Comments on Next Big Future: Responding to Al Gore's Clean Energy Challenge

Uh. Solar scientists think we are headed for a lit...

2008-07-27T04:21:00.000-07:00

Uh. Solar scientists think we are headed for a little ice age.

How many solar scientists are on the IPCC? Hint: it is a whole non-negative number less than one.

The longer we put off the transition the better and lower cost the transition will be. We should do solar and wind where it makes sense without subsidies.

Where will the high carbon industries (like steel making) go? China. India.

Europe has a plan to build a LOT of coal fired electrical plants in the next decade. So they are no shining beacon.

America needs to build 150 GW of baseline capacity in the next decade or two to prevent grid overload. That is one nuke plant a month for ten years.

And to tie all of Al's grandiose plans together (solar energy from deserts and wind from the upper Mid West) we are going to need a lot of 2 MV DC transmission lines. There is no such technology currently available.

The #1 problem with this plan is storage. Al doesn't even mention it.

He doesn't explain how he plans to get past the NIMBYs and enviros who oppose large scale solar and wind. Not to mention nukes.

Anti-carbon is popular hysteria.

If we really wanted to solve the carbon "problem" at low cost there is a natural answer: trees.

Cool discussion. Not sure I agree about collusion...

2008-07-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

Cool discussion. Not sure I agree about collusion being a result of carbon taxes, but it's easy to check: some European countries have had carbon taxes for over a decade, including Germany, Finland and Sweden. Their energy mixes are rapidly evolving to low-carbon alternatives, so the tax is at least not negative in its effect. What we need here is a good study of the effect of these taxes, now that they've been around for more than a decade.

Incidentally, there seems to be one glaring omission in your otherwise brilliant energy plan: biochar. Done right, it's carbon-negative energy and some estimates put a global transition to biochar as capable of sequestering 5gt+ per year, so its effect is potentially greater than anything else you've listed, including Calera cement. It's not sexy, but it's important.

Al Gore's moon shot speech for solar and windGood ...

2008-07-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

Al Gore's moon shot speech for solar and wind

Good analysis, bad advice

Former vice president Al Gore gave a high profile speech in Washington, DC, on Thursday July 17 in which he called for conversion of all U.S. electricity generation to solar, wind, and other renewable resources within 10 years. In it he compared his goal to that of President John F. Kennedy who called for putting a man on the moon within a decade.

Just about any politician worth his salt knows that making promises that live in the future, especially well beyond the next election, are an easy sell. Gore knows, from experience, that ten years is about the lifetime of any big idea because it is within the grasp of two senate terms and the political lifetime of a two-term president. So it makes sense to package a super size vision inside of a practical time line. That's one of the few things he gets right.

Full details at Idaho Samizdat
http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2008/07/al-gore-moon-shot-speech-for-solar-and.html

The problem with green shift type carbon taxes, th...

2008-07-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

The problem with green shift type carbon taxes, they allow manufacturers to collude, and simply pass the costs on to the consumer. The prime example being the collusion to suppress the electric vehicle. What good does it do, taxing gasoline, when manufacturers refuse to offer EV's for sale, no matter how profitable they will be. And then there is Chevron, buying the NiMH battery patent, and refusing to sell the large format NiMH batteries "for transportation or storage applications". See:

EV’s that the Oil / Automotive industry suppressed

The Government had to pay Detroit to build 60-90 mpg full-sized HEVs in the late 90’s, which they easily did, and pocketed most of the cash, without offering the vehicles for sale.

The NiMH battery Pelican Brief, How Chevron Buried the Large Format NiMH battery

Another example is Methanol, Oil Interests are trying to shove their Hydrogen Economy gravy train down our throats, and so are suppressing Methanol, a far superior fuel to Hydrogen. Where are the Methanol filling stations and why don’t we have clean burning, environmentally friendly, 43% efficient Methanol engines in our vehicles, especially in series hybrid EV’s, with 4 times the efficiency of current vehicle propulsion systems. See:

The 43% efficient, extremely low emissions, Methanol engine, with a extraordinarily wide island of high efficiency.

The best way to achieve success is to have energy policy determined by scientists and engineers, selected by national academies, vetted for conflict of interest. And target technologies with the highest potential gain vs investment ratios and those that result in the fastest reductions of Fossil Fuels at the lowest cost. That leaves Wind and Solar way low down on the best options list. Many technologies, such as Nuclear Fusion, take years to develop, and private investment is not going to be sufficient.

A doubling in CO2 means a much higher crop yield. ...

2008-07-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

A doubling in CO2 means a much higher crop yield. Seeing as much of the world's dominant economic output is food, these nations would see a 10-30% increase in food ( economic ) output.

I doubt if that was factored into any equation.

The other question is - is it better to be warmer or colder or the same? Assuming Co2 has a marginal effect on climate - it may not - then it would be better to be warmer for food, energy, and health reasons.

I should add that Germany, for instance, has had s...

2008-07-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

I should add that Germany, for instance, has had such a tax structure for 10 years now, and the Netherlands, Austria, the UK and Portugal are also introducing similar measures (albeit slowly). So when I say it's mainstream I mean it's mainstream.

I'm sure there are many details of this plan that ...

2008-07-18T05:34:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there are many details of this plan that can be critiqued; the main idea, however (of a revenue-neutral tax shift) is pretty mainstream now. In Canada,the Liberal party (no, it doesn't mean "liberal" in the sense used in the US, they're the most MOR mainstream political party in the country) has proposed something very similar. In fact, Stephan Dion, the Liberal leader, has bet his political future on it. You can find out details at http://www.thegreenshift.ca. And it's not their idea originally, either. The British have extensively studied this method, as have others. The biggest problem the Canadian plan faces is that it's merely revenue neutral; the Liberals had an opportunity (since our government runs a surplus and is actively paying down the national debt) to accompany the tax shift with really deep cuts in income tax. That would have brought people on side in droves, but by merely making it "tax neutral" they've opened themselves to salvos of abuse from their political enemies. That is likely to scuttle the plan.

In some tax shift models, by the way, income tax can be entirely eliminated. Think about that for a while...

To say Gore's version of the plan is bad simply because Gore (or any other particular person) proposed it is simply the same blindly partisan knee-jerk reaction we're seeing up here. As I said, specific details can certainly be critiqued, and this site is doing that; what we've learned in Canada is that you really have to sell something like this--but you can, if you accompany the shift with deep tax cuts somewhere where ordinary people will feel the difference.

Is there any discussion on the cost to the consume...

2008-07-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

Is there any discussion on the cost to the consumer for electricity if you eliminate coal? Currently it is the most inexpensive form electric power generation. Nuclear power is the next lowest cost.

Wind power sounds like it is free, but it is not. A single 2.5 MW wind generator, is expensive to install, and stands nearly 400 ft high, and they require maintenance. Currently wind power is only feasible with generous tax credits to the power companies.

Solar is still very expense and would likely never provide a return on investment, before it needs replacement or major maintenance. It is likely not a viable source of electricity.

And the big question that has not been answered... There is no proven connection between CO2 and global warming, and trying to alter the climate by reducing CO2 is a futile exercise. CO2 represents 0.00038 of atmospheric gases all of which are greenhouse gasses. Our atmosphere in total is our greenhouse which is needed to sustain life on this planet.

The comment that "If wind power would make GE more...

2008-07-18T04:52:00.000-07:00

The comment that "If wind power would make GE more money then GE would develop more wind power. "

GE has two basic constraints on the amount of wind power equipment the company can manufacture:
1/ the number of manufacturing plants that can build the blades. The company has a huge backlog of orders for this technology and you can believe they'd rather have those units sold now, instead of later!
2/ the status of the tax-credits that incent energy companies to purchase the wind turbines.

If Congress would take a longer-view on the tax credits, say a 5-year renewal instead of the 2-year renewals we've seen in past sessions, manufacturers would invest in more capacity, because there would be a greater likelihood of customers. This is a long-lead-time purchase for wind energy producers (utilities), and the short tax-credit window doesn't get the job done.

Lobby Congress to create a 5-year incentive tax credit, and you'd see much greater acceptance of this technology.

A review by farsighted physicist Freeman Dyson app...

2008-07-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

A review by farsighted physicist Freeman Dyson appeared last month in the New York Review of Books, which is well worth perusing in its entirety, while an excerpt appears below.

Dyson doesn’t dispute the observable fact that concentrations of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” (insulating) gases are rocketing up exponentially in the atmosphere, nor that such a rise is likely to eventually have substantial impacts on our planet. However, he opposes the Kyoto treaty and like simplistically proffered remedies, a la Al Gore, as not at all sensible approachs economically to coping with the problem. It’s worth considering more closely the astronomical difference in costs in attempting to cope with foreseeable problems of global warming. As Dyson writes (sorry for the length; I quote it to establish essential context):

“William Nordhaus is a professional economist, and his book A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies describes the global-warming problem as an economist sees it. He is not concerned with the science of global warming or with the detailed estimation of the damage that it may do. He assumes that the science and the damage are specified, and he compares the effectiveness of various policies for the allocation of economic resources in response. His conclusions are largely independent of scientific details. He calculates aggregated expenditures and costs and gains. Everything is calculated by running a single computer model which he calls DICE, an acronym for Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy.

“Each run of DICE takes as input a particular policy for allocating expenditures year by year. The allocated resources are spent on subsidizing costly technologies — for example, deep underground sequestration of carbon dioxide produced in power stations — that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, or placing a tax on activities that produce carbon emissions. The climate model part of DICE calculates the effect of the reduced emissions in reducing damage. The output of DICE then tells us the resulting gains and losses of the world economy year by year. Each run begins at the year 2005 and ends either at 2105 or 2205, giving a picture of the effects of a particular policy over the next one or two hundred years.

“The practical unit of economic resources is a trillion inflation-adjusted dollars. An inflation-adjusted dollar means a sum of money, at any future time, with the same purchasing power as a real dollar in 2005. In the following discussion, the word ‘dollar’ will always mean an inflation-adjusted dollar, with a purchasing power that does not vary with time. The difference in outcome between one policy and another is typically several trillion dollars, comparable with the cost of the war in Iraq. This is a game played for high stakes. […]

“Nordhaus examines five kinds of global-warming policy, with many runs of DICE for each kind. The first kind is business-as-usual, with no restriction of carbon dioxide emissions — in which case, he estimates damages to the environment amounting to some $23 trillion in current dollars by the year 2100. The second kind is the ‘optimal policy,’ judged by Nordhaus to be the most cost-effective, with a worldwide tax on carbon emissions adjusted each year to give the maximum aggregate economic gain as calculated by DICE. The third kind is the Kyoto Protocol, in operation since 2005 with 175 participating countries, imposing fixed limits to the emissions of economically developed countries only. Nordhaus tests various versions of the Kyoto Protocol, with or without the participation of the United States.

“The fourth kind of policy is labeled ‘ambitious’ proposals, with two versions which Nordhaus calls ‘Stern’ and ‘Gore.’ ‘Stern’ is the policy advocated by Sir Nicholas Stern in the Stern Review, an economic analysis of global-warming policy sponsored by the British government. ‘Stern’ imposes draconian limits on emissions, similar to the Kyoto limits but much stronger. ‘Gore’ is a policy advocated by Al Gore, with emissions reduced drastically but gradually, the reductions reaching 90 percent of current levels before the year 2050. The fifth and last kind is called ‘low-cost backstop,’ a policy based on a hypothetical low-cost technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or for producing energy without carbon dioxide emission, assuming that such a technology will become available at some specified future date. According to Nordhaus, this technology might include ‘low-cost solar power, geothermal energy, some nonintrusive climatic engineering, or genetically engineered carbon-eating trees.’

“Since each policy put through DICE is allowed to run for one or two hundred years, its economic effectiveness must be measured by an aggregated sum of gains and losses over the whole duration of the run. The most crucial question facing the policymaker is then how to compare present-day gains and losses with gains and losses a hundred years in the future. That is why Nordhaus chose ‘A Question of Balance’ for his title. If we can save M dollars of damage caused by climate change in the year 2110 by spending one dollar on reducing emissions in the year 2010, how large must M be to make the spending worthwhile? Or, as economists might put it, how much can future losses from climate change be diminished or ‘discounted’ by money invested in reducing emissions now? […]

“The choice of discount rate for the future is the most important decision for anyone making long-range plans. The discount rate is the assumed annual percentage loss in present value of a future dollar as it moves further into the future. The DICE program allows the discount rate to be chosen arbitrarily, but Nordhaus displays the results only for a discount rate of 4 percent. Here he is following the conventional wisdom of economists. Four percent is a conservative number, based on an average of past experience in good and bad times. Nordhaus is basing his judgment on the assumption that the next hundred years will bring to the world economy a mixture of stagnation and prosperity, with overall average growth continuing at the same rate that we have experienced during the twentieth century. Future costs are discounted because the future world will be richer and better able to afford them. Future benefits are discounted because they will be a diminishing fraction of future wealth.

“When the future costs and benefits are discounted at a rate of 4 percent per year, the aggregated costs and benefits of a climate policy over the entire future are finite. The costs and benefits beyond a hundred years make little difference to the calculated aggregate. Nordhaus therefore takes the aggregate benefit-minus-cost over the entire future as a measure of the net value of the policy. He uses this single number, calculated with the DICE model of the world economy, as a figure of merit to compare one policy with another. To represent the value of a policy by a single number is a gross oversimplification of the real world, but it helps to concentrate our attention on the most important differences between policies.

“Here are the net values of the various policies as calculated by the DICE model. The values are calculated as differences from the business-as-usual model, without any emission controls. A plus value means that the policy is better than business-as-usual, with the reduction of damage due to climate change exceeding the cost of controls. A minus value means that the policy is worse than business-as-usual, with costs exceeding the reduction of damage. The unit of value is $1 trillion, and the values are specified to the nearest trillion.

“The net value of the optimal program, a global carbon tax increasing gradually with time, is plus three — that is, a benefit of some $3 trillion. The Kyoto Protocol has a value of plus one with US participation, zero without US participation. The ‘Stern’ policy has a value of minus fifteen, the ‘Gore’ policy minus twenty-one, and ‘low-cost backstop’ plus seventeen.

“What do these numbers mean? $1 trillion is a difficult unit to visualize. It is easier to think of it as $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US population. It is comparable to the annual gross domestic product of India or Brazil. A gain or loss of $1 trillion would be a noticeable but not overwhelming perturbation of the world economy. A gain or loss of $10 trillion would be a major perturbation with unpredictable consequences.

“The main conclusion of the Nordhaus analysis is that the ambitious proposals, ‘Stern’ and ‘Gore,’ are disastrously expensive, the ‘low-cost backstop’ is enormously advantageous if it can be achieved, and the other policies including business-as-usual and Kyoto are only moderately worse than the optimal policy. The practical consequence for global-warming policy is that we should pursue the following objectives in order of priority. (1) Avoid the ambitious proposals. (2) Develop the science and technology for a low-cost backstop. (3) Negotiate an international treaty coming as close as possible to the optimal policy, in case the low-cost backstop fails. (4) Avoid an international treaty making the Kyoto Protocol policy permanent. These objectives are valid for economic reasons, independent of the scientific details of global warming.

“There is a fundamental difference of philosophy between Nordhaus and Sir Nicholas Stern. Chapter 9 of Nordhaus’s book explains the difference, and explains why Stern advocates a policy that Nordhaus considers disastrous. Stern rejects the idea of discounting future costs and benefits when they are compared with present costs and benefits. Nordhaus, following the normal practice of economists and business executives, considers discounting to be necessary for reaching any reasonable balance between present and future. In Stern’s view, discounting is unethical because it discriminates between present and future generations. That is, Stern believes that discounting imposes excessive burdens on future generations. In Nordhaus’s view, discounting is fair because a dollar saved by the present generation becomes fifty-four dollars to be spent by our descendants a hundred years later.

“The practical consequence of the Stern policy would be to slow down the economic growth of China now in order to reduce damage from climate change a hundred years later. Several generations of Chinese citizens would be impoverished to make their descendants only slightly richer. According to Nordhaus, the slowing-down of growth would in the end be far more costly to China than the climatic damage.”
And not just for China. Notice, according to Freeman Dyson’s review, the stupendous difference in cost various approaches to coping with global warming entail. As his piece notes, according to reasonable extrapolations of economic growth over the remainder of the century, Al Gore’s suggested remedy would cost the economy (relative to simply doing nothing, i.e., ‘business as usual”) the staggering sum of $21 trillion dollars (‘disastrously expensive,” Dyson characterizes it). Dyson, contrariwise, believes likely and suggests holding out for (one of) the so-called technological ‘low-cost backstop” solution(s), forecast to have an economic benefit of $17 trillion. Difference in economic impact between Al Gore’s and Dyson’s recommended approach: 38 trillion (2005) dollars.

Updating Sen. Everett Dirkson’s familiar (but perhaps apocryphal) adage: a trillion here, a trillion there — pretty soon we’re talking about really gargantuan sums of money.

What does Dyson think is likely to be most effective as a technological “low-cost backstop” in warding off global warming?

“The science and technology of genetic engineering are not yet ripe for large-scale use. We do not understand the language of the genome well enough to read and write it fluently. But the science is advancing rapidly, and the technology of reading and writing genomes is advancing even more rapidly. I consider it likely that we shall have “genetically engineered carbon-eating trees” within twenty years, and almost certainly within fifty years.

“Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling’s wiggles prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world’s forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years.”

Sounds good to me.

Gore said today that he wanted the US to provide a...

2008-07-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

Gore said today that he wanted the US to provide all of our
electricity needs within the next 10 years through non-carbon dioxide
polluting systems by:

1. dramatically increasing solar energy production
2. dramatically increasing wind energy production
3. dramatically increasing geothermal
4. the utilization of clean coal
5. while keep nuclear energy production at its current level (20% of
electric power generation in the US)

I don't know, but Gore may be as dumb as McCain on his knowledge on
the energy requirements of this country.

1. Solar power currently represents just 0.1% of our total electricity
production. So even if you increased solar power capacity by-- 10
times-- current capacity over the next decade, solar would still only
produce about 1% of our nations total electricity.

2. Wind currently produces close to 1% of our total electricity
production. So if you increased wind capacity about 10 times over the
next decade, wind would still only produce about 10% of our total
electricity needs.

3. Geothermal produces about 0.3% of our total electricity production.
If you could somehow increase that by 10 times over a decade, that
would represent about 3% of our total electricity needs.

So non-hydroelectric renewables (solar, wind, and geothermal) would
only produce about 14% of our total electricity needs if we
dramatically increased current production by a enormous factor of ten
times current capacity within ten years. Add hydroelectric to that and
21% of our electricity could be produced by renewable energy. This of
course assumes that there will be no significant increase in
electricity demand due to increasing population and economic growth.

Clean coal? Coal produces 100 times as much radioactive waste as
nuclear power per unit of electricity produced and thousands of times
more toxic waste. Trying to capture the carbon dioxide from these
plants will raise electricity prices from coal-- dramatically. And
there is no long term environmentally sound place to put the carbon
dioxide after its captured. Clean coal is a total myth.

Just increasing nuclear capacity by less than-- 5 times-- current
capacity could supply all of our electricity needs plus the off-peak
electricity from nuclear could be used to produce hydrocarbon fuels
that could cut our oil imports by at least 50% . But even I wouldn't
say that this could be done in a mere decade. Additionally, replacing
all of our electricity through carbon neutral systems would only solve
about 40% of our total energy needs.

Both Gore and McCain need to look at the real numbers. This energy and
climate change problem is going to optimistically take at least 30 or
40 years to resolve.

Marcel F. Williams

I hope you don't expect to be taken seriously by R...

2008-07-17T19:01:00.000-07:00

I hope you don't expect to be taken seriously by REAL Global Warming/Energy - Power - Transportation/Climate Change players.

You used all that logic, factual data, and objective analysis stuff.

I bet you aren't even positioned to the hilt to benefit financially from ham handed, confiscatory government tax policies, are you? Huh? ARE YOU?

Didn't think so.

On the other hand, you've written a fabulously thoughtful and useful post, the link for which I will definitely forward to folks I know that are interested in this subject. Great job, sir, and please accept my humble thanks.

The really big question here is: "Why bother in th...

2008-07-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

The really big question here is: "Why bother in the first place?"

Gore is so biased and partisan, I don't see any re...

2008-07-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

Gore is so biased and partisan, I don't see any reason to listen to a word he says.

Perhaps Al Gore and T. Boon Pickens would consider...

2008-07-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Al Gore and T. Boon Pickens would consider financing the IEC polywell fusion technology if the WB7 experiments should prove successful this fall.

More likely, both of these gentlemen will prefer to mentally masturbate over windmills and solar energy instead, even if the WB7 experiments should be successful.

Anyone here care to take a bet on this?