It would be easy to assume - and my detractors assume lots of things about
me since they are, in my opinion, intellectually unarmed when it comes to addressing what I
say and thus are required to change the subject to
me and how obnoxious I am - that I have
always been skeptical about so called "renewable" energy.
In fact, in my writings here and elsewhere, I have not been nearly as hostile to so called "renewable energy" as I am now. For instance, as recently as the last days of 2005, less than 3 years ago, I was waxing romantic about how we might make better use of a combined program of wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric energy
combined in one system in the Imperial Valley of California:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x37366">I offer a crazy energy idea about which I've fantasized: The Salton Sea.
Actually, although I would never even
dream of writing that post now, it wasn't all that bad. Of the 4 major renewable energy fantasies beyond hydroelectricity, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass, geothermal is by far the least obnoxious in my view, and the program I proposed relied heavily on the geothermal resources of the Imperial Valley, which are large,
if the water can be found, although finding water in Southern California is no sure bet.
It's no secret that I don't think that
any of the big renewables - including hydroelectric - can ever be as safe and clean as nuclear energy, although nuclear energy is
not and never will be perfect: It is only capable of being better than everything else.
The one big renewable I have not mentioned thus far in this post is one of the oldest, and the one that has been used the most throughout human history: Biofuels.
If you must know, if this was 1980, I would have been happy to come here and note that I agreed completely with the energy policies of Jimmy Carter. What were the ideas behind those policies. The anti-nuke self referential energy writer Benjamin Sovacool, citing his own work (published with no collaborators) only 5 times in the paper puts it this way:
After the exile of the Iranian Shah in 1979 and the second ‘‘energy crisis,’’President Jimmy Carter confided to his friends that he believed one ultimate consequence would be widespread use of renewable energy. Carter expected renewable power technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels ,at minimum, to reach 10 percent of national electricity capacity in the United States by1985. Denis Hayes, director of the Solar Energy Research Institute(the predecessor to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory),predicted two years earlier that by the year 2000 renewable energy sources would provide 40 percent of the nation’s energy supply. Hayes(1980) and Noland(1980) similarly thought thats solar panels would furnish 10–20 percent of all American energy needs by 2000. Declared the solar energy alone would account for 38.2 percent of American Energy by 2000. The National Research Council predicted two years earlier that solar energy alone would account for 38.2 percent of American energy needs by 2000..
Sovacool, Energy Policy 37 (2009) 4500–4513
Nothing said by Carter, Hayes, et al would have found much conflict from me in 1980. I would agreed completely, and let me tell you something else: I would have never dreamed of asking the question, "What if we're all wrong? What if we're all full of shit? What if we're only hearing what we
want to hear?"
(For the record I was an illiterate anti-nuke up until 1986 when the disaster at Chernobyl answered experimentally the previously speculative question, "What's the worst case?")
The paper to which I refer also comes from the social science journal
Energy Policy, which also publishes a lot of stuff (not only that from Sovacool) that I view with a skeptical or - being who I am - one might even say a
jaundiced eye.
Energy Policy Volume 34, Issue 7, May 2006, Pages 863-876. The article is called "Conditions for the sustainability of biomass based fuel use."
Here's the introduction:
Before the industrial revolution recently formed biomass dominated the supply of fuels. This was no easy matter: overexploitation of resources did emerge as an important problem. Overexploitation was linked to poor energy efficiency and limited long distance transport (Ponting, 1991). On the other hand energy demand before the industrial revolution was much lower than current demand.
Relatively much is known about the pre-industrial revolution energy supply in some Western European countries. In the seventeenth century England deforestation and the ensuing scarcity of fuel wood triggered shipments of coal from Newcastle to east coast ports such as London (Hochberg, 1984). In the late eighteenth century the switch to coal for iron manufacturing was made in the United Kingdom (UK) due to scarcity of biomass, as reflected in increasing prices of biomass derived fuels. This was when iron production was probably at about 0.2% of its current UK level and imports of charcoal from in particular the Baltic counties were large (Hammersley, 1973; Thomas, 1985; Ponting, 1991). In 1789, 16% of the land area of France was covered with forest, making France relatively well forested by European standards. Still France needed at least 90% of annual forest growth for meeting people's minimum fuel needs regarding space heating and cooking, leaving little room for building materials and industrial activity (Pomeranz, 2002). In 1820 Britain's coal use already exceeded the energetic equivalent of the sustainable yield from more forested land than all of Britain's pasture and crop land combined (Pomeranz, 2002). By 1840 the total demand for fuel in the Netherlands was about 0.025 EJ, less than 1% of current demand. Availability of recently formed biomass was however very limited. So demand for fuel had to be covered mainly by unsustainable peat digging (60%) and coal (Mokyr, 1980).
Apart from Northern Italy where there were severe wood shortages by 1650 (Pomeranz, 2002) evidence for the Mediterranean area is more anecdotal than for Western Europe, but also here there were several instances that biomass was a scarce resource (Braudel, 1975). In 1512 even the officers kitchens in Cairo ceased to function due to lack of fuel and the sixteenth century humanist Antonio de Guevara stated that ‘wood costs us as much as what was cooking in the pot’. In the late eighteenth century fuel wood became rare and expensive in the Languedoc- so dear that bakers were hard pressed to produce bread (Allen, 1983). Nor were problems restricted to Europe and North Africa. In China during the Northern Sung (960–1126), urban expansion and growth of the Chinese iron industry led to shortages of biomass-based fuels and a switch to coal (Hartwell, 1962). By 1800 the situation in southwest Shandong (China) was similar to that in contemporary France, with fuel prices high and rising (Pomeranz, 2002). In West Africa there was a substantial decline of iron industries well before the industrial revolution due to reduced wood resources, that limited the availability of charcoal used as a fuel in iron production (Goucher, 1981).
Biomass use that is rather similar to use before the industrial revolution is still important in the countryside of the third world (Chen et al., 1998; Gadi et al., 2003; Ludwig et al., 2003). Such use is now called ‘traditional use’ (Goldemberg and Coelho, 2004). In many rural parts of Africa and India more than 80% of energy supply is provided for by biofuels such as wood, charcoal, crop residues and dung cake (Omer, 2002; Reddy and Venkataraman, 2002; Jagger and Pender 2003; Ludwig et al., 2003). Especially in well forested industrial countries there is also household consumption of biomass that can be considered ‘traditional use’ (Hallin, 1994). All in all about 45 E (1018)J, somewhat over 11% of the yearly world fuel consumption (roughly 400 EJ), concerns traditional combustion of biomass (van Minnen et al., 2003; Goldemberg and Coelho, 2004).
Use of traditional biomass based fuels is often associated with environmental problems. Poor indoor and outdoor air quality are obvious examples thereof (Gadi et al., 2003; Ludwig et al., 2003 J. Ludwig, L.T. Marufu, B. Huber, M.O. Andreae and G. Helas, Domestic combustion of biomass fuels in developing countries; a major source of atmospheric pollutants, Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry 44 (2003), pp. 23–37. Full Text via CrossRefLudwig et al., 2003). Resource related problems are also still prominent. Examples thereof are shortages of fuel wood or good quality wood (Stevens, 1993; Akinbami et al., 2003; Ludwig et al., 2003) and insufficient input of organic matter into agricultural soil due to use of dung cake and crop residues for energy supply, which in turn leads to soil degradation (Jagger and Pender, 2003). Also desertification and reduced generation of hydroelectricity have been associated with traditional biomass use (Akinbami et al., 2003).
In fact, if you look, you will discover that wind, solar (although not PV) and biomass energy
dominated most of human history, for much of which life was short and miserable for all but the wealthiest portions of society, although it wasn't all that great for the wealthy either. I, for instance, consider that I live much better than Henry VIII or his smarter daughter Elizabeth.
This begs the question: If renewable energy is so great, how come humanity
abandoned it historically?
Right now though, huge portions of the forests in places like
Sumatra with all those rare species found no where on earth, including our close cousins the Orangutans, are disappearing so Germans can feel smug about the "renewable energy portfolio standards" of their
cars.
There are now more than 6 times as many people as there were in 1600. Most of them
want to drive cars and watch TV.
Does this raise a smidgen of concern with anyone? No?
The conclusion of the article refers to the non-renewable resource to which I have referred here and elsewhere, phosphate:
A number of conditions have emerged for the sustainability, as defined here, of biomass-for-energy production. Practices should be such that levels of soil organic matter and nutrients in soils can be maintained indefinitely. Water usage and erosion should not exceed additions to water and soil stocks. Use of virtually nonrenewables, such as phosphate ores and fossil fuels, should be much reduced. This in all probability leads to a relatively low productivity per hectare.
Let us pray..."percent by 2050...percent by 2050...percent by 2050...percent by 2050..."
"Hear O Lord, our prayers..."
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