Murray Grimwood*
The Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) is running a series of webinars, consulting on future energy options. It takes energy to build infrastructure, energy which will not come again, making it crucial that we get our next moves right. Unfortunately, most of the spectrum of submitters (and the host itself) belong to a culture steeped in a still-taught falsehood, thus threatening to render the exercise obsolete.
Salient points
Most folk – MBIE included – use the Samuelson/Econ101 circular graphic of an ‘economy’. It is steeped into everything; politics, other academia, business. It is fatally flawed because there is no accounting for essential inputs (energy being one) or outputs. Put differently; it measures flows (albeit somewhat remotely) but not stocks. Much of the Green New Deal (GND) is flawed for the same reason. It is planetary stocks – of finite resources, of renewable and sink capacities, but crucially of the half-gone one-off bonanza of fossil energy – which are our predicament.
Confusing matters more, words are used which convey incorrect meanings; oil is not ‘produced’, it is extracted. Electricity is not ‘generated’; kinetic energy is transformed into electrical energy (and we don’t ‘consume’ it, either; we dissipate it).
The graphic to use – the one which does not lie – is the Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen one (below). The two in-arrows and the two out-arrows are the ALL of it, in terms of energy and the economic system. That simple diagram covers everything, Climate included. The one on the right – a version of which every economics-intake is taught…… does not.
Flows and entropy. The flows are always from left to right, across that first diagram, every stage is dissipative, every stage one move towards entropy.
Relativity. In that diagram, fossil energy is a one-off stock of historic sunlight being injected into the energy flow between the circle and the square. Fossil energy is orders of magnitude more potent that any alternative, but the remaining fossil energy is reducing exponentially both in potency and in volume. The potency ratio is generally reckoned as the energy in a barrel of oil being equal to 4.5 years of human labour; labour is therefore ‘noise’ statistically.
Productivity. The above ratio – unaccounted in economics unless by default – means it is energy efficiencies, not human labour, which have increasingly driven productivity-gains for 200 years (it’s not the digger driver, it’s the digger, and that comes back to the diggers’ energy efficiency).
Energy efficiencies run into hard Thermodynamic limits after having run a course of diminishing returns, usually via an increase in technological complexity (the latter usually associated with diminished resilience).
Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) is an important concept, an unavoidable constraint, and should appear in MBIE’s final report. All life- forms and all machines are energy-dissipative; they require more energy in than they expend (in muscles, pistons or thrust); the loss is always low- grade heat (ejected via sweat, radiators, exhausts, cooling-fans), of too low a grade to be re-usable. We are traversing ever-lower EROEI energy options, needing more energy to obtain energy, with implications for total work-doable in the future.
It needs to be remembered that food is energy (energy cannot be created; the question needing asked of all lab-food is: where does the energy come from?) and currently we require several calories of fossil energy to produce one calorie of food. Where will the replacement energy come from?
Which sunlit acre (that is not already being used)?
Surplus energy (energy over and above food-production) allowed specialisation. It is reasonable to presume that a reduction of surplus energy will curtail specialist activities, with knock-on societal implications.
Most folk make personal decisions at a remove - or many removes - from the energy-flow, yet their activity is almost certainly dependent on some level of surplus energy. This remoteness can make long-term appraisal difficult.
Where to from here?
We have an existing collection of physical infrastructure – roading, pipework, wiring, buildings, vehicles, tools – all reliant upon and built by/of fossil fuels (as energy and as feedstock). We passed peak energy-per-head (globally) in 1980, and seem to have passed peak energy all-in, yet the collection of existing infrastructure has never been bigger; never more cumulatively demanding of maintenance energy, and as time goes on, will demand ever-more. Atop that, we are attempting to replace much of it like-for-like (as in the GND promoting EVs).
The energy and resources for the change must come from somewhere, and there are two obvious curtailments; (1) we are already extracting energy and materials full-noise, using all we’ve got – meaning we will have to increasingly triage both.
(2) Our construct is already overshot, so we need to reduce anyway.
Accounting properly
Our accounting system (through whose lens we don’t see the above) is not designed to accommodate a permanent reduction of energy (and resource availability). Put differently, a growth-requiring system (profits, interest, return) cannot survive permanent energy reduction (permanent degrowth); who pays, how, by doing what, and who gets to buy the output of the ever-reducing production?
Submissions to MBIE suggesting ‘jobs’, therefore, might be correct in that folk will be busy, but not in the sense that they will represent buying-power, even at existing levels. This point is not on anyone’s radar – officially, at least - but an assessment of our energy future which fails to address the needed alterations/replacement of our valuation-mechanism, will be invalid by definition; nothing is produced (and therefore no money is underwritten) without the use of energy.
The yardstick
We will end up (whether we go there voluntarily or involuntarily) at a sustainable rate of resource consumption and running on renewable energy. Building - or even maintaining - anything which does not fit those parameters, is a waste of the remaining energy (and resources and time). That is a high bar; bitumen is out; hydro dams run their lifetime course, unfixable electronics gets junked, the current-form internet is moot (that ‘cloud’ is just server-farms, a significant percentage powered by coal). Yes, the knock-on societal-implication questions are hard; yes, they need to be asked.
Questions
Now we ask the energy-specific questions; is Onslow worth the effort (forget the myopic environmental implications, we all impact by being alive and there are always best-of-the-bad options)? Back one stage, can we actually maintain the Grid sans fossil energy (we won’t be making PV panels using PV energy, ever; with that in mind, how are we going to maintain substations; pylons; undersea cables?).
Before we advocate public transport, ask: Over what surface? To where? For what purpose? (Most folk think in terms of getting into a ‘city’ for ‘work’; firstly what they do mostly isn’t work in the physics sense; secondly, in a power-down world, what activities will be in demand?). Before fossil fuels there were no cities of over 1 million, so the GND types advocating urban crowding are almost certainly on the wrong track. We are likely to see an exodus from cities, and a massive increase in people per food-producing acre (living closer to the original – sun/photosynthesis - energy source); a logical reversal of the fossil-energised shift from rural to urban. That suggests a more-dispersed electricity – and overall energy - demand in the future. How do we accommodate that?
There will be a period – perhaps a century – where existing processed material (steel, copper, aluminium) can be adapted/used. Old-school mechanical windmills and micro-hydro (both physical and electric) are energy-collation systems we can reuse existing materials to create locally; what other options should be investigated?
Solar
Ultimately, all renewables are solar-originated. The rule of thumb is that the closer to source (to the left in the first diagram), the better the energy quality; the less it has been dissipated. Direct solar – food-production (the vegetarians have a point; plants are closer to the energy source than animals), passive-solar housing, direct water-heating, reflector/boiler systems – should therefore be priorities. A passive-solar house requires less eternally-supplied energy for the whole of its life; anathema to the Econ101-taught where’s-the-profit? brigade perhaps, but a physical reality. Direct solar/water is low-tech and locally buildable; heat- sink/storage will be important.
The existing fleet of PV panels will most likely decay over time; a transition format like gas.
Wind
Big wind is likely unmaintainable ex fossil support; as those carbon blades age and those gearboxes wear, they will likely be retired. MBIE – shades of Econ101 – are suggesting a bond to cover the retiring of offshore wind; they should be demanding the earmarking of a certain amount of energy and materials; bank- held historic digits cannot shift offshore tonnage, that forward betting works until it doesn’t.
Small wind – both old-school direct-drive and low-tech electric – are do-able; locally buildable and locally fixable. They are a ‘fit’ for the re-localisation of food-production and the exodus from urban cramming. We cold do worse than encouraging this industry ahead of time.
Gas
Initial ideas at MBIE seem to be that gas will be used as a ‘transition’, that electricity will be almost everything else. Gas already has infrastructure, and skills.
It is a lesser carbon criminal than oil and coal, and probably has a transition role to play. Unfortunately, this will be exploited by those standing to profit or lose; propaganda and spin can be expected.
Hydrogen
One expectable move, particularly globally, will be to continue the fossil burn, using it to separate hydrogen and tout the process as green. Carbon implications aside, hydrogen is a negative-EROEI proposition; we would be better using the electricity directly in every possible application. Hydrogen doesn’t have existing infrastructure, has containment issues and – like PV – will never be buildable/maintainable beyond the fossil-energy system. The idea of exporting energy for dollars is a prima facie example of that ‘steeped in a falsehood’ mantra mentioned earlier; at the low EROEI represented by shipped hydrogen, there is no longer an ‘economy’ as we have come to understand it.
Nuclear
Not covered by MBIE, but all things should be considered. Despite the Rickover-led application to submarines, nuclear really does best at grid-scale, transforming atomic energy into electrical, plus some local heat. The disposal issues have never been adequately addressed, and impact many yet-to-be-born generations, the resource source is also finite; thus nuclear is unsustainable, big-picture. If we find we cannot maintain the grid ex fossil energy, nuclear has eliminated itself as an option.
Geothermal
Geothermal works in some locations, within geology-limiting parameters. Grid-supplying in current form, we may well see local activities gravitating to locations where it is viable. As with all technologies, geothermal can be expected to struggle with maintenance, beyond fossil energy.
Hydro
The best big-hydro sites have been taken, and we can assume that lead-times and environmentalist opposition will preclude any more. Small and micro-hydro, though, fits ‘local’, and is locally buildable/do-able. We may even see direct hydro again (mill-wheels, Hayes workshop). Small hydro is 24/7, even, controllable, locally maintainable.
Wave/tide
Few NZ sites stack up, the environment is hostile, most academic investigations seem to be unfavorable.
Storage
Storage is a major question, rightly being tackled head-on. We owe those who went ahead – the Bardsley/Onslow initiative particularly. Water-at-height is the most benign battery possible, and long after supply-chains fail, water held uphill will still be potential energy waiting to be turned into useful work at a time of our choosing, smoothing (if not eliminating) intermittency.
Whether to proceed with Onslow, depends on grid-related questions; can it be upgraded? Can it be maintained? Smaller, more local water-at-height storage, should be explored, discussed and supported; no activity can claim zero environmental impact but local water is lesser-impacting than most.
Batteries, so far, rely on the fossil-energised economy; their potential cessation of supply is yet to be seriously contemplated. Few folk contemplate the energy required to recycle stuff – we will never separate the materials in the current crop of cell-phones for this reason – and that the majority of recycling energy, currently, is fossil-originated. Like PV, batteries could be a decaying-over-time technology.
Firewood is, of course, stored solar energy (just not for as long, or as compactly, as fossil energy), gathered close to source. The danger is that if fossil supplies curtail quickly – think: geopolitics/war, pandemic, financial collapse – there could be a rapid decimation of standing timber.
Environmental and carbon implications aside, burning forest faster than the rate of regrowth is a temporary arrangement. Locally-grown/coppiced firewood is essentially carbon-neutral and has incidental benefits (shade, water-retention, land stability, biodiversity). Given lead-times, we should be contemplating it now.
Resilience
It is reasonable to assume that ex fossil energy, we will experience longer, more frequent outages of energy-supply. It is also reasonable to anticipate moves to circumvent logistical supply-stages (each being a potential failure-point, and each being a source of energy dissipation (leakage) in the left-to-right entropy traverse.
We cannot move the sun closer but we can – and will - move our harvesting of energy as close to solar input as possible. The word defining close, is ‘local’, so we can predict local energy harvesting, local clusters, local food-production.
While the global internet is likely to falter, fragments may continue to function for years. That format points the way to resilience; multiple stand-alone hubs have more chance of continuance, than does a monolith. Put another way; resilience improves with multiple redundancies. The recent flood/weather events have taught us this lesson (cell communication down; power out; petrol and gas supplies not getting through), but energy-reduction will encourage corner-cutting rather than capacitance-building; the latter must be prioritised.
Displacement
For the last 200 years we have been spatially cheating by digging up compressed historical sunlit acres – the fossil energies. Falling back on real-time sunlit acreage, augmented by the minor reach-backs of firewood, hydro storage and prior-season food, will inevitably involve competition for acreage. We are seeing that already; tree-planting vs farming vs urban encroachment; aerial space in cities, offshore space being contemplated. The real-time energy-capture will be orders-of- magnitude short of our current expectations; apportioning such on the basis of ‘the market’ will not work; physical strategies - and social ones resulting from those – will require Churchillian leadership and a mature societal discussion.
Conclusion
Attending the first online ‘consultation’ (a question re the overarching Limits to Growth, was the first one they answered); one sensed that MBIE are less sure about the Samuelson/Econ101 version of the world, than they were. That parallels a growing portion of society trying to answer resource depletion and overshoot with virtue-signalling wokeness. As a personal comment (the writer has spent a main lifetime evaluating energy-efficiencies for the greater good), admirable sentiments don’t change the physics/chemistry/biology of our poly crisis; those are not solvable by redressing colonialism and/or emission- cessation alone – although both are part of the needed dialogue.
Admittedly the discussion has moved a long way in recent times, but obviously it has further to go given that MBIE’s stated goal is to ‘encourage productivity and economic growth’; dinosaur territory at this point in the human irruption-trajectory. If by productivity they mean efficiencies, fine, but say so; call it what it is. But the goal should be: To ascertain what energy infrastructure we are capable of maintaining beyond fossil energy. Throw in a desired capacitance/resilience factor, and that is it; that is the all of it, and we are late already; very, very late.
Let’s get on with it.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/energy-transfer-ecosystems/
https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/
*Murray Grimwood comments on interest.co.nz as powerdownkiwi.
46 Comments
MH- great question and good on you for asking it.
Perhaps an appraisal in different form, might help: Consider a fossil-energised motor-car; we all know it needs fuel in, and exhaust out. We all know that if you run it until empty, it stops. We all know that if you shove a spud up the exhaust pipe, it dies.
Now, if you are inside the car, you can only see that it is going along, and that the driver gets out with money, gets back in then it goes again. More money therefore, from your viewpoint, equals more going. You can believe that more passengers equals more money, and therefore will fund even more going. The truth is that if there is no petrol at the pumps, all the money in the world - even if it is inside your car - is not going to get you going. Back one; no tankers equals no petrol at the pumps equals no going (irrespective of price offered). You had concocted an in-car hypotheses which worked until it didn't, but which was false.
We have oligopoly power generators sucking excess profits from the power market.
We have no chance of reaching societal goals while that happens.NZ is simply too small for a competitive power market. We have too few players as well as vertical integration further stifling competition.
Govt needs to have majority shareholding in the power generators and then move towards a system optimised power system run by a single non-profit SOE.
Everything we do in a modern society depends on power and thus its price. The system should not be run for, nor the oligopoly profits be siphoned off to a small group of shareholders.
Excellent article PDK.
In my view, the worst response to our energy/ resource predicament is to keep growing.
I for one enjoy the fruits of industrial civilisation such as running water, essential medications etc., but we should have been focused on maintenance rather than growth decades ago.
Collapse (a return to simplicity) is now inevitable in the following years/ decade(s), yet our leaders seem to react to every economic hiccup by opening the immigration floodgates to boost short term demand, thereby delaying the inevitable adjustment and storing up bigger problems for the future.
I am heartened to see that our energy/ resource predicament is being discussed more widely and I thank Interest.co and Murray for their contribution to that. I even heard a guest on National Radio talking about de-growth a few days ago.
We are certainly in big trouble and really do need to get on with facing up to the facts and making the necessary adjustments before our ability to choose how we adjust is taken away.
Work in the energy sector. The major item that this article misses is the need to store energy. NZ's peak energy demand it between 4-8pm on weekdays. You can't store generated energy from PV or geothermal or wind. Hydro lakes can but our lakes have very little storage. So far the talk has been around battery banks and pumped storage. Both are horrendously expensive in terms of cost per kWh. Our best option is to raise the level of lake Matapouri by 20m as it was originally intended. We would lose Te Anau village but we will secure our energy future for the next 20 years even if we all take up EVs
Manapouri - wee typo there.
It's an interesting proposition - I wonder if anyone has studied that as a comparator/alternate to Onslow. Perhaps not, given opposition to raising the lake previously resulted in a near single-issue election winner for Labour who promised not to do it - and then, when in government (I think) legislated to cut off any future prospect of such an action.
Always interesting PDK. The transition away from fossil fuels is certainly going to be challenging. Although I am not as pessimistic as you. I think it is doable.
This video on whether the world has the resources or not to transition away from fossil fuels might be of interest to the viewers.
Moving to Nuclear is the only way. Rickover is one of those shining lights of the 20th century who is forgotten now, but the US navy has never had a nuclear accident in its 80+ years of operation due to the excellent institution built by Rickover and his subordinates.
The appropriate way is to found a power company with an explicit focus on providing nuclear power, establish a university campus focused on nuclear power research and engineering (medical isotopes and light manufacturing of radioactive products) and focus on generating energy. Given the energy demand is largely in the Northern North Island, I think Auckland or Hamilton is the appropriate place found a nuclear programme. But we are incapable of this without a dictator willing to force it through. Our current political class is incapable of talking honestly about resolving the housing crisis, let alone resolving it.
I also think we will keep wind power, just not in the form of these enormous unrecyclable carbon fibre towers. We will likely see a significant civilization decomplexification (catabolic collapse is very likely). I recommend anyone who is under 30 tribe up and train for it. Collapse now and avoid the rush.
I used to think a lot about energy because it looked like that'd be the bottleneck to human prosperity. After all I grew up at a time when everyone had read Erlich's "The Population Bomb" and the intelectual extrapolation of that being the 1972 paper "Limits to Growth." These where actually important intelectual excercises even if the forecasts ended up being way off.
Now it looks like demography will get us long before we run out of oil, coal or uranium. Actually it's quite interesting to look at the data you now have declining consumption, not just per capita, but across many countries as well. It almost makes an old pessimist like me hopeful for humanities future.
As usual, PDK puts forward a well argued, indeed it might be said compelling case for degrowth-whether we like the idea or not.
In some respects, I think we will at some stage, have to do less with less. Oil/gas is a finite resource, though we will have it for longer than he thinks. More oil-take Guyana as an example-will be found and exploited. An early move to more local power supply makes sense, partly to help deal with the consequences of the potential effects on centralised sources from ever more extreme weather events.
However, while we should not rely on technology to allow us to continue 'business as usual', equally i see it ameliorating the loss of ffs. Perhaps that will come in say 20/30 years in the form of small-scale fusion reactors.
What he doesn't address is the population question. What will the carrying capacity of the planet be and can we juggle things long enough to see significant depopulation though rapidly falling birthrates in developed and developing(think China) countries? If not, how should that be achieved?
It’s not that resources are not finite - the universe appears to be finite. They just aren’t finite on many scale that is relevant to humanity. The article points out in its diagram is that all the energy we use is solar power. Since solar is the source the question is will this be exhausted either in terms of the sun continuing to shine or in terms of the quantity hitting the earth. The answer is no. We are tapping just a fraction of the energy available on earth. We have the technological means or can reasonably anticipate it to tap much more. We’ll be fine.
Your argument misconstrues availability of energy with accessibility.
There is much energy available, but only a small proportion of that is in a low-enough entropy form to create tools for us to harvest the energy with a significant return on the energy invested and thereby make it accessible for useful work
You don't need evidence to realise we as a species will not be able to suck oil out of the ground like we are currently forever, it must run out at some point.
I don't know if/when alternatives will be found, but to not consider that they won't be does seem a bit foolhardy to me.
Planning for, or at least considering, all possibilities does seem like a sensible thing to do. That includes PDK's [worst case?] scenario. It certainly seems more likely than the growth is possible forever on a finite planet others worship. Maybe we do both, growth first, then crash to end up somewhere close to what PDK has described. Is he wrong or just thinking further into the future? Life is getting harder and harder for the young so that makes me think we're already heading towards what PDK is talking about if we don't find an alternative to oil energy.
PDK isn’t proposing we plan for a future without oil - we should plan for that - he’s saying that a future without oil must as a matter of fact be a future with less energy. That is nuts. There is no evidence to support that view. We have the capacity to move beyond fossil fuels and consume more energy and we are already doing this.
he’s saying that a future without oil must as a matter of fact be a future with less energy. That is nuts. There is no evidence to support that view.
Agree no evidence as we don't know what the future hold for certain, but that isn't the same as having evidence that his view will ultimately be proved incorrect (and is nuts).
We have the capacity to move beyond fossil fuels and consume more energy and we are already doing this
Are we really? For me, to make that claim of 'already doing this' then we should be able to point to an enclosed system [community/country] operating without fossil fuels that is providing the same standard of living as a community/country using them. This would include any non-repeatable subsidisation from past fossil fuels.
I would be happy if PDK is proved wrong about operating with less energy going forward but to me it looks likely (not certain) we'll have to.
This article is full of unfounded logical leaps which it presents as absolute facts.
You imply that solar panels cannot generate the energy to make solar panels? Why not? Presumably because you believe that solar power cannot be cheaper than fossil fuels. This is nonsense. The cost of solar panels is subject to economies of scale and technological development - nobody knows how cheap they can go. But all evidence to date points to the cost continuing to decrease and them already being cheaper than gas/coal - ie fossil fuels. Even when storage is accounted for they are cost competitive.
While storage costs aren’t great (ignoring pumped hydro), there is every reason to believe there will be progress in improving the cost effectiveness of lithium ion and alternatives like iron air batteries. Writing an article predicated on the assumption that solar plus storage can never be cheaper as if it’s some iron law of physics is madness and the height of arrogance as to the superiority of today versus the future.
You also appear to be discounting geothermal. Again, you are assuming no technological progress. The major limit on geothermal is our ability to drill deeper into the earth. Geothermal energy is feasible anywhere if we drill down far enough. There are projects underway to do this and why can’t we do this - we’ve never really tried.
I take this article’s thesis to be that we need to prepare for a low energy future. Why? Our ability to generate energy is increasing. There is plenty of sunlight/fissile material to power how we live today and a healthy increase in living standards. The population of the planet will be in decline by the end of the century, possibly rapid decline. We may find ourselves with only a few billion mid 2100s and significantly lower energy needs. Likely everyone then will be laughing at the doomer articles today like we laugh at the Malthusian doomers from our past.
People need to focus on abundance driven by science and stop listening to false prophets of doom.
'Presumably because you believe that solar power cannot be cheaper than fossil fuels.'
Clearly you either didn't read the article, or you did so without divesting prejudice adequately. Think about that first graph; obviously energy underwrites money, 100%. So why think of 'cheaper'? The only yardstick is: Of what EROEI ratio? Solar PV (and I've lived on PV longer than just about anyone; over 20 years now, one way and another - I'm no knocker of it) has not the EROEI - not the available grunt - to deliver the energy required to supply the materials and collate a PV panel. Physically, it just won't happen.
Nothing to do with price; price is an artificial concoction totally contained within the second diagram.
Do the math. Show us your workings. Don’t just make assertions.
Cost represents resources. If something costs less it means it consumes less resources. I say cost per kilowatt hour is the appropriate measure of “grunt”. Solar and wind are already cheaper than coal/gas. Accounting for storage they are close. It’s fine, we will get there. We’ve only been seriously trying to improve the technology for 15 years or so.
The failure of your logic is a failure of imagination. Because oil is integral to our society you cannot imagine a world without it. But look at a Tesla, no oil, better car. Now your arygme
You represent an interesting phenomenon; the way sapience can get hamstrung via preconception.
Solar and wind are currently subsidised - in an energy sense - by fossil energy. No wind-powered truck shifted those pylons; no Nissal Leaf was built using PV either.
Money 'cost' can be reduced by keystroking more digits in some bank computer, and adjusting an interest-rate. Do you think that accounts for, or measures. energy?
No, it doesn't.
Some further required reading:
Plummeting 'Energy Return on Investment' of Oil and the Impact on Global Energy Landscape (spe.org) - The global energy landscape is facing a crucial turning point. Various studies show that oil liquid production is expected to peak in 2035 at a magnitude of 500 petajoule per day (PJ/d), but when the energy required for the extraction and production of these liquids is taken into account, the net-energy peak is expected to occur in 2025 at a level of 400 PJ/d.
How to Survive in a Future without Fossil Fuels | OilPrice.com In this post, I offer a rosy vision for what I think we could accomplish in the near term to maximize our chances of coming out shiny and happy on the tail end of the fossil fuel saga. I’m no visionary, and this exercise represents a stretch for a physicist. But at least I can sketch a low-risk, physically viable route to the future.
These are some of the best investments to ease you through the transition (with estimated lifespan). It revolves around having access to self-generated electricity. Main risk is availability of parts/skills to maintain.
- A low energy house (100y)
- Solar panels (40y) with microinverters (25y+)
- LiFePo4 house battery, sized to cycle only a third per day (20-30y). Alternatively, an EV with LiFePO4 batteries and V2H technology can be used as a battery when home or permanently once no longer running (20-30y)
- Long life repairable appliances (20y+)
- Log burner for cooking/heating/water (50y) plus access to wood to feed it
- Acreage to grow food (forever)
- Rainwater collection tanks (25y)
- Good quality corded electric tools and manual tools (20y+)
There seems to be information around the fact that we *could* reuse nuclear waste reducing it considerably.
Youtube link on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQ3gFRj0Bc&t=124s
I'm certainly not qualified comment but it is interesting.
According to Sir David MacKay; At 25 ml per year, a lifetime’s worth of high-level nuclear waste would amount to less than 2 litres. Note: Per person calc, published 2008 so could be outdated.
I'm not advocating this, I found it interesting as I thought it was much more. Times this by 9 billion and you'd get a big number, though luckily many third world countries dont use as much electricity, yet.
Perhaps we should all take our waste with us when we depart, lead lined coffin fired off into the sun :-D
Source: https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_170.shtml
This is the only book i've read on sustainable energy, so I'm no expert :-)
PDK likes to parrot the myth that there is some energy shortage out there. Withouthotair is a good read.
"“Fundamentally, in light-water reactors, out of the uranium we dig out of the ground, we use a half a percent of the energy that’s in the uranium that’s dug out of the ground,” Gehin told CNBC in a phone interview. “You can get a large fraction of that energy if you were to recycle the fuel through fast reactors.
...There is enough energy in the nuclear waste in the United States to power the entire country for 100 years, and doing so could help solve the thorny and politically fraught problem of managing spent nuclear waste.
That’s according to Jess C. Gehin, an associate laboratory director at Idaho National Laboratory, one of the government’s premier energy research labs.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for…
You might find this a thought-provoking, reasonably balanced read:
"And hydrates hold a lot of potential energy. One cubic meter of the material can release up to 160 cubic meters of gas. There is potentially more energy in methane hydrates than in all the world’s oil, coal, and gas combined.
...For one, hydrates form at shallower depths in the ocean than oil, and so are “easier to access than conventional reservoirs” of the fossil fuels that people use now to heat their homes. Another benefit is that gas hydrates come in “a tiny, concentrated package,” she said. “So you get much more methane from one of those than from drilling for gas at the same depth.”
https://bigthink.com/the-present/flammable-ice-methane-hydrate-energy-s…
He links a weakly-mounted apologist argument.
What’s more, the BBC has reported that it might be possible to pump CO2 out of the atmosphere and back into hydrates to replace the methane as it’s used. This could “provide an answer to the yet unsolved question of how to store this greenhouse gas safely.”
Nobody does real CCS.The reason is simple; it takes energy to to it. Lots of energy.
A sure test of whether something is really happening, is to do a search for it, and scan the images. If they are all artist's impressions - it isn't happening.
Try that with Carbon Capture and Storage... And I heard that comment, re artist's impressions and bull---t, in a 2007 lecture.... t'ain't gotten any further since then - and won't.
Is it maybe time for honesty around the degree of social engineering required to make a transition to sustainable energy use - it'll mean the wholesale re-design of our current low-density cities for a start, as well as the wholesale adoption of new ways of living and new technologies.
A couple of talking points to update a couple of ideas in the article - Tidal energy is gravitational, not solar, and we have good sites like Cook Strait with the potential to produce a lot of energy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_power_in_New_Zealand - if costs can be conquered, which may relate to scale, and it can get past the RMA and assorted objections.
And predicting technological advances is really tricky: a case in point is Hydrogen. The portable hydrocarbon energy-in-a-bottle without a contiguous network we rely upon has shaped much of the way our physical world and society. Hydrogen, while it can be clean, is difficult stuff to manage, but Ammonia (NH3 - much easier to handle and produce) is now usable in a new technology that cracks it in a new design of fuel cell. NH3 has about 1/3 the energy density of petroleum, but around 5 times the energy density of lithium batteries. https://amogy.co/technology/
And we may have good hydro sites - but what happens if they are inside Fiordland National Park - so maybe some value judgements need to get made, too.
There all sorts of idea out there, but proven oil reserves/NIMBY's increasing every year there is little incentive to crack on.
"Sustainable hydrocarbon fuels by recycling CO2 and H2O with renewable or nuclear energy
...An analysis of the energy balance and economics of this CO2 recycling process is presented. We estimate that the full system can feasibly operate at 70% electricity-to-liquid fuel efficiency (higher heating value basis) and the price of electricity needed to produce synthetic gasoline at U.S.D$ 2/gal ($ 0.53/L) is 2–3 U.S. cents/kWh. For $ 3/gal ($ 0.78/L) gasoline, electricity at 4–5 cents/kWh is needed. In some regions that have inexpensive renewable electricity, such as Iceland, fuel production may already be economical. The dominant costs of the process are the electricity cost and the capital cost of the electrolyzer, and this capital cost is significantly increased when operating intermittently (on renewable power sources such as solar and wind)."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032110001942
Given that you always present nonsense, I went and looked. There had to be a flaw; goes with the territory.
And there it was:
'can feasibly operate at 70% electricity-to-liquid fuel efficiency'
So, a 30% loss in the transfer, from as yet unbuilt nuclear, and from being-used-full-noise 'renewables' (better thought of as re-buildables). We ain't going to do it; energy will be so precious we won't be wasting 30% on any conversion. And if we get the window to build extra, we won't be sacrificing 30% of that, either.
The need to believe is strong in that one...
You should have read to read the next line - "so precious" at 4-5 cents/kWh - Manapouri is cheaper already. It is pretty lame if all you can up with is the nuclear plant hasn't been built yet!
"the price of electricity needed to produce synthetic gasoline at U.S.D$ 2/gal ($ 0.53/L) is 2–3 U.S. cents/kWh. For $ 3/gal ($ 0.78/L) gasoline, electricity at 4–5 cents/kWh is needed. In some regions that have inexpensive renewable electricity, such as Iceland, fuel production may already be economical."
"The most popular reactor types, LWR and HWR, need between 0.1 and 0.3 kWhth, and on average about 0.2 kWhth for every kWh of electricity generated."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890408000575
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