If we think about the energy future and imagine the energy that will someday power the homes of our children and of their children, we know it will not be fossil fuels. Maybe it will be some high tech variant of nuclear power, but my view is that it will be some form of solar power. Here in New York, our city government is considering placing solar cells over our now closed garbage dumps. Last week, Mireya Navarro reported in the New York Times on a new City University of New York study of the potential for using New York's rooftops for solar collectors. According to that report:
"...66.4 percent of the city's buildings have roof space suitable for solar panels, said the CUNY team, which developed the map in partnership with the city and the federal Department of Energy. The rooftops could generate up to 5,847 megawatts from hundreds of thousands of buildings, the team said, compared with the negligible 6.5 megawatts yielded now from about 400 installations."
The technology of solar power is advancing and beginning to gain momentum. Last week, the Department of Energy provided a $150 million loan guarantee to a Massachusetts-based company that has developed what they term Direct Wafer Solar Cell Manufacturing. This reduces the costs of solar cell wafers by about 50%, therefore reducing the cost of solar energy. According to Energy Secretary Steven Chu:
"This project is a game-changer that could dramatically lower the cost of photovoltaic solar cells. It is exactly the kind of innovation that puts America at the forefront of the global clean energy race," said Secretary Chu. "As global demand for solar cells increases, this kind of technology will help the U.S. increase its market share and be more competitive with other countries such as China, which currently accounts for 60 percent of the world supply of multicrystalline wafers."
Writing in The Huffington Post, reporter Alex Wagner observed that: "If projections regarding cost savings are accurate, solar may be on its way to becoming competitive with traditional fossil-fuels -- though some in the industry remain concerned about barriers still in place." The cost comparison between fossil fuels and solar is not a question of "if" but one of "when." The cost curve is clearly headed down. While fossil fuels are still plentiful and relatively inexpensive, they are finite resources that over time will only become more expensive. In the end, it won't be environmental damage that moves us off of fossil fuels, but price.
I am not minimizing the environmental impacts of our energy use. Fossil fuels get us coming and going. They damage ecosystems when we extract them from the earth. They cause damage to people and the environment when we burn them for their energy. They are a major cause of global warming.
Our hunger for oil distorts our foreign policy, and the energy lobby has long had a major impact on American politics and public policy. Remember that fellah from Texas who used to be president? How much campaign funding did he get from the energy industry? We have many reasons to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but without a reliable and low-cost alternative, the transition to renewable energy will not happen.
This brings me back to solar power -- and the possibility of lower cost solar cells and cheaper, more reliable batteries. Those two technologies are the key. Over time, they will be subject to the same improvements and cost reductions that every consumer has seen in laptop computers and cell phones. If they become low cost and physically small, they could have an even greater transformative effect on our society and economy than the one caused by the Internet, laptops and smart phones. Imagine if the electric grid was your household's back up source of power, and the place you deposited the energy you generated at home but didn't need.
Hard to imagine? How about a stereo and 3000 song record collection you can keep in your shirt pocket? Imagine a portable telephone that makes it unnecessary to maintain a land line. How about a superhighway paved with information? Why is a solar array the size of a window any more far fetched?
There is little question that an improved, lower cost and renewable energy base is a necessity for this nation's future prosperity. There is also little question that the nation's fossil fuel companies and electric utilities will fight to prevent a system of lower cost, decentralized renewable energy. That is why the coming energy battle will be more than technological. It will involve political and economic competition as well. Fortunately for America, we are now part of a global economy. This new technology will be developed by a multi-national public private partnership. The economic forces that dominate America's political process will not be able to prevent this change from taking place.
It is difficult to predict the technologies of the future. No one would have predicted cell phones and iPods. But the switch from fossil fuels is inevitable. Some day people will look back on the 20th and 21st centuries amazed that we burned up these finite, highly useful geologic resources, instead of using them to construct plastics and other building materials. But I can't be bothered with that now, I've got to get in my car, refill my gas tank and get back to the city for the work week...
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Covering every commercial and household rooftop in the US with PV panels would produce only 30% of US energy needs at a cost of $42 trillion, about 15 years of the current US budget.
1000 sq ft of commercially available panels on each of America's houshold rooftops, would produce 12 kw peak or 1.2 kw average at a cost of $7 trillion , $60K per household producing .13 GW average or less than 5% of US energy needs. An average capacity factor of 10% for the US is better than you can expect with cleaning, shade and orientation issues.
Adding 710 GW or 7100 GW peak of solar panels to commercial buildings at a cost of $35000B would backrupt the nation yet provide only 25% of US energy needs. That's ten years of the total US budget.
http://www.ef.org/documents/PV_pressrelease.pdf
8400 GW of constantly running gas backup would be required producing far more GHG's than the solar saves.
Rooftop solar PV is a silly dream designed to cover the stuffing of the gas sale pockets of Big Oil in exchange for campaign donations.
A full conversion of fossil to zero environmental footprint nuclear is America's only option.
What's far fetched is thinking that advances in information technology say anything about fundamental laws of thermodynamics. We can get a lot of energy from solar power, but nowhere near as much as we get from fossil fuels. Not in our lifetimes, anyway.
1kW of thermal power from the sun per square meter, that's 1GW per square kilometer. Human's power consumption is about 50TW, 50,000 square kilometers of collector and we're done.
We do not need to wait for better tech, it's here.
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-14-your-tax-dollars-subsidize-the-sht-out-of-coal
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/08/01/solar-energy-cheaper-than-nuclear-energy/
http://www.ncwarn.org/2010/07/solar-and-nuclear-costs-the-historic-crossover/
http://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/NCW-SolarReport_final1.pdf
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-06-16-german-rooftop-solar-price-averages-less-than-4-per-watt
solar costs: 30 year 64 KWH per Wp. Germany less than 4$ average installed cost. 6% 30 year doubles cost, 6 cents per kwh no interest 3.35x ROI*, 12 cents per kwh with 6%. 2.5X ROI*.
* for 30 cent CA peak electricity.
The problem is, the big money buys the politicians.
There's likely to be some difficulty pushing efficiency past 100%.
You can have a solar array as small as you feel like. The main application of PV in recent decades has been postage-stamp-sized cells on calculators. But a solar array can't capture any more energy than is in the light that hits it.
"lower cost solar cells and cheaper, more reliable batteries ... are the key."
I'm relatively pessimistic about batteries. There's room for some improvement, but the basic idea of a battery has been tinkered with quite a lot already, and no fundamental breakthroughs are on the horizon. My best guess for major storage a hundred years from now is solar thermal with stored heat, but even that seems less likely than the total chances of all the unknown possibilities. Maybe supercapacitors will turn out to work. Maybe it will be quantum flywheels. Maybe fuel cells. Maybe we'll develop revolutionary materials that allow a spring to store energy well enough to power wind-up SUVs. Maybe power will be beamed through the air, or every street will have a magnetic third rail, eliminating the need for large-scale mobile stored energy. Maybe we'll find a way to convert back and forth between iron-56 + magnesium-26 and iron-58 + magnesium-24. Maybe quantum flywheels. Ordinary chemical batteries that meet 2111CE standards seem a bit less likely than quantum flywheels.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4216134/Activated-graphene-boosts-supercaps
Democratically-owned and fairly compensated solar power will put money INTO our local economies in the forms of jobs, property value increases and actual cash that is currently being pulled OUT of our economies by Big Energy. It is critical for the renter/high-rise/low income resident to have access to Solar Gardens as well, so that everyone can participate in the renewable revolution, not just suburban McMansionites.
Germany, Italy and Australia are getting it, by making sure that WE get returns on investment that are comparable to those Big Energy generators are guaranteed. Shouldn't we be doing the same?
Thanks again for leaving our healthy, fragile, biodiverse deserts OUT of the equation. We can do it all in the built environment, on Superfund, and Brownfield sites. no wilderness needs to be killed for Chevron Solar profits!
If you want a real laugh you should check out the Energy section in Forbes online. The dirty energy companies sure know where to invest their onlne schills.
Wind on a large scale, however, may need such investments.
First google hit says a typical home's power consumption is 600 watts, averaged over the course of a day. http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/question418.htm
Start with the 100 watts, and use 35%. Knock it down by another factor of 5 for night, clouds, not having your window face directly south, etc. That gives a crude estimate of 7 average watts per square foot. You'd need about six of those 3x5 solar arrays.
No, typical solar cells convert at 10-20%.
Oil companies knows this and is hoping that consumers will buy this folly of 'solar and wind' so they can pretend like they are helping the earth while jacking up the cost of fuel and calling it 'premium'.
WHY?
In California you can finance or lease a solar set up with 0 down with your monthly payments being equal or less than you current electric bill. Almost all of these houses get 100% of their energy from solar with some actually feeding power back into the grid. Once the panels are paid off people will no longer have to pay for the energy they use at home. As technology advances exponentially solar will only become more efficient and less expensive (like everything else in technology) providing more financial incentives for people to go solar. As of now the ROI on solar is completely worth it since you will pay no more than your current electric bill until the panels are paid off, then you have free energy for your house. Nuclear cannot provide free energy for any consumer because uranium is not abundant or sustainable.
Look at http://www.sungevity.com/ to see how they can provide this service. Maybe you can find a similar company that operates in your state. With zero down and a your monthly payments being equal or less than your current electric bill with a future of no electric bill in 5-7 years how can anyone be against using solar.
As far as the need to re-industrialize the United States economy, solar will not cut, nor will it ever, since the amount of energy required to power major industry requires nuclear fusion.
The thermodynamic efficiency of nuclear is LOWER than coal, oil or natural gas, because the nuclear plants must operate at a lower temperature. This is a fact taught in all engineering schools.
Current PV panels return five times as much energy, during their 25 year warranty period than is needed to make them, according to the Jerry Ventre, co-author of Photovoltaic Systems Engineering.
Nuclear proponents never talk about all of the externalized costs included in the most extraordinarily complex system ever devised to boil water. Guess who gets to pay for the clean-up when they go bad -- See Japan.
Who cares what it costs?
Civilization must constantly develop higher and higher forms of intense energy generation in order to stay modern and improve the living standards of a growing population.
Coal, natural gas, etc. are all the fossil fuels that society can no longer rely upon on its own, therefore, nuclear fission is the next logical steps, which, obviously, we're 13 years behind schedule.
Your logic about focusing all of our efforts on 'reflecting' energy instead of generating it ourselves, makes about as much sense and adding a spoiler to a kiddie boom-boom go-cart when we have automobiles, planes and rockets to travel much much faster.
- The sun (it will run out millions of years from now)
- interplanetary gravitation (for the earth, primarily lunar)
- Earth's internal energy (the molten core)
All other forms of energy on earth either drive from these of are very finite. All hydrocarbons will run out in the near future as will raw uranium.
Hydrogen is NOT a source of energy, but a storage material. That is, to use it for portable energy, it must be made from water using a lot of energy.
Note that hydroelectric, wind, and PV are all forms of solar energy. Humans are not really tapping into earth energy and gravitational energy much yet.
Basically the people on earth do not have too many long term choices for energy.
While nuclear fusion is theoretically possible, it look like practical usage it hundreds of years off.
Fusion technology probably isn't here yet even though we've made the hydrogen bomb. But fusion still creates far more energy than splitting up water molecules, and water isn't exactly rare with 71% of our earth's surface covered by water.
Fission is less plentiful than fusion, but it's more than just uranium. Look up thorium ore (not the WOW thorium) Nuclear fission can easily last us a few or several generations. There's probably more fission energy on earth than crude oil energy.
However, for applications that need steady power, like a fridge, it's perfect for taking pressure off our energy grid, especially during the hot summer months.
I do agree that Europe's practice of taxing fossil fuels heavily seems to have worked very well for them.
1) Their cities and towns are more concentrated and there's less of our endless suburbia
2) There's better rail transportation between their town and cities. Where there's demand, supply rises to meet it.
3) Their cars, although ugly, are typically small and fuel efficient which is better for our planet, costs less to buy and operate, and delays the day when our fossil fuels run out.
The worst public private partnership was probably the 'partnership' of the Portuguese Crown and its private contractors exploring down the coast of Africa (1420's). That partnership introduced commercial slavery into the new world and reintroduced it into the old world, where it was almost gone. Government should regulate commerce not partner with it.
I think I'm paraphrasing British historian Paul Johnson (A History of the American People).
As for nuclear, light water reactors are, by design, unstable and extremely dangerous and there is nothing that can be done to that design to make it safe. BUT ...
There are some other reactor designs that are very safe, that can NOT melt down. these will probably help provide power for a while, but they face a similar problem to oil energy in that the global supply of uranium is very small.
In the end, only solar, gravitational and earth energy sources will be viable over the long term.
Your right about the energy battle though. Fossil fuels are on the way out right now. Carbon dioxide does cause global warming. It's not rocket science. Less carbon in the air = good for you and me. Or you can take a walk out in L.A. smog and figure it out yourself.
The left hasn't always attacked nuclear my dear cookie cutter partisan friend. Oh just recently by the way:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/21/chris-huhne-nuclear-power-stations
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/opinion/24Von-Hippel.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
Nuclear's popularity obviously oscillates with public emotional shocks like 3 mile Island, Chernobyl, and the recent Fukishima Daichi crisis. But it's obvious to everyone that the E source with the least amount of long term drawbacks is going to be the most the most sought after as technology progresses and the environment worsens. For my sake, I still believe nuclear has a place in our world. Albeit a temporary one.