I'd meant this week’s Archdruid Report post to return to Retrotopia, my quirky narrative exploration of ways in which going backward might actually be a step forward, and next week’s post to turn a critical eye on a common but dysfunctional habit of thinking that explains an astonishing number of the avoidable disasters of contemporary life, from anthropogenic climate change all the way to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Still, those entertaining topics will have to wait, because something else requires a bit of immediate attention. In my new year’s predictions a little over a month ago, as my regular readers will recall, I suggested that photovoltaic solar energy would be the focus of the next big energy bubble. The first signs of that process have now begun to surface in a big way, and the sign I have in mind—the same marker that provided the first warning of previous energy bubbles—is a shift in the rhetoric surrounding renewable energy sources.
Broadly speaking, there are two groups of people who talk about renewable energy these days. The first group consists of those people who believe that of course sun and wind can replace fossil fuels and enable modern industrial society to keep on going into the far future. The second group consists of people who actually live with renewable energy on a daily basis. It’s been my repeated experience for years now that people belong to one of these groups or the other, but not to both.
As a general rule, in fact, the less direct experience a given person has living with solar and wind power, the more likely that person is to buy into the sort of green cornucopianism that insists that sun, wind, and other renewable resources can provide everyone on the planet with a middle class American lifestyle. Conversely, those people who have the most direct knowledge of the strengths and limitations of renewable energy—those, for example, who live in homes powered by sunlight and wind, without a fossil fuel-powered grid to cover up the intermittency problems—generally have no time for the claims of green cornucopianism, and are the first to point out that relying on renewable energy means giving up a great many extravagant habits that most people in today’s industrial societies consider normal.
Debates between members of these two groups have enlivened quite a few comment pages here on The Archdruid Report. Of late, though—more specifically, since the COP-21 summit last December came out with
yet another round of toothless posturing masquerading as a climate agreement—the language used by the first of the two groups has taken on a new and unsettling tone.
Climate activist Naomi Oreskes helped launch that new tone with a diatribe in the mass media insisting that questioning whether renewable energy sources can power industrial society amounts to “a new form of climate denialism.” The same sort of rhetoric has begun to percolate all through the greenward end of things: an increasingly angry insistence that renewable energy sources are by definition the planet’s only hope, that of course the necessary buildout can be accomplished fast enough and on a large enough scale to matter, and that no one ought to be allowed to question these articles of faith.
There are plenty of points worth making about what this sort of rhetoric implies about the current state of the green movement, and I’ll get to some of those shortly, but the issue that comes first to mind—typically enough for this blog—is a historical one: we’ve been here before.
When this blog first got going, back in 2006, the energy resource that was sure to save industrial civilization from the consequences of its own bad decisions was biofuels. Those of my readers who were paying attention to the peak oil scene in those days will remember the grandiose and constantly reiterated pronouncements about the oceans of ethanol from American corn and the torrents of biodiesel from algae that were going to sweep away the petroleum age and replace fossil fuels with all the cheap, abundant, carbon-neutral liquid fuel anyone could want. Those who raised annoying questions—and yes, I was one of them—got reactions that swung across a narrow spectrum from patronizing putdowns to furious denunciation.
As it turned out, of course, the critics were right and the people who insisted that biofuels were going to replace petroleum and other fossil fuels were dead wrong. There were at least two problems, and both of them could have been identified—and in fact were identified—well in advance, by that minority who were willing to take a close look at the underlying data.
The first problem was that the numbers simply didn’t work out. It so happens, for example, that if you grow corn using standard American agricultural methods, and convert that corn into ethanol using state of the art industrial fermenters and the like, the amount of energy you have to put into that whole process is more than you get by burning the resulting ethanol. Equally, it so happens that if you were to put every square inch of arable farmland in the world into biofuel crops, leaving none for such trivial uses as feeding the seven billion human beings on this planet, you still wouldn’t get enough biofuel to replace the world’s annual consumption of transportation fuels. Neither of these points were hard to figure out, and the second one was well known in the appropriate tech scene of the 1970s—you’ll find it, for example, in the pages of William Catton’s must-read book Overshoot—but somehow the proponents of ethanol and biodiesel missed it.
The second problem was a little more complex, but not enough so to make it impossible to figure out in advance. This was that the process of biofuel production and consumption had impacts of its own. Divert a significant fraction of the world’s food supply into the fuel tanks of people in a handful of rich countries—and of course this is what all that rhetoric about fueling the world amounted to in practice—and the resulting spikes in food prices had disastrous impacts across the Third World, triggering riots and quite a number of countries and outright revolutions in more than one.
Meanwhile rain forests in southeast Asia got clearcut so that palm oil plantations could supply the upper middle classes of Europe and America with supposedly sustainable biodiesel. It could have gotten much worse, except that the underlying economics were so bad that not that many years into the biofuels boom, companies started going broke at such a rate that banks stopped lending money for biofuel projects; some of the most highly ballyhooed algal biodiesel projects turned out to be, in effect, pond scum ponzi schemes; and except for those enterprises that managed to get themselves a cozy spot as taxpayer-supported subsidy dumpsters, the biofuel boom went away.
It was promptly replaced by another energy resource that was sure to save industrial civilization. Yes, that would be hydrofracturing of oil- and gas-bearing shales, or to give it its popular moniker, fracking. For quite a while there, you couldn’t click through to an energy-related website without being assailed with any number of grandiose diatribes glorifying fracking as a revolutionary new technology that, once it was applied to vast, newly discovered shale fields all over North America, was going to usher in a new era of US energy independence. Remember the phrase “Saudi America”? I certainly do.
Here again, there were two little problems with these claims, and the first was that once again the numbers didn’t work out. Fracking wasn’t a new technological breakthrough—it’s been used on oil fields since the 1940s—and the “newly discovered” oil fields in North Dakota and elsewhere were nothing of the kind; they were found decades ago and the amount of oil in them, which was well known to petroleum geologists, did not justify the wildly overinflated claims made for them. There were plenty of other difficulties with the so-called “fracking revolution,” including the same net energy issue that ultimately doomed the “biodiesel revolution,” but we can leave those for now, and go on to the second little problem with fracking.
This was the awkward fact that the fracking industry, like the biodiesel industry, had impacts of its own that weren’t limited to the torrents of new energy it was supposed to provide. All across the more heavily fracked parts of the United States, homeowners discovered that their tap water was so full of methane that they could ignite it with a match, while some had to deal with the rather more troubling consequences of earthquake swarms and miles-long trains of fracked fuels rolling across America’s poorly maintained railroad network. Then there was the methane leakage into the atmosphere—I don’t know that anybody’s been able to quantify that, but I suspect it’s had more than a little to do with the abrupt spike in global temperatures and extreme weather events over the last decade.
Things might have gotten much worse, except here again the underlying economics of fracking were so bad that not that many years into the fracking boom, companies have started going broke at such a rate that banks are cutting back sharply on lending for fracking projects. As I write this, rumors are flying in the petroleum industry that Chesapeake Petroleum, the biggest of the early players in the US fracking scene, is on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, and quite a few very large banks that lent recklessly to prop up the fracking boom are loudly proclaiming that everything is just fine while their stock values plunge in panic selling and the rates other banks charge them for overnight loans spike upwards.
Unless some enterprising fracking promoter figures out how to elbow his way to the government feed trough, it’s pretty much a given that fracking will shortly turn back into what it was before the current boom: one of several humdrum technologies used to scrape a little extra oil out from mostly depleted oil fields. That, in turn, leaves the field clear for the next overblown “energy revolution” to be rolled out—and my working ghess is that the focus of this upcoming round of energy hype will be renewable energy resources: specifically, attempts to power the electrical grid with sun and wind.
In a way, that’s convenient, because we don’t have to wonder whether the two little problems with biofuels and fracking also apply to this application of solar and wind power. That’s already been settled; the research was done quite a while ago, and the answer is yes.
To begin with, the numbers are just as problematic for solar and wind power as they were for biofuels and fracking. Examples abound: real world experience with large-scale solar electrical generation systems, for example, show dismal net energy returns; the calculations of how much energy can be extracted from wind that have been used to prop up windpower are up to two orders of magnitude too high; more generally, those researchers who have taken the time to crunch the numbers—I’m thinking here especially, though not only, of Tom Murphy’s excellent site Do The Math—have shown over and over again that for reasons rooted in the hardest of hard physics, renewable energy as a source of grid power can’t live up to the sweeping promises made on its behalf.
Equally, renewables are by no means as environmentally benign as their more enthusiastic promoters claim. It’s true that they don’t dump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels do—and my more perceptive readers may already have noted, by the way, the extent to which talk about the very broad range of environmental blowbacks from modern industrial technologies has been supplanted by a much narrower focus on greenhouse gas-induced anthropogenic global warming, as though this is the only issue that matters—but the technologies needed to turn sun and wind into grid electricity involve very large volumes of rare metals, solvents, plastics, and other industrial products that have substantial carbon footprints of their own.
And of course there are other problems of the same kind, some of which are already painfully clear. A number of those rare metals are sourced from open-pit mines in the Third World worked by slave labor; the manufacture of most solvents and plastics involves the generation of a great deal of toxic waste, most of which inevitably finds its way into the biosphere; wind turbines are already racking up an impressive death toll among birds and bats—well, I could go on. Nearly all of modern industrial society’s complex technologies are ecocidal to one fairly significant degree or another, and the fact that a few of them extract energy from sunlight or wind doesn’t keep them from having a galaxy of nasty indirect environmental costs.
Thus the approaching boom in renewable energy will inevitably bring with it a rising tide of ghastly news stories, as corners get cut and protections overwhelmed by whatever degree of massive buildout gets funded before the dismal economics of renewable energy finally take their inevitable toll. To judge by what’s happened in the past, I expect to see plenty of people who claim to be concerned about the environment angrily dismissing any suggestion that the renewable energy industry has anything to do with, say, soaring cancer rates around solar panel manufacturing plants, or whatever other form the inevitable ecological blowback takes. The all-or-nothing logic of George Orwell’s invented language Newspeak is astonishingly common these days: that which is good (because it doesn’t burn fossil fuels) can’t possibly be ungood (because it isn’t economically viable and also has environmental problems of its own), and to doubt the universal goodness of what’s doubleplusgood—why, that’s thoughtcrime...
Things might get very ugly indeed, all things considered, except that the underlying economics of renewable energy as a source of grid electricity aren’t noticeably better than those of fracking or corn ethanol. Six to ten years down the road, as a result, the bankruptcies and defaults will begin, banks will start backing away from the formerly booming renewables industry, and the whole thing will come crashing down, the way ethanol did and fracking is doing right now. That will clear the way, in turn, for whatever the next energy boom will be—my guess is that it’ll be nuclear power, though that’s such a spectacular money-loser that any future attempt to slap shock paddles on the comatose body of the nuclear power industry may not get far.
It probably needs to be said at this point that one blog post by an archdruid isn’t going to do anything to derail the trajectory just sketched out. Ten thousand blog posts by Gaia herself, cosigned by the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Captain Planet and the Planeteers probably wouldn’t do the trick either. I confidently expect this post to be denounced furiously straight across the green blogosphere over the next couple of weeks, and at intervals thereafter; a few years from now, when dozens of hot new renewable-energy startups are sucking up million-dollar investments from venture capitalists and planning their initial IPOs, such few references as this and similar posts field will be dripping with patronizing contempt; then, when reality sets in, the defaults begin and the banks start backing away, nobody will want to talk about this essay at all.
It probably also needs to be pointed out that I’m actually very much in favor of renewable energy technologies, and have discussed their importance repeatedly on this blog. The question I’ve been trying to raise, here and elsewhere, isn’t whether or not sun and wind are useful power sources; the question is whether it’s possible to power industrial civilization with them, and the answer is no.
That doesn’t mean, in turn, that we’ll just keep powering industrial civilization with fossil fuels, or nuclear power, or what have you. Fossil fuels are running short—as oilmen like to say, depletion never sleeps—and nuclear power is a hopelessly uneconomical white-elephant technology that has never been viable anywhere in the world without massive ongoing government subsidies. Other options? They’ve all been tried, and they don’t work either.
The point that nearly everyone in the debate is trying to evade is that the collection of extravagant energy-wasting habits that pass for a normal middle class lifestyle these days is, in James Howard Kunstler’s useful phrase, an arrangement without a future. Those habits only became possible in the first place because our species broke into the planet’s supply of stored carbon and burnt through half a billion years of fossil sunlight in a wild three-century-long joyride. Now the needle on the gas gauge is moving inexorably toward that threatening letter E, and the joyride is over. It really is as simple as that.
Thus the conversation that needs to happen now isn’t about how to keep power flowing to the grid; it’s about how to reduce our energy consumption so that we can get by without grid power, using local microgrids and home-generated power to meet sharply reduced needs.We don’t need more energy; we need much, much less, and that implies in turn that we—meaning here especially the five per cent of our species who live within the borders of the United States, who use so disproportionately large a fraction of the planet’s energy and resources, and who produce a comparably huge fraction of the carbon dioxide that’s driving global warming—need to retool our lives and our lifestyles to get by with the sort of energy consumption that most other human beings consider normal.
310 comments:
2/10/16, 3:56 PM
dfr2010 said...
Am I the only one who immediately thinks, "Petroleum hasn't even done that after over a century!"
2/10/16, 4:03 PM
alex carter said...
We were highly entertained by hiking or going to the beach and poking around. Radio's a good technology because you can entertain, educate, inspire, without using a lot of energy. Big screen TV's, not so much.
Whittling. A pocket knife was the ultimate toy because it was a meta-toy, that could be used to make other toys. Those were my favorite toys. There are so many things that are fun as hell, that I guess kids don't know much about now?
2/10/16, 4:04 PM
sgage said...
2/10/16, 4:16 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
Photovoltaic cells strike me as having this amazing ability to crawl up into our collective brains and shut off the imaginative part for a bit. Funny story: I once raised the idea of a solar water heater with my mother. She was insisting that it would cost too much to be worth it... a little bit into the conversation I realized this was because she was imagining an electric heater running on a PV cell.
2/10/16, 4:22 PM
William Conklin said...
2/10/16, 4:23 PM
Justin said...
Right now, many people in North America (including me) live in a local optima of moderate (by NA standards) but too high, energy consumption, and a job that pays well, but limited opportunities to for example, start a compost pile or grow some veggies. The 'alternative' is to go to a rural area where one might be able to afford a place that allows the opportunities for various futuristic activities like keeping chickens and growing squash, but where there is no obvious way to make any money at all - no way to buy a few staples and pay the modest property taxes. It's a serious quandry, and I think it affects more than a few people. Do you see a real way out of this pickle, aside from staying ready to change and picking up a few useful skills?
2/10/16, 4:25 PM
Justin said...
2/10/16, 4:26 PM
Paul Kinsky said...
2/10/16, 4:27 PM
John Weber said...
This is an essay challenging ‘business as usual’. If we teach people that these solar devices are the future of energy without teaching the whole system, we mislead, misinform and create false hopes and beliefs.
I have provided both charts and videos from the industries themselves for the solar cells, modules, aluminum from ore, aluminum from recycling, aluminum extrusion, inverters, batteries and copper.
Please note each piece of machinery you see in each of the videos has its own industrial interconnection and history.
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html
2/10/16, 4:33 PM
JimK said...
I am not a big fan of proposals like raising the minimum wage. I would much rather see proposals that, first, make it very difficult for the power elite to further trap the poor into struggling to earn money to pay for things that really wouldn't be necessary if it weren't for the clever entrapment. Second, I would like to see infrastructure efforts focused on what people of the most limited means really need. I would like to see a new interstate walkway system, with water sources every five miles and food sources and campgrounds every fifteen miles.
Living well on a low budget is partly a matter of choice but also, in significant degree, a matter of public support.
2/10/16, 4:34 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Alex, exactly. Exactly! Most current American energy use goes to things that can be readily done without, and in a good many cases the result of doing without is a measurable improvement in quality of life -- but try telling that to people whose single deepest fear is that someone will think they're poorer than they are.
Sgage, good. I really wonder where the smirk comes from -- I've seen it, of course. It reminds me of nothing so much as the expression on the face of Charles Wallace in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time when IT has control of his brain.
James, no argument there. It's like the people who want to run a blender off a stationary bicycle by using the pedals to power a generator and the generator to run the blender -- as though it wasn't vastly more efficient simply to hook up the blender to gears driven by the pedals...
William, nope. The laws of thermodynamics say that you have to put slightly more energy into extracting hydrogen from water than you get back by burning the hydrogen, so it's precisely the equivalent of buying dollar bills for $1.05 each and expecting to make a profit.
Justin, the whole notion of running off to rural property is a mirage. My entire strategy, as sketched out in my book Green Wizardry and elsewhere, focuses on adapting in place -- and that starts by cutting your own expenditures to the bone so you can look at finding a place in town where a backyard composter is an option. As for a Trump sandwich, good question -- though I know it would have plenty of American cheese on it!
Paul, no, because the laws of thermodynamics impose hard upper limits on the efficiency of solar energy conversion and storage. The diffuse heat we get from the sun can't be made to equal the extremely concentrated heat we get from fossil fuels, no matter how you spin it.
2/10/16, 4:39 PM
Bluebird said...
2/10/16, 4:42 PM
Repent said...
In addition, the existing power grid utilities have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent a distributed electricity grid from becoming a reality.
Even large mega-corporations are having difficulty getting funding right now, and governments are by and large functionally broke; where would the money come from?
2/10/16, 4:43 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
If I made the Trump Sandwich, it'd probably be made of balogna and canned cheese, just because that's too funny not to be a thing.
I'm still hoping on them serving up the Sanders Sandwich, however. I'm thinking an open-faced Reuben on marble rye, if that's not too stereotypical. (Mind you, I really, really like open-faced Reubens on marble rye.)
2/10/16, 4:44 PM
MoonRaven said...
And, of course, that's going to upset a lot of people who want to keep the lifestyle that they have.
2/10/16, 4:47 PM
Justin said...
2/10/16, 4:48 PM
Maybe Next Year said...
Mr. Greer, I have a quick question for you and my apologies in advance if you have covered this topic before, but what are your thoughts on these driver-less, automated cars being road tested by Google?
Thanks!
2/10/16, 4:49 PM
MindfulEcologist said...
Wet computer screen, again. Must not reach for the water bottle while reading JMG...
Retooling lifestyles is of course what the new consumer of the Regan era was all about. Hitched to the star of "self-expression" the updated "values and lifestyles" marketing segmentation techniques blindsided the nation. Now when you and others with an eco-conscience teach a lifestyle change is needed but that it involves LESS a typical reaction, at least from my experience, is that at first it is heard as a suggestion to by hand-pumps instead of microwaves. Which it is, but it is so much more. Stepping out of the narratives that make our eco-insanity look inevitable, if not reasonable, is really hard.
A freedom from conditioning is needed if we are to get anywhere through the thicket of thought stoppers that passes for an intelligent conversation these days. So we find our societies bouncing back and forth at the whim of these pied-pipers. We are sure there must be, to use another useful phrase from Kunstler, a way to keep shopping at Wallmart forever.
Thanks for hosting this little corner of sanity.
For those interested in the issues raised in last week's comments about the Century of the Self might find my post this week of interest, Education vs. Manipulation. John, it starts with one of my favorite quotes from Schopenhauer.
2/10/16, 4:55 PM
Robert Tweedy said...
Have you heard of Gail Tverberg, who has a website called Our Finite World? She shares much the same outlook as you, but from an economics perspective. In your 20 seconds of spare time each day, she might be worth a read.
2/10/16, 5:00 PM
Don Stewart said...
I have one suggestion and one wish.
The suggestion is that people who want to do composting in an urban space check out:
http://www.debtolman.com
You can build one of these gardens, fill the bottom with compostable material you scavenge in town, add 4 inches of topsoil on top, and grow a crop while the compost cooks. Remove the compost to use elsewhere and repeat.
The wish is that solar PV work well enough to power a DC rice cooker with a timer on it. DC rice cookers are already sold by Asian companies....they will work off your car battery or boat battery. DC avoids the need for an inverter. The timer means that you can set it, and leave it to do other world without tending it.
Why a rice cooker? After a collapse, dry grains are likely to be the main calorie source for urban people. Brown Rice is the most common grain that people cook as a whole grain, but you can also cook other whole grains. Best to soak them a couple of days, but you get into a routine with Mason jars. Avoids the need for grinding. If you have a battery, you can wake up with the grain cooked for breakfast. Or cook once a day, while the sun is shining. Cooked grain should last 24 hours without refrigeration.
Don Stewart
2/10/16, 5:00 PM
Aubrey Romero said...
2/10/16, 5:02 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
The devils smirk?! You guys have seen the devils smirk?! I see that all the time out here just before someone says something condescending. I do it myself from time to time, though I'm trying to break the habit.
2/10/16, 5:03 PM
Unknown said...
I am a member of the small choir you preach to. I've been watching the decline of industrial civilization for 40 years, even before it globalized. I once dreamed of living off the grid and lived on a piece of land where it would have probably worked if it was practical. But I looked at the investment and the likely maintenance required a few times and never came up with a number that made sense. If I could have made a difference all by myself I would have probably made the sacrifice. But why should I when it wouldn't have made an erg's worth of difference.
Human nature, especially our cognitive glitches prevent large numbers of people from recognizing the challenges that face us. Only when the system meets a shock it cannot absorb and begins to collapse in a way that can no longer be denied will enough people be willing to change so that a real difference MIGHT be made. The sooner it comes the better because the hole won't be as deep.
But the dreadful reality is that such times have more often resulted in malnutrition, violence and disease.
Of course, the one power source that conventional wisdom does not want to consider is muscle power. That is the world of Kuntsler's world made by hand series and a reasonably likely future.
2/10/16, 5:09 PM
Andy Brown said...
I'm not even saying that such adaptiveness would solve the problem, but adjusting our way of working or living even slightly to intermittency is just completely beyond imagining apparently. And that's how I can tell that nothing about the conversation is serious and that heads are firmly buried in the sand. It confirms my impression that the math doesn't add up and it's not meant to add up. To imagine - much less admit - the necessity for even the slightest tweak to our ways of doing things is an extremely powerful taboo.
2/10/16, 5:33 PM
Ahavah said...
2/10/16, 5:42 PM
John Michael Greer said...
JimK, no doubt, but someone has to take the first step.
Bluebird, true enough. Back in the day, we said, "weatherize before you solarize" -- that same rule can be extended much further.
Repent, sure, but you'll notice that money didn't become worthless in 2008-9, or for that matter in 1929-32. It won't become worthless this time, either. A currency or two might have to be replaced, as the pre-hyperinflation Deutschemark was, but that's an ordinary event in economic history. Money is just a system of tokens, after all, and it can be replaced with another set of tokens readily enough.
Moonraven, exactly. It's the desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable that's driving a lot of the evasions of reality that permeate the green scene these days.
Justin, how about trying to find a not so good job in a not so small town, but one that's smaller and has more prospects for backyard gardening than the place you live now? It's not an all-or-nothing thing, you know.
Maybe, it's another toy for the privileged and another way to eliminate jobs at a time when permanent joblessness is one of the country's major social crises. Other than that, an irrelevancy.
Ecologist, all it requires is self-knowledge and reflection -- and I suspect that the reason so many people spend so much time staring at little glass screens is that this makes it easier to avoid those things.
Robert, why, yes -- Gail and I have had long conversations at peak oil events, for example. I disagree with some of her arguments, and I'm sure she disagrees with some of mine as well.
Don, try a fireless cooker for rice. It works really well, and all you need is enough heat to get the rice and water to a boil. As usual, conservation is the best first step!
Aubrey, you're welcome and thank you!
Varun, no, I think it's a little different from the ordinary condescending smirk. I may just have to do a post about it one of these days.
2/10/16, 5:45 PM
John Michael Greer said...
2/10/16, 5:47 PM
Angus Wallace said...
Great post.
I imagine you will agree, but think it's worth clarifying that an industrial civilisation doesn't _need_ our current energy inputs -- it _could_ be run on 1/100th current energy consumption (as in Retrotopia) which could probably be provided by renewables. Private energy use might need to decrease more than 99% to achieve this.
I've written a new blog post about status and consumerism, which ties into this quite nicely. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.
Cheers, Angus
2/10/16, 5:51 PM
Chris Balow said...
I wonder what role you believe the stability of the American political order has to play in all of this. You mentioned that, maybe 6-10 years down the road, the investment dollars could start flowing into nuclear after the taps get shut-off for wind and solar. However, in 6-10 years, might the political and economic conditions in the U.S. become too unstable and volatile to allow for another renewable energy bubble to form? Maybe, at that point, Wall Street wouldn't have the clout to begin the cycle anew?
2/10/16, 5:56 PM
Bike Trog said...
2/10/16, 6:00 PM
Dearcan said...
Dearcan
2/10/16, 6:01 PM
Unknown said...
- First, minor spelling error in your post, you say "ghess" instead of guess.
- About solar energy being diluted. I read Tom Murphy's posts but I disagree. Solar energy is equivalent to a 6000K heat source. That means the maximum theoretical efficiency is around 95%. That does not mean we can use it to power industrial civilization! As always the technological and economic limitations are much stricter. But in the right environment, with the right tools it can be incredibly useful (e.g. smeltering metals).
- Finally one comment related to a previous post about climate change. Nowadays I am almost completely convinced by your catabolic collapse theory, except for the possible impact of sudden climate shifts. I am not talking about near term human extinction, just major enough changes to, for example, make money in large parts of the world worthless (to build on another commenter's thought).
2/10/16, 6:07 PM
Bruce E said...
Did anyone remember to plant, water, harvest, and refry the beans?
That all aside, the energy consumption peak seems to be in our rearview mirror already, and I don't think all of the reduction in consumption is driven solely by economics. I think there is also quite a bit of solid engineering innovation going on when it comes to consumption efficiency. It's most dramatic in computer equipment, but there is still a lot of low-hanging fruit in the typical middle-class American wasteful lifestyle that can be realized without a significant hit to quality of life.
What we need to reimagine is the notion of ever-positive exponential GDP growth, population growth, and GDP per capita growth -- unless we can find a way to perpetuate the myth that currency = income = capital, and the power of that myth serves us as long as our computers can churn out Bitcoins and simultaneously keep track of the $5 billion per second minimum wage transactions to the nearest penny, and this myth somehow continues to motivate us to do things like cook the beans so that the personal farter we hired to keep our electronics powered up doesn't run out of gas...
2/10/16, 6:22 PM
siliconguy said...
2/10/16, 6:35 PM
diablomoreno46361 said...
As one of the converted I have made shift to learn and simplify, planning for the demise of all I grew up with without the prepper overkill. But if we accept as a given many of the issues raised here and elsewhere ...where do we go next? ...Green wiz is fine and vital but commonsense really.
A relatively unexplored topic is how will our current, and probably future more fascist governments and elites organize their not inconsiderable media,legal and coercive powers to affect our preparations,contrasting and subversive lifestyle [sic]? Here in Oz we have emergency legislation on the books but never enacted and certainly not in common knowledge.My familiarity only comes about due to my involvement as an emergency services worker. The internal and external proletariat I understand but not the concrete forms conflicts might take. A post on this or even a new chapter in your ongoing saga might be useful for those planning to ride the waves of these 'interesting times'.
2/10/16, 6:37 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
As for peak oil, it's still difficult to talk about it and be taken seriously when $1 gas is possible in the Midwest. We all know that it happened, but current conditions allow people like Fabius Maximus to dismiss the whole idea along with its proponents.
2/10/16, 6:38 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
2/10/16, 6:42 PM
thenoteswhichdonotfit said...
Not relevant to this post, but if you have not found it already, I think you may find this article about people who are collapsing their lifestyles interesting, even though I would not consider some of the people profiled to be truly 'off the grid':
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/off-the-grid-but-still-online
2/10/16, 6:45 PM
Mark Luterra said...
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the big dams which could never be built today (too much money, too many environmental impacts) will continue to churn out gigawatts at very high net energy until they need to be replaced - perhaps another century or more.
I guess my point is that while it would be much better to focus on using less than throwing money into low-net-energy speculative bubbles, a bubble that leaves a legacy of continuing energy production has to be a little better than a bubble that dies as soon as the money dries up.
2/10/16, 6:46 PM
SamuraiArtGuy said...
In the meantime, whenever the topic of renewables comes up, aside from the sobering numbers of the energy and industrial processes required to deploy those technologies, I always was left with a question. – "How the BLIP do you turn wind or solar generated electricity into plastics, lubricants, fertilizers, and the 1001 other petroleum-based products other than fuels.
I have heard the argument, that the more we supplant fossil fuels with renewables, the more we can sequester precious pretroleum for non-fuel usage. But that's a game with a decidedly limited lifespan. But we can play it a hell of a lot longer if, as a species, we learn to get buy with a LOT less... well, everything. Other sets of sobering numbers concerning overshoot and sustainability reveal we're already using WAY more than the Earth can rightly provide.
No, the Middle Class American Industrial lifestyle is as endangered as Bluefin Tuna and the sooner put out of it's misery, probably better. Having recently abandoned the urban sprawl of NYC and it's suburbs for the semi-rural Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, we're consciously down-scaling, and are reasonably content to do so. Most of what comprises the Middle Class American Dream is empty trophies and material accumulation for no particular purpose beyond "keeping score." But what will bring on considerable unrest and misery will be the utter resistance of the affluent and the wealthy to consider giving up a single bit of thier extravagant lifestyles for the common good.
As George Carlin once famously said, "They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying-- to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want.
"They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests."
It's not going to be a boring century. Those of us paying attention will be doing what we can to try and decline gracefully, and land on our feet and not our faces.
2/10/16, 6:52 PM
thenoteswhichdonotfit said...
I also WWOOFed on an off-the-grid farm where the owner was building a dam on the creek flowing through the property because he was not satisfied with what he could get from solar energy alone (and he got solar from both PV and coppicing-to-firewood).
2/10/16, 6:56 PM
backyardfeast said...
To field questions from callers, the show had brought in an energy economist from Ontario as a pundit. Many callers expressed the belief (quite common here) that this LNG scheme was a fool's errand (for a host of valid reasons) and that instead these investments should be made into renewable energy. Quite so. Finally, a little exasperated, the pundit said, "you know, here in Ontario, we HAVE made those investments in renewable energy, and is hasn't really worked out. They require enormous subsidies, don't work as well as projected, and don't produce the jobs in the volume promised. We just don't get the economic benefits from renewables that you do from fossil fuels."
Aha! I wanted to shout. Exactly! So the missing point, which I will be shouting from the rooftops as often as I get the opportunity, is that both of these points of view are correct. We DO need to move away from fossil fuels quickly and dramatically. AND we won't end up with as productive an economy as we now have. Yep. So...the real problem we need to concentrate on, is how to move forward from that reality. This, as you keep telling us, is the task for all of us now in our own communities.
2/10/16, 6:59 PM
Clay Dennis said...
2/10/16, 7:11 PM
pygmycory said...
And yes, we can't run North American society as it is currently organized on renewable energy alone. No argument. I wonder about what society will look like in five years, much less twenty.
2/10/16, 7:12 PM
Kyoto Motors said...
@dfr2010
Well earned gold star! Nice way to start things off. I often wonder what might have happened if petroleum had been doled out internationally as the ur-resource that it is, by a United Nations body of some sort. But then of course that would have required an enormously different history than the one we got... industrial capitalism being wholly intertwined with the development and leveraging of fossil-fuels.
I wonder, JMG, if you think Richard Heinberg's Oil Depletion Protocol and ASPO still have a chance of influencing national policy? It seems the opportunity is hanging in the air - but maybe that's just me...
2/10/16, 7:30 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Reusable! Air-driven! Clothing-dryer! Kit. It dries your delicates and humidifies your house in one single operation! No batteries! No electrical outlets needed! Portable! Energy-efficient! Simply place the clothing in various places on the R.A.C.K. and leave them the rest of the day! AND - there's more! For certain times and weather conditions you can have Accelerated Solar Drying Capability by simply placing your R.A.C.K. in direct sunlight! For less than $30 at your local hardware store ... use in conjunction with your amazing energy-efficient solar clothing dryer!
What's more, no dryer sheets or scents are needed. A sweet, natural scent of Nature's Sunshine is included with the Accelerated Drying Option at No! Extra! Cost! No additional purchases necessary!
Granny Weatherwax says "I've been using the R.A.C.K. and the solar clothes dryer for the past 90 years, and have been quite satisfied. You can, too."
2/10/16, 7:31 PM
shastatodd said...
i say "disgust" because of what has happened to the solar electric industry. in "the old days", we (mostly hippies) wisely insisted on "energy audits" to reduce waste before any consideration for solar. we also had serious conversations with our customers about changing behavior to reduce consumption. typical systems were in the .5 to ~1 kW range, providing around 2 to 5 kWh/day at our latitude. this was plenty of a power for my off grid customers.
in the past ~5 years the charlatan$ have moved in. these are basically unethical solar prostitutes, who make more money, selling larger systems. since their motivation is purely about economics, they actually have an incentive to encourage waste and mindless consumption.
so now we have poor EROEI solar (founded on an unsustainable, fossil fuel powered industrial infrastructure), powering waste and mindless consumption. this makes "bad", "worse". 15 to 20 kW systems are common these days... providing 75 to 100 kWh/day. this means solar is now about greenwashing unconscious consumption and enabling non-negotiable lifestyles.
and don't forget while solar modules may last 20 to 30 years, the typical lifespan of an inverter is only ~6 to 8 years... so for sure, anyway you look at this, it is clearly not a "free lunch".
but in a world where people eschew reality and cling to any hopeful mitigation to the laws of thermodynamics... bullshit sells. i fully expect solar to be the new techno-cornucopianism pipedream.
2/10/16, 7:34 PM
Eric Teegarden said...
2/10/16, 7:36 PM
Sojan Shieldbearer said...
2/10/16, 7:36 PM
pygmycory said...
I visited yesterday, brought food, hung out at the firepit for an hour or so, asked how things were going, why they were there, and what they were hoping to achieve. I was struck by a few things: the number of tents, the multiple tarps over and under everything in an attempt to keep things dry, the number of pet dogs and the cat on leash,the structures built out of pallets and other discarded objects, and the strong sense of community and how welcoming people were.
According to 'Grandmother', who the others at the firepit seemed to hold in respect, what they want is a permanent solution and not to be split up. It sounded almost as if they'd happily build their own makeshifts if they were given a bit of land on which to do so, rather than being temporarily warehoused and shifted from place to place with their belongings outside getting stolen, or out on the streets depending on political whim that month.
Another interesting thing with regard to native spirituality you mentioned a couple of weeks back: the firepit was the 'sacred fire' and Grandmother was First Nations. A disproportionate number of homeless people in Canada are First Nations, so that's not entirely surprising.
I suspect we have more of this type of thing in our near future.
2/10/16, 7:38 PM
Jen said...
2/10/16, 7:46 PM
Bryan L. Allen said...
Because of that behavior, our electricity bill is lower in the summertime here in sunny Palmdale than it is in the wintertime, and it's still pretty low in the wintertime. As a result, I now have an often-used discourse I give to the door-to-door folks who stop by every month or two trying to sell rooftop solar (leases mostly now) and the look on their faces when I tell them what our electrical bills are ($ and KWH) is uniformly one of shocked surprise. Their offered monthly lease prices are three or four times our average monthly bill!
The recent thing that convinced me we're in the final desperate phase before such pathetic solar tomfoolery goes belly-up was a large billboard I saw that had the classic graphic of Uncle Sam scowlingly finger-pointing and admonishing everyone to Go Solar! Should have taken a picture but it appears others already have; Googling American Solar Uncle Sam without quotes and selecting Images will give you a glimpse of the foolishness. Bah.
Always a pleasure reading your words. Cheers!
2/10/16, 8:14 PM
Dennis Mitchell said...
2/10/16, 8:16 PM
Michael Byron said...
JMG,
Have not commented since about 2008 when we wrote semi-dueling Fermi Paradox columns. I’m commenting now as this March 12th I will celebrate four years physically disconnected from the grid. Our three bedroom suburban home in Oceanside California has been powered throughout this period solely by 6.25 watts of solar panels supplemented by a one kilowatt (maximum output at 26 mph) aluminum windmill seated atop a 35 foot post. On the topic of life off grid, I reckon that makes me very qualified to speak authoritatively. Our deep cycle battery backup consists of, effectively, 15 kilowatts. Batteries are recyclable lead acid types (Trojan 105’s to be exact).
Firstly, life off grid is VERY different from life on grid. Simply put, you MUST “trim your sails to the sun (and wind). High energy activities such, say, running the clothes washer, are for sunny days after the house battery bank has recharged. As for drying, well, that is solar too: a clothesline! If necessary, located inside. It is necessary to develop the habit of always minimizing power use at non-prime time hours.
Running the central heating in winter at night or in cloudy weather is impossible. This is because the forced air blower is a massive current suck which drains the batteries nonlinearly. Deep cycle batteries are not optimal for delivering high amounts of current for a sustained time period. So, winter mornings getting up for work below dawn it can be high 40’s F. Try stepping out of the shower into THAT folks!
Some winter days my wife and I have to declare to be “minimum energy days.” We actually love these because we spend more time together, play board games, and…well use your imagination. Our life inside is DIRECTLY connected to varying amounts of sun and wind OUTSIDE. Our home exists within nature, not isolated from it. We have always had power through these past four years by living like this.
Our energy system itself represents a departure from standard “McSolar” installations. Aside from being non-grid tie, with deep cycle batteries instead of the grid, the basic design is very different. Standard solar installation practice is to place all panels facing as nearly due south as possible. We have four separate arrays which, essentially “follow” the sun from dawn to sunset. We are not a grid tied net metering system. We must maximize our total daily intake of power throughout the entire day. On winter days with no sun this produces the most power for our battery bank.
The windmill produces about 2 kilowatts per day, averaged throughout the entire year. This is not much, but, in winter, it can be an energy lifesaver. We purchased it with the rebates from our solar system. If you can do this, it is useful for off grid systems. The windmill blades are aluminum. For whatever reason, birds see and avoid it. This is not true of blades made of composite materials, though, I confess, I do not know WHY.
We have come to accept our off grid life as “normal” over the years. However, it is indeed, very different from the on grid lifestyle of our neighbors.
Michael Byron, Oceanside, CA
2/10/16, 8:39 PM
Agent Provocateur said...
Renewable energy sources may well be the next bubble. I'm not certain that's a bad thing though if you consider some of the likely alternatives.
Some governments have gone big on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power for governments owned electrical power companies. I don't think these governments really think renewable power is the answer in and of itself due to the high costs (relative to oil), intermittency, and low power production per unit. These governments are the actual users and so, as you indicted, they ought to know.
The hope is that these energy sources are less environmentally destructive than say just building a new oil fired power plant for roughly the same power output. My guess is that, all things considered, this is probably true.
I take it as a given that such renewable sources are more expensive than oil fired power plants for the same power output. Were this not so, most governments would have gone renewable long ago. In the case of economic hydro and geothermal power, this is in fact so.
Running costs on renewables are presumably lower than oil powered plants. The main running expense is maintenance, the energy source itself is free.
Thus the capital costs for renewables must be much higher than oil power plants for the overall costs for renewables to be higher per Kwhr.
Electrical power projects capital costs are typically paid for by public debt. To my knowledge, governments never really pay off their debts. They just roll it over. Destruction of the governments or sovereign default are the ways government debt is reduced or eliminated. Governments do not actually paying down on the "principle" of their debt.
So renewables are not economically viable compared to oil fired power plants ... if the government doesn't default. But lets face it, all governments will default (effectively if not in fact) as the global economic crisis continues. Its just a matter of how soon and in what order governments default. The trick is to be one of the last in the next wave of sovereign defaults.
My point here is: Yes there will be a boom and bust, but since we are talking about relatively cleaner energy that (probably) keeps producing after the bust (at least until the running costs cannot be covered); the situation is not nearly as bad as losing that (centralized) oil fire plant that is shut down because one can't afford the fuel oil. Further, renewable energy is generally delocalized to begin with (thus its higher capital cost). As things become more local, the potential exists or it to be broken up for local grids i.e. it can be scaled down in a way a large central oil plant cannot. To be honest though, I expect most of those huge windmills to stop forever once a bearing goes.
Still, I'm not seeing the downside to large scale government funded renewable electrical power generation. No its not the answer to keep the system going indefinitely, nothing is. It may; however, be a partial answer to graceful (versus catastrophic) degradation of the industrial way of life.
Might not this be a reasonable post peak (i.e. now!)strategy to keep the game going a bit longer? When a government defaults, it no long pays the debt service on the capital costs. At that point the lower running costs will appear as an advantage compared to oil fired plants.
2/10/16, 8:46 PM
RPC said...
2/10/16, 9:06 PM
Mark Rice said...
2/10/16, 9:22 PM
econojames said...
2/10/16, 9:26 PM
Mark Hines said...
Keep up the good work.
2/10/16, 9:32 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Chris, it's entirely possible that the US will be on its way to failed-state status by the time the next bubble happens; in that case, it'll be the other industrial countries that take the lead in chasing that will o'-the-wisp.
Trog, you know, I think it's time to launch a new contest for presidential candidate sandwiches. To my mind, the Donald Trump is bologna and American cheese on white bread; I shudder to think of what the Hillary Clinton would be!
Unknown, solar energy is equivalent to a 6000K heat source 93 million miles away, plus atmospheric filtering -- and basic thermodynamics says that matters. That is to say, Murphy's a physics professor and knows his stuff.
Bruce, funny. Bean jokes were all the rage in the 1970s energy crisis, too.
Siliconguy, no doubt that'll be brushed aside once the hype really shifts into gear.
Diablo, it's all very well to say "where do we go next?" -- but have you actually gone down the green wizard path as far as you can? I haven't met many people anywhere who can say that. As for the politicians, as we move deeper into the next depression, I suspect you'll find that they have other things to worry about besides a quiet movement of people calmly detaching themselves from dependence on a collapsing global economy.
Pinku-sensei, and "Gong hay fat choy" (as I was taught to say it) to you and yours! Krugman -- gah. I don't read him unless I have to; it's rather too reminiscent of eating cold Spam on Wonder bread.
Notes, I've heard many similar stories. Thanks for the link -- no, I hadn't seen that!
Mark, granted -- though the maintenance problems with wind and solar are a lot more extreme than those for hydro. My guess is that the solar boom will result in a lot of very cheap PV cells available for salvage, though, which will be some help to those interested in 12v DC home systems.
Samurai, well, we'll see. Far milder comments by me have fielded screaming diatribes in the past.
Notes, and that's simple physics: moving water exerts vastly more force than moving air. Now if only that sort of straightforward reasoning would catch on in the green scene!
2/10/16, 9:39 PM
jbucks said...
I'm especially glad to see the decline of fracking, but a question: is fracking in trouble because it isn't efficient, or is it because of the oversupply in conventional oil? Or both?
2/10/16, 9:46 PM
Donald Hargraves said...
2/10/16, 9:56 PM
jbucks said...
It's almost like people who are steadily losing money deciding to increase their investment in lottery tickets. I don't know if the analogy totally fits yet, but I'll work on having something like it ready for the next time I hear that phrase.
2/10/16, 9:58 PM
jbucks said...
2/10/16, 10:03 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Clay, I remember Chapin well, though I never got to attend a live concert of his. I wonder how many other people who were there admit to remembering those words.
Pygmycory, good. That's the question that needs to be asked, of course.
Kyoto, not a chance. ASPO is flat on its back and gasping -- do you recall how long it's been since they've even been able to host a conference? -- and the Depletion Protocol, like so many other good ideas, was dead on publication and as far as I know has never been seriously considered by anyone capable of acting on it. Nor are there more than a very few of us, out here in the archdruid-haunted wilderness, who are ready and willing to cut back on our energy usage right now in order to provide our descendants with a livable world.
Patricia, Granny Weatherwax's recommendation is good enough for me!
Shastatodd, I made an exception to my usual rule about profanity because I appreciate hearing from someone who's actually been out there in the trenches. Many thanks for the report from the field! I used to live in Ashland OR, a few hours north of you, and got to see the same thing a little earlier; my favorite example was the expensive house with a full set of PV panels on the side of the roof facing north, away from the sun, because that faced the street and allowed the homeowner to parade his ecological virtue to the passersby.
Eric, yes, and that kind of case-study rhetoric -- which pays no attention to the issues involved in large-scale PV usage -- is among the things that will be used to fuel the sales pitches for the allegedly renewable future.
Sojan, it is indeed -- the author, Andrew Nikiforuk, is among the best commentators on energy and peak oil news out there, and very much worth following.
Pygmycory, I'm glad to hear that 40 tents counts as a giant homeless encampment in Canada. Seattle, based on what I've been told by friends there, has half a dozen such encampments with populations ranging up into three digits. You're quite right that there'll be more of this to come -- as the industrial economy unravels, this is the new reality.
Bryan, excellent! To my mind, that kind of systematic conservation means quite a bit more than any shiny technological gimmick.
Dennis, good. Have you considered acting on that recognition?
Michael, welcome back! It's exactly the testimony of people who are actually living off the grid that, to my mind, is the best source of guidance for what works and what doesn't, so thank you.
Agent, the devil as usual is in the details. Right now, with the price of fossil fuels as low as it currently is, the operating costs for a PV system of comparable wattage to a natural gas power plant may actually be higher -- the lack of fuel costs are offset by much higher maintenance costs, since the PV cells have to be cleaned regularly or they lose efficiency, the devices that pivot them toward the sun take constant repair, etc., etc. In some situations PV plants might be useful; in others, they're subsidy dumpsters -- and while governments can come up with the money by the simple expedient of borrowing it out of thin air, the energy, resources, labor, and other real costs involved are not so readily manifested.
RPC, vast government subsidies for the corn and ethanol industries were needed to make that happen. Of course ethanol could be used, on a modest scale, as a fuel source; cornstalks make a viable feedstock, for example, if you're willing to use relatively inexpensive fermentation methods. But you can't power an industrial civilization that way.
2/10/16, 10:06 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Econojames, no argument there!
Mark H., oh, granted. The awkward detail that all that oil is filling up the tanks because the global economy is skidding into a depression, and nobody can afford to use oil at previous rates, misses a lot of people just now.
Jbucks, all of the above, and then some. It's also in trouble because it was basically a Ponzi scheme from day one: fracking produces a very nice initial rush of crude, followed by nightmarishly fast depletion, and frackers used that initial rush and a lot of very dubious claims about how long it could continue to lure in investment money from the clueless, who have now been left holding the bag.
Donald, sure, and some of it may actually get built until the dismal economic reality sinks in.
Jbucks, I think of the phrase "they'll think of something" as the sound made by a brain turning off. Yes, I used the lottery ticket metaphor, but it's a good one, so by all means run with it!
2/10/16, 10:17 PM
Brian said...
A couple of things worth considering when thinking of renewables. Wind and solar PV work a lot better when combined with existing hydropower, a means of generating power that can be quickly turned on and off as required - when the wind blows and the sun shines, you keep the water behind the dam like money in the bank.
Another is the amount of land required for PV generating - this might be useful for those considering community solar co-ops:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf
Finally, I would like to second Jen's advice regarding mortgages to those contemplating a move to the country: you can scratch by growing some of your own food and working part-time jobs doing this and that if you're not paying a mortgage, but I've seen too many dreams end up in broken marriages and other sorrows from people trying to do it all while paying a mortgage.
2/10/16, 10:29 PM
Anthony Romano said...
I think most people could, if forced to, adapt to a lower energy lifestyle. However, it will probably be a century or longer before landlords start accepting labor, or homespun goods, in lieu of rent checks. I can learn all the skills I want, but that doesn't mean my landlord will accept a basket of eggs, or a pair of handsewn leather boots.
As I see it, living through the crash is going to be a lot harder than living after the crash. It is a bit ironic, that those living hard homesteading lives right now will likely be living what is considered a life of luxury several decades from now simply virtue of their owning title to land.
Since homesteading is out of the question for me (I don't have the capital to make it happen before thing really go pear-shaped), I reckon the best skill anyone can have is an adaptable mindset. One that is willing to roll with changing circumstances and, when the wind shifts, not getting hung up chasing dreams that only make sense in the prior conditions.
2/10/16, 10:36 PM
Jason Renneberg said...
2/10/16, 10:46 PM
William Hays said...
Engineers are supposed to solve problems; my frustration lies in convincing anyone a problem exists! We have the creativity to bring new solutions and a better life for all living things on this planet if we can just recognize the true circumstances in which we find ourselves and pull our hand out of the trap. Again, thank you for your excellent columns each week.
2/10/16, 10:49 PM
backyardfeast said...
@Justin: I think many feel your dilemma. But if you are in a job that's got a reasonably viable short-to-medium term future, a walkable/bikeable urban environment,a reasonable cost of living, and a strong community network, etc in your current life, then you have a lot going for you. If what you don't have is land to grow food, why not try and address just that? There are many ways to access land to grow food that don't involve you buying it yourself. Some folks are "farming" other people's unused yards in exchange for a cut of the produce. Others lease land just outside of town; others grow on vacant lots or community gardens, or start growing on vacant land until it becomes a community garden. Others still do "guerrilla gardening"--planting food in unobtrusive places around the city in secret or semi-secret. Be creative! You won't be alone in your position in your city--find others who will help you create a solution and your whole community will be more resilient and better connected. It's so easy to fall into the mind trap of "if I need it I must own it myself!" But that's a very recent, and very north american way of thinking, and it's not the past nor likely to be the future.
2/10/16, 10:55 PM
aiastelamonides said...
It's good to see Prof. Murphy linked here. Do The Math is an extremely valuable and delightfully written resource. To see someone go through the costs in systematic detail is a huge relief, and a model to aspire to. An island of rigorous, researched systems thinking in the shallow, stormy sea of extrapolation that is the public conversation about the future! The other day I was discussing population growth with someone and had to point out that global population is, in fact, tied to global food supply, and that the latter cannot be increased indefinitely. Oy vey!
Calling a claim without anything resembling the term "climate" in its subject or predicate "a new form of climate denialism" is so transparently Orwellian and manipulative that it's actually rather charming (I'll leave the article's main argument untouched, lest it collapse into a cloud of poisonous dust). I'm imagining a future where the word "denial" is generally accompanied by "climate" (like "time immemorial" or "everyday life/experience"), as in "Simultaneous affirmation and climate denial is contrary to human reason" or "Climate denial is followed by anger, and then bargaining."
2/10/16, 11:10 PM
Jason Heppenstall said...
I bought some solar panels from eBay a few weeks back. They came direct from the factory in China and arrived in England within four days - so I'm assuming they flew them over (no horse can run that fast). The reason I bought them - along with a modest charge controller - was so that I would have a power backup at the caravan in my woodland. I already have a small inverter to convert 12v to something my laptop, some lights and a music system can use. Anyway, this setup was about 20% of the cost of the last setup I purchased, back in 2004.
People like to claim that this price drop is due to increased efficiencies etc, but I think it may have more to do with overcapacity in China and a hugely subsidised industry that is struggling to get rid of its products. I don't have any illusions about what renewables are capable of (having lived with them in the past) but I certainly appreciate their usefulness in the short to medium term while everyone else works through their delusions and arrives at the same inescapable conclusion.
2/10/16, 11:20 PM
bowsprite said...
May I use your line, " hydrofracturing of oil- and gas-bearing shales"? I have linked it to you.
I am a reader currently living in Switzerland. A friend who is an environmental lawyer here spearheads a fight on which the people will be voting for very soon; hardly no Swiss voter wants this second tunnel through the mountains, but it seems like it will be built, and the people do not understand how a few, monied 'yes' can over overrule a majority 'no'.
Nevertheless, my friends print this out and it is one of the things they hand out at rallies:
"https://nyharborshipping.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/iniziativa-da-las-alps/
The image of the globe and needle on E, I first saw in the 1970's. It was a hot day, my father's license ended in an odd number, so we were allowed to get fuel. We waited interminably on line at that gas station in Queens in the heat. A huge billboard with this image rose above us: black background, globe, needle on "E", over the Grand Central Parkway, with simple white lettering underneath, reading: "What then?"
I have searched in vain for images of that billboard, or the sponsor of the ad. Would you or your readers know more about it?
Images have powerful effects on the young! I have never forgotten it--I was 7 years old then.
2/10/16, 11:59 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Anthony, my working guess is that within a couple of decades, most Americans will be squatters, not renters, living the way homeless people do today -- but with a much larger stock of abandoned housing to choose from. As rents continue mindlessly upward in a contracting economy, it's not too hard to see the shape of the future.
Jason, that's a good example of the way that intermittent power can be used. Unfortunately there are not many other examples that don't involve significant changes to modern American lifestyles.
William and Backyardfeast, you're welcome and thank you.
Aias, that Oreskes piece is quite a piece of work, isn't it? It's a fine if meretricious sales pitch for the solar and wind industries, to be sure.
Jason, gah. Yes, I field arguments like that all the time -- "X runs on electricity, therefore it doesn't pollute" is among the most common. Sure, so long as you don't think about what generates the electricity. I suppose it makes sense if your only concern is whether you, personally, are producing pollution, and you think you've got an indulgence from the Pope absolving you from any pollution someone else produces on your behalf...
Bowsprite, you certainly may -- but I didn't invent it; it's the technically correct description of what "fracking" actually is. As for the billboard -- yes, I remember it too. Here's TV spot with the same image at the end.
2/11/16, 12:28 AM
Antonio García-Olivares said...
2/11/16, 1:04 AM
ed boyle said...
It's all just whistling past the graveyard. If europe gets to 50% electricity replacement with cables balncing out northern wind with southern sun, and then french nukes acting as base load as coal is phased out I wonder if all transport will go to electric rail, trams, etc. Something will break and growth will be zero as we restrict ourselves to basics and fan't replace the monster turbines as fossil fuels really do deplete as the solar and wind need replacement in 20 years. Then we will have an easter island situation.
2/11/16, 1:28 AM
cristina said...
But (and here the Dollar signs start spinning in some people's eyes) there is still so much hydro power untapped! Harness the highlands! Build another dam or five! Aluminium smelter, anyone? Or maybe we could have some sort of underwater cable from England and just plug them in. England? Hell, let's plug the world in!
Megalomania being not unknown in these parts, all this could happen. And instead of being content with Guðmundur bóndi heating his greenhouse and his farm with hot water from the sping down the road, I guess we'll end with plenty of half-finished dam projects, infrastructure leading to nowhere, destroyed land and broken places when all those gradiose plans run out of money or it turns out that somebody didn't do the math properly.
That's going to happen in a lot of places where renewables are touted as THE Thing that's going to save our lifestyle. Foolery and madness.
2/11/16, 1:40 AM
Mark Mikituk said...
This is what got me, John; a perfect one paragraph summary of your argument which is pretty indisputable, and needs to be chewed on.
2/11/16, 2:14 AM
Chloe said...
I remember when the biofuels debate kicked off, actually - it became one of our classroom topics for a week or so, at the age of about thirteen, and the funny thing is we all spotted those little problems regarding the fact that it would be impossible to scale up in any meaningful way without, oh, starving out most of the planet almost immediately. I remember being quite dismissive and then surprised later when all the local buses announced they were running on 10% biofuels (or whatever it was). Being so young, we hadn't fully absorbed the assumptions or the desperation of the cornucopian renewables crowd, and young people are far less invested in their beliefs than older ones in any case. Unfortunately - there's a lot more to be said about this, but it's kind of off-topic and would max out the character count for three or four comments - suffice to say that since 99% of young people, like 99% of everybody, have barely an inkling of the wider issues involved, that doesn't necessarily help. (Though the people who came of age post-2008, and even more so those who come of age post-the next big crisis, and more so continuing, will be progressively less convinced by the paradigm of progress, even if they can't/don't articulate it.)
I recently read the Bromeliad trilogy, by Terry Pratchett. There's a nice metaphor in it about tree frogs who live in flowers and don't realise there's anything outside the flower. That's us, with history rather than space, and far less excuse: even people who are old enough to remember within their own lifetimes when things were different seem to forget. And you've reminded me - I must re-read 1984...
I'm just going to hope the fracking "boom" goes properly bust before it can cause too much damage over here in the UK. I'm not even sure renewables done carelessly even get a gold star for being "less malign" and they'll probably start digging up the (carbon sink) peat bogs again, but most things are better than methane coming out the taps.
2/11/16, 3:05 AM
Ien in the Kootenays said...
2/11/16, 3:32 AM
MigrantWorker said...
May I suggest another potential future energy bubble - this one centered on forests. Specifically, coniferous forests.
For many centuries, coniferous trees were tapped for their resin. All of them produce it as defense against wounds, pest infestations etc., with various species of pine producing the greatest amount. This resin can then be distilled to extract turpentine - which in turn has chemical properties very similar to those of diesel fuel. It can be used as an additive, replacing up to 30% of oil-derived fuel - or indeed as a fuel in its own right: the first Honda motorcycle, built right after the 2nd World War when petrol was in very short supply in Japan, did run on pure turpentine. A pine tree can be tapped over a long period of time - 20 years or more if a suitable technique is used - and while a single tree yields only up to 2 litres of turpentine per year, there is of course a lot of trees.
It would also be a relatively easy sell to the public. Not only does it use a sustainable resource, but also tree tapping is by necessity local thus creating jobs in the rural areas! And not just in parts of the country blessed with geological history conducive to the formation of oil deposits, but potentially anywhere with a climate suitable for tree growth. And tree tapping cannot be easily automated, so the jobs would be there to stay.
...of course a question of energy return on energy invested still remains. As for profitability, well - at current low oil prices it's a non-starter. It may become competitive when at the pump diesel prices reach 6 dollars per gallon; I am not sure what oil price would that imply. This does not count the cost of building all the infrastructure necessary to convert resin into marketable fuel, which may be considerable.
The wider implications of mass-scale adaptation of resin extraction may include: destruction of broadleaf forests, to make way for pine plantations; destruction of the existing coniferous forests through overexploitation, improper tapping techniques etc.; destruction of forest fauna by pesticides; and all the corresponding secondary effects of the above.
But hey, by a back of the envelope calculation the US could extract a million barrels of turpentine a day from its forests (under a number of optimistic assumptions). This is a significant amount whichever way you look at it; I can see it becoming a serious proposal in the future.
MigrantWorker
2/11/16, 3:42 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Thank you for writing this! ;-)!. Seriously well done.
Renewable energy systems are great, but they are uneconomic and will not deliver the sort of energy that people currently expect from the mains electricity grid. The sheer wastage in that mains grid system is immense and frightening.
I was in the big smoke working today and got back home quite late - 11pm, so I will pen a longer reply tomorrow, but I just wanted to again say thank you.
Oh, yeah, before I forget, I had this weird insight that people understand energy in terms of monetary units and not in the terms that I have to understand it here which are energy units (i.e. Watts and Kilo Watts). I think that misunderstanding breeds a lot of confusion on the subject and especially as the monetary units can be gamed. Nature can't be gamed and Watts and Kilo Watts are part of nature.
Anyway, bed is calling. Top work!
Cheers
Chris
2/11/16, 3:53 AM
deedl said...
Electricity: While solar production is much lower in winter, wind production is much higher in winter, so there are no seasonal shortcomings to expect. Except for some events in autumn, weather conditions that are both cloudy and low in wind speeds are rare. Water power provides some (low level) baseload and biomass is a subsidy sink and will not play any significant role. Electricity is 1/3 of total energy consumption. Of this electricity, 70% is used by industry and 30% by households. Industry has to align ist electricty use with the weather to cope with intermittency, which will greatly impact the rhythms of industrial workers life. But total post fossil impact here is low, since electricity already is at 35% renewables.
Heating: Heating Buildings makes up roughly another 1/3 of energy consumption and is mainly done by burning fossil fuels. Superinsulated buidlings and heat pumps can warm buildings using quite small amounts of electricity, but badly done insulations are at the moment a subsidy dumpster because many buildings start rotting beneath the insulation. However, because of the thermal mass of buildings, (renewable) electricity based heating can be used to flatten the intermittency of electricity production. But if and how the amounted of heated space that is available now for everybody can be ensured in future is questionable. The post fossil impact here is medium.
Transportation: This is the remaining 1/3 of energy use. Although electrical cars will replace ice-cars in the years to come, I am sure that large parts of the middle class will not be able to afford an individual car one generation into the future. The trend for growing bike use is already here and the public transportation system of electrically driven trains and trams is dense and convenient. Replacing ice-buses by electrical ones does need much fewer resources than replacing all the individual cars. I also think that plane rides and subtropical fruits will be out of reach for most middle class people. On the transportation sector post fossil impact is high.
Alltogether life will change significantly for most people, that are now used to having a car, flying on vacation to Spain and eating mediterrane vegetables in winter. However the settlement structure is still in large parts the same as before the times of mass car use, so chances are that basic transportation needs can be met in the time to come. The high population density means that per head costs of grid are lower than in other countries, so public transportation and electricity networks have better chances to survive than in other parts of the world. Chances are good for common people to have access to electricity and public transport, there is no shortage of rain and water for agriculture and sanitary use, but many people probably have to wear warmer clothing at home during winter time. I also see a dramatic decrease in meat consumption, but basic food needs can be covered using (labour intensive) ways of local production (as two world wars have shown). The conversion of office jobs to agricultural jobs will not go without complains.
So the future here in Germany will be neither a renewable business as usual nor a revert to preindustrial times. I think in terms of energy use it will be a sort of lower level industrial society with many of todays convenience being unaffordable for the majority of people.
2/11/16, 4:01 AM
Pavel said...
1. Bird-killing wind power stations: is it current situation? Because I was looking at the problem a few years ago, and at the time it seemed, that most of the killing was done by old, small and fast turning turbines. Typical current turbine is 150 m or even 200 m high, which may be too high for at least some of birds, and its angular velocity is slow, which should make it avoidable.
2. Photovoltaics in Spain: the problem IMHO is, that the study includes too many things on input side. For example, factoring in expenses for police protection (because maintaining order is necessary for running the station) is IMHO too much. May be, if we include so much of common expenses of society among inputs, then EROEI of 1.6:1 is not that bad...
3. Low net energy of wind: EROEI of wind is usually given as 15 - 25, which is not a miracle, but still more then the value of 10, allegedly necessary for running a civilisation of our type. Of course, that is without counting loses in storage and grid.
4. And as a reaction to one of your comments: AFAIK green movement is aware of better performance of water turbines. The problem is, that hydro power is now more or less on its potential - the best places are already used. And, as anything else, even hydro power has its externalities.
2/11/16, 4:02 AM
Ondra said...
this article http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/France-To-Build-621-Miles-Of-Solar-Roads.html shows nicely the fantasies about renewables. It is really fine coincidence that it appeared just today.
Greetings
Ondra
2/11/16, 4:06 AM
Sherril Bowman said...
I'd be smirking too (maybe not quite so publicly) if i was in a position to showcase what Big Pharma has been doing for years. Maybe he's like a smart-aleck Edward Snowden.
2/11/16, 4:10 AM
John & Louise said...
Your writing is a joy to read.
Thank you.
2/11/16, 4:20 AM
Kyle Schuant said...
So average 14kWh, and case study 35... meanwhile in our home we use 6kWh/day on average, and we are not making extraordinary efforts, we do use aircon when needed (35+C days) and so on. If everyone did similarly, domestic electricity consumption would halve. In terms of climate change and fossil fuel depletion, a 50% reduction of consumption is the same as being 50% renewable, even in the magical world where renewables have zero fossil fuel consumption or carbon emissions. And rather than a cost, we save money.
The second thought is that people's reducing consumption may actually lead to large grids becoming economically unsustainable. About 20 years ago we privatised electricity production, and the buying companies didn't invest in infrastructure. Consumption rose, and there were blackouts on hot summer afternoons. So government stepped in and forced the companies to invest in infrastructure to deal with future consumption rises.
The companies responded by raising prices. Consumers responded to rising prices by... consuming less. Companies are now responding to lower consumption by... raising prices. Which will lead to... and... and...
At some point this positive feedback loop leads to companies going bust: either the companies get taken over by government who then run the electricity grid as a loss-making public service (like pension funds or our public healthcare), or the companies can no longer afford to maintain the grid of production and distribution for everyone and just keep it up for a wealthy few.
Whatever the energy equations of the whole thing, energy conservation is an economic threat to the age of the One Big Facility. So while in principle simply conserving energy could have similar effects to closing down coal etc stations in favour of renewables, I don't see how it can happen economically. And while individual households can live "off the grid", I can't see that happening with tens of millions of households - the minimum-wage home isn't buying a Tesla Powerwall any time soon.
Small-scale grids as Greer describes seem inevitable. That or permanent blackouts - but I doubt most people will just stumble into oblivion, Third World slums show how inventive people will be when they need to.
2/11/16, 4:46 AM
Ares Olympus said...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Costa_Rica#Exports.2C_jobs.2C_and_energy
--------
Costa Rica has not discovered sources of fossil fuels—apart from minor coal deposits—but its mountainous terrain and abundant rainfall have permitted the construction of a dozen hydroelectric power plants, making it self-sufficient in all energy needs, except oil for transportation. Costa Rica exports electricity to Central America and has the potential to become a major electricity exporter if plans for new generating plants and a regional distribution grid are realized. Mild climate and trade winds make neither heating nor cooling necessary, particularly in the highland cities and towns where some 90% of the population lives.
----------
I also notice from Wikipedia the GDP per capita is about $15k, low by U.S. standards, but lower incomes might still make for a good life if the cost of living is lower too. OTOH, I see the inflation rate 5.6% if sustained will quickly move people into poverty.
Anyway, at least it reminds me that when oil economy is gone, we will enter a world of differential geographical assets, and some regions may prosper for decades while others will fall into chaos, even now, like regions of war now leading to huge refugee movements.
Donald Trump might be wrong about his Great Wall of America aspirations, but you have to think modern liberalism of more "open borders" is a temporary feature of cheap energy, and the future will contain more intense defending of boundaries, for anyone who likes what they has, while their neighbors failed to have the same good fortunes or prudent ancestral planning.
I've also remembered you quote from 2010 in regards to communal boundaries.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html
"In my experience, there are at least two things essential to any viable community that the vast majority of Americans find completely unacceptable. The first is an accepted principle of authority; the second is a definite boundary between members and nonmembers."
I can see the reason multicultural liberalism tries to break boundaries is they are by nature discriminatory, giving special treatment to tribal ingroup members and shutting out people who are different.
But if individualism must end with cheap energy, then we will have to relearn how to deal with tribal thinking, and use its best qualities for resiliency while moderating its vices. (Like they say teddy-bear empathy has a dark side that enables aggression to people outside your circle.)
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/the-violence-of-empathy/407155/
2/11/16, 4:52 AM
Fred said...
2/11/16, 5:21 AM
David Veale said...
2/11/16, 5:33 AM
pathman said...
http://www.investigativepost.org/2016/02/10/another-mayday-for-solarcity/
2/11/16, 5:57 AM
SCA Heretic said...
This has nothing to do with this week's post, but I thought I would pass it along to you, for what should be obvious reasons to the author of Twilight's Last Gleaming. :)
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/tennessee-becomes-5th-state-pass-resolution-calling-article-v
2/11/16, 6:00 AM
trippticket said...
This post reminds me that perhaps the best gift we've given our two young children is the gift of comfort with intermittency. When the old laptop runs out of charge and the kids' movie goes dark, the children quietly stand up, close the lid, and go play. No tantrums, no "Aaaaaw, crap," no nothing. Out of all the organic gardening, orchards, mushroom cultivation, small livestock, water catchment, graywater reuse, herbal medicine, and so on, I wonder if this isn't the best gift of all.
By the way, congrats on a decade of blogging! Wish I'd been here all along. You are far and away the most influential person in my life, and I can't thank you enough for the last 4 years of time spent with you. And now I'll go slip a little something in your tip jar as a small token of thanks for all you do. Cheers.
2/11/16, 6:24 AM
M said...
"But even more troubling, SolarCity’s debt levels are soaring as cash levels shrink. Last year, the company’s interest payments on its debt totaled nearly a quarter of its revenue.
SolarCity executives continue to express faith in their business model. The potential market for solar panels is barely tapped, they say, and the extension of the federal tax credits bolsters their ability to capture it.
As governments around the world look to increase their share of solar power, Mr. Rive said, customers will continue to want a product that saves them money and offers a clean alternative to utility power.
But it is local rate policies, like the sharp cut in net metering credits in Nevada, that pose a threat to SolarCity and its ilk. The reductions, supported by the main utility, NV Energy, a subsidiary of Warren E. Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, apply to existing contracts as well as to new ones, raising worries that customers will try to renegotiate or break them."
Full article here.
Of course, these articles never go deep enough to give the reader a true understanding of the dilemmas involved. Here the easy answer is that local policies are being changed before things can get going. Or something to that effect.
To me, the current hi-tech renewables (as opposed to the 1970s lo-tech that you espouse)is another example of the increasing complexity of systems. Or, as Ivan Illich would say, the watershed point where renewables made sense has long been passed. Just because something gets more complicated, does not mean it is better or more "efficient." See our educational system, health care, transportation, etc. Not to mention politics. Like these tools, our energy system is now mostly occupied with the task of keeping itself (and our lifestyles) in existence as much as it is in providing a reasonable assist to the basics of living in the world. We just never know when to say when when it comes to technology. Humans!
An example I like to use is the side view mirror on automobiles. Once it was a humble slab of mirror attached to a basic frame that swivels on a ball joint that could be adjusted by rolling down the window, sticking your hand out, and moving it into a useful position. Now it is operated electronically by several switches, and costs many hundreds of dollars to fix or replace. And for what? To save a few calories of small muscle movements? (It doesn't save time, these things take longer to adjust.)
I read recently that now automakers are set to roll out camera systems to take over this function, similar to the cameras that have replaced the rear view mirror. This of course further adds to the cost and complexity of cars. As for self-driving Google machines, again, more complexity, and more extraction, etc.
2/11/16, 6:29 AM
Knotty Pine said...
2/11/16, 6:34 AM
Clay Dennis said...
2/11/16, 6:35 AM
Brian said...
I said all along to the fanatical anti-frackers, "Look, you just need to stall. The numbers don't work and the industry will collapse in a few short years, though damage will be done."
I say now to the solar fanatics, "Look, what happens after you install all these panels and in 20 years they're putting out 3% of the energy they do today and they can't be replaced because to manufacture solar panels you need an industrial infrastructure and materials that aren't possible without oil? You can't run a factory or forge steel on solar-generated energy. Sure, you might be able to have electricity a few hours a day, but eventually you'll run out of light bulbs, and without a grid there's no communications network for your now irreplaceable phones and tablets. So why not just learn to do without this stuff now? Let's write letters so they'll keep the post office funded, let's work with machines and implements built to last and figure out how to fix them."
It's so depressing that this same message has to be rehearsed over and over again. But so be it. And there will be acres and acres of defunct solar panels poisoning the landscape. Well, maybe some bright young person will figure out how to turn them into surfboards.
2/11/16, 6:45 AM
bigsky generation said...
Current generation wind turbines are complex machines. They have 3 MW inverters that are intricate and complex power electronics communicating on integrated control systems. During Commissioning of one particular vendor's units in Southern Ontario they are controlled by engineers in Orlando. What does it take to build and maintain that complexity? Although in normal operation they are controlled by the local Park controller through the fiber optic communications.
It is quite common for a unit to be shut down due to a $10 or $100 part.
We know the current renewables buildout is a transition. Hopefully it is part of the path that gets us from here to there. As for social and habit change, this is why the promotional commercial by Jon Cooksey was made for This Is Insane Day. It's on YouTube.
2/11/16, 7:01 AM
Pentrus said...
The use of a very limited amount of renewable energy in the future is going to be constrained both by the simple fact that such sources can't produce power at nearly the same level as the current fossil fuel-based energy grid, and because the manufacturing infrastructure we have today that would be used to produce solar panels, wind turbines, and the like, cannot function without fossil fuel inputs.
For me, this means I have to scale back my use of energy in every area of my life. Relearn how to depend on shoe leather or a bicycle to perform many of my errands. Cut back on natural gas and electricity to light and heat my home (in other words, make the home better insulated, or go small so that it is easier to heat, and have a couple of alternatives that don't rely on the grid or fossil fuels). Quit buying so much stuff. Try to grow at least a portion of our own food. The real problem for me is getting to work. The distance to be traveled is great enough, the weather is weird enough (and getting weirder), and the roads between here and there are dangerous enough (crazy traffic and drivers), that daily biking is problematic. And, since the location is in a rural area, there is no public transport to the place (a school).
The good news is that I will retire in not too many years, and my follow-on job after retirement (assuming I can find one) will hopefully be close enough to where I live to make walking, biking, or using public transportation viable options. Boom, get rid of an automobile, save money on maintenance, insurance, and fuel. Put that money into things like seeds, tools (which I have been amassing over a lifetime), and more importantly, learning as many practical skills as possible (another lifelong endeavor). I live in a small city (less than 20,000) and have a pretty good sized lot that needs to have more of the land converted to growing fruit trees, as well as perennial and annual plants that produce things we can eat.
The point of all this rambling is that I understand that renewables can only play a very limited role in my future, and that I should not become dependent on them. The real future lies in adopting a different way of living that more realistically stays within the energy inputs outside of our current fossil fuel economy.
2/11/16, 7:03 AM
patriciaormsby said...
For the past couple of days, the TV over here has been moralizing about a dire need to forge ahead bravely with technology. First, a popular prime-time documentary series about space that has a high degree of credibility brought up the rumor of a neutron star heading toward the solar system, due to arrive 75 years from now, presenting it as a fact. The only hope for humanity, they said, was first to colonize Mars and then, based on that experience, build a huge toroid biosphere for as many people as could fit and boogey on out of the solar system. I'm not making this up, and it's not April, and they don't even have April Fools Day over here! I told my husband I could find no credible sources on the neutron star, but he is still really upset, and I wonder how other people who watched it are feeling. I see the hand of the nuclear lobby at work in the background here, because their big argument is that we NEED a high-energy future, and here's why for all the doubters. Seventy-five years! Perfect timing. All our dear little rosy cheeked grandchildren will be trying to reach their golden years when this cosmic wrecking-ball thing arrives (undoubtedly sent by the space lizards).
There was another documentary on yesterday about medicines, but I blocked it off, because it was too high blown, with a lot of moralizing, but what I suspect was going on is an attempt to soften up the Japanese for the TPP transnational corporate dominance "trade" pact, which the Japanese delegate signed along with a bunch of other countries', with its over-priced drugs and GMOs. The minority that understand the TPP's contents are freaking out, but the rest will probably just stumble into it blindly if it goes into force, wondering whatever happened to things they took for granted.
2/11/16, 7:09 AM
Renovator said...
I have noticed lately that the sadness/anger/frustration that has been building in people, especially of lower economic means, has resulted in a falling away in faith in the god of Progress. Perhaps a bit of the current financial downturn we are about to go stumbling down is the result of people who finally see the rust showing through the chrome cities in the sky promised, but never delivered and have simply said, 'I can't follow this anymore'. Once one realizes the absurdness of the empty, unobtainable propaganda being shoveled endlessly their way, they will find a new alter to worship at.
Interesting times ahead...Thank you for your work.
2/11/16, 7:17 AM
Phil Harris said...
“Angus, you know, that's an interesting point. I don't happen to know offhand how the energy per capita of, say, Victorian England compares to our current figure; I'll have to chase that down, compare other historical examples, and see if it's possible to identify a threshold below which no kind of industrial society can function.”
Per capita energy consumption was surprisingly high in Britain by the end of Victorian times. I understand that present USA per capita energy consumption is very roughly double that of the present British.
The rise in energy use in the UK per capita in my lifetime has been mostly from the increased use of petroleum. (I have ignored the relatively small contribution from nuclear power). The petroleum era really occurred at the end of my childhood after 1950.
Adapted from: Pearson 1998, The Energy Journal ‘A thousand years of energy use in the United Kingdom’,.
UK (England Wales, Northern Ireland)
Total energy consumption in coal equivalent (ce) million tones per year
Year Total
1900 167.8
1950 229.8
1960 272.4
1970 349.8
1996 385.8
One tonne of coal equals 0.6 tonnes of oil or 7.1 MWh of electrical energy or 1.016 long tons
Per capita UK in 1900 = 4.42 tonnes ce; 1950 = 5.6 tonnes ce; 1990 = 6.5 tonnes ce
And separately within the total: Petroleum and NG
(from L to R)
1900 negligible
1950 24.4; 1.0
1960 69.9; 1.1
1970 161.1; 19.2
1980 131.5; 76.1
1990 133.1; 86.0
1996 133.6; 140.1
best
Phil
2/11/16, 7:28 AM
patriciaormsby said...
2/11/16, 7:30 AM
Lou Nelms said...
The cornucopian germ is planted. Providing more for more people through the human hive of interconnected technologies and people dedicated to making it all come together in a global village. It is, to paraphrase Loren Eiseley, as if one highly maladapted, organic beast represented the sole vision and future of the planet.
Renewable energy is very much a part of this global vision. So, to put it somewhat mildly and also to paraphrase Eiseley, our deep earth centric view has become the strange odor among the herd. The herd of the departed. Eiseley's sporulation stage is upon us.
2/11/16, 7:31 AM
Paulo said...
I see we have some BCers on the reading list. (Ah, I don't feel so all alone.)
Justin, someone from Texas gave some excellent advice on buying rural. I just want to add that it doesn't happen overnight. You need the goal, a plan with steps to proceed, and a format to check your progress. Plus, you need to select a location/dream that isn't too pricey. You cannot have a mortgage unless you have sure-fire-way to pay it off, quickly. If you can't make it to a rural lifestyle, it really is about mindset, afterall. JMG calls it 'Collapse In Place'. My own opinion is that we will all get there, one way or another, so try and move to where you want to live.
The other thing, just like being in town it is easy to look around and see other folks who have a better setup; better location, neater buildings, barns, whatever. You just have to go your own way, do what you can, and be happy with what you accomplish. A personal suggestion, learn building and maintenance skills, now. Take some pre-apprenticeship classes. You want to be the person who can do things because you cannot afford to hire done what you need. Furthermore, when you build things take time and do it properly. Don't slap stuff together whether it is a chicken pen or front walk. Do it right so it lasts a lifetime, and then some.
regards
2/11/16, 7:33 AM
Wolfgang Brinck said...
Whatever merit renewable energy technology has stems primarily from the fact that it cannot produce nearly as much energy as oil extraction technology can deliver. Another way of putting it is that conversion to renewable energy will force us to go on an energy diet sufficiently severe to starve the industrial virus that has infected the human species. So the fact that renewable energy cannot produce as much energy as oil is not a shortcoming, it is a virtue.
2/11/16, 7:34 AM
Ekkar said...
Civilization has cut our memory to shreds. Meaning that we have a very hard time remembering that there is or was anyother way.
Thanks again!
2/11/16, 7:35 AM
Pentrus said...
I would like to think that communication, both withing communities (say a 5-10 mile radius) and to other communities further away will still be important and available in some respect in an age of energy scarcity.
I wonder it it will be anything like the current communication grid (I really doubt it)? Would we be better served to learn (or relearn) how to use simple radio communication (HF, VHF, UHF) to serve both the long distance and local community communication needs/wants?
I am a sixty year old new amateur radio licensee and have joined a local club to, hopefully, gain knowledge and skill in this new area (to me) of communication. The negative side of amateur radio today is the seemingly greater reliance on the maintenance, of repeaters (VHF, UHF), digital modes of communication, and always transmitting power (more and more power up to the legal limit). Such thinking, and operating methods, seem to me to be at odds with the original aims of the hobby which is to do more with less power, in fact, the least amount of power necessary to complete a communication. Would it not be better for most new amateurs to start with QRP (low power operation) first, and spend time in learning the very best operating techniques and the science of antenna design?
In a future world of energy scarcity it would be much easier to maintain and run 5 watt or less transceivers (good operator with well designed antennas can make contacts over hundred, and sometimes thousands of miles on less than a watt). QRP operators can do this with very models solar inputs or very small batteries that can be charged using a panel delivering only a few watts, or with a micro hydroelectric set up.
This assumes the contacts will be simplex (not rely on repeaters, analog or digital), that is, directly radio to radio.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
2/11/16, 7:36 AM
Wolfgang Brinck said...
2/11/16, 7:49 AM
Allie said...
I think your prediction that solar PV and wind power will be the next energy bubble has a great chance of becoming reality. They will probably earn some big blue chip companies and hot start ups some very large subsidy checks and tax breaks from the federal government. Unfortunately, those will be the only entities allowed at the feeding trough. If some "collapse now and avoid the rush" folks wanted to take advantage of the bubble pricing, new tax breaks, and so on to get a really cheap solar thermal water heater system or a 2 to 4 kwh solar pv system to power some lights and ceiling fans and maybe a small fridge/freezer...forget about it! Those types of systems will not qualify or be part of the bubble. Only giant windmills and PV solar plants the size of a small town will qualify.
The other topic this post got me thinking about is the claim that solar and wind are rapidly approaching parity with coal for power generation. I have never seen anything factual that clearly demonstrates that claim. I have been kicking around the idea of installing a small solar PV system to power the well on our farm. It feeds water to our house, the main barn, some outbuildings and our garden. Long story short, every time I get some proposal for it and price it out (tax break included) against what I'm paying now it doesn't even come close. For example, assuming a 20 year service life and assuming that the average rate for coal powered electricity during that 20 years is DOUBLE today's rate, the cheapest solar system I have gotten pricing on is more than 150% more expensive than sticking with the grid. Now of course, there are all sorts of other assumptions one could make. Will the grid be on 24/7 in 20 years, will the USA even exist as a nation in 20 years, yadda yadda. All other things being equal on a dollars and cents analysis solar PV doesn't even come close!
So basically I guess we will see the government and big business waste time, effort and money to build out solar and wind subsidy dumpsters when the government could have helped individuals and communities build out realistic renewable energy infrastructure. What a shame...
2/11/16, 7:54 AM
Nathan said...
2/11/16, 8:03 AM
Wes Loder said...
But so many visitors, neighbors and friends still shake their heads. I would agree that solar will never work at a commercial, grid-tie level, but at the small, personal level, with low consumption rates, it's working fine. But it requires personal effort and a willingness to live without "stuff." WES LODER
2/11/16, 8:04 AM
Erik Buitenhuis said...
"I suspect [methane leakage from fracking]’s had more than a little to do with the abrupt spike in global temperatures and extreme weather events over the last decade."
It's possible to do a back of the envelope estimate of the maximum contribution. Atmospheric methane has increased by ~50 ppb between 2009 and 2015 (inclusive). At a global warming potential that is between the instantaneous one of ~100 and the 20-year one of 86, that's ~4.7 ppm CO2eq, not all of it from fracking leakage. CO2 increased by ~13 ppm during the same time.
2/11/16, 8:09 AM
Phil Harris said...
Bioenergy as a global industry is an ongoing nightmare. See the role of the EU here:
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2016/bioenergyout-declaration/
(btw Britain imports massive quantities of wood pellets from southern USA forests to burn in very large scale DRAX electricity power station. The excuse is 'climate change'. http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/#2 )
best
Phil
2/11/16, 8:11 AM
Gavin Burnett said...
2/11/16, 8:12 AM
Friction Shift said...
You've identified the crazy aunt in the attic no one wants to talk about (Who said that? Was it Ross Perot?), which is that we in the industrial world have to start using a lot less energy. Regardless of its source, we just have to use less. And the sooner we can have an adult conversation about that, the better.
It doesn't matter what type of energy you examine: algal biodiesel, tides, wind, PV solar, or good old fashioned hydrocarbons, a life structured on high consumption of energy sooner or later runs into a big brick wall constructed by the laws of thermodynamics.
Reality has already deconstructed the dream world of biofuels. Now we're on to the really sexy stuff: wind and solar, especially PV solar.
I am a big fan of solar, actually. I have friends in the Rocky Mountain states who have been living in passive solar houses they built back in the 1970s. The reason they're still living happily in those houses is that long ago, as an earlier poster pointed out, they adjusted their consumption to fit their energy incomes. But we're talking about back yard DIY solar pioneers, here. What is facing us now is an entirely different industrial-scale animal, funded with huge amounts of capital, selling the idea that we can continue our lifestyles as is by putting 6 kw of PV on the roof of our wood-chips-and-glue tract houses. As shastatodd has pointed out, here come the hucksters.
I would suggest that elements of this bubble are already evident. In my own state of Oregon the Department of Energy is embroiled in a scandal involving the state's generous and poorly regulated solar energy tax credits, which some big players like Elon Musk's SolarCity have been accused of misusing. Although just now, for perhaps unrelated reasons, SolarCity's stock is tanking.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/lawmakers_hold_first_oversight.html
As for wind power, it comes with its own sets of problems. For one thing, big wind farms kill birds. Lots of them. They just do. The intermittency of wind has been well discussed. But I have often also wondered if there is an upper limit of wind power deployment that we humans can hit before it starts affecting the climate. Because, gosh, nobody ever thought that burning stuff would change our climate system, did they? It turns out there just might be:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063-300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance/
So we're back to that brick wall again. Thanks for pointing out that you can't keep looking at one side of the equation and ignoring the other side.
2/11/16, 8:16 AM
Glenn McCumber said...
2/11/16, 8:19 AM
Ralph Smithers said...
2/11/16, 8:24 AM
dylan said...
Yep this sums it up, It's been great to read of others who have actually made the leap. I would encourage anyone who wishes to see what it's like to go stay somewhere off grid for a fortnight. That should be long enough for the charm to wear off and to get more of a feeling of what our really needs are.
Hauling water from our stream this morning for us, the pony and chickens, I was struck by how much you get when you give up. Not in a sackcloth kind of way, there's just a reconnection that happens. We are animals after all and it's helpful to be reminded of that and our place on Earth.
Sometimes our pv system seems more of a burden to keep an eye on. Then sometimes on a sunny day with more power than we can use, I get to cut wood with the electric chainsaw, and that feels like a satisfying and appropriate use of sunlight.
A quick anecdote on the animal theme: Our Pony decided to head for pastures new the other night and walked through our woods(40 acres) at night in the snow to a neighbours Field.
Huffing and puffing to catch up to his ground eating trot, I abruptly came across 6 pairs of green eyes regarding me just as my flashlight died. (Gulp)
As a recent Irish immigrant to New England I'm not used to meeting anything much bigger than a fox so it was quite an eerie feeling to meet 6 coyotes who were quite at home in "my" woods and idly considering having a shetland pony for Dinner.
Faced with the ponies easy speed and my lack of it, coupled with the coyotes nonchalant presence sure brought home to me the frailty of this modern Human and his now useless, Made in China Flashlight ;-)
2/11/16, 8:47 AM
Helix said...
As Jen stated -- and I can second from my own experience -- it takes time before a rural property can provide subsistence and generate income unless it's already a turnkey operation. Turnkey properties usually command a substantial price. Therefore, having savings that will enable you to span the gap is vital. Or you can work in town, either physically or by telecommuting. This will lengthen the time needed to set up your property, but if you need to work for a number of years to pay off the mortgage anyway, the timing may work out for you.
Finally, everyone involved has to be on board. The rural lifestyle isn't for everyone, and making a go of an agricultural enterprise is a team effort. If anyone is not behind it, animosities will likely arise.
I can recommend two books on this subject: "Five Acres and Independence" by M.G.Kains (1935) and "Ten Acres Enough" by Edmund Morris (1864). These are old classics, but because they were written in times when fossil energy use was not nearly as intensive as it is nowadays, they may actually be of greater interest to Archdruid Report readers than newer titles (some of which are also very good). They both include early chapters on what to look for in a rural property, and they describe their failures as well as their successes. The failures are highly instructive of pitfalls to avoid.
Thanks to JMG for your usual instructive and thought-provoking post, and to commenters here who provide additional information and food for thought.
2/11/16, 8:48 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
http://esciencenews.com/sources/ny.times.science/2016/02/11/rooftop.solar.providers.face.a.cloudier.future
You called it on the nose!
2/11/16, 8:57 AM
Glenn in Maine said...
2/11/16, 9:23 AM
Eric S. said...
Is there anywhere either in past ADR essays, or in a book that agrees with your definition of the phrase that offers a clear set of parameters for what exactly constitutes an industrial society, what distinguishes it from other models of society, what specific details set an industrial society apart from other forms of technic society, what suites of technology that are associated with industrial society at present are unique to industrial societies and so on? Some things are obvious, but other places can be much more difficult to know where the line gets drawn… Things like energy per capita obvious quantifiable features, but are much harder to qualify, Centralized power grids and other infrastructure systems are important features but it’s much harder to say just how big a power grid or other infrastructure system has to be to be considered an industrial power grid… fossil fuels are an important feature but is that related to energy per capita or is it a necessary feature (i.e. would a society powered by renewables that maintained the same energy per capita still be considered an industrial society? Or would it be considered something else by definition?). Mass production and factory manufacture are important parts of the definition of industry, but they had plenty of industry by that definition in the ancient world. Automation is another important feature, but the concept of automation itself goes more under what you’ve termed “technics,” and could be maintained with a lower degree of infrastructure in a non-industrial society. So, with the concept of “industrial society” I’m kind of stuck in a situation where I can point it out where I see it, but most of the distinctions I can see between industrial and non-industrial societies involves degrees of scale, rather than specific clear parameters that I can use to define it in a concise way, since by some people’s definitions a nation-state on about the infrastructure scale of ancient Rome plus a few wind powered home or neighborhood sized power grids for lighting, heating, and long distance communication with factories playing an important role in the national economy and a rail system connecting some of the larger cities would count as an industrial society (which is a type of society I could see popping up in some future civilization).
2/11/16, 9:25 AM
Robo said...
A rational approach to non-human 'renewable energy' involves an acceptance of strict limitations on the fulfillment of individual appetites and desires that is quite un-American and will require the establishment of new communities and nations rather like your Lakeland Republic.
Perhaps the unexpected success of Trump and Sanders is the first stirring of this creative process. Although neither of them makes much practical sense, their supporters are motivated by an underlying awareness that the old ways aren't working very well any more.
2/11/16, 9:29 AM
111DFC said...
Hi JMG
Great post! It is clear that a “renewable world” cannot sustain the wastefulness of this system
Anyhow, what do you think the elites will do when the “derivatives bombs” start to explode? (only the Deustche Bank has a derivatives’ notional value 16 times the GDP of Germany). Or in other words, when the Debt Hypercycle start to fall apart, which “contracts” will be respected and which one not? it will be based on weapons and guillotines or in others more “civilized” means?
No, the money is not a “token”, because from their inception (who, how and when is made) is a power’s tool, it is also a way to drive the society values and conform even the world perception. Money needs to meet a huge change in the future
IMHO the next “trumpet of doom” will be de financial system, and as in 1929, probably we will not see another big bubble in some decades (we have seen too many bubbles in historical terms in two decades)
Sincerely yours
2/11/16, 9:58 AM
WW said...
A lot of things in our current society are like that, a series of ineffective actions that seem like just the thing that would create the desired outcome if the situation you're in actually were as it appeared.
As I discovered from reading the ADR, it doesn't necessarily take ten years of weekly long form essays and discussion to get to a place where you start to get a grasp on the situation- if you're lucky you can do it in eight.
2/11/16, 10:13 AM
buddhabythelake said...
I'll add my thanks for another insightful post.
As I've mentioned previously, I work at a modestly-sized municipal electric/water utility (modest by national standards, though I believe that we are the largest municipal utility in the state). We are also somewhat unique in that we own a considerable (for our size) amount of generation -- two solid-fuel boilers powering three steam turbines. Right now, we co-fire biomass (good) with coal and pet coke (not so good), but have already established air permits to allow up to 100% biomass consumption (very good). I have been lobbying for the development of more localized fuel sources for biomass, as supply is our primary constraint. We are surrounded by farmland and I have proposed the idea of us producing our own pelletized fuel from crop residue. I see this as a multiple win -- farmers receive a revenue stream, we take greater control of our own supply chain, and we secure long-term access to a fuel supply less dependent on rail transport. reception has been mixed. Let's just say that I will have to keep proposing this idea for a while.
In further news on the political front, our local primary to narrow the field of city council candidates from seven to six (a state requirement) is next Tuesday. With a bit of luck, I will be one of the six to make it onto the April ballot. My brief (10-minute) local radio interview this past Monday went well -- it either really helped or totally sunk me, as I gave my honest opinion on several local issues :) We'll see!
2/11/16, 10:44 AM
Mark said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/energy-environment/rooftop-solar-providers-face-a-cloudier-future.html
We just had a proposal done for solar PV and water on our new (and quite small) home's roof. Crazy big numbers being asked to invest, for about a 10 year payback. 10 years is a long run and in the long run we'll all be dead, etc So, no to that. I've already done some small scale hot water stuff myself (for an outdoor shower) but PV seems more of a challenge. Question for US-based experienced PV users, what's a good book/resource to help get me started on building up my own small scale PV system?
2/11/16, 11:10 AM
zaphod42 said...
Worse, we seem stuck in some sort of rut... going on with few alterations in our way of life. Yes, we use LED bulbs, now have 21-SEER HVAC, and drive a Prius. Other than that, our entertainment (diversion/misdirection) costs rise, we still drive to the supermarket... and mass transit, when it is running at all, is so bad that it is a 15 mile drive daily to the train or bus station closest to home.
Members of our household spend upwards of 10 hours per day playing games on line; we all have cell phones, and complain if they are slow, drop a call from time to time, or are less than the instant servants we imagine we need to aid what little intellect seems to have survived. How can we hope to survive the major dislocations coming if we cannot make the minor changes already required in order to at least minimize and delay the worst?
Though I am considered an optimist by most who know me, I do not wonder why my personal motto has long been, "... an interesting species, Homo Sapiens sapiens. I wonder if they'll be missed."
Craig
2/11/16, 11:13 AM
Karim said...
Actually you need a 3rd group that does NOT believe what the first believes and does NOT have any or much experience either.
However there are certain things with which I disagree, for instance you have repeatedly quoted the Pedro Pieto and Charles study that came up with low EROEI. However, this study is only one of many and over the years the literature has come up with a range of values from 2.45 to 12 (I think!). The average being 5 to 8. Not great, yet not abysmal.
When reading the literature it is quite clear that coming up with an accurate EROEI is problematic and will be most probably never be settled to everyone's satisfaction.
Furthermore, EROEI figures change in accordance with materials and manufacturing processes used, it is NOT a simple function of thermodynamics. Actually, no one knows how high EROEI figures can reach for solar PV. I have not yet seen theoretical studies that would put an upper figure on the above for instance.
From my perspective, to argue that "the numbers are just as problematic" based principally on the Charles study weakens your argument significantly for it ignores the range of values different studies generate, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Of course, where you are correct is that we cannot power the whole grid on solar and wind and even less an american lifestyle. You are right but for the wrong reasons, says I respectfully.
It is not necessarily the lowish EROEI that is problematic but mainly because solar and wind start off from a very low base, are variable in nature and grids have been designed for stability. Furthermore, solar and wind require electrical power storage which is still fairly expensive and difficult to deploy at will. Actually, we do not even know how low EROEI must fall before it becomes impractical to use. Of course below 1 the source becomes a sink.
The good news is that we do NOT need to have a grid solely dependent on either solar and wind. As we more or less know now, we are facing not an abrupt collapse but a gradual decline, hence as time goes by fossil fuels prices go up and down violently and supply may become variable. What we need is a way to dampen the impacts of those variations so as to retain a viable grid that can sustain a viable economic system. Of course we urgently need to cut down on wasteful consumption as at the same time.
This is where renewables come in. Hopefully they can help us to gradually reduce our dependency on fossil fuels while retaining a viable but most probably lesser economic system.
2/11/16, 11:14 AM
Karim said...
I note that you have not discussed the EROEI of wind energy, which ranges from 20 to 80 (I disbelieve the latter figure!) and the fact that it is now just as cheap as coal fired electricity. Furthermore, we tend to forget that in using coal we must burn it and so waste heat is generated, hence the EROEI of coal used to generate electrical power ought to be adjusted by reducing by 2/3 giving 1/3 of 80 = 26. Within the range of wind EROEI.
However, as discussed beforehand, wind is intermittent and electricity is expensive to store, making wind useful as power but difficult to power the grid with.
Finally, the main reason why renewables won't save our current industrial civilisation is that they cannot be used easily to power transportation, we need oil for that. We have a problem of non-susbtitutionability there. This is the elephant in the parlour that will wreck many things.
I do apologise for the length of that post and hope I have offended no-one and not made a nuisance out of myself!
Thank you!
2/11/16, 11:17 AM
pygmycory said...
2/11/16, 12:35 PM
Marinhomelander said...
Two 3" holes cut in back of freezer or refrigerator with sheet metal round hole saw. Make sure where electrical and refrigerant tubes are located first.
Use stops to restrict holes to refrigerator, or wide open for freezer.
Insulated dryer vents to holes cut in outside walls, top and bottom for convection. Insulated plugs for closing holes when not freezing outside.
2/11/16, 12:40 PM
pygmycory said...
2/11/16, 12:51 PM
mrs slow loris said...
2/11/16, 1:03 PM
pygmycory said...
I'm sorry to hear the situation is Seattle is so bad. Do bear in mind that Victoria is a much smaller city than Seattle. All thirteen municipalities that comprise greater Victoria only have 330,000 or so people put together. And I think half the issue with InTent is that it is on the courthouse lawn where VIP have to look at it.
my best guess is that Canada is in a fairly similar situation to the one the USA found itself in early 2008. In western Canada at least, we haven't really had the stair step down that the US took in the last recession. This downturn is acting as a nasty shock, especially in Alberta.
Calgary is seeing jingle mail, with people walking away from their mortgages and sending the keys to the bank. Yet Vancouver and Toronto are, I believe, still rising. This can't possibly end well.
2/11/16, 1:03 PM
pygmycory said...
2/11/16, 1:05 PM
August Johnson said...
It’s financially impossible for anybody but an ultra-rich to install enough PV or other to actually power a conventional house 100%. And that’s only for its electrical usage. Our Industrial Society uses many times this just for electricity, not counting other sources of energy such as oil, gas, etc…
M – It’s not just that car manufacturers are going to roll out the cameras, it’s now law that cars must have back-up cameras!
http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/u-s-requiring-back-up-cameras-in-cars-by-2018/
Pentrus – You have it exactly right on Ham Radio! Yes, current thinking is quite dependent on complex and not so reliable systems. Simplex, lower power and simple equipment is the right way. I know one Ham who is quite dedicated to contesting in Ham radio, yet she just uses a 100 watt radio and has stated that it does all she wants and has no desire to use any more power. Thousands of contacts from all over the world with 100 watts and a wire antenna. Actually I know several that work this way.
I’d love to have more Hams in conversation over on the Green Wizards website, we need to have more GW members of the Ham Community!
August KG7BZ
2/11/16, 1:36 PM
MIckGspot said...
I still got another week with Spengler, TY Arch Druid.
Can I have another push up please sir?
Of course we must have some fun!
2/11/16, 2:54 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
She has now moved to Gainesville, FL, a hot damp town if I understand it correctly. So she'll have waste heat, which was a bonus in Pacifica, to deal with as well.
2/11/16, 3:48 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ed, and of course that's another issue as well -- what's the effective lifespan of big grid-tied renewable systems, remembering that they last only as long as their least durable irreplaceable part, and what kind of energy and resource inputs will be needed to replace them?
Cristina, on the other hand, Iceland did manage -- unlike every other country in the world -- to respond to the 2008 banking crisis the right way, by letting the banks fail and jailing the bankers for fraud. That bespeaks a very pleasant level of common sense, which might get you through this in one piece. By the way, who is Guðmundur bóndi? I'm guessing he's the Icelandic equivalent of John Doe, but inquiring minds want to know. ;-)
Mark, glad to hear it. I figure if I keep on bringing that up, it's just possible that sooner or later enough people will grapple with it.
Chloe, I certainly wish you a fast fracking bust -- no question, as energy bubbles go, fracking has some of the worst blowback. I admit there's also a certain amusement value in trying to imagine some English politician in wellies and a raincoat standing there in the pouring rain, making a speech at the construction site for a big new solar power facility...
Ien, the future's a big place, you know, and I think there's probably room in it for Retrotopia, and also for the splendid ecotechnic civilizations of the far future -- which will make use of renewable energy, of course, because that's all they'll have to work with.
MigrantWorker, no doubt that'll have its place in line. My guess is that we'll have three or four more bubbles, alternating between pseudo-green and pave-the-planet, until the whole system unravels far enough that blowing bubbles stops being much of an option any more.
Cherokee, you're welcome and thank you! Your comments here, and those of my other readers who have direct personal experience of living within the limits of renewable energy, contributed quite a bit to this post.
Deedl, it's quite possible that Germany could manage to downshift to a post-petroleum and post-coal economy, for exactly the reasons you've sketched out -- the built environment still follows pre-fossil fuel patterns, and what's been done with renewables so far, though it's an immense subsidy dumpster, may give you a little more wiggle room on the way down. Other than England -- which is hopelessly overpopulated -- and those countries that will simply vanish beneath the waves as the seas rise, I could see that happen to a fair bit of Europe. Over here? Not so much, outside of a few corners of the east coast.
Pavel, the bird- and bat-killing is an ongoing issue here in the US. As for your other points, well, we'll just have to see; as I noted, nothing I do or say is going to turn aside the renewables bubble, so in six to ten years we'll know exactly who's right.
2/11/16, 4:00 PM
Donald Mackay said...
1. everything has to come from somewhere.
2. everything has to go somewhere.
3. there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Wish I could give a proper attribution, but it didn't make as much of impression on me then as it does now. I can give credit for planting it in my head to Vinnedge M Lawrence PhD
2/11/16, 4:42 PM
onething said...
And there you have it. The Chillary.
2/11/16, 4:50 PM
Justin said...
The issue that I am facing is that in 5 years, I likely will no longer be employable as an engineer because of the implosion of the North American economy - right now my employer benefits from cheap commodities and a low Canadian dollar, but ultimately still depends on the ability of the American consumer to buy our customer's products.
My internal conflict comes from the fact that right now, I could buy property in one of the smaller towns in Eastern Canada, but would have no realistic way of paying the mortgage. If I stick around in Halifax, I'll eventually have enough saved to buy a place, especially if the housing market crashes and my money stays valuable. Until then I am kind of in limbo. Maybe the best thing to do is buy a car and commute into town from the outskirts, although that would strain my ability to save money.
And yes, I know I am lucky, I have a good job for now, in a walkable city.
2/11/16, 4:59 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Indeed. It's definitely not just condescension, that's why I called it the "Devil's smirk." I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it, I have a feeling there's a layer of emotions there that I can't even being to understand.
As for renewables, have you seen this thing?
http://www.rawlemon.com/
Leaving aside the ridiculous use of this thing for electricity generation, I can totally see it's value for other solar related projects. Wonder how well it boils water...
Regards,
Varun
2/11/16, 5:06 PM
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen said...
2/11/16, 5:26 PM
Susan Roberts, MDiv, OTR/L said...
2/11/16, 5:27 PM
LarasDad said...
Here's 1 example of what you need to be looking for (from mls.com)
2/11/16, 6:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Sherril, I hope he has the chance to practice that smirk behind bars for a good long time.
John & Louise, thank you!
Kyle, exactly. The most likely trajectory as I see it is a rough, crisis-laden transition in which grid power to rural districts goes away, starting of course with the poorest first; large-scale grids gradually get cut apart into smaller, more sustainable grids; the more than occasional disaster of one kind or another (climate, war, terrorism, industrial accident) shuts down sections of the grid, and each year the likelihood of replacement goes down. Eventually you end up with those areas that have long-term sustainable power sources (such as hydro) with their own microgrids, while everyone else either generates a little 12v for their own uses or simply does without.
Ares, my guess is that for centuries to come, those districts that have viable hydroelectricity will either be centers of political and military power, or the most tempting targets for conquest by those who have political and military power, and the risk of being overrun during periods of mass migration won't be small. My guess is that it will be a lot safer and more comfortable to be somewhere that doesn't have much in the way of hydro.
Fred, it's unquestionably true that the salary class and the wage class have very different cultures. I consider myself fortunate to be comfortable with both.
David, that's one of many problems. The one that strikes me as the most important is that hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy storage system, and not a very efficient one at that. Again, you have to put more energy into making it than you get back from burning it -- those dratted laws of thermodynamics, again!
Pathman, that's no surprise. SolarCity is one of Elon Musk's enterprises, and he's basically the nation's leading manufacturer of subsidy dumpsters. All his enterprises are simply ways of funneling public money into his own pocket.
Heretic, yep. So far, at least, Obama's avoided the kind of military confrontation that would lead to a military debacle, but we'll see.
Trippticket, congrats on the forthcoming solar system! It's people like you, who are collapsing well ahead of the rush and finding their feet in the deindustrial future, who make this blog's project seem worthwhile to me; thank you.
M, a very solid point. White's law argues that economic complexity is a function of energy per capita, and so a viable strategy for the future involves sharply reducing complexity so we can handle decreasing energy per capita. Very simple and very obvious -- except, of course, that it's not obvious at all to those who have their heads stuck in the assorted orifices of the mythology of perpetual progress.
Pine, it'll be interesting to see whether the current mark-to-makebelieve economy does in fact come crashing down, or if it simply spins off into irrelevance; I know a lot of people who expected things to fall apart long before now, and it may be the case that hallucinations need not obey the law of gravity. Still, we'll see.
2/11/16, 6:29 PM
Justin said...
2/11/16, 6:29 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Brian, well, look at the bright side -- the steel and rebar from all those defunct solar installations will give a couple of generations of rural blacksmiths a local source of raw material, while the trade routes that will ship chunks of defunct skyscraper out from abandoned downtowns get up and running.
Bigsky, thanks for the data point! Complexity is a crucial issue, no question -- and that suggests that one of the core strategies for getting ready for the deindustrial transition involves eliminating excess complexity wherever it can be found. Hmm. I may want to do a post on this down the road a bit.
Pentrus, thank you! That's exactly the point, of course -- the only strategy that will get anything of value through the mess ahead starts with changing our own lives to use less energy and less resources. Any proposal that doesn't begin with that simply isn't serious.
Patricia, why don't they just send Gojira and Rodan to fight the neutron star? Sheesh... ;-)
Renovator, if you're right -- if people are finally beginning to see that the Great God Progress is a hollow mask in an empty temple where the paint is peeling off the walls -- then we may just be able to accomplish more than the sort of emergency salvage operation I've had as my Plan A. The abandonment of blind faith in progress is the one thing that might lead a significant number of people to grapple with the realities of our situation, and maybe even do something useful about it. That is to say, I hope you're right!
Phil, okay, that's worth knowing. In other words, you don't have the capacity for a Victorian-style industrial society on 5% of current energy input. That said, more research is definitely needed to get a sense of where the breakpoint lies.
Patricia, good -- that might inspire a lot of people to cut their energy consumption instead. Japan before 1868 managed an impressive level of culture and comfort on a very, very modest level of energy per capita; revisiting some of the lessons of the Edo jidai might be a good strategy now.
Lou, but that beast is so maladapted that at this point more and more people are being forcibly excluded from it. The question is how they'll react.
Wolfgang, excellent! That first sentence -- "The color of energy, regardless of where it comes from, is essentially brown" -- earns you tonight's gold star, for crisp enunciation of an unwelcome truth.
Ekkar, the only reason the urban-industrial model of society has become so widespread on the planet is, again, lots of cheap energy from fossil fuels. As that ends, I expect to see towns, roads, and the like vanish from fairly large regions that are now more or less integrated into the urban-industrial model, and human settlement in those regions will cycle back to horticultural, pastoral, or hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Thus it's not so much a failure of memory as the imposition of a human monoculture on the planet, and when that goes away, I expect the options to expand considerably.
2/11/16, 6:48 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Wolfgang, I've heard that from others, including quite a few people with extensive knowledge of desert ecology. Not that such concerns will slow down the faux-green promoters...
Allie, exactly. One of the necessary realizations in this business is that the government is not here to help you -- it's here to help the rich and their pet corporations. The most you can hope for is to slip past under the radar, and do what you need to do yourself.
Nathan, thank you. This blog has been a great place to learn that particular skill set.
Wes, exactly! It's perfectly possible to live a comfortable, decent, humane life using renewable energy sources -- and indeed to have a more comfortable life than most human beings have had. It's just not possible to maintain the absurd extravagances that characterize modern industrial lifestyles.
Erik, thanks for the numbers.
Phil, of course. Just because it's carbon neutral doesn't mean it's not wrecking the biosphere in some other way!
Gavin, thanks for the link.
Friction, exactly. I'm also a great fan of solar energy; solar water heating, passive solar space heating, solar ovens, solar greenhouses, and plenty of other ways of using the diffuse low-grade heat sunlight generates so readily are all wonderful technologies that deserve much more use than they currently get. I suspect the future will also make much use of solar electric technology, though I'm guessing that Seebeck-effect generators using bimetallic strips heated by reflecting concentrators will be more sustainable and rugged than any PV-effect technology. My point is simply that trying to force solar energy to do something it can't do -- that is, power a modern American lifestyle -- is an exercise in futility at a time when we have many better things to do.
Glenn, thank you, but Google won't let me access that page via your link.
Ralph, exactly -- and thank you for joining in and helping to remind people what it's actually like to live on renewable energy.
Dylan, that's a great story -- and a useful reminder that humanity's supposed ownership of the Earth is not of great interest or importance to most of its other tenants.
Patricia, that's the thing about historical parallels. Once you know what makes people stop thinking and start going through pointless repetitive actions, you can predict it to a fare-thee-well and be right every time.
Glenn, I've long had my doubts about the tubes -- too fussy, too many things that could go wrong. A good old-fashioned circulating solar water heater is a lot simpler and sturdier; admittedly, Maine may not be the best place for that particular technology.
2/11/16, 7:13 PM
Genevieve Hawkins said...
2/11/16, 7:15 PM
Glenn said...
"By the way, who is Guðmundur bóndi?"
I don't speak Icelandic, but I've read enough Sagas in side by side translation to parse out a few words. Bondi is farmer, and the phrase is "goodman farmer". The John Smith of the countryside in mediaeval Scandinavia.
Glenn
in the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
2/11/16, 7:27 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Robo, that may be the case -- but I'm interested that you think that Trump and Sanders make no practical sense. Did you think their rivals make some kind of practical sense, then?
111DFC/David, au contraire, money is just a token -- it's because it means nothing in and of itself that it can be loaded with so many illusory meanings by those who manipulate it.
WW, if you got it in eight, you're doing far, far better than a lot of people out there! Thank you for making the effort.
Buddha, all of that is good to hear. Best of luck in the primary!
Mark, PV is a very mixed bag. Have you looked into a solar water heating system? That can chop 10% off your annual energy consumption quite readily, depending on where you live.
Zaphod, if that's the way you want to live, fine. If not, why do you choose to keep living that way?
Karim, yes, I've seen those numbers as well. If sun and wind produced the kind of net energy that their proponents claim, neither one would need government subsidies to make them profitable -- and yet we see that neither one sees any kind of widespread adoption without substantial subsidies. The thing is, as I noted in the post, nothing this blog says is going to stop the renewables bubble; over the next six to ten years, I expect to see billions of dollars in new investment in solar and wind electrical generation capacity, and if they really do perform as well as their promoters insist, that should be the leading edge of a lasting boom. If, on the other hand, I'm right, a decade from now we'll be looking at cascading bankruptcies in the renewable industry because the numbers really didn't work. Shall we see what happens?
Pygmycory, good! Okay, we have the Hillary Clinton. What about the Ted Cruz sandwich? Canadian bacon and Cuba cheese on sourdough?
Mrs. Loris, that's good to hear. That anybody's mentioning conservation at all is good to hear.
Pygmycory, Seattle's in the middle of a tech bubble, so rents are being jacked up exorbitantly, and of course the city council and mayor are weeping crocodile tears over the plight of the homeless while doing nothing to change the situation. Tings are just as bad in a lot of other coastal cities, and even in the inland states, homelessness is rising rapidly as more people every month enter the ranks of the permanently unemployed. You're quite right that it won't end well.
2/11/16, 7:57 PM
Justin said...
2/11/16, 8:07 PM
John Michael Greer said...
MickGspot, of course bubbles are renewable. We've had a tech stock bubble, a housing bubble, a fracking bubble, and another tech stock bubble, just for starters, and I have no doubt that there will be more. A certain song somehow comes to mind...
Donald, those three rules ought to be hammered into the skulls of every human being on the planet. Thank you!
Varun, ah, concentrating solar PV. That was a hot new idea in the 1950s, you know!
Allan, thanks for the reminder! You're quite right, of course -- this one was visible a long way off.
Genevieve, excellent! You get a gold star for straightforward common sense. Of course it doesn't make any kind of sense -- but it certainly helps suck money out of the public coffers into the pockets of promoters.
Glenn, got it -- many thanks.
Justin, funny.
2/11/16, 8:14 PM
Justin said...
I think a crowdsourced history of American Presidential Sandwiches would be fascinating, and quite possibly a contributor to your eventual fame, whether you want it or not!
2/11/16, 8:34 PM
Karim said...
On a last note, in my little country of Mauritius, we have begun to install solar and wind capacity for the grid.
As numbers come in I shall report to readers of this blog the situation as it unfolds, should that interest some of you.
Right now I can report that very small scale PV installations of less than 50kw get a subsidy.
However a medium sized solar farm of 15 MW was made operational in 2014 and it gets paid US $ 0.16 per kwh, coal fired electricity costs US 0.10 per kwh. The difference is substantial but not that enormous given that LPG turbines generate power at around US 0.15 per kwh. Note that I am not aware of any Government subsidies in this project.
Furthermore a few additional medium sized solar farms are being proposed to Government, all from private investments, they are proposing tariffs of less than US 0.16 per kwh.
The situation is getting interesting here.
2/11/16, 9:03 PM
patriciaormsby said...
I love my R.A.C.K.! In Japan, we have itty-bitty ones that you can swipe inside at a moment's notice when it rains, and stick over by the stove. We don't have a second story for a balcony, which is where you see people's bedding put out to sun, but we have created a porch with a greenhouse over it on the south side, and the car comes in handy on fine days as an improvised R.A.C.K. for that purpose. (At some point, it will also serve as a handy hothouse for seedlings.) I've been surprised to hear of some communities outlawing outside use of R.A.C.K.s. I recall the warm stiffness and pleasant scent of sheets we'd bring in at the end of long summer days when I was little.
(I enjoy your comments!)
2/11/16, 9:23 PM
Unknown said...
Justin, it might work for you as an interim measure to buy an inexpensive small house (if such a thing exists) in a location where you would like to live later on, fix it up, and rent it out. This could be a good idea or a very bad one, depending on the details. It is only a good idea if you can count on enough rental income to cover property taxes, maintenance and mortgage payments. Don't expect a positive cash flow; that usually only happens after the place is paid off or the area gentrifies.
The property has to be nearby enough for you to keep an eye on it and do most of the maintenance yourself. Before you buy, you want to make sure that the place doesn't have costly or unfixable hidden problems or criminal neighbors and you need a realistic plan to get a good tenant. Don't rent to a family member whom you won't get rid of if they fall behind on the rent. You should be well informed on what your legal responsibilities would be as a landlord, what the law requires you to do in order to perform a legal eviction, and you will want advice on how the rental property will affect your taxes.
If this works out well, you will have a steady long term tenant covering your costs of ownership. When you are ready to retire from your town job, either you wait until the tenant's lease is up and move in, or sell the property to the tenant or someone else and use the proceeds to buy a home for yourself. It's also possible that you will find being a small scale property manager congenial and sufficiently lucrative to become your post retirement occupation.
Being a responsible landlord requires some knowledge, skills, and time spent. Do the research before committing any of your precious capital.
2/11/16, 9:49 PM
patriciaormsby said...
Better deals emerged in the wake of Fukushima, and people took advantage of them to go into business, but Japan's electric companies started refusing to buy the electricity, and I'm hearing about resistance from established power generating companies everywhere.
Lots of people after Fukushima would put up a solar panel, but not know how to store the energy. They'd attach it to a light or something, which would only work when the sun was shining. Then they'd just give up. Information can be surprisingly hard to obtain here.
We put up a few panels and fixed up a way to swivel them, which basically doubles the amount of energy we get. The swivel unit consists of my husband, with a replacement unit available. A friend in car repair has given us a lot of old car batteries. With this and energy-saving light bulbs, we manage to light the house quite well, but not much more. We are still on the grid for the refrigerator and this computer, which is essential for my work. We have the potential for hydro out back of our house, with which we might become independent of the grid, but unfortunately, TEPCO owns the rights to all hydro in the area.
2/11/16, 10:26 PM
patriciaormsby said...
2/11/16, 10:29 PM
Dau Branchazel said...
My main point, was that at point of consumption (the time of purchase, or the point at which you are getting the benefits of the product) solar panels are awesome. They don't emit gases. They can operate on a personal level. No noise. Etc. The main issue with people's hopes for solar/wind/etc lie in the fact that they tend to only see it a piece of technology in their hands, doing what it does. No matter how well solar does what it does, they can't match fossil fuels pound for pound in energy production.
This led to my other point, more hard fought for it to be considered, that solar and wind are both recipients of huge fossil fuel subsidies. For a solar panel to be made, requires large inputs of fossil fuel energy. The mining, transportation, manufacture, maintenance of factories. All of it has raw crude lubing its path from concept to product. The other option is that it is that essentially all the materials and subsequent aspects of the supply chain are done by physical labour, which would make them a luxury item and not a worldwide energy solution.
I think people just don't wanna hear things that they think are negative or likely to discourage a transition towards the usage of renewable sources of energy via things like wind farms and solar panels. But it just has to be said, it's not about discouraging people away from cleaner forms of energy concentration and capture, it's about putting it in context. There is not a bauxite mine on the planet that sources its electricity from solar panels and its fuels and lubricants from bio-diesel or other non-toxic means. And If you were to divert all that low-grade power production to try and match what fossil fuels do, then there would be no bauxite mines because it would be cost prohibitive and and generally unfeasible.
I also brought up the idea of mini-grids, and even perhaps having a local producers of solar energy from whom others paid/traded for power. My gracious boss who did not mind arguing these points with his new staff member took issue with it, suggesting that the major grid network offers so many benefits. It does, it's true, but at what cost? And to what end? The modern industrial experiment has made the impossible possible, the inaccessible accessible, for some. By absolutely no means all. But the cost has been so great that it threatens the health of every ecosystem on the planet. Decentralisation, and there fore localisation of energy capture, concentration and distribution will be the only way to maintain an even mutant resemblance to our current habits of consumption.
Then came the argument for efficiency, and how all products are becoming more and more efficient. My response was, that there will come a time in the future, where from out of a bunker-lab emerges the world's leading efficientologist carrying the world's most extremely efficient thingy, to present it to an empty scorched earth, laid to waste in the quest for the most efficient way sustain unlimited growth on a finite planet.
2/11/16, 10:59 PM
Graeme Bushell said...
Graeme
2/11/16, 11:56 PM
stravinsky7 said...
Nor will it be that people are making themselves some cheap trinket every day on their 3-d printers.
The problem is that all effort is by default, industrial, while individuals sit in the den snacking on what they've got, surfing the internet or watching tv.
If people were to have to implement the solar theirselves, we might just be better off for this bubble. Standard script says that's not how this will go though, and that's a shame.
Someone posted that long term efficiency of solar is low. I keep hearing, though, that it's surprisingly high.
2/12/16, 12:26 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
160 comments and it is only Friday night! Well done, you've hit a nerve here.
Thank you for writing that as my experience has taught me that it is an unwise gamble to bet the farm on renewable energy sources powering the sorts of consumption that people enjoy today. I mean, honestly, how many readers here could cope with only 4kWh of electricity in a single day and then do it again the next day, and the day after etc.? Not many at all I reckon. The funny thing is that visitors don't even notice that the house is not connected to the mains grid. 4kWh is a massive amount of energy too and few people realise that.
Incidentally relying on solar photovoltaics solely for electrical energy means: Making hay whilst the sun shines, but then so many other systems here revolve around that simple concept too. The McDonaldisation of our society to me appears to mean that we have somehow become so used to consistency of supplies, that we no longer understand what resources nature can feasibly and reliably supply us with. We have become like giant toddlers in an energy play ground throwing tantrums and stomping our feet, when the lights fail to go on at night because someone else used the energy instead.
cont...
2/12/16, 1:47 AM
Flo said...
you may not have to wait that long. This week, Austrian media are reporting on the biggest bancruptcy so far this year, coming from *drumroll* - a solar power company! With only 3 employees in Austria and a plant in Ukraine, the company managed to amass a debt of half a billion Euros, with assets of just 19 million. - Try to get that kind of loan from a bank for a proper business of your choice ;) And that doesn't, to my understanding, include any government subsidies already consumed.
Given, in this case it may have been a corrution and ponzi scheme from the start that exploded in the face of its creators early due to the regime change in Ukraine - but the dimensions involved and the willingness of mainstream banks to hand out that much money for practically no securities (but hey, what could go wrong? "Future markets" AND renewables? We're in!) does not cast a good light on the financial side of things...
http://mobil.derstandard.at/2000030703814/Wiener-Activ-Solar-legt-Millionen-Pleite-hin (unfortunately German only. This is one of the serious Austrian mainstream newspaper's website)
2/12/16, 2:35 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
As to 12V DC systems, the vast majority of solar PV panels out there as grid tied solar PV systems are readily suitable for 24V DC off grid systems. Of course a clever person could take out a cell or two or more really, here and there and connect the panel straight up to a 24V DC battery or even rewire the panel so that it can work with a 12V DC battery. It doesn't have to look pretty to be effective.
There are plenty of salvageable 24V DC items - look to the trucks as they use 24V DC equipment as standard...
On that point too, so many people want an off grid system to provide them with the sort of comforts that they enjoy today which if they are of the average consumption persuasion, is generally impossible. But that does not mean that a tiny little system isn't highly useful. Quite the contrary, a small system can power: radios (including ham radios); water pumps; lights; air compressor; soldering iron; refrigerator; fans even a television or computer. You name it, it can do it - no worries. Just don't expect heating - I actually tried an electric heater here and it was more effective to simply open the window and let the warm air into the house. Seriously! And the load it put on the equipment just wasn’t worth it.
Oh yeah, most of the grid tied inverters are boat anchors as they have no application to an off grid system. They are like a pump that can only ever run at one speed, whereas off grid inverters are far more complex beasts and can vary the output and provide for huge peak loads (mine can go up to 9kW for 5 minutes). It is one of those things that people don't realise but some electric motors – like induction motors can require huge amounts of energy to start functioning before backing off on their demand. A lot of cheap and simple off grid inverters can't power them and I've heard of many sad tales about that sorry story. A lot of the hybrid systems that people like to talk about have no hope of even running those sorts of peak demand loads. Some hybrid inverters can though, but they are very expensive hybrid inverters. People think of this stuff as being cheap, but to be useful it isn’t cheap.
That reminds me too: Batteries are only ever 80% efficient and they are a very old and mature technology, regardless of what anyone says. There are no easy gains to be made there. Just sayin... Oh yeah, and if one more person tells me about the Tesla powerwall – honestly, the off grid people down here have slam dunked them.
I've read most of the comments so far and am rather enjoying this topic.
Oh incidentally, the concept of running off to the boonies to set up an organic farm takes a whole lot of work and time. Years down the track, I still learn things every single day and I've learned enough to know that some of those errors would have been fatal to either myself, or the bit of infrastructure here that I was playing around with. Nothing can replace the time taken to gain the experience, and anyone thinking otherwise is daydreaming.
Cheers
Chris
PS: I've got a new blog entry up: Tomato Jungle where coincidentally I show the 4.2kW off grid system performing as well as it is ever going to (which is only 80% efficient!). I hack a path into the now feral tomato jungle - yes you read that correctly! There are before and after photos – it is feral. I'm storing firewood which is a nice form of concentrated solar energy. There is a great photo of a mob of Kangaroos in my garden. A New Zealand Lolly cake was made to celebrate Waitangi Day with NZ friends. And more metalwork art stuff gets bolted to a rock! True story! Lots of cool photos - enjoy!
2/12/16, 2:51 AM
Stein L said...
I have solar and wind at my cabin in the mountains, together with a generator. Enough battery capacity to deliver the 230V/50Hz electricity I need while staying there, but I am not running any mod-cons, just basics such as lighting, power for the radio, computer and recharging the phone. You learn to question what you need electricity for, and how much you need, and you learn quite a lot about conservation, if you're smart.
As JMG writes, those who believe we're headed for a glorious renewable future, with no let-up on our energy use, don't have any practical experience with domestic renewable sources. You need to learn quite a bit, in order to ensure that your set-up is at optimum -- and there's a lot that can go wrong if you don't pay attention.
Yes, I did what most do: I destroyed a battery bank. One bit of advice I got was that "your first bank should be a cheap one, as you're going to kill it." I was confident I wasn't going to do that, but I did.
Sure, it's possible to install a huge battery bank, lots of panels, a turbine with a large swept area if you have enough wind. And if the dimension is right, you can run mod-cons, not as conveniently as with on-grid, but enough. Only trouble is that it's going to cost you, a lot.
Installers have lots of stories about people who calculate their energy needs, prior to getting a bid for the installation. Without fail, they have ludicrous requirements, and it takes some effort to talk them down from their expectations. Some get angry, when told what it would cost for them to have "everything as it used to be, but now off-grid".
After having run my solar/wind for over three years, I've become so good at it that I could sell my generator. Sun and wind are supplying enough energy to keep the batteries healthy, without a need to juice them up with the generator. But that took adjusting how much I demanded from the set-up.
The difference between what I would like to have on hand, and what I realistically should expect to have on hand, is probably nicely mirrored in society as large: what we'd like to do is far in excess of what we should do. It took breaking a battery bank for me to respect the difference; "society" will break a lot more, because it won't accept the difference.
2/12/16, 3:25 AM
Eric S. said...
Re: presidential sandwiches:
The Sanders would have to be fried chicken and Vermont cheddar on a sourdough roll.
2/12/16, 4:27 AM
Phil Harris said...
Thanks for your reply:
JMG wrote: “Phil, okay, that's worth knowing. In other words, you don't have the capacity for a Victorian-style industrial society on 5% of current energy input. That said, more research is definitely needed to get a sense of where the breakpoint lies.”
(O goodness! I just read my own comment again and see I left Scotland out of the UK.)
In that earlier comment this week - see also the reference cited - I calculated British energy consumption (expressed as coal equivalent):
Per capita UK in 1900 = 4.42 tonnes ce; 1950 = 5.6 tonnes ce; 1990 = 6.5 tonnes ce
One tonne of coal equals 0.6 tonnes of oil or 7.1 MWh of electrical energy or 1.016 long tons
Yes – always more research is needed! Good job I am retired (lower complexity! ;-)), and that we make compost and my wife is into veg gardening! I have a whole string of questions about breakpoints.
First-up question might be – why does the USA have double the energy consumption per head compared with Britain and the European average? And as a subsidiary question, at the same time why should the USA have such a poor and expensive health insurance system given the vast resources serving the economy? My first guess is that Kunstler is right when he points to the American suburb as 'the' major expense / 'consumer-good' needing (and getting) cheap oil / gasoline, but see also Elizabeth Warren, below.
[Elizabeth Warren back in 2006 pointed to the threat to the USA middle class – basically income insecurity – and to the then current major household expenditures for mom & pop and two kids. Big changes since the 1970s; and no, it is not expensive clothes and household goods and cost of food and running a car. See rather, larger mortgages from inflated house price, more cars for two jobs (and taxes), health insurance, and the biggest increase, childcare.]
Where does that leave complexity? [Next major research project ;-)] Maintenance of legacy-complexity is first up in my view, which includes inter-generational maintenance of, in particular, ‘knowledge’. My guess is that some ‘knowledge’ is relatively easy to maintain while other types become prohibitively expensive. (Some knowledge is exterminated and the ‘DNA’ is lost?) From analogy with ‘key species’ in specific ecosystems, there could be ‘key-knowledge’. Look around – there are planetary human systems that ‘get-by’ on 10% of British energy per head or 5% the energy consumed by a USA citizen. Some of these ‘lower energy-cost’ systems are dependent in some critical regard – at the critical margin - on the legacy of industrial civilisation, perhaps something like vaccines or a small number of IC engines, or even on the hand-ons of the Big Consumer. But … and so on and so on: research continues. :-)
Some places get by with adequate complexity on not much more than 15% of American per capita energy, like Cuba, and a few on only 5%, with enough ‘surplus’ to maintain a ‘knowledge base’ given their own legacy civilisation. On the other hand, others at higher levels fly apart already.
best
Phil
2/12/16, 5:44 AM
Jim R said...
That has been a trend throughout the 20th century, the "economy" of "huge". And I have mentioned re-naming it "profligacy of scale" in this very forum. Huge towers supporting wires distributing vast amounts of electric current, and losing more than ten percent of it in transformers and radiation into space. Huge investment in copper wiring and steel pylons.
The problem with solar PV, of course, is that the central-control model no longer makes any sense at all (not that it made much sense in 1970). Why waste all that precious energy driving a big grid? An article I noticed a couple days ago, the headline was that Morocco is building the biggest solar power plant ever. There was a picture of a field of curved mirrors in the desert. My first thought was that this thing is going to be offline every night...
Well, I think there's a place for solar PV in retrotopia. I suppose the crux is whether silicon can be sufficiently refined in small batches. PV does not need the extreme, obsessive, insane, purity levels required by microelectronics.
2/12/16, 6:09 AM
cristina said...
There are plenty of other bubbles in the making right now in these parts ("clean" energy being one of them) and I have my own set of predictions about the future. But yes, you are basically right - we might have a soft landing compared to other places.
Guðmundur bóndi actually exists, by the way, and is some kind of a running gag in our family. It's not his fault, though, he's perfectly nice, the poor man. But yes again, he was intended as an icelandic John Doe :-)
2/12/16, 6:24 AM
Janet D said...
Top Google Engineers: 'Renewable Energy Simply Won't Work'
A brief sampling of the article: "Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that renewables will never permit the human race to cut CO2 emissions to the levels demanded by climate activists. Whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.....Whenever somebody with a decent grasp of maths and physics looks into the idea of a fully renewables-powered civilised future for the human race with a reasonably open mind, they normally come to the conclusion that it simply isn't feasible."
2/12/16, 6:37 AM
NickVictoryofthePeeps83 said...
2/12/16, 7:18 AM
Lou Nelms said...
JMG: "Lou, but that beast is so maladapted that at this point more and more people are being forcibly excluded from it. The question is how they'll react."
We are entering one of the great bottlenecks in earth history. A great force of convergence toward the centripetal pull of industrial civilization while splintering forces for divergence are waking to and resisting the pull. But it does seem inevitable that we will all be sucked into the global gauntlet. What emerges on the other side after the great selection occurs is anyone's guess. Will it follow a natural, post extinction course of selection for diversity or will it be some surviving offshoot, a fatal strain of our errant way?
I was working in my plastic covered, solar heated, cold frame yesterday, basking in the sun, preparing for a late winter planting of spinach and such. Thinking about plastic and oil and my dependencies on the course of it. And how our system seems reluctant to ask the inconvenient questions of our leaders and candidates (let alone ourselves). As we enter the age of the tail of oil, when will we get serious about the end of oil? Uncontrolled by oil. For example, rather than pour $4 billion from the federal larder into driverless car research, as has been proposed recently by some technocrats, you'd think we might be wiser to start disfavoring the auto. Stop the subsidies for this mythic icon. This god machine, our master on this unending road on tales of unending oil.
But back to that plastic question. What would be needed to start up small, local glass making industries? If we are to get serious about local food production, we will need to extend the growing season far into the fall, winter and early spring with the capture of shorter day sunlight. Just thinking of how we will do this, post oil, post plastic, post infrastructure built on oil. 'sides that, there is the big cost of replacing this plastic when the sun finally does it's job on it. Guess I could just expat it, fly off to Bocas del Toro, add to the strain on paradise, and drive up the price of real estate for the campesinos so they'd be forced to sell out and tend my tropical garden for campesino wages. Why am I so damned cynical?
Buenos.
2/12/16, 8:13 AM
Ekkar said...
When the sounds of machines are quiete when the wind carries only the sound of the trees, the songs of the birds, the soft rumble of the umpqua, I feel the most human. A surprisingly subtle feeling that is lost quickly when the machines again break the silence.
I spent a lot of my formative years in bigger cities dominated by machines. Cities full of machine people who have very little to no awareness of what has been lost. Full of humans who have become insane and collectively suicidal.
I can not help but welcome the fading away of machine domination.
2/12/16, 8:17 AM
latefall said...
This is where anthropological information would be really useful, because you can try to get to certain societal configurations if you know under what conditions they exist in a relatively stable way. What is technologically viable in these societies won't be easy to predict from a BAU/always-on-grid perspective.
Like Andy said, if you aren't even experimenting with alternative models while you have the ability to learn and plan as a society - you are stumbling into the twilight with eyes closed. Why not offer an alternative tax scheme? Why not have 3 days off per week on the days the weather is not right for energy intensive work? You'll directly condition people to use less energy in their spare time. Of course education (that is something I dearly missed in retrotopia by the way), paperwork, perhaps travel or military training should be affected (did you know WWI was delayed because Austria's army still had to bring in the harvest before they'd be ready?).
Re industrial renewables:
@Backyardfeast: When I see energy related pie charts (which sort of imply that, yes, you will be covering a 100% of demand) I like to just imagine a significantly bigger pie around it. If you have the chance, it is easy enough to draw and label it "shed". Then you can focus the ensuing discussion on the relationship of the part of the pie that says "efficiency" and the big pie. Between the question of "efficient at what exactly?", systems thinking, and perhaps the likelihood of being in the "inner circle" (conveniently loaded phrase) - you can have a lot of fun.
By the way there is currently a de-industrialisation datapoint in the making for the company German Pellets (high grade wood pellets), which is in the process of going broke. As far as I know they did not use a lot of subsidies though and are probably partially a victim of the oil price. I guess split logs will have larger market in the future.
@SamuraiArtGuy: BLIP = e.g. Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland (from thin air). You may also use oil crops, but then you better not be hungry or be afraid of hungry people next door.
2/12/16, 8:20 AM
Unknown said...
Sure there's lots of Hydrogen in sea water of which there's a seemingly endless supply. But, it takes energy to get the hydrogen out (electricity, typically) and you lose energy with each transformation like separating the hydrogen out of water, recombining it into water (whether with a flame or an electrode). Better to use the electricity directly. Similarly, hydrogen can be a by-product or intended product of transforming some forms of fuels, but again, better to use the fuels directly because of losses in transformations (at least 15% with each one). And, finally, hydrogen lacks the energy density and ease of handling of gasoline or diesel fuels. Sure, it was used on the space shuttle and other rockets because of its high energy density when burned with liquid oxygen (and both the hydrogen liquid and oxygen liquid were used to cool the the rocket nozzles) but who wants to build a car with cryogenic tanks? Or let non-specialists refuel such cars? And, who wants to drive a car with that kind of fuel if there's an accident (and there will be!). Liquid fuels are dangerous enough in a crash, hydrogen! Perish the thought!
2/12/16, 8:22 AM
Sven Eriksen said...
The "Bill Clinton" - whole weiner sausage in a french baguette
The "Jimmy Carter" - peanut butter and jelly on toast
The "Dick Cheny" - beef jerky, vinegar and children's tears on cracker bread
The "Ronald Reagan" - have all you want from the buffet, and ask your grandchildren to pay the bill at a later date
2/12/16, 8:38 AM
Steve Morgan said...
"The all-or-nothing logic of George Orwell’s invented language Newspeak is astonishingly common these days: that which is good (because it doesn’t burn fossil fuels) can’t possibly be ungood (because it isn’t economically viable and also has environmental problems of its own), and to doubt the universal goodness of what’s doubleplusgood—why, that’s thoughtcrime..."
There's a big push around here to subsidize electric cars. The argument basically goes: "Climate change is bad, but people won't stop driving cars, so we should subsidize electric cars, because they don't run on oil." When anyone points out that coal-electric powered cars emit more CO2, while fracked gas-electric powered cars emit more methane and cause high levels of ground level ozone here in fracking country, it becomes "Stop living in the past. Cars can be powered by solar panels."
Speaking of fracking, this piece showed up in the local press a couple weeks ago. The domino effect of fracking company bankruptcy is hitting the minor leagues. It's probably not the first nationally, but it's the first one to show up in the local press.
Also, regarding your comment to Pinku-sensei, while I generally agree about Krugman, he wrote a book review a couple weeks ago that I found surprisingly out of character for him. Though he holds out the possibility of sweeping techno-progress changes throughout the piece, Krugman seems to honestly confront the compelling argument that the party may just be over. The final two paragraphs are worth quoting:
"It’s a shocking prediction for a society whose self-image, arguably its very identity, is bound up with the expectation of constant progress. And you have to wonder about the social and political consequences of another generation of stagnation or decline in working-class incomes.
Of course, Gordon could be wrong: Maybe we’re on the cusp of truly transformative change, say from artificial intelligence or radical progress in biology (which would bring their own risks). But he makes a powerful case. Perhaps the future isn’t what it used to be."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-powers-that-were.html?_r=0
Anyhow, I suppose if renewables are the next investment bubble, at least the legacy will be somewhat less egregious than the abandoned leaking wells, earthquakes, poisoned air and water, and battered roads of the fracking bust. It won't be pretty, but with any luck we'll end up with plenty of salvage parts for more modest systems, as well as a few more people with skills and experience wiring up PV panels. In the meanwhile, it's time to get the vegetable seeds started for spring planting.
2/12/16, 8:42 AM
dltrammel said...
Individually I think the scariest thing about all this is that while peak oil may be here, peak landlord is still a long way off.
The Crash is already here for way too many people. Read this for a picture of the Future for too many of us.
"Forced Out - Inside the Eviction Epidemic"
At some point too many landlords will have gone bankrupt, businesses will have closed, and a ton of properties will be vacant to be "squatted" in. A smart local government will realize that homeless people who will keep up and improve an abandoned property owned by an absentee landlord are better for the community than trying to kick them out. There are some cases now where you can get a condemned property for a cheap price from the City, and as long as you make it better, after a period of time, it's yours.
Remember something too, just because you are homeless doesn't mean you can't vote. When enough of a city councilperson's constituents are poor and out of work, then you might finally see them helping to those voters.
2/12/16, 9:07 AM
dltrammel said...
If anyone would consider writing up a guest blog post (or series of them) for the Green Wizards DotInfo site, our sort of gateway blog that I'm trying hard to reboot this Spring, on the basics of solar power, what the equipment is and the upside/downsides, please contact me at dtrammel at greenwizards dot info
Seems to me that the inverter is the weak link in the system, why take 12v DC from the panels, use the inverter to ramp it to 120v AC, if you could just build a secondary system that is 12v DC to start, and run the main equipment on that?
2/12/16, 9:18 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
A few years ago I put in a solar home heating system. When I mention that, people usually assume something fancy involving PV or heat exchangers or big barrels of wax or whatever. Nope. All I did was make a black-painted south-facing room out of part of the attic, replace the metal roof over it with polycarbonate, and put in inexpensive ducts and fans to blow hot air into the rest of the house. Nothing that you can't buy in hardware stores, cost of a few hundred $$. Sure it doesn't provide all the heat we need in midwinter, but it provides a significant amount, and it does provide just about all the heat we need in September, October, March, and April, and a large portion of the November and February needs. And in Dec-Jan it significantly reduced our use of wood and supplemental electric.
Same with hot water. I have not put it in yet just because it hasn't gotten to the top of the project list. But the fact that it might not give me all the hot water we want in January is irrelevant. It still would reduce the use of the electric water heater, especially if I put it online as a pre-heater for the electric one.
And of course if the grid and fossil fuels become less affordable and/or less reliable during your lifetime, you'll still have *something* instead of nothing!
2/12/16, 9:33 AM
Moshe Braner said...
I believe this scheme was accepted by the utilities and the powers that be only because it does not cost them any market share: it actually helps them smooth out the summer peak demand. And they make money selling the renewable "credits" to other utilities (enabling them to legally burn more fossil fuels).
Me, I designed and built a small back-up power system that is not connected to the grid (although the house it on the grid). It includes PV (at first 400, now 800 watts nameplate), charge controllers, batteries (lead-acid, about 5 KWH nameplate), an inverter, thick copper cables, circuit breakers, etc. In such a system, the parts other than the PV panels are far more expensive than the PV panels - despite buying the electronic components used, and doing all the labor myself. And the batteries are only good for a decade or so.
I did this not to save the planet, but to be more resilient in case of prolonged outages, which I expect will be more common in the future (as they are already more common than in the past). That system is just large enough to run a couple of lights and a small chest freezer - a bit more in the summer, a bit less in the winter. With the well pump now a 115V soft-start model, it too can run on the inverter. So can the boiler that heats the water on demand - it burns propane, but needs some electricity to operate. A hot shower while the grid is down, now that's how I define "resilience"! Yes I know that can be done with thermal solar etc, but not so well here in the frozen north. And relative to the space heating, the propane amount used for cooking and hot water is small. At least I get most of the space heating from a wood stove and a heat pump.
2/12/16, 10:00 AM
Matthew Sweet said...
On the note of renewables, in Ontario the government has an incentive program so that homeowners who purchase solar panels and tie into the grid are paid so-many-cents per kw/h on a 20 year contract. That's all well and good and the panels would pay for themselves over time, but it's amazing when you go to suppliers / contractors and try to have a discussion about installing panels for personal home use instead. It's as though you are speaking Klingon. No one has the notion of personal use in mind when discussing solar panels here. It's all about making money.
2/12/16, 10:03 AM
Mikep said...
2/12/16, 10:23 AM
Mikep said...
2/12/16, 10:34 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/12/us-markets.html
2/12/16, 10:55 AM
Tom Christoffel said...
2/12/16, 12:15 PM
jessi thompson said...
2/12/16, 12:19 PM
Ron M said...
I'd love to see the EROEI on that!
Many thanks, JMG, for returning to the evergreen issue of the energy predicament we are in as the bubbles of delusion (and foolishly invested money) get regularly blown up and pop about us over the years.
2/12/16, 1:10 PM
pygmycory said...
I put up that comment to talk about what I've seen recently with my own eyes. I haven't been to Vancouver more than passing through for many years.
2/12/16, 1:20 PM
latefall said...
1850 - 1.6 t coal equivalent, rising pretty linearly to 1890 - 3.6 t coal equivalent. After that it levels off for some time. This is for the UK based on Humphrey & Stanislaw (Economic growth and energy consumption in the UK, 1700–1975 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0301421579900491 I believe).
R. Fouquet has a relatively recent and accessible paper out that has some pretty good diagrams on the share of different energy sources over time, https://addi.ehu.es/bitstream/10810/14207/1/BC3WP201005.pdf
2/12/16, 1:31 PM
mountain momma said...
data point on home solar : My system is grid-intertie with battery back up and was installed 17 years ago. My inverter was one of the early ones built in California, so is still running fine. I have changed batteries as I missuse them. The panels are fine. They do not go to almost nothing at 20 years, as some commentator tried to say, they likely are 10% less than rated original power.
2/12/16, 3:24 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Oooo, thought I should add a bit of an explanation to my previous comment as I used a word in the final paragraph without properly explaining what I meant. I wrote:
"Oh incidentally, the concept of running off to the boonies to set up an organic farm takes a whole lot of work and time. Years down the track, I still learn things every single day and I've learned enough to know that some of those errors would have been fatal to either myself, or the bit of infrastructure here that I was playing around with. Nothing can replace the time taken to gain the experience, and anyone thinking otherwise is daydreaming."
Sounds like an extraordinary claim doesn't it? What I actually meant by using the word "fatal" was that if a person was relying solely on those systems for survival then my errors would have been fatal. Not that I haven't had the occasional accident here though... Novelty is a tough school when your very survival is at stake - fortunately, I started this whole process early enough that I have a bit of fat up my sleeve to learn the ropes and the why's of things.
I fully expect some serious economic turmoil this year. It is not going to be pretty either. I was reading the physical newspaper this morning and noticed a few articles in the business section, of all places, calling to the wealthy to take a hit to their wealth for the benefit of everyone. I reckon it is a timely reminder to the very wealthy to avoid the possibility of retribution of the lamp post sort, but if they fail to hear or learn from history, then so be it. Anyway one article from a guy that works in the advertising industry (which I'm always a bit wary of and for good reason): Inequality is no recipe for prosperity. Anyway, in amongst the hooplah and advertising speak, there is a fascinating statistic provided by Professor Joseph Stiglitz. It quotes his latest book, The Price of Inequality and the general conclusion is that: "He warns us that the last time inequality reached such alarming levels was just before the Great Depression." Whoa! That worked out so well last time, let's do it all over again...
I did enjoy his concern about climate change whilst flying to New York too. Well done. Isn't it a problem...
And, apparently public schools in New York now have a day off to celebrate Chinese New Year. Did I read that correctly? Mate, that’s not good… at all… Yes, whomever controls the debt, controls the asset. I wonder if in the final days of the Roman Empire, whether the barbarian hordes exercised economic warfare against the imperial rulers?
What an interesting time we live in.
Cheers
Chris
2/12/16, 4:14 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Your quote: "Seems to me that the inverter is the weak link in the system, why take 12v DC from the panels, use the inverter to ramp it to 120v AC, if you could just build a secondary system that is 12v DC to start, and run the main equipment on that?"
Yes, the inverter is a weak link, but then so are the battery charge controllers - they're complex too, plus fuses fail, connections corrode. Mate, it is complex. Your question is an excellent technical question, no doubts about it.
But a little 12V DC system is a good thing. It has to be a "little" system because larger 12V DC systems require really thick copper cables in order to allow the energy to pass through them without converting that energy to heat. If the copper cables get too hot because you are pushing (or drawing) too much energy through them, then you get the magic black smoke and the cables will literally catch fire. Not good. Think of it like pushing too much water through a small pipe and the heat is sort of like the equivalent of friction in the pipe. As the voltage increases, that friction becomes less, but it doesn't go away and a huge chunk of the electricity generated anywhere disappears as heat into the environment. Ever wondered why electrical cables are suspended in the air? It is because they're generally under sized to save money and they need to get rid of excess heat losing electricity in the process – it literally disappears over the entire system - everywhere. Bury an electric cable and you'll find out that it is an expensive process.
The surprising thing is that thick copper cables can often cost far more than the PV panels themselves.
The inverter helps by increasing the voltage, which means that your appliances can use smaller cables and down under we use 240V AC for mains whilst over in the US it is I believe 110V AC which means that you lot have to use thicker cables than we do (or we get the same ones in our appliances which is more likely and so our stuff runs cooler). Without the 24V DC to mains AC inverter you have run really thick and expensive cables which means the inverter actually saves you money.
Hope that helps!
Cheers
Chris
2/12/16, 4:40 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Karim, if your energy per capita is modest enough and rising sea levels don't become too much of a problem, I could see renewables working tolerably well in Mauritius, at least as a transitional measure. As I noted in my post, the issue isn't whether renewables are viable energy sources, it's whether they can prop up the wildly extravagant lifestyles that pass for normal in America today; if you haven't adopted those lifestyles in Mauritius, you'll have a much easier time of it.
Dau, ouch! I hope your shinbone heals up promptly.
Stravinsky7, in today's America everything, without exception, gets turned into an excuse to spend money and stare at little colored pictures on a screen, so why should renewable energy be exempt?
Cherokee, you're welcome and thank you. Your comment about overgrown toddlers is spot on -- and there's a particular sort of thinking common to toddlers that's all too pervasive in people these days, which will be the theme of an upcoming post.
Flo, thanks for this! Fortunately my knowledge of German, though spotty, was enough to pick up a fair number of the details. I wonder how many more dubious companies of the same sort are already all over the renewables scene!
Cherokee, here in the US 12 volt is more common than 24, but the principle's the same. One of the huge advantages of a homescale system in the US is that you can skip the inverter, use 12v DC across the board, and equip your home with devices that are designed to run off an automobile's electrical system -- there are still a fair number of things for sale that will plug into the cigarette lighter! Keep the end uses close to the batteries and the batteries close to the panels, so you minimize losses to resistance, and a very modest secondhand system can give you a few lights, a radio and CD player, a laptop computer, and a small and efficient refrigerator -- that is to say, lavish comforts by the standards of a century ago.
Stein, thank you for this! Your last comment is spot on, of course -- I suspect that we'll break industrial civilization before it really sinks in that, yes, we really do have to live within our energetic means.
Eric, it's based on the lifespans of the fracking and ethanol booms. You have three to five years of sales pitches and delusions of grandeur, which can flower freely since the new projects take that long to be built; then you have three to five years of desperately trying to keep reality from interfering with the gravy train of investment dollars and government subsidies. That's been the profile for both previous booms, and so it seems reasonable to expect a repeat.
Phil, many thanks for this. Why do Americans think they need double the energy per capita of people in England, and three times the figure for people in continental Europe? Because we waste energy in ways that would literally make you gulp in disbelief. When I'm over in Britain, it always impresses me to see how modest your energy use is compared to ours. You don't respond to any modestly warm day by cranking the air conditioning so that it feels like the inside of a refrigerator in most houses and all stores; you actually walk to the pub three blocks away, rather than driving, and you don't have thirty-six flat screen TVs blaring away in every pub; and so on. It's really quite simple; when it comes to energy use, Americans are frankly a bunch of spoiled crybabies.
Jim, you can also make cheap, modestly efficient PV cells out of some metals, and there's always bimetallic Seebeck effect generators, which I still think are probably the wave of the far future.
2/12/16, 5:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Janet, yes, but many thanks for the reminder. I note that anybody who actually has to make the thing work says that it can't be done, while all those who say that it can be done don't actually have to make the thing work.
Nick, thank you!
Lou, there are plenty of ways to extend growing seasons that don't require plastic, though they're neither as convenient or as cheap. Look into how it was done back before the Second World War, and that'll give you some ideas.
Ekkar, well, then you're in a good position to start transitioning forward to the deindustrial age.
Unknown, yes, that's probably in the cards too. It never fails to amaze me that so few people can get their minds around the fact that hydrogen in water is not an energy source. Due to the laws of thermodynamics, you have to put more energy into getting the hydrogen out of the water molecules than you can get by burning the hydrogen. That's not something that can be fiddled with or negotiated around; it's rooted firmly in the hardest of hard physics, and people who insist that they can ignore it might as well be claiming that they can get power by having rocks fall straight up into the sky.
Sven, so far so good!
Steve, yes, I've seen the same bizarre non sequiturs passing for logic. It's impressive, in an ironic sense, how many people think that if they personally don't burn the coal, it somehow doesn't count.
Dltrammel, no argument there. The real estate situation in the US is one of the major things pushing this country toward an explosion.
Bill, that's an excellent point. Really, all the green wizardry that's being talked about here consists of things you can do a step at a time, gradually expanding things as you go.
Moshe, thanks for the data! That kind of very simple system is to my mind likely to become the template for the long-term use of solar PV: what do you really, truly need enough to pay for?
Matthew, good! I know people who've literally cut their budget in half by similar changes.
2/12/16, 5:26 PM
jessi thompson said...
2/12/16, 5:33 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Patricia, I'd be surprised to see it this soon. My guess is that it's yet another upwards fake, aka "dead cat bounce," on the way to capitulation.
Tom, why do we need technological advance? What if we can actually improve our lives and the sustainability of our societies by deliberate technological regression? That's a point I've been making here for months, and I'd argue that repeating "we need technological advance" is simply an expression of blind faith in the fake divinity called "Progress."
Jessi, Thank. You. For. Getting. It.. Seriously, you have no idea -- or maybe you do -- how many people seem to be completely unable to recognize that limits aren't these accidental things that pop up out of nowhere, and if we can just get past them we can zoom off into forever. Limitation is the first law of existence. If we dodge one limit, that just means we slam face first into the next one. For recognizing that, you get tonight's gold star -- which is, of course a limited edition. ;-)
Ron, no doubt we'll see even more absurd proposals in the years immediately ahead, as America and industrial civilization generally throw a world-class, fist-pounding, feet-drumming, shrieking right there on the floor tantrum because the universe is being a meany and refusing to hand over limitless fuel.
Latefall, thanks for these!
Momma, that's an excellent point about ammonia cycle refrigerators. As for the lifespan of PV cells, I wonder whether there's been any decrease in durability between cells manufactured 17 years ago and cells manufactured today --- so much else has been cheapened into brittleness and early failure that it would surprise me if PV cells hadn't.
2/12/16, 5:37 PM
jessi thompson said...
2/12/16, 5:44 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
HA! I guess we're not the only ones looking to retro-tech our way forward.;)
Regards,
Varun
2/12/16, 5:50 PM
mountain momma said...
Put in 17 years ago, 2.4kW "label number", which is 24 panels, the older ones made in America from reject silicon wafers/or ingots -- our installer rated it for 2kW given various losses. Running with original inverter, grid tie, battery back up. 4 12volt batteries.
I lose grid power power alot in winter, so have alot of experience running off just the batteries. We adjusted our needs before install, which is why we decided 2kWatts would be sufficient. This house is all electric, no gas or propane, no generator. Heat is woodstove. Solar hot water panels, closed loop propolyne glycol, flat panels I bought used. Electric element in hot water storage tank for back up. Used to have a run thru the wood stove for back-up, presently unhooked. Electric range and oven.
When running off just the battery storage, there are 2 main things that change, main one is no showers/baths unless the sun is out. Any hot water is heated on pot on top of the woodstove for dishes and washing up us. Second is that we cant use the electric range/oven, the cooking has never been a problem. We just switch to cooking on top of the woodstove and eat well. Just cant do any fancy baking of chiffon cakes and such. When the sun is out, I do use solar ovens alot -- I have 2 sun ovens, they do alot, but not fancy cakes. We do often use plug in cooking appliances off of the batteries/inverter, such as: electric breadmaker, electric kettle, toaster if we are running out the door and arent going to build a fire. We have the refrigerator powered, the internet boxes and the laptop computer and lights in the house and barn. The well pump and the pressure pump we decide at the time, as I can leave then off or not judging how long until I think we will have sun to recharge the batteries. I have water to the house without the pressure pump, from gravity from the water storage tank, but it is lower pressure and just downstairs then -- it is sufficient to shower with downstairs by swapping out the low flow shower head back to the old one, if the sun is out and have solar hot water.
I have run dishwasher (asko, built in water heater) and clothes washer even, when running off batteries/inverter in the summer when they could recharge, but I usually dont do that and wash dishes by hand with hot water off the wood stove.
My thoughts on a more constrained future are like this : It would be nice to have water catchment (passive, no pumps) and next time the well pump wears out, if I am still here, I will replace with a DC pump and move a few panels off the house roof and over to the barn roof to pump water to the storage tank when the sun is shining. It is no problem having this task intermittent and with alot of electronics and conversions.
The thing I would miss the most without an AC power system would be the clothes washer. I hope to always have a power clothes washer as I am disabled and couldnt do such a hard task by hand. I havent had a clothes dryer (other than the R.A.C.K.) for 19 years.
I have been thinking of the refrigerator lately. I have little need of one, realy. But, I do have dairy goats and chickens, and I store milk and homemade cheeses in it as I live in such a hot climate. I can save all the vegetables and fruits out of season by dehydrating and canning, which I do. Eggs dont have to be so cold, so something could be arranged with no fridge, but the milk would all have to be used soon -- fresh cheeses and yogurt and not able to be saved as hard cheese, not in this location. But, I would give up the refrigerator before the washing machine, so I think that Kunstler is correct about that and having his story making a community laundry
2/12/16, 5:50 PM
Asier Garcia Moradillo said...
https://twitter.com/stacyherbert/status/697812495889784834
2/12/16, 6:02 PM
Sylvia Rissell said...
Do the prices of Miskatonic's leather-bound books reflect the cost to make them? I guess I will just have to stick with used book stores...
2/12/16, 6:14 PM
Eric S. said...
The bursting of the Fracking bubble wound up being the event that's caused my friend in the oil industry to start listening to me on the subject of peak oil, which has always been a touchy, brittle, no-go zone with him that we didn't discuss if we wanted to keep our friendship in tact. He's started asking everything he can think of, and is interested in borrowing my copy of limits to growth... Right now he's mostly just scared and looking for a plan B to get out of the industry, while at least listening interestedly on the subject of conservation and skill building rather than shutting down. I hope it's not too late to do some useful gliding down to a lower level of living and I'll do my best to guide him through some of the process, but it definitely shows that even this low oil price side of energy cycles that provide the illusion of an overly successful technology rather than an energy bubble in a failed technology can be enough to shock some people awake and get them thinking about making some shifts.
2/12/16, 6:31 PM
234567 said...
Humans tend to have very unrealistic expectations in almost any endeavor. We are no more 'special' than caribou or monkeys. We just have bigger brains, so big they are capable of really big and crazy expectations.
Expecting tomorrow to be like yesterday is a common problem, when things change.
Expecting electricity to be always there, like when the light switch is flipped, is something many people will be upset about when things get just a little more stressed in the coming years.
There is already a clean water problem, but then, we have been raised to 'expect' clean water as almost a right - when it isn't.
Closing your eyes and thinking about your own insignificance is helpful, provided you don't get trapped in a loop doing it.
It is a shame that most Americans have never been elsewhere in the world, and many haven't even been elsewhere within the continent - seeing other do with less, expect less and then finding how easy it is for you to do the same, tends to relieve a LOT of stress.
Unrealistic expectations can cause a lot of personal and social issues, and in this country, the expectations are very, very high concerning most every endeavor. Learning to lower ones expectations is going to be required in the very near future. We have done very well lowering our expectations of government - we are going to need to do the same with many things sooner than we think.
2/12/16, 6:43 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
OK, I'm intrigued and looking forward to reading about tantrum throwing and stomping two year olds! Should be fun, for them, I guess. I see a few of them in cafes and they make for very poor company indeed - especially when I'm trying to get my head around the words and imagery of the poet Wordsworth... Unfortunately, I am not allowed to say anything about it these days either as people get very upset about that one. Try it sometime and watch the escalation and emotional heat, I dare you! Hehe! :-)!
Yes, I too wonder about the brittleness and tend to purchase PV panels from suppliers that I've been dealing with for years. They're a small enough company and have been around long enough that they don't want - or need - troubles.
Would you believe that the glass on my wood heater has broken again? I've been putting a few brain cells towards that problem this afternoon - despite the heat and wind. I decided to fill up the main water tanks from the reserve water tank too today based on the predicted weather for the next couple of weeks.
Cheers
Chris
2/12/16, 7:53 PM
Dwig said...
We also look forward to yet another companion technology, the details of which I'm not at liberty to discuss just yet. It's still in laboratory testing, but it shows great promise. We're tentatively calling it Continuous Carbon Sequestration (CCS), and expect it to actually reduce the carbon load of the local foodshed, while improving the quality of the soil!
Our team looks forward with confidence to improving everyone's quality of life through this radical new and improved suite of technologies. Onward!!
2/12/16, 8:00 PM
tokyo damage said...
Sorry if I got that wrong, it's been a few years.
I know you've got a massive backlog of things to talk about, but I'd love it if you someday talked more about what should power what, home-electricity-generation-wise.
2/12/16, 8:13 PM
DeVaul said...
I had only read your new year's article a few days before a major magazine came into the law library where I work (Forbes? Fortune? BusinessWeek? I cannot remember which.) with a cover page extolling the coming "photovoltaic revolution" or something similar to that.
My first thought was: Did not the Archdruid just predict this only a week or so ago?
It seems events are about to outpace your own predictions. Perhaps we will soon reach a "prediction horizon", where no prediction can escape in time to make any difference in the outside world.
2/12/16, 8:44 PM
onething said...
"The swivel unit consists of my husband, with a replacement unit available."
You're certainly a lucky woman. Is the replacement unit also Japanese?
2/12/16, 9:52 PM
Peter Wilson said...
However, within this, there few byways and regional or national anomalies that could ultimately add up to something important, for those lucky to have them. There are places where both centralised and decentralised grid-distributed renewables make economic sense, and where they will be able to be sustained in some form for many years to come, even as fossil fuels dwindle. New Zealand, Scandinavia, the Pacific North-West, and much of Canada come to mind here. China and India aren't badly off either, and neither are many African nations.
Once you have a grid-backbone of hydro, other renewables rapidly become economic too. Geothermal, wind, and probably marine sources. Given the right environment, it can work without subsidies, although, the true cost is the loss of wild rivers.
I say this because most countries that developed renewables early - i.e. hydro - did it largely with human and animal power. They even built their grids with the same energy resources, wooden poles, humans and animals to install them, but with help from fossil fuels to mine the minerals to make the wires and build the generators and turbines themselves. Bear in mind that these were regional grids, it was only post WWII that grids were connected into national or international systems.
Even on the steel supply there are options. NZ runs an interesting operation for steel production. Feedstock is iron-sand, rather than taconite, using a direct reduction process, rather than a blast furnace. As such, coal is required as a reducing agent, rather than a primary energy source. It would be challenging, but not impossible, to use renewable resources to make the reducing gas.
So I hold out some hope that we can maintain some electricity production, however, it won't be possible to maintain industrial society.
2/12/16, 10:26 PM
jessi thompson said...
2/12/16, 10:47 PM
dragonfly said...
Our needs were modest going in, but I over-specified the system, as we both still rely somewhat on a couple of computers and the internet to make a living. We have two small high-efficieny DC refrigerators. No freezer, but we have the energy capacity to run one if/when we decide it is needed. A clothes washer is a luxury my partner wanted, and we have plenty of power for that, though we try to run it only on sunny days. We happily employ a variation on the R.A.C.K. that has so revolutionized laundry drying. I am able run a table saw, mitre saw, etc..., though again, we try to limit our heavy electrical usage to what I now call "Sun Days". I derive a little pleasure from using an electric string trimmer to help keep the jungle at bay (using the power of the sun to cut grass !), but on cloudy days or for big jobs, I sharpen up the scythe.
In short - after five years, we still love it. Yes, it requires some attention to energy usage and maintenance of the system, but for all that it provides us, the added effort seems totally worth it. We don't dwell much on the economics or 'payback period'. We prefer instead to see it as 'we bought some equipment, installed it, and now get free electricity from the sun.'
2/12/16, 10:51 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Momma, thanks for the further data -- this sort of thing is extremely useful for readers who are trying to make sense of the haze of claims and counterclaims around renewable energy.
Asier, it's funny to me, too. For the humorist, the F-35 Lardbucket is the gift that just keeps on giving -- pity it isn't actually useful for any military operation other than carrying out devastating raids on the Pentagon's budget...
Sylvia, yep, a properly made leatherbound book isn't cheap; the upside is that it lasts for a very long time. There will be a trade paperback edition out eventually.
Eric, that's really good to hear. If that proves to be more generally the case -- if the implosion of the fracking bubble forces a significant number of people to see what's been in front of their faces all along -- here again, there are things that might become possible.
234567, no argument there. The expectations Americans have about technology, in particular, rise to the point that "delusions" is arguably a better term for them.
Cherokee, I'm not sure if Wordsworth didn't have children or if he kept them neatly sedated on laudanum. As for the glass window, sounds to me as though the manufacturer is shipping out inadequately tempered glass -- the plunging quality of manufactured products is a major force these days.
Dwig, you'd better hurry up and get your Continuous Carbon Sequestration to the market right away -- I know quite a few people who have proof-of-concept models already installed on their property, and I expect to see things moving ahead to plant construction as soon as spring comes around!
Tokyo, no, you got it basically right. I'll consider something along those lines down the road a bit.
DeVaul, it's like those poor schmucks who write for The Onion and other satire magazines, who have to come up with something more outrageous than everyday life -- and usually by the time their stories have been up for a week or two, everyday life has topped it.
Peter, of course. One of the things that the end of the industrial age means is that there will no longer be one model of human society that everybody everywhere is expected to follow. Some regions will be well suited to technic societies, and some won't; some will have agricultural societies, some nomadic pastoral societies, some hunter-gatherer societies, and some -- for example, a broad band of lifeless desert connecting the long-abandoned ruins of Las Vegas and Phoenix -- will have no human inhabitants at all.
Dragonfly, many thanks for the data points. That's just it, of course -- if your electricity needs are modest, and you live in a good location for solar, you can do very well indeed with solar energy.
2/12/16, 11:19 PM
jessi thompson said...
2/12/16, 11:33 PM
jessi thompson said...
2/12/16, 11:37 PM
Sven Eriksen said...
Dunno if this is happening a lot of places, but here the commercials belted out by the digital tech industry is also getting increasingly hostile, cornucopian and defensive. The one that kept interrupting the news program i was listening to while reading the comments yesterday was kindly provided by Norways second biggest provider of internet and cell phone services, and was basically saying "So you have the audacity to doubt the infinite power and goodness of tech? You just wait and see. Oh, yesss... you will see... This is only the beginning... Tech is coming for you... You're either with us or against us!"
2/13/16, 12:42 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Oh my, that sounds like strong stuff! Yup, watch the world and its worries float away... Actually when I was a kid, they used to have ads saying things like: Life is better on Bex. I even clearly remember the little blue box that it was supplied in. It looked very cheery really. And you know what, I had know idea what those things were, but I believe they were some sort of tranquiliser. Who'd have thunk it? I've never used such things as I don’t need to, but it is not as if they weren't around back then and even today. I suggested to someone once that they slip their kids a tranquiliser before a long haul flight and they looked horrified...
Sorry, I'm rambling. Just also thought that I'd second your opinion about the evacuated tube solar hot water panels. They seem very fiddly to me and I've often wondered how tough they'd be in a decent hailstorm. Probably not very well, is the answer. I use two very old school low tech flat black box with glass and copper pipes and it works fine for almost 10 months of the year. Today, the water is too hot to even touch. Ouch!
Yes, I reckon it is a huge problem and I reckon I got done on that glass, so I'm going to another supplier and going to utilise stainless steel bar to hold the glass in place rather than the more traditional steel flats. Mind you, I spotted a bridge the other week that the authorities have been doing some serious and urgent looking re-work on and it was only a year or two old... Not a good sign.
Cheers
Chris
2/13/16, 2:59 AM
Christopher Calderhead said...
***
The atmosphere at HQ in the Atlantic Republic was tense. The boss was fuming.
"Where the hell is CARR?" he shouted.
"He failed to submit his biweekly report, sir. But we believe he is still in Toledo."
"Why didn't he post his dispatch? Every two weeks. That's the deal."
"I know sir, but he didn't send it this week."
"Has anyone been able to reach him?"
"No sir. But we do have this."
The secretary laid a small card on the boss' desk.
The boss looked at it blankly.
"What's this?"
"We think it's a.. a postcard sir."
"A WHAT?"
"A postcard."
The boss picked it up. The photograph on the front, taken from the top of Toledo's incomplete Capitol dome, showed four smiling construction workers waving to the camera. The city of Toledo was spread out behind them, with Lake Erie in the far distance. Colorful block letters in a wide arc along the top of the card read "LAKELAND BUILDS!"
He flipped the card over. In slightly tentative handwriting—the writing of a person not used to using a pen on paper—there was a short message: "All is well. —Carr."
The boss hurled the card at his secretary, shouting, "I want Carr. And I want him NOW."
The flimsy partitions between the cubicles shook as everyone hunkered down at their stations, trying to stay out of sight.
***
At that very moment, Peter Carr, who was indeed in Toldeo, stood at the side of the Miami and Erie Canal. He leaned on the railing, holding his veepad in his hand. The screen was blank. For the first time, the dark screen gave him a distinct sense of pleasure. No messages. No vids. Nothing to look up.
He dangled the device out over the slowly moving water of the canal. He held it there for just a moment, then shook his head and put it back in his pocket.
As he strolled slowly back to his hotel, he whistled a tune he once heard in a barbershop.
***
Here's hoping that Mr. Carr does not fail us next week.
2/13/16, 4:56 AM
Sylvia Rissell said...
The difference between fossil-fuel powered industrial process and hand-crafted will tremendously impact the number of things/stuff people own and use.
A couple of specific examples:
Bread: half an hour at minimum wage buys a loaf of store bread. If I make the bread myself, it takes at least a half hour of my (active) time, plus equipment (pans, ovens, etc), and I need to be in the house for the last 40-60 min so I can take the bread out of the oven.
Sweaters:
I can buy a wool sweater for less than $100. I am a few hours from finishing a knit vest, for which I spun the wool. I'm sure the material cost was less than $100, but not necessarily much cheaper, and I don't remember how long it took to spin. The wool was commercially prepared, it would have taken even longer if I had started from the sheep.
Books:
Trade paperbacks, in the 5-10 dollars (American) range. Hardcovers, $25-100, depending on whether or not it is a college textbook.
To compare, our host's leather-bound work goes for $350, and a bit of quick searching finds a lovely, leather-bound "pulpit" bible for $650.
(my assumption that price for books is approximately proportional to human labor is questionable, but I'm not going to dig any deeper.)
The predicted post industrial lifestyle, based on these data points, is going to have enough bread, just barely enough clothing, and only a couple of books to a household... I hope they are good books.
2/13/16, 5:00 AM
Ben said...
I found these articles the other day on cracked.com
I include them for two reasons; 1- its a website that has 1.5 million likes of Facebook and fairly wide popular appeal, 2- the first article deals with Kessler Syndrome.
Someone up-thread mentioned the rust starting to show on the shiny cities of Progress, and these articles point to that trend. Are we seeing a mass movement to abandon Progress yet? No. But as you pointed out last year, revolutions begin with discrediting the status quo, and if the failures of progress are becoming as widely circulated as it seems, there may still be time for some collective action.
http://www.cracked.com/article_23474_5-likely-world-ending-scenarios-no-one-talking-about.html
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-odd-similarities-between-dark-ages-modern-america_p2/
2/13/16, 5:28 AM
John Roth said...
First is Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from magic (with apologies to real magicians among the crew). It's a bit much to expect someone who can't draw the relationship between the light switch and the light to understand the relationship between that, coal-fired power plants and the environmental destruction caused by mining coal. And there are way too many of those people.
Which leads to the second law (attributed to Napoleon): Never assume malice when stupidity is an adequate explanation. Or the short version attributed to the Brits: Cockup before conspiracy.
2/13/16, 5:35 AM
Ben said...
The upside is that all six will be back in operation by the end of March. Probably around the spring equinox!
2/13/16, 5:50 AM
Knotty Pine said...
"I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, ‘the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it’. Yes, what we need is a positive attitude and conviction. Indeed, each time central banks have been confronted with a wide range of problems, they have overcome the problems by conceiving new solutions."
Makes me want to dump my savings into some juicy CoCo's! :<D
2/13/16, 7:17 AM
Jon from Virginia said...
2/13/16, 8:06 AM
HalFiore said...
I am temporarily - I hope - stuck in a small community in Texas while the transmission in my old pickup is replaced. Now, I have been taking Amtrak for my semi-annual trips to California over the past several years, but this time a granddaughter was born and I decided that the no doubt temporarily low fuel prices gave me a possibly last chance to transport some family pieces and other things to my kids, and to possibly back-haul some tools that I hope to find out west.
Well, the transmission gave out in a small community in northeast Texas, near the panhandle. I like to travel the more back roads and see the real country, but the downside in it is possible to be stranded approximately 150 miles from where the nearest used transmission could be located.
A little buttonholing of locals at a fuel station found me a good mechanic who got the dog and me into a decent motel and took the truck to his shop and began looking for the parts. I was surprised he was willing to drop everything at 5pm and jump on my job till I saw his shop the next day. He said he normally likes to keep about a 2-week backlog, but the shop was empty. He had time yesterday to make the drive to Lubbock and get the transmission.
It seems to be much the same story along the main highway strip that makes up the economic hub around here. A lot of closed businesses. The side streets, where the people mostly live, appears pretty derelict, also. I have not seen the downtown, or any subdivisions within walking distance, so my data set is as yet incomplete, but plan to explore when I troubleshoot the job.
Then this morning I walked the dog over to the edge of town, just a few blocks from my motel. There I beheld a fully-loaded train, about half of my view in one direction, and as far as I could see in the other, with very strange looking cars. When I got closer, I realized they were giant wind turbine rotors on flatcars, one to a car.
Somebody is making some good money, but it doesn't seem to have trickled to many of the locals.
Now, I have driven the I-40 between OK City and Amarillo many times, and seen the vast wind farms for years, and seeing several big rigs loaded with rotors in that stretch is not uncommon. So what I saw today may not actually represent an uptick in activity, but it was provocative, to say the least. I plan to ask around before I leave.
2/13/16, 8:41 AM
Roger said...
While most of the clan had left the farms for either nearby towns or the Americas, some stayed. And we visited my parents' old farms. Nobody lived there anymore, tools and implements pretty much where my parents left them.
What I saw in those hills were small farms, ancient two storey stone houses, farm animals on the ground floor, the family's living quarters upstairs. No central heat, no natural gas, no electricity, no refrigeration and no running water. No machines, no tractors. Everything was human or animal powered. They cooked using heat from stone fireplaces and pumped water by hand from a well. No radio, no TV, no newspapers. Most people of my parents's generation got just a few years of schooling.
City dwellers tend to have a rosy view of farm living. They picture robust, ruddy cheeked people happily labouring in the fields, farm wives and little ones milking cows and raising chickens and pigs. And lots of fresh air and sunshine.
One way or another we're going back to a life of low energy consumption so we need a clear eyed look at what's ahead. Because what characterized this early 20th century agricultural life was malnutrition, sickness, death in childhood and in child-birth, unaffordable or unavailable medical care.
A simple case of diarrhea, that is, maladies that are easy to cure here and now, could well have been a death sentence back then. My dad said that if a farmer was lucky enough to make it into his sixties he'd be toothless and bent.
No need to do a recitation of 20th century European history but if I had to put it into just a couple words I would say those were times of anger and despair, these sentiments rooted in living conditions. And a source for these woes being an abusive landlord-ruling class. Sound familiar? Some things never change. No surprise that fascists and communists found willing listeners.
I say all this because I agree with Mark Twain, history doesn't repeat but it sure does rhyme.
2/13/16, 8:44 AM
Ed Prell said...
Absent this hypothetical scenario, your views – and historical analogs – have persuaded me that the energy baton pass won’t be a clean one. But at this juncture, I refuse to slam the door on the feasibility of sustainable energy delivery picking up the load, if perhaps a bit tardily. The incentives are enormous, and proving a negative is a hazardous errand. But I am doubting whether saving our energy-driven lifestyles would be wise. Even if this new energy delivery system were environmentally benign and as cheap as it now is (forgetting today’s externalities), where would we be? With such energy available with the flip of a switch, we could still hunt rhinos to extinction, we would be depleting our water tables, we would be paving over the lands of the indigenous people and the remaining wildlife, and we would bekilling our enemies with WMDs instead of clubs. No, I think we have amply proven we can’t handle such amplification of our ability to carry out our urges. I think it’s a good thing that we will have burned through nature’s “firewater” before we can totally wreck the place. As we deal with this hangover, and no booze is left in the cabinet, a galaxy of challenges unfolds: physical survival skills, and how to treat one another in the reshuffled world. Tragically, many innocents will become collateral damage in the reshuffling.
2/13/16, 8:59 AM
SamuraiArtGuy said...
I gave up that front row seat, bailing to Berkely Speings, so long as I have a roof, access to the 'Net and 'lectricity, I could keep working, if scaling down. Provided of course that we condense our lifestyles. So we are, a little at a time.
But reading down these comments I realize that for the majority of Americans, the renewable bubble is ALREADY OUT OF REACH. Even with tax credits or subsidies, they just do not have the financial resources to put in photovoltaics or extensive wind systems. These people are already dirt poor and have largely been hammered out of technological society. The affluent folks able to make the investment in high tech renewables are, in general, not the least bit interested in giving up on their consumptive lifestyles.
Our political system is ill-positioned to addressing it in any meaningful way. There is not a candidate alive at either end of our conservaliberal corporatist party that will get a microsecond of traction running on "collapse gracefully." Furthermore, any such candidate would be swiftly punished by their corporate sponsors who have not the slit east interest in ending the gravy train of government subsidy much less dismantling their own system. The wealthy will fight tooth and nail and expend fortunes to preserve their wealth, privilege, political power and extravagant lifestyles.
But there are consequences for impoverishing the vast press of the people. Market destruction. The corporations depend on having a market to purchase their good and services. While they busily rush to impoverish their own workers in the name of profit, they rely on their markets being "other, more affluent people" (certainly not their own low wage employees) But when too many companies follow this strategy, there aren't really enough of these fabled "other, more affluent people" to go around and keep the whole ponzi pyramid inflated. If a pack of sharks eat all the trout in the swimming pool, all the sharks starve, all at once..
People reduced to paying rent, buying subsistence food (beef is nearly gone from our menus), and gas to and from work, are not in any position to invest in high tech solar or wind tech. For the most part these folk largely rent, and don't even have the option. As the salary class is being increasingly degraded from the bottom, this bubble could be particularly short lived, as the market is not vast.
As for Paul Krugman, he is rather old,school, favoring pre-reagan economics, but you don't get a Noble prize is you can't do the math. So he still shown more relative sanity than most of the rah-rah cheerleaders for the Wall Street cabals than most and ocassional flashes or reality grounded relevance.
2/13/16, 9:52 AM
Grebulocities said...
This turned out to be completely wrong. There actually was plenty of shale oil worth extracting at $100/bbl, more than enough to beat the Red Queen for years. US production rocketed up to nearly its all-time peak in 1970. There's still probably enough to have kept production skyrocketing for years past 2014, had oil stayed around $100. The real constraint turned out to be that the Saudis really don't like competition, and deliberately glutted the oil market even at the price of having to cut back on the lavish subsidies to their people that keep them afloat. Of course it's likely that the frackers might have triggered a glut all on their own a couple of years later even if the Saudis had cut back like usual. But even then, the economic constraints would likely happen well before the physical ones. The physical constraints are still real, but more distant than the economic ones.
I agree with you about solar PV and wind. Once gas producers like Chesapeake go out of business for good, prices for electricity will start to rise again, adding to the already substantial subsidies for wind and solar PV. Suddenly these will start looking like more attractive investments, and Wall Street's spigots will turn on. A solar and wind boom will begin, and even the big oil companies will get in on the action. There will be a bunch of articles about the renewable revolution and the "bright green" types will pat themselves on the back and squeal with delight. They'll hop in their Teslas and go for long drives, safe in the knowledge that a somewhat higher proportion of the electricity in their batteries comes from solar and wind than used to. But then the surge of renewables will glut the electricity market, especially in the crucial peak times in midday where solar production is at its highest. This has already happened in places like Germany that reach something like 10% PV: the spot prices for midday electricity now sometimes crash to 0, squeezing the producers. Then of course there will be a messy wave of defaults, and the cycle starts anew with thorium reactors or something.
2/13/16, 11:16 AM
Jon from Virginia said...
My google-fu fails me, but I remember a story about a whole different kind of Wind Generator. The inventor, the "guy who invented John Glenn's space helmet", just stacked wing sections up to the sky, and let them go up and down in opposed pairs* and left the generating equipment on the ground. (*You don't want net lift on a large structure in heavy wind. Trust me). The wing sections could be built with high tech materials like wood and fabric.
But for me, I would add in another, umm, "growth" industry. If we build this in multimegawattt size, we get the "wind shear" problem, where the wind direction is different at the top than the bottom. We could solve this problem by hanging the wing sections from a very large central shaft and let each pair be pointed separately. Now visualize the result in motion--it looks like a four hand treat your salaryman would pay a whole months wages for! So let's call it "Two-Monkeys-approach- the-offered-plum".
2/13/16, 11:31 AM
Julian Bond said...
Because like it or not, mankind will end up in a sustainable ecosystem. The question is if we can make it pleasant and entertaining along the way.
2/13/16, 3:05 PM
Jim R said...
If I were making recommendations for retrotopia, I'd probably tell them to go with nickel-iron batteries. They are leaky and inefficient and slow to charge, but they are made of environmentally friendly materials, and some have demonstrated a full century with minimal to none-at-all maintenance. Discharge 'em and abuse 'em and they don't die like lead-acid batteries.
As for myself, I wish I could say I'm living off-grid, but no. I live in town, making and spending lots of those dollar-token-coupons on a house that would give Jim Kunstler the dry heaves. Independent solar living is but a dream. For one thing, I haven't been able to convince the other members of my household that this isn't the very pinnacle of existence, nor that we can't do this for another ten or twenty years. And I have been caught in kind of a hypnotic trance since being reminded (by The Oil Drum) of Hubbert's forecasts back in the mid 20th C. I had managed to forget them, or at least place them conveniently beyond my own time horizon. But the time is now, within a decade or less.
Perhaps this will be the year that I peel myself off the screen and do something. Maybe go out and try to make a garden this spring... (and John Weber, thanks for the link - nice blog!)
2/13/16, 3:54 PM
patriciaormsby said...
@JMG, your suggestion to send Godzilla and Rodan has cheered up the primary unit. I'm going to remember your kind advice when future crises arise. For global warming, Mothra might be useful.
@Everyone, yesterday the replacement unit was outside snorting, grunting and rooting around like a boar in the garden, and it (i.e., I) got a subtle, yet unmistakable sensation, a sort of "oomph" (that's all I can say to describe it) that says "spring!" This is the moment each year when the plants start going at it. I always try to get outside at noon on any sunny day in winter, so I frequently catch it. It is an uplifting, powerful sensation. the opposite of "depression." The day before, the weather reporter had said "Haru Ichiban?" (first gale of spring). It had already warmed a bit, but not that much, and this was before the gales arrived, overnight. And it'll freeze again and again until May, but spring is here and the plants and I all know about it. And darn! I didn't schedule my misogi until Friday! I'll move it up to Monday. Spring is here.
I think this is what Stephen Harrod Buhner was talking about in his "Secret Teachings of Plants." If you don't spend lots of time outside with plants, and if you've never heard about it, you'll miss this vital part of life. This relates very strongly to happiness, as my friend Tony Boys keeps trying to get people to appreciate. I think people dismiss this because they have no experience on the personal level that they can relate to. It is said that the sensation is experienced with the heart, literally, not the brain. I think that's why I experience it as "oomph."
2/13/16, 5:30 PM
Graeme Bushell said...
"Heating and cooling stuff takes way more energy than anything else" is quite a good rule of thumb for the household.
The energy required to boil 5 litres of water is enough to power my 20km each way commute by electric bicycle each day, for example. So with limited electricity, you certainly won't be using it for heating or cooling. Other functions are much more valuable.
Graeme
2/13/16, 6:20 PM
Graeme Bushell said...
Cheers,
Graeme
2/13/16, 6:51 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Your quote: "But at this juncture, I refuse to slam the door on the feasibility of sustainable energy delivery picking up the load, if perhaps a bit tardily. The incentives are enormous, and proving a negative is a hazardous errand."
I read your reply, and whilst I respect your thoughts, I am somehow also discomfited by the strength of your belief. You see, renewable energy systems can't deliver the sort of energy that people in Industrial countries are used to as a matter of course. No way, not now and certainly not into the future.
I suggest that if you do not believe me, and I respect your lack of belief, that you install a decent solar photovoltaic system on your rooftop and record the results for yourself for every single day of the year. I keep detailed statistics here because I have no other choice if I wish the system to survive.
Several times per day, every day of the year with no exceptions, I have to check the status of the off grid solar power system here, and all I can tell you is that over the past few years that activity has confirmed to me that renewable energy systems will have a future, but they will in no way shape or form replace: coal; hydro; gas and/or nuclear.
Sorry to be a bit of a bummer, but wind and solar are very intermittent and nature provides when she is good and ready too and not one second beforehand. Just sayin...
Cheers
Chris
2/14/16, 12:47 AM
Kyle Schuant said...
I was working at a gym 30' drive away, now it's 20 steps to my garage. This has meant I've gone from filling the car every 10 days to every 60 (at most). Of course home electricity consumption is up a bit since I'm home more, but in energy terms it's overall less.
Old consumption:
Car, 38lt or 338kWh per 10 days = 3.4kWh/day equivalent
Home, 5kWh/day
Sum 8.4kWh/day
New consumption
Car, 38lt per 60 days = 0.6kWh/day
Home, 6kWh/day
Sum, 6.4kWh/day
Obviously it could be lower, but - well, in the gym I tell people about the weight on the bar, "progress is progress." But here we might say, "regress is regress."
It's saved us money as you suggested, not only from reduced fuel costs (note, average fuel price was $1.31/lt, which is about 15c/kWh, compared to electricity costs of about 30c/kWh - petrol is too cheap!), but also reduced childcare. And of course, I believe this has improved our quality of life - being my own boss, more time with son, the house being cleaner, etc.
Many people focus on earning more for a better life, but sometimes earning less to free up time for other people and things can make life better anyway. Likewise, I think, energy consumption... My son has more fun splashing under a hose than sitting watching tv with the aircon on.
And even if you just care about money, spend $1,000 less, earn $1,000 more, the balance is the same... main difference is, you are not taxed on reduced spending.
2/14/16, 4:18 AM
Karim said...
Here in Mauritius, we have indeed a lower per capita energy consumption, lower than in Europe actually. Although we are doing our best to catch up!
I also see renewables working fairly well here.
However the issue of transportation is where everything fails.
It is a huge problem about which there seems to be little serious discussions.
Sea level rise will affect part of the coastline here and impact fresh water sources no doubt. But actually I see Peak Oil and impacts of oil prices having a greater impact on our economic systems now and in the near future rather than climate change later.
Actually I have worked on a model of the economic impacts of oil prices on the Mauritian economy and if any readers are remotely interested in it, they can find it on the following link: http://iels.intnet.mu/ENSI_9.htm
Regards
2/14/16, 4:42 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
But in contrast, europeans arriving here "discovering" the natives commented on how trim, fit, and erect they were. There is a documentary made of some of the last "free-living" Ojibwa, and the people in it have the bodies, movement, and posture of modern-day professional dancers. Somewhere between the low-density hunter gatherers and the overworked broken and bent early 20th century, surely there must be a middle ground? I thought somewhere I saw that european & american life expectancy actually declined during the industrial revolution and reached a minimum in the 19th century, then only climbed with vaccines and antibiotics.
2/14/16, 5:50 AM
Dammerung said...
Then I woke up. :-/
Just thought that might amuse you.
2/14/16, 8:24 AM
heather said...
Obviously, three beets and some small quantity of propane saved doesn't add up to much, but changing unthinking habits and adjusting expectations *can* matter, over time. Thanks, JMG, Granny Weatherwax, et al.
--Heather in CA
2/14/16, 8:25 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
2/14/16, 10:02 AM
Unknown said...
When the green movement says that "industrial civilization can be powered by renewables", they aren't replying to "industrial civilization can't be powered by renewables, therefore we should reduce consumption" but to "industrial civilization can't be powered by renewables, therefore we should fund fossil fuels and nuclear instead". The political green movement does not have the luxury of choosing its positions only in function of their truthfulness, but has to take into account whether they are realizable in the political arena. Arguing straight away for a consumption reduction is the shortest route to political irrelevancy in the USA right now, as the people will try everything else first before that. Sometimes making the right choice (renewables rather than other energy sources) for the wrong reasons is the best possible option in politics.
People will not start gardening because it may be the only thing between them and starvation within 50 years, but they might because it's healthy/fun/good for their soul/the Kardashians do it too. That's the material we have to work with.
2/14/16, 10:10 AM
onething said...
I know quite a few people who have proof-of-concept models already installed on their property, and I expect to see things moving ahead to plant construction as soon as spring comes around!
2/14/16, 11:14 AM
Susan J said...
But . . . the grid is inefficient. Electricity falls off it all the time. And why should people in the middle of Montana fund a grid that exists mostly to benefit San Francisco?
The biggest problem I see with the grid is that new development projects are allowed to avoid electrical independence. Instead they are allowed to consume the power previously enjoyed by their new neighbors—who pre-exist them by decades and who already paid for the electrical infrastructure. Of course, the same argument exists for water. Which is where these ideas began for me.
2/14/16, 12:00 PM
william fairchild said...
You have isolated the Achilles Heel of the mainstream green left, and that is renewables, whether they be biofuels, solar/wind, or even nuclear. The popular meme is that but for the evil machinations of the fossil fuel industry (and many of their machinations are in fact evil) we would have a green utopia. We would unplug coal and oil and plug in solar and wind.
Of course the subject of EROEI never comes up in mainstream leftist circles. That is verboten and is poo-pooed as alarmism.
The reason in my mind is very simple. A class (or race) discussion is great, so long as it is abstract, can never be really acted upon, and only serves to turn out your voters. But as soon as it drifts into territory that may require joint sacrifice, or common effort, in other words as soon as it affects the pocketbook, privilege, and lifestyle of the salary class (and investment class) it is relegated as "extreme".
So the laws of nature are subject to interpretation by TPTB. It is fine to talk about more public transit, as long as YOU are not the poor bastard waiting by the his stop, late to work once again as the water main is being ripped up at 4th and Main.
And incidentally, most of the folk in that position (left holding their dingle-dongle in their hands when the bus is late) don't vote. The ones who can afford the Prius (or the F250 Power stroke Dually) do.
And like a dog, who's just been fed, they will snap at anyone who intrudes on their bowl.
2/14/16, 12:28 PM
onething said...
I'm wondering about that, too. And a lot of the Native Americans did quite a bit of farming.
2/14/16, 2:56 PM
jean-vivien said...
here in Ecnarf and in Europe in general, the media coverage in general is probably much better quality than in the USA... and yet it doesn't prevent the spectacle of world events from looking increasingly like a strange post-modern performance circus show. But this circus has become our daily new normal.
To begin with, on the 22nd of January one of the two subway lines in Paris that got automatized (no more driver...) experienced a halting incident, leaving all running cars blocked at the same time for an average of 2 hours, resulting in a network-wide evacuation of all the line 1 cars for an estimated total between 2 to 5 000 people having to walk on the subway tracks...
Whoops. Communications breakdown, litterally. I'm glad I wasn't there, it really sent shivers down my spine.
http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-75005/paris-vaste-operation-d-evacuation-apres-une-panne-sur-la-ligne-1-22-01-2016-5476703.php#xtref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.fr%2F
The incident was still pretty well handled, and the folks running public transportation are doing a fairly good job. Hope we can keep it running in years ahead, in the face of economic stresses :
http://www.lemonde.fr/economie-francaise/article/2016/02/10/la-cour-des-comptes-preconise-une-hausse-des-tarifs-de-transports-en-ile-de-france_4862525_1656968.html
The notion that we have embarked on a crazy economic system and sacrificed the newer generations in terms of economic opportunity is making it to public discussion in established media. Just one example :
http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/02/10/pour-sortir-de-l-impasse-economique_4862421_3234.html (80 economists warning of the necessity of "getting out of the dead end")
Public discourse also uses nationalistic rethorics again :
http://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2016/02/12/une-europe-sans-britanniques-deviendrait-plus-allemande_4864461_3210.html
The collective discussion about the plight of the agricultural sector is turning against intensive agriculture and the big pesticide manufacturers :
http://www.lemonde.fr/televisions-radio/article/2016/02/02/cette-agriculture-qui-tue_4857651_1655027.html
http://www.franceinfo.fr/actu/societe/article/gironde-une-manifestation-pour-denoncer-les-pesticides-766483
The topic of agricultural remuneration, and the growing presence of automated cashiers, is making the supermarkets look like the bad guys...
I have worked inside big industrial companies, and that, just like the news, is telling the same story everywhere : jobs being suppressed everywhere, either through incentives or not replacing vacancies. Probably part of a catabolic process.
The discussion on a spelling reform not actually approved nor disapproved by French academicians is scaring everyone :
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/05/not-the-oignon-fury-france-changes-2000-spellings-ditches-circumflex
at least some folks have thought of improving our terrible keyboard layout :
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10805562/france-change-keyboard-layout-azerty
The government is trying to waive muscled rhetorics that fail to materialize into any visible measure aside from more guards around Ministers' entrances :
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/world/europe/france-state-of-emergency-paris-attacks.html?_r=0
The government has also changed the whole set of Ministers after some spectacular departures :
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/laurent-fabius-foreign-minister-to-leave-french-government
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/27/french-justice-minister-christiane-taubira-resigns
and impressively recycling of a former Prime Minister in the same Presidency :
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35553747
2/14/16, 3:20 PM
jean-vivien said...
With all the IT jobs being outsourced to other countries thanks to the Information Highways and the wonders of automatization, it looks strangely like IT having no clear social project other than risking its own demise... But at least some persons in the more research-oriented field of Computer Science are opening their eyes to the risks the are working so hard to bring out into reality themselves :
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama_series_we_study_how_intelligent/
It's not like the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain, where you take down one border, and that's it. It's all very subtle, more like a picket fence, where a lot of small, apparently isolated pickets do break, a few each day. The fence is still holding strong...
We are crossing tiny red lines every passing day without ever getting close to any visible Rubicon, and my guess is that belief in Progress has pretty much faded away in the face of constant chatter about economic crisis and terror... but belief in the statu quo is still a given, although a growing sense of limits being reached has now set in. Maybe the belief that Progress can resume once we have solved all the problems in its way.
When you take away the belief of Progress from people, they cling to the belief in Statu Quo. And when that goes away... all cards get put on the table.
By the way, here is some more of the same New Normal, in Greece :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12156571/Greek-riot-police-fire-tear-gas-at-crowds-protesting-against-new-migrant-hotspot-on-island-of-Kos.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/greek-farmers-clash-riot-police-athens-160212163808840.html
(the farmers' one doesn't get as much press coverage here as our own farmers' protests...)
2/14/16, 3:32 PM
latheChuck said...
You ask "why do Americans [US] use so much more energy that Europeans?" I think we need to look at exactly how these figures are determined to get useful insight. The easiest way to make that claim is to calculate "national energy use / population", right? But that's only a lower bound on the personal energy consumption. We also need to think about industrial energy (e.g., the energy used to extract energy!), and commercial energy (e.g., air conditioning the Wal-marts). If Europeans don't drill for oil, dig for coal, or refine ores into useful metal, their personal habits could be exactly like North Americans', and the statistic would mislead us regarding their virtue. And then there's the military-industrial-complex, which consumes vast amounts of energy on forging armor-plate, tank turbines, exotic materials for military aircraft, etc. And then, they burn more hydrocarbons for training, transportation, and operations. If we're to have significant impact on national energy consumption, we'll have to address these consumers, as well as our own individual consumption habits.
Lately, statistics have been released showing that Americans have become more energy efficient: higher GDP per BTU (or something like that), and the claim is that we create value through "the services economy". If/when (they imply) the rest of the world reaches our exalted state, we can all be "richer" on less energy. Of course, this just ignores the fact that a lot of the energy-intense industries have simply left for Asia, and we import the "embedded energy" of their steel, chemicals, plastics, etc. Shame on them for burning all that dirty coal, to produce the steel we buy!
2/14/16, 5:41 PM
latheChuck said...
The wire between your power source and your load device has some resistance (Rw), and the power wasted will be I*I*Rw. If you need to supply 120W at 12V, you need to drive 10A through the wire, but only 1A at 120V, so the loss is either 100*Rw or 1*Rw. If Rw is 1 ohm, that's either 100W or 1W wasted. If you have a 12V source, and waste 100W in the wiring, you only have 20W left to do anything useful (and only 2V at the load). If you design the system to actually deliver 120W, your source needs to put 22V into the wiring to get 12V to the load.
I chose 1 ohm of resistance to make the math simple and dramatic, but you can have 1 ohm in 600 feet of #12 copper wire (typically used for house wiring). If instead it's 30 feet from your power source to your 120W load (60' total), the resistance is just 0.1 ohm, so the losses are 10W and 0.1W for 12V and 120V. Maybe you can tolerate losing 8% (delivering 11V instead of 12V), but it's actually more efficient to convert the solar panel DC voltage to AC, transform it to a higher voltage, and rectify it back to DC at the higher voltage, than to just transport it at 12VDC.
On my grid-tied rooftop solar system, in fact, each of 21 panels has a power conditioning unit which adapts to the current local conditions to absorb the optimum amount of power such that when all 21 panels add their voltages together, it will add up to the 600VDC that the inverter is designed to accept. This means that the 6 kW {name-plate capacity} inverter never gets more than 10ADC, rather than 500A at 12 VDC. It also means that any one, two, or even 20 panels can be taken out of service and the system should keep working, though at lower capacity. The two functions of "optimum power point tracking" and "grid interface" are done in separate units.
*Optimum power point tracking: the more current you draw from a PV cell, the lower its voltage is. Max voltage is zero current -> zero power. Max current is zero voltage -> zero power. Somewhere in between, depending on sun angle and clouds (and even snow accumulation), is the optimum compromise.
120W might have been merely one bright light bulb 30 years ago, but we can get by with much less power for lighting now, and for entertainment, but heating and cooling appliances still demand hundreds of watts power.
2/14/16, 6:19 PM
latheChuck said...
2/14/16, 6:22 PM
latheChuck said...
"They only offer credit towards future electricity bills, and that credit expires after a year or so. That means that a household on "net metering" must use a significant amount of electricity on winter nights to use up those credits - hopefully a heat pump, but some use resistive heat. Of course, THAT electricity is coming from other sources, mostly fossil."
I take issue with the phrase "must use ... to use up those credits". The only harm in letting generation credits expire is that they're a gift to the utility, which one might have used instead to run an electric heating system. I may have more credits than I can use, but I'm pretty sure it's better (for the world) to heat my home directly with (high-efficiency combustion-gas condensing) natural gas than to demand "free electricity" from the utility and make them burn coal, uranium, or natural gas some distance away and transmit the energy to me.
Currently, our utility is happy to have solar generation that tracks the peak load of hot sunny afternoons. If the cost of power rises to the point that people give up on A/C, maybe they'll have to do something else with the excess power - refine aluminum or copper, or run electric steel furnaces (things which they do now with the cheap excess base-load capacity overnight). Dynamic pricing should lead to clever demand management.
2/14/16, 6:39 PM
Maxine Rogers said...
There is really no need to perpetuate our ghastly technologies on renewable energy. The key to a good life for me is to walk backwards step by step until I hit the eighteenth century and then stop for a while.
I have decided to purchase a large galvanized metal tub to have waiting for when my washing machine packs it in. What I will do is heat water on the wood stove, add it plus soap, washing soda and clothes to the tub. Then I will step into the tub and tread the laundry with my feet.
I already have a small farm and lead a delightful life. I eat better than the Queen. Got to go now and bottle feed my adorable baby lambs.
2/14/16, 6:39 PM
Myriad said...
Of course, being worth the cost doesn't require achieving costs per kWh that beat the electric company at today's prices. There's additional value in the resilience (either entirely off grid or as backup), the experience managing limited energy "funds and flows," and hedging against future rises in power costs. I've mentioned before that if you turn on a flashlight with AA alkaline batteries in it, you're paying somewhere between one hundred and three hundred dollars per kWh. If price per unit of output were the only issue, those things would never be able to compete against grid power, and yet every store sells them.
2/14/16, 6:41 PM
gjh42 said...
Stephen Colbert hams it up after MSNBC’s Chris Hayes incorrectly says Bernie Sanders’ name during Tuesday’s primary coverage.
On the ability to invest in renewables, a point I have never seen mentioned is that all power plants have a lifespan, and any utility that expects to stay in business for the long haul will be planning for the cost of replacing old power plants when necessary. If kept to a pace of replacing obsolete plants, it may not be significantly more expensive to invest in a renewable source than in a fossil-burning source, especially if the company has a realistic assessment of future fuel availability and cost for the life of the new plant.
2/14/16, 8:16 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Sven, the thing to remember with regard to the condescending rhetoric is that the people who use it don't think they have to care about what the rest of us think. They trot out their verbal noises; if the rest of us respond with the verbal noises they prefer, they smile and nod; if not, they get snottily condescending; either way it's a boost to their sense of entitlement. As for the advertisement, I'm not at all surprised to hear that they're chanting "One tech to rule them all, one tech to find them" -- that's very much in character, wouldn't you say?
Cherokee, the plunging quality of everything manufactured may be as important as any other cause in the collapse of civilizations -- ours as much as, or more than, others. Here in the US road repair gets done with shoddier and shoddier materials every year, where the roads are repaired at all -- in many places they aren't -- and if that continues too much further, the end of the automobile age won't require the exhaustion of gasoline supplies or the collapse of car manufacturers, there just won't be any roads you can drive on any more.
Christopher, funny. Stay tuned...
Sylvia, and that's why libraries are so important. The library Ben Franklin founded in colonial Philadelphia enabled people who could only have afforded a couple of well-bound books to pool their resources and have access to hundreds. Many other things are subject to the same sort of logic.
Ben, thanks for this. I remain bemused that Cracked, which was an utterly lame Mad Magazine ripoff in my misspent youth, has pupped so funny and interesting a site.
John, I've quarrelled with Clarke's law more than once in the past! Still, the point you're making is valid; I'd just rephrase it as "Any sufficiently unsophisticated user of technology will constantly confuse it with magic." Napoleon's law, on the other hand, is rock solid.
Ben, delighted to hear it. Curiously enough, mine will be gearing up for operation right around the same time.
Pine, Kuroda's statement still makes my head spin. He's admitting, very nearly in so many words, that economics is based on faith rather than facts.
Jon, thanks for this!
Hal, many thanks for the data point! I hope you're already on your way out of rural Texas as I write this.
Roger, the interesting thing being that -- as others have pointed out -- not every agrarian society, by a long shot, involved such grueling living conditions. It might be worth doing some study to figure out what factors tended to produce better conditions and what factors produced worse ones.
2/14/16, 9:59 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Grebulocities, no argument, a lot of people in the peak oil scene made a lot of simplistic linear projections about fracking, which turned out to be wrong. For that matter, I underestimated just how much fracking would be paid for by cheap debt even when it made no economic sense at all. All this is a good reminder that you can't just draw a straight line and expect the universe to follow it!
Jon, that's exceptionally funny. I suppose you could house the generators in a pair of geodesic domes to either side of the shaft, too.
Julian, "pleasant and entertaining"? We flushed that option down the ol' crapperoo before you were born. Now it's just a matter of how brutal the dieoff is and how much gets lost in the dark age that follows.
Jim, if a garden is what you can do, do a garden. Oh, and cut an hour a day from your television time -- it really will pay off in terms of getting things done.
Patricia, just one of the services I offer! To my mind, daikaiju are a neglected resource -- perhaps somebody could pay a visit to Kaiju Jima and see if they could lend us a giant radioactive paw. ;-)
Graeme, no argument there!
Karim, transport will require some adjustment, but as I recall, Mauritius was discovered and settled repeatedly before the era of petroleum, and the turn back to windpowered shipping -- you know, sails -- is already well under way.
Dammerung, it does indeed. Now if we can get other people to wake up!
Heather, delighted to hear it. I bet the beets were good, too.
Varun, that could be interesting indeed. My guess is that it would go to the House of Representatives, as contested elections have in the past.
Unknown, there are plenty of people saying what's politically expedient right now. I'm much more interested in talking about realities -- and the scale of this blog's readership suggests that there are a fair number of people interested in hearing that at this stage in the game.
Onething, thank you! I try to keep it entertaining where possible.
Susan, you'll get no argument from me. I'm quite convinced that not only in the deindustrial future, but in the ecotechnic civilizations that follow ours, electricity will be locally generated near where it's used, with microgrids and homescale power systems the standard approach.
William, exactly. The privileged are willing to do absolutely anything that doesn't require them to surrender one iota of their privilege; unfortunately that little exclusion leaves out every option that might possibly help.
2/14/16, 11:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
LatheChuck, thanks for the refresher course. Standard practice back in the appropriate tech scene of the early 1980s was the shortest possible run between power source, batteries, and load, and big thick wires to minimize resistance. It seemed to work pretty well!
Maxine, well put. That's the logic behind the Retro Future project I've been developing here, with the Retrotopia narrative among other things. I'm partial to electric lights, radios, and simple refrigerators, and would like to see those preserved, but if they go away that's not the end of the world.
Myriad, two very solid points. Thank you.
Gjh42, granted, but since grid power from renewables is entirely a creature of government subsidies -- nobody builds renewable power plants unless there's a lot of government money in it -- i'm far from sure that's actually a viable plan.
2/14/16, 11:43 PM
latheChuck said...
2/15/16, 4:31 AM
Karim said...
The point I was trying to make is that given that 95% of transportation is dependent on oil and given that there are few alternatives to oil in that use, any shortfall in oil supply has massive implications for transportation and this has a big impact on any modern economic system.
By me reckoning it is the above dynamic which will bring much distress and dislocation to the modern economy, and even a massive come back to sail shipping will most probably be insufficient as adjustment.
Yes humans will still roam the seven seas past peak oil, but not in the same numbers and not ferrying the same huge volumes of goods as right now.
The implications for any economic system cannot be exaggerated.
2/15/16, 4:43 AM
peak.singularity said...
From what I've read, it might not be possible to have a working large-scale electrical grid if too much of it consists of intermittent power generation (or you need extreme amounts of energy storage).
As you say, since the people you're talking about consider not having electricity on demand unacceptable, it's no wonder you get such a reaction...
And it's partially true, but more so for the real user of electricity : the various industries. There's plenty of industries where losing electrical power screws up the whole process at best, and poses significant danger at worst (see Fukushima disaster). And we most likely simply don't know whether these processes could be (economically) redesigned to take intermittency into account.
Though I've heard of at least one industry that bought a dam to store power to protect itself from these issues. This gives hope that some of the most critical industries could be conserved (well, rather, scaled down) in this way.
(IIRC this was for aluminium, but steelmaking/recycling would be less energy consuming and more important?)
2/15/16, 5:01 AM
Phil Harris said...
JMG wrote:
"Roger, the interesting thing being that -- as others have pointed out -- not every agrarian society, by a long shot, involved such grueling living conditions. It might be worth doing some study to figure out what factors tended to produce better conditions and what factors produced worse ones." and Bill & @onething commented on better Native American fitness.
We have a lot of archaeological evidence in Europe / Britain (bones etc.), and although I am not able to check just now, memory tells me that health was highly variable across the centuries and at different sites. In the most recent agrarian past as well as in later industrial times, Britain’s rapidly growing urban population became notorious for poor health. Rapidly growing London from 16th to 19thC simply 'ate' infants and children of all classes rich and poor alike, (mostly because of infectious disease), though people continued to migrate to the city. Even in 20thC industrial times when control of infections – public hygiene, immunisation - vastly improved, British working class (i.e. an urban large majority) continued to experience frequent poverty, which was and continues to be critical for lifetime health. For example, army conscription for WW1 etc showed-up average poor health in 18 year olds. On construction sites, recruitment of robust young men from rural Eire was a commonplace even in my early years. (Poverty is inadequate money, income, livelihood – at the extreme it manifests as ‘pauperisation’.)
I suspect therefore that frequent poverty has been perhaps the main reason for lifetime ill-health in both agrarian and urban contexts. Without any 'wide-area' ameliorating system of 'insurance' and ‘trade’, then subsistence or semi-subsistence farming is very risky. There must be continuity of nutritious food – there is evidence that given even a very modest sufficiency of calories, green vegetables are key; more so than ‘protein’. And there must be necessary farming resources - seeds, tools etc. and in most contexts a way to pay for them. True self-sufficiency farming with adequate nutrition is pretty much a myth unless there is a special case of sufficient recourse to wild food to back-up a mix of vegetable gardening and staple food production using very local tools; for example gardening in a beneficent rain forest. Without that ‘natural’ back-up, agrarian economy always needs a secondary craft and trade economy along with secure enough regional storage, and also needs I think financial or other kinds of organised access? Farmers in historical agrarian civilisations as a rule needed to borrow; (Solon's reforms; debt Jubilees anyone?).
best
Phil
2/15/16, 6:17 AM
temporaryreality said...
2/15/16, 10:32 AM
donalfagan said...
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/the-next-bubble/7/
2/15/16, 10:35 AM
Yanocoches said...
But, I think that during my ruminations about this week’s essay and comments, I might have fallen inadvertently into the dysfunctional habit of thought that you have alluded to a couple of times now and plan to discuss at length in the future. Thinking about electricity generation and use, on-grid, off-grid, hybrid grid, pros and cons, difficulties and positives, solar and wind, I became overwhelmed realizing that this is not an area of any sort of expertise on my part with the exception of standard conservation, i.e., turn off when not in use, dimmers on lights, timers on heaters, then bring in the solar garden lights and locate that hand crank radio when the electricity is out and wait patiently for it to come back on.
There is so much to know and learn and habits to change, it can be horribly discouraging. And I started to drift into a mental pattern of thinking that it’s okay if I don’t know how to set up an off-grid solar array, that I know about other things, that somehow my ignorance would protect me from the consequences of not having the skill set to establish a household energy system, that somehow I could get a pass on this one, everything would be fine. This produced a deep emotional comfort until my inner archdruid (have we not all developed an inner archdruid after so many years of reading the ADR?) chimed in to say that not knowing, not learning, not changing, not developing some sort of resilience in this area would not protect me at all. If the grid goes down and I don’t have other means of power generation, then I will be living quite simply in a house with no electricity at all. Reality stings, yes indeed. There really is no degree of exceptionalism and there is no excuse or level of bargaining that will allow any escape from the realities of the future. Thank you for a stunning, thought provoking essay and comments this week. It’s been particularly juicy for me.
2/15/16, 10:35 AM
Sven Eriksen said...
2/15/16, 11:43 AM
Yanocoches said...
I too have had the same thought, and more than once. I even thought up a name for the site (with a nod to Dimitry Orlov and the dating site for farmers): CollapsniksOnly dot com.
2/15/16, 12:32 PM
Shane W said...
you've mentioned in the Trump post and other recent posts that you think the US is very close (like w/in 5 yrs max) to insurgency/dissolution/roadside bomb/civil war time, so when you're discussing financial bubbles being blown, I'm assuming they'll be Russian or Chinese bubbles? I'm not sure how the American economy/bubble blowing machine can function very well during a time of national crisis/dissolution...
2/15/16, 1:04 PM
Hubertus Hauger said...
I guess what does depend on us, is, how we can shape our and our fellows conscience and how effective there comes out of it decisive and adequat action towards transition. But as tide is changing freqently, a lot of outcome will be there anyway. However any way we will reach the limits of growth, from which is coming unavoidably collapse and thereafter a compulsory simplification of life.
I imagine there will be one or several million years of human existence on earth still to come. So there is time for many turns. As we had in 10.000 years a thousand civilisations and cultures revolving. For how many more there is still space in time to play around. Lots!
I feel, that one religious order to go trough the centuries to come, will be one in the fashion of Isaak Asimov´s historian society. Safekeeping the wisdom of sience and understanding of human behavior, to influence the shape of future human societies. So my hope and desire is to partake a little in its making.
Joseph Tainter is influencing me much. His repeating matrix of history as a texture of humans organising ourself is also helpful. I understand him saying, that societies, who get too good in problem solving via enlarging complexity, do stumble in the end over their own feet. The succes is the initial for their demise.
A faszinating example here for me is Teotihuacán. The greatest of the Mezoamerican civilisations. Yet misted in history. Only their stones are telling us some of their story. One of their successes has been their effective acriculture, strongly assisted from their vulcanic habitat.
Its attractivity spreading 1000 cilometres at least. People pilgrimed and settled there from far and wide. At the peak of its popularity it began declining and perished finally. So its success became the source of its demise.
That turns me to the question, what factors tend to produce better conditions in agrarian societies. There are many, as we had plenty of flourishing agrarian societies. Yet some of them succesfull agrarian society got blown up from their initial success and toppled. Beside there are also enduringly stable agrarian society like the Neuguinean higlanders keeping a sort of cultural unity in diversity.
What I want to say, is, that we humans tend to stability and to success (aka wealth and plenty of stuff). But often stability contradicts success and vice versa. We humans might be not as brainy as believed, but we are resilient. So we will continue to live, prosper, die and be born again. Carry on!
2/15/16, 1:36 PM
latheChuck said...
Resistance is the word we use to describe the relationship between pressure and flow: I = V / R (more resistance means less current; more voltage means more current). (Just to be confusing, some authors refer to voltage as "E": electromotive force. "I" is used for current because it is "Induced flow".) A "resistor" is analogous to a restriction in the water pipe: the pressure is higher on one side than on the other, and the greater the flow, the greater the pressure difference.
(By the way, just when you think you're getting comfortable with these equations, you're likely to discover that, in general, the quantities are actually measured with complex numbers (vectors). I guess that's kind of the boundary between electricians and electrical engineers.)
It's too bad you didn't study physics when you had the chance in school! You'll never know how many ways it might have become important to you later in life.
As for something to read, I recommend any of the annually-updated versions of the "ARRL Handbook" for amateur radio (the exact title varies, but this is a good search string. Prices start at $6 for the 1993 edition).
2/15/16, 2:36 PM
Jay Moses said...
2/15/16, 2:40 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
And all the children and teenagers and yuppies are crying out "My precioussssss! My
preciousssssss!"
2/15/16, 2:51 PM
Mon Seul Desir said...
I would point out that the word "subsidy" like the word "investment" are loaded words that say more about the feeling of their users about the said expenditure than anything else. I would point out that in most places today it is not possible to fund the production of basic goods, as you have pointed out yourself for your own town, let alone any major infrastructure. At the same time there seem to be plenty available for pointless speculation, luxury housing that few can afford, office buildings that are mostly empty, destroying foreign countries, flying Edsels for the Pentagon, etc...
Its obvious that "The Economy" assign resources in a warped and irrational fashion and in a way that satisfies the priorities of a blinkered elite. Under the current system of manipulation and deceit, does anyone know the real cost and value of anything with any certainty?
On collapse, I would point to Pennsylvania. During the 50s and 60s it was an industrial powerhouse bigger than Germany, today its a scrapyard with its society showing the same sort of social collapse that is seen in many indian reservations. Of course the above will never be reported in the press and the elites are so blinkered that they don't see the importance of this. For Pennsylvania collapse is history, not the future.
As for fracking I see it as something like industrial agriculture, a testimony to the modern ability of combining the maximum expenditure of resources with minimum real production of value, what would be called value reducing activity. This is how resource consumption and economic numbers go up while actual living standards go down. The wonders of Progress, more scrap, more slums, more beggars. Isn't Progress supposed to be about more of everything? :)
For all practical purpose America has undergone economic collapse with that being concealed by an imperial tribute economy that propping up the elites and its clients, its now undergoing social collapse and political collapse is not far away. In my readings of history economic and social collapse precede political collapse since social strength is the foundation of power, remove the base and the rest goes.
America is now in a condition where a crisis or defeat that would have been shrugged off in its prime will trigger a major political crisis.
For building a more durable system, were not going to know what can be done until the current dysfunctional imperial system has been scrapped and that will not occur volutarily since this means the shutdown of the rent income of the middle class and the elites. The middle classes will crash suddenly to the level of the working class and much of the elite will experience the fate of William Crapo Durant who founded GM, was worth 4 b$ in the 1920s, was ruined in the depression and died in 1947 with his probate totaling $100.
Keep up the good work!
2/15/16, 3:06 PM
Mon Seul Desir said...
I've found this on the never ending saga of the flying Edsel:
http://sputniknews.com/us/20160211/1034553919/air-force-general-faints-budget-briefing.html
This general fainted during a press briefing on the F-35 budget.
His assistant finished the briefing and joked at the end:
“That’s what the F-35 will do to you”
2/15/16, 3:16 PM
Jason Butler said...
I thought this windfarm letter quote from Viz was worth sharing -
"These wind farms are ridiculous. As if the country doesn't have enough wind of it's own without wasting electricity making more of it by running these big fans. It's a waste of taxpayers money." - Ben Cormack, Isle of Eigg
2/15/16, 3:54 PM
Sojan Shieldbearer said...
How much do you wanna bet they have also infiltrated Yekrut, both as individually as spies and in "sabotage-reconnaissance groups", ready to be activated when called upon...
2/15/16, 6:34 PM
The other Tom said...
"I would much rather see proposals that, first, make it very difficult for the power elite to further trap the poor into struggling to earn money to pay for things that really wouldn't be necessary if it weren't for the clever entrapment. Second, I would like to see infrastructure efforts focused on what people of the most limited means really need. I would like to see a new interstate walkway system, with water sources every five miles and food sources and campgrounds every fifteen miles. "
A country that intended to scale back its use of resources and be sustainable would know this is a practical idea. The fact that this proposal would be relegated to the lunatic fringe in the U.S. shows how far this country is from recognizing its own demise.
Not everybody could walk long distances, but as part of a diversified transportation system interstate walkways could be the cheapest way to go. A walkway system could spawn businesses along its corridors just like the railroads and then the interstate highways.
Walking, actually being in the world, is far more interesting than being sealed up in a car. A low income family could have a nice outdoor vacation, traveling on the interstate walkway system.
Or maybe I'm just crazy.
2/15/16, 7:40 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Historically, the bubbles have disappeared as the crisis comes to a climax, or have been forcibly popped. When the climax hits, everything the nation or empire or city-state can't afford goes to feed what it can afford, whether war or rebuilding, whatever, and the survivors Take Steps to see that it won't happen again. IF they can prevent it. Then, if it's a good recovery, they age, and "There arose a generation which knew not Joseph" and thinks Pharaoh's wise provisions are standing in the way of us all getting rich. If it's a hard recovery, we get some of that. IF it's a crash landing, of course.....
2/15/16, 8:23 PM
temporaryreality said...
thank you! that helps! Now I'll go back and re-read your earlier comment with this in the back of my mind. At least, though I missed physics, I got chemistry and biology which have served me well. Truly, we never know the lost-impacts of what we miss out on - but the good thing is that it's possible to learn all one's life long, so… here I am :)
2/15/16, 8:39 PM
steve pearson said...
Will be interesting to see the prices when the recession ends: like a terrier shaking a rat.
2/15/16, 9:49 PM
Kevin Warner said...
Now consider - for decades countries such as America have shut down their industrial companies and shipped them overseas for profit. America's industrial base has been gutted. When the collapse comes, most of the industries that would have to shut down have already done so a long time ago. The disruption of all that has already been gone through. A cynic would say mission accomplished!
As well, millions of workers would find their places of work gone and would have to scramble for a living - or starve! At the moment however, millions of American workers have already removed themselves from the official employment rolls. They have not just rolled over and died, you know. They have simply given up on a broken system and gone to try to make a place for themselves in the unofficial economy. When the collapse comes, these workers are already set and can perhaps help the other workers make the transition to a post-industrial economy.
You know what really riles me? When I was a kid and saw dystopian societies in movies I used to wonder how the people could not notice that they were living in one. How could they get used to it? Never thought that I would live long enough to be living in one.
2/16/16, 4:19 AM
latheChuck said...
Sometimes it's easier to consider the reciprocal of resistance, conductance, whether we're talking electrical or thermal. When you have parallel paths, such as a wall, a window, and a door, each with a different resistance, convert the resistance to conductance, and the conductances can be added together to get the overall conductance of the room. Take the reciprocal of that to find the overall thermal resistance of the room.
You can use these calculations to figure out the most cost-effective insulation upgrades. Compare the heat flow through a ceiling vs. the flow through a window. Windows typically have relatively little resistance to heat flow, especially if they're just a single layer of glass. But the ceiling has a much greater area. So, which upgrade will minimize your energy consumption? Or, to put it another way, which one will leave you the most comfortable when we run out of heating fuel?
Math! It predicts the future, conditioned on our ability to use it wisely. But perhaps that's a topic for the other blog.
2/16/16, 7:10 AM
Mikep said...
Mon Seul Desir,
Once again we Europeans are way ahead of the new world when it comes to expending hugh amounts of money on military projects just cop a load of the tyhpoon Eurofighter, though it's true that we had the unfair advantage of a crack team of Eurocrats operating without the distraction of a common language.
http://www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-Typhoon.html
2/16/16, 7:41 AM
latheChuck said...
I don't find it particularly significant that we don't see "solar-powered solar panel production". In the marketplace, most buyers don't look past the price tag. If cheap hydrocarbons can be used to make a solar panel 5% cheaper (just to pull a number out of the air, unsupported by research), then even if the solar EROEI is positive enough to support production, it won't be positive enough to compete for sales.
Personally, if I knew that my PV system had a guaranteed break-even date 20 years from now, that would be enough to justify getting them. However, there's some risk of unexpected maintenance expenses, and subsidies help cover that. With all of the incentives received and expected, I should break-even in 7 years.
This is not to argue that Business As Usual can be sustained with alt-energy. As others have noted, some uses of electricity are so appealing that we'll pay hundreds of times the current rate (that is, buy alkaline batteries) to support those uses. Solar panels from solar-powered factories may end up costing as much as these batteries, and we'll still be glad we have them.
2/16/16, 7:54 AM
Etienne Bayenet said...
Just another text from the bible, this time it comes from the book of Ezekiel. It's the one I am reading now
I hope you don't mind. I just thought this was a good description of your blog. Thanks for it.
Best regards,
Etienne
33:1
And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
33:2
Son of man, give a word to the children of your people, and say to them, When I make the sword come on a land, if the people of the land take a man from among their number and make him their watchman:
33:3
If, when he sees the sword coming on the land, by sounding the horn he gives the people news of their danger;
33:4
Then anyone who, hearing the sound of the horn, does not take note of it, will himself be responsible for his death, if the sword comes and takes him away.
33:5
On hearing the sound of the horn, he did not take note; his blood will be on him; for if he had taken note his life would have been safe.
33:6
But if the watchman sees the sword coming, and does not give a note on the horn, and the people have no word of the danger, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them; he will be taken away in his sin, but I will make the watchman responsible for his blood.
33:7
So you, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the children of Israel; and you are to give ear to the word of my mouth and give them news from me of their danger.
33:8
When I say to the evil-doer, Death will certainly overtake you; and you say nothing to make clear to the evil-doer the danger of his way; death will overtake that evil man in his evil-doing, but I will make you responsible for his blood.
33:9
But if you make clear to the evil-doer the danger of his way for the purpose of turning him from it, and he is not turned from his way, death will overtake him in his evil-doing, but your life will be safe.
33:10
And you, son of man, say to the children of Israel, You say, Our wrongdoing and our sins are on us and we are wasting away in them; how then may we have life?
33:11
Say to them, By my life, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the evil-doer; it is more pleasing to me if he is turned from his way and has life: be turned, be turned from your evil ways; why are you looking for death, O children of Israel?
2/16/16, 11:43 AM
Ezra Buonopane said...
2/16/16, 12:00 PM
Myriad said...
Those are good points, which is why I limited my comments about DIYing to non grid tied solar PV systems. A grid tied system has to be completely automated and idiot-proof (and in the minds of the installer and of the power company, the idiot they have to keep at a safe distance is you), so what are you going to learn from it?
Claiming the U.S. Federal tax credit for solar electric property (form 5695) doesn't appear to require an installer's permission. A power company subsidy would have more specific requirements, of course, but would probably not apply to a non grid tied system anyhow. I'm uniformed at present about state subsidies.
Of course, I should have mentioned the real safety risks of DIYing as well. If you're not starting well-informed, then start small, which minimizes the harm of mistakes. As I understand it, the greatest hazard is falling from the roof, which is a risk that should not be taken lightly.
2/16/16, 12:55 PM
Chris M said...
Another author who has influenced me in recent years is William (Bill) Janeway, who writes of the role of bubbles in his book "Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy". If I understand him correctly Janeway says that we do not achieve transformative change by making economically rational judgements about investment (the uncertainties in transformative change are too great). We do so by investing for strategic reasons (e.g. the German autobahns in the 1930s) or for prestige, national development or security (the French railway system, the US transcontinental railroad or the interstate highway system, the French nuclear plants) or we invest through bubbles (the British railway system, the Internet at the end of the last century and so on). At the end of a bubble many investors have lost their shirts but we may be left with a new and valuable network. So Janeway says that not all bubbles are bad, and I hope if we are having a 'renewables bubble' it will at least leave us with a useful network of resources.
I quite agree however that renewables will not remotely provide the level of energy supply to maintain our industrial society at current or projected rates of consumption, and certainly studies like ZeroCarbonBritain by the UK Centre for Alternative Technology (http://zerocarbonbritain.org) assume very significant reductions in consumption to go along with a shift to renewables. I completely agree that this means lifestyle changes and
using different technologies - in fact a complete redesign of the artificial world - but instead much of the current discourse I hear talks of adding a further layer of technological complexity in smart cities, smart grids, autonomous systems etc.
On the discussion of historic patterns of energy consumption in the UK, I think Gandhi got it right when he said, on visiting the UK in 1928, "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the west. The economic imperialism of a single
tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."
JMG please feel free to edit if you think this is too long.
2/16/16, 1:06 PM
Mean Mr Mustard said...
Regarding hunter/killer drone developments -
http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2016-02-16/iai-unveils-quad-copter-bomb
Sinister alright, but oh so much cheaper than a JDAM delivered from 20000 feet by F-35. Though this seems low-tech to the point that even your raggedy warbands could easily work up something along those lines.
cheers
Mustard
2/16/16, 1:10 PM
Glenn said...
Glenn
in the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
2/16/16, 2:44 PM
mountain momma said...
3 types of heat transfer, conduction, convection, radiative (JMG gives the hybrid loss due to air flow its own category as it is convenient to think of it that way for remediation efforts). So, yes, heat loss thru conduction has that relationship, depends on amount of insulation and temp difference. Convective losses vary due to pressure differences and due to things we do to impede convective currents (ie, fiberglass battings in walls are there to stop/slow down convection loops inside the walls. A closed valance on top of the curtains keeps convection loop from going across the glass of the window, etc...) radiative losses are slowed down by reflection, the shiny coating on modern windows, closing any type of curtain so that the room has a barrier to the dark night sky, painting a roof white to NOT get as much radiative heat, painting a batch hot water tank black TO get more radiative heat....
2/16/16, 4:47 PM
Kyle Schuant said...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/16/masdars-zero-carbon-dream-could-become-worlds-first-green-ghost-town
2/16/16, 5:25 PM
Geo T said...
To embrace wind power, one must cynically decide that the last remnants of natural & bucolic scenery are expendable, or pretend that rows of huge machines are "beautiful" based on a hypothetical utopia where nature takes a backseat to Man. Some of us will never stomach those attitudes. Wind turbines are routinely built on prominent mountain ridges to catch the most wind, and the apathy with with that destruction is allowed is chilling to watch. I have no idea how it became known as "green" but people have made big mistakes before.
2/16/16, 6:48 PM
FiftyNiner said...
This is bit off topic for the week, but I made an interesting observation this past Sunday afternoon at the nearest Super Walmart. While walking the aisles in the grocery some of them had just recently been relaid with merchandise with all the items "fronted and faced", as is done in retail. I was astounded at the reduction of variety of items. This particular store has always had an enormous selection of cookies--domestic brand names we all recognize and many imports.
The cookies have always moved well, but the cookie aisle I estimate to be less than half of its former size. I thought that this might be a logical retail decision, but I kept getting to areas where the same thing was true. The volume of merchandise seemed the same, but the selection was greatly reduced.
I ran into a lady whom I did not know who excused herself for cutting me off with her shopping cart and I took the opportunity to ask her if she had noticed the same thing I had. She had indeed and said it had been going on for a few weeks. I live out of town and go in that store never more than twice per month and some months not at all, so I had not noticed it before.
Our conversation turned to the economy and she told me that she believes that people are now being very careful in their shopping, but my hunch is that there is less in the pipeline than there was in the past. I have noticed that since the Chinese bought Smithfield that hams seem only to be available at the holidays.
I suppose I am getting paranoid in my seniority but I wonder if there really is a nefarious connection between Walmart and the US government? Are the soon to be vacated Walmart stores to be turned into human holding pens as is alleged on the internet? We all know the direction this is taking and I believe the next few years are going to be unlike any we have ever seen.
2/16/16, 8:57 PM
Mikep said...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076599-space-solar-the-global-race-to-tap-the-suns-energy-from-orbit/
As a sci-fi author perhaps you could have some fun with beams of "perfectly safe nothing to cause alarm" microwave radiation from space sweeping erratically across the surface of the Earth when the guidance systems either fail or are sabotaged.
One thing that escapes the author of the article's attention is the possible effect on the climate of taking solar radiation which is currently missing the Earth and re-directing it onto the planet's surface.
2/17/16, 7:01 AM
David T. said...
dfr2010 said...
"the sort of green cornucopianism that insists that sun, wind, and other renewable resources can provide everyone on the planet with a middle class American lifestyle"
Am I the only one who immediately thinks, "Petroleum hasn't even done that after over a century!"
****
Actually dfr2010, petroleum has, at least for the 1%. The world's 1%, that is, not just the American 1%. Industrial society is not going away quickly. But boom-bust cycles and resulting economic dislocations are going to increase inequality. As the American 99% starts to slide into the lifestyle of the worldwide 99% we'll wonder why and most people will blame other people. Social cohesion fraying and all that.
I think Soylent Green is a far too accurate portrayal of our future, circa the latter 25 years of this century, if TPTB don't start a nuclear holocaust, or if nuclear fusion doesn't become a reality. The 1% of the Soylent Green society had all the luxuries, although even there the building manager admitted that the cameras no longer worked because the company went out of business years before.
But your point still stands. There was never enough fossil fuel energy to provide an American middle class lifestyle to the entire world by the time the American middle class lifestyle became an "ideal" (post-WWII). Oh but Americans will reap what they have sown, they complain about the 1% now, not realizing they ARE the real 1%, and stand to lose all of it within a generation or so.
Elysium is another fiction that is possible. The global 1% perpetuating a high-tech industrial lifestyle on the backs of the 99% (slavery reborn). I remember the "feel good" ending to that movie, thinking, great, now everyone is a citizen of Elysium, but this will all grind to a halt within weeks once the resources are depleted. Elysium will be ransacked, drained, overrun, and as wretched as the planet beneath shortly.
We will have to wait and see. I, for one, am supportive of the 1% (in the resource-shortage scenario) as a matter of necessity. To allow some humans to have all the comforts of industrial technology is to maintain the ability for someone to solve nuclear fusion. Then maybe somewhere down the road the excess energy will be available for everyone to live comfortably.
2/17/16, 1:42 PM
zaphod42 said...
If I cannot even have an impact on those who supposedly care most for me, and who claim to respect my views, how in the name of the gods and fairies can I move others who do not know me so well?
Choose to live this way? Well, in 4.25 yrs it will become a choice. Meanwhile I will do my best to overcome inertia and years of hopium addiction. At least I can hope that Pam will follow whence I lead.
If things can only hold together for those 51 months, eh?
Craig
2/19/16, 3:54 PM
Andrew D said...
2/23/16, 2:28 PM
Geo T said...
Wind turbines (of the tall, industrial type) are the most visible man-made invasion of the countryside in history. Their size and spread surpasses oil rigs and far more people see them than coal mines on a daily basis. So-called environmentalists who insist on calling wind turbines "beautiful" make me angry. Did the landscape and seascape suddenly become invisible or expendable in its unfettered form? Man's carbon footprint is just one of many we need to limit. Physical impact on priceless landscape mustn't be trivialized. Even if all potential sites are filled, wind power will never replace fossil fuels' energy density & portability (for industry and heavy transport) and it needs them to exist, anyhow. "Fossil fuel extenders" is the common term.
Wind turbines number over 250,000 globally and most of them were forced onto the landscape with little say from locals. That's changed in recent times but there's still a ton of propaganda convincing naive people to back the colossal structures. Previous visual impacts in wind turbine zones were less contrasting masts and power-lines with no kinetic distractions, or low-lying structures like barns. No grain silos approach the height of wind turbines.
Some studies (e.g. Jacobson & Delucchi) call for nearly 4 million wind turbines down the road, and I wince thinking about landscapes and ocean views of the future. The world could become a very stark place. We need another character like The Lorax to ask "Who speaks for the landscape?"
3/1/16, 12:03 PM
Unknown said...
9/9/16, 9:36 PM
Vanholio ! said...
I live simply (and quite well). I use my good sense to make use of passive techniques in heating and cooling: smart use of shade and ventilation to stay cool, solar exposure, clothes, and blankets to stay warm. In other words, I try to make a smart blend of new tech and old wisdom.
What I don't have is the middle class, energy-hog lifestyle I grew up with. And good riddance! I walk a little more softly on the earth and avoid the monthly bills that plague my fellow countrymen.
10/24/16, 9:29 PM