The power world is dominated by coal, gas and nuclear, with some large hydropower in selected spots. Most people believe that it is likely to stay that way for some time. But there are more and more stirrings of a science-driven revolution, a transformation in how we generate our power. There is something deeply unpopular about each of our current big sources of electricity, nothing that has in any way upset society's love of electricity, but just the way we get it.
OK, I accept that for most people the way we get our electricity is by flipping a switch, and it is very much an 'out of sight, out of mind' provision. Still, if you are living in a big Chinese city, (and there are a lot of them), even if you can't see the power plant you can certainly see the air, and that ain't good. And even if you are pretty oblivious to concerns about climate change, you might at least have heard about Russia cutting off winter supplies of gas to some of its neighbors in disputes over prices. Or heard a lot of confusing and contradictory rhetoric around the desirability of new nuclear power plants. More about the science behind that another time.
Now in this world of claim and counterclaim, it is interesting to see just how change has occurred in some places. In 2008 wind power (onshore) in Spain generated more electricity than coal for the first time, though still behind gas and nuclear. In 2009, there were many days when wind was the leading generator of power in Spain. And given a reasonable regulatory regime, the levelized cost of onshore wind power is as low as that for gas, and cheaper than everything else. So I think we have arrived at a point, at least for onshore wind, where a second form of renewable energy has taken its place among the big generators. Moreover, it is less geographically specific than large hydro.
I make this point in part to split apart the mass of technologies that are called 'renewables', because they are very different. Some are commercial on utility scale and able to compete reasonably well at wholesale prices, others are very far from that. Some are amenable to use at small scale (for example rooftop solar PV or solar hot water) and others are only sensible at megawatts and above. Some of these technologies need scientific breakthroughs (which will almost certainly happen) to get to commercial competitiveness, while others can only drive down costs based on better engineering and manufacturing.
I want to pick this apart with some examples. The cost of the active module of solar photovoltaics has been falling rapidly. This is a combination of exploitation of research in materials science over the past 30 years, and application of manufacturing techniques, much of them learned from the semiconductor industry. And this is not incremental improvement. Rather costs have fallen by as much as 75% in just a few years. Of course the active PV material is just a part of the finished generating kit, so the levelized cost of power from solar PV has not fallen as quickly. Nonetheless, when your most costly component drops in this way, it gives impetus, motivation, for getting the costs of everything else down. And this will happen, and I believe happen quickly, over the coming three-five years. So solar PV is science driven, and manufacturing enabled. We are not finished with the scientific progress either. There are results just coming out of the leading nanotechnology laboratories, outcomes of research over the past decade, that promise another step change of lower cost and higher efficiency for PV.
These nanotechnology developments are also important for lighting. Solar power is light in and electricity out. LED lighting is electricity in and light out. The same devices, or very nearly, can do both. It seems clear to me that in a decade or less all of our lighting will come from LEDs, and most of these will be the products of our basic materials science investment in nanotechnology and nanofabrication.
Another area where science promises to play a leading role is next generation biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials. This is the third wave of biotech, following from pharmaceuticals and agriculture. It promises to take us way beyond ethanol derived from corn or sugar cane. And in so doing has the ultimate promise of addressing our energy challenges and the problem of accumulation of waste from urban societies. We must reduce the volume of waste, but to the extent that the waste we do generate can be feedstock for our energy needs, that is a good outcome. Bioscience holds the promise of making that outcome a reality.
Biofuels are not a risk free area. When energy crops are involved, we of course have to price in the risks of disease, weather, and the fickleness of nature in to our energy costs. And the science here is still developing -- yes there are commercial products making their way to market, but we still have a decade of development ahead of us. I know many people think of any kind of biofuels as competing with food for scarce land resources. But in the last year I have been listening to a lot of scientists who work on agricultural productivity, and they all have the same message: We can develop plants that double the production from the same land area, with little or no increase in fertilizer demand. If so why haven't you done this already? Because there just has not been the demand for it.
But why concentrate just on fuels? Chemicals and materials require volumes with higher values, and there is a big effort to make more of these from biological feedstocks rather than petrochemical ones. A good mantra here is to use biology to make things that are hard to make by chemistry.
So if solar PV and biofuels/biomaterials are science driven renewables, what are the engineering/manufacturing driven ones? Wind, wave, tidal (tidal stream and tidal range), 'utility scale' solar thermal. This is rotating machinery, deployed in sometimes difficult conditions, but it is all about engineering rather than science. And that means cost reductions will be eked out over years of experience, rather than step changes resulting from new science.
Some doubt the value of encouraging this sort of revolution to occur, and worry about increasing the cost of electricity. I don't. We have the opportunity to accomplish several desirable goals -- reduce greenhouse gas emissions, eliminate fuel price volatility, increase the diversity of our energy supply and improve energy security, and create new manufacturing jobs -- while we create the energy infrastructure for the 21st century. Push the science, refine the manufacturing, deploy at scale that which is ready, and set high standards for the next generation of technologies. It's as simple and as difficult as that.
Specifically:
Efficiency, wind and waste bio char bio fuels, and rooftop solar.
This combination is several times the worlds energy and fuel needs, forever, 24/7 using the existing fossil infrastructure with clean bio fuels, and faster to replace nukes coal and oil than to build one nuclear power plant.
This combination has NO technical barriers. No storage, that is done by waste bio char bio fuels. Zero land use for offshore wind and rooftop solar, and negative dump land for waste bio char.
We do need to cut our oil use by 90% by using 50 mile range commuter plug in hybrids, so waste bio char fuels can supply the rest.
For the first time in history, solar wind and waste can supply all the energy we need. NOW is the time.
All it take is the will to transfer the trillion in wars for oil, the 500M$ per reactor per year in breaks for nukes, and even more for coal
to green energy. feed in tariffs for efficiency, solar and waste bio char, and direct help for offshore wind.
Don't expect that from the GOP/Tea crowd, and pick the real Kucinich Grayson Warren CPC progressive on the democratic side.
Fluorescent: $5.00
LED: $40
Variations of CCT (color correlated temperature) at different viewing angles present another obstacle against widespread use of white LED. It has been shown that CCT variations can exceed 500 K[citation needed]. This is clearly noticeable by human observers, who normally can distinguish CCT differences of 50 to 100 K in the range from 2000 K to 6000 K, which is the range of CCT variations of daylight.
LEDs also have limited temperature tolerance and falling efficiency as component temperature rises. This limits the total LED power that can practically be fitted into lamps that physically replace existing filament and compact fluorescent types
...no demand for greater yield of arable land??...they must be living in a different planet, because there sure is a great deal of hunger in this World...and still, even though you can double production without increasing fertilizer use, as long as the World population continues to grow, the productivity gains will be lost in a very, very short time...this is a great technological breakthrough, however, to me it is another "taking blood out of a turnip" technology because we are not reducing the human population on the planet to adjust to what the planet can sustain and leave something for every other life form that exist here.
Not sure why you are upset about $40 cost for an LED light when you are willing to pay $300 for the lamp fixture you are screwing that light in. The $40 is close to the production cost of the LEDs, while they screw you by about 400% in the lamp store on the price of the fixture...
As for the color temperature... you get what you pay for. Manufacturers characterize their LEDs with high precision and when you order them bulk, you get them sorted by color temperature. It's only the retail chain that throws all of it into one bin... to save cost. And if you want, you can build electronic controller which let you adjust the color temperature of LEDs, too. So no, it's not a production problem, it's just the typical "screw the consumer" problem.
Between 30-50% of all food produced is wasted. The hunger in the world is a production chain, transportation chain, consumer cooling problem. Easily solvable with existing technology, no more land required. If we cared, that is. But we don't.
When are we going to invest in our grid system ? This seems the most pressing problem . Given the loss in delivering electricity to distant locations. Lets not even bring up the vulnerabilities of this antiquated , tenuous , out dated , one size fits all disaster waiting to happen . Smart Grid anyone ?
Now add all the other renewable energy sources to the mix and... the problem is perfectly solvable. All we have to do is not to stand in the way of the solution.
I have a couple of questions. Does the ionosphere have an abundance of electrical capacity? And can it be captured or can conditions be simulated here on Earth to utilize this kind of energy. There is probably something that prevents such a thing, but I read that a lot of high energy molecules are produced in this area. Anyone ... ?
And why don't we know this? We are so shallow! Like we think canopy beds are just luxury, when they were built to keep the cold out; we think a decorator did the castles we see in movies, when this wealthy decoration was accumulated over centuries! And we seem to think oil dropped out of the sky from heaven and radio waves were invented by DJs.
Gee, "The Power World" are nothing more than the interlocks of three powerful organizations, The Chatham House (EN), The Pratt House (NY) and The House of Bilderberg and each are built on the Rothschild/Rockefeller cornerstones.
The Carbon Economy can be collapsed in a NY minute with the launch of The Hydrogen Economy.
It is a pity that the writer has yet to figure out that when you break the water molecule apart and let it snap back together again across a membrane, that you just draw the electric current from the process and drive an electric motor with it.
But people need pictures to see this happening.
This pollution free 11.2 MW Fuel Cell Park became operationaÂÂl in South Korea recently: http://tinÂÂyurl.com/Â6Âskgw9h .
This outfit makes Hydrogen Gas for the Oil Cartel: http://tinÂÂyurl.com/Â6Âumyf7f .
Mercedes Benz is PRODUCTION READY with this Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric vehicle: http://tinÂÂyurl.com/Â6Ânxrcq2 , but the Oil Cartel are not installing hydrogen gas pumps on their service station lots.
So, there you have it.
You have the Fuel Cell Electric Generation Plant that runs the Hydrogen Production Plant that supplies the Hydrogen gas for the car.
Instead they've just thrown this potentially powerful new technology away by denying its existence.
On the other hand, I do think that we pose a clear and present danger to the continued existence of the biosphere on this planet.
Think bigger, think TVA big!
Let's think in terms of a engineered method to reverse the damage we have caused in terms of increased CO2 levels, oceanic pH change which is destroying crustaceans & reefs, over fishing, and climate change.
There's an old proven technology called Bio-Rock where a little electricity is applied to a grid that has coral attached to it. The electricity shifts the equilibrium of the reef building process into a more favorable situation with corals growths of 2 inches per ear being reported...This is warp speed in the world of coral growth.
http://www.alertdiver.com/Biorock_Electric_Reefs
See coral reefs are CO2 sequestering machines. In this process we would reduce CO2 in the oceans improving the viable pH for corals & crustaceans. These coral reefs would act as nurseries
Now how do we combine this for the future?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=offshore-wind-may-power-the-future
These sites are going up across the world. Which leads to my next point. People think of coral as only warm water entities.
But there are cold water varieties as well!
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/distribution-of-coldwater-and-tropical-coral-reefs
As Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith would say, " I love it when a plan comes together"!
Sure, you might say "they ARE necessary" as they do provide a lot of power, however, there is a MUCH better reactor design. Just a little thorium or uranium (or even LWR waste) in a MOLTEN mix is 100 times more efficient, thus 100 times less waste (or something like that) and that waste (since it is more radioactive) lasts only 1/500th as long.
Once initiated, the meltdown proof thorium reactors could power HUNDREDS of full blown Western civilizations...just by mining dirt (and extraction from desalinated seawater)!
I like solar and wind (because they, too, can power at least one whole population at Western standards), but I don't think they could ever match that!
On the other hand, dangerous LWR's scaled up "all the way" wouldn't even keep up with the rest of the oil that is still left (because of the need to extract the 0.7 percent of U235 out of natural U238 and because it only fissions like a few percent "of that" at most)!)
They are likely to make practical the changes needed for human survival on the planet. Surprisingly, our survival may be about to confront an unrecognized hazard. A solar storm can cause hundreds of nuclear plants to meltdown worldwide.
See the Aesop Institute website to understand why and how. And what might be done to prevent the worst.
Cheap Green, Moving Beyond Oil, Running on Water, and Black Swans, on the same site, provide a few examples of revolutionary technologies that promise to change the economic, energy and perhaps the political, landscape.