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It's Not Just Alternative Energy Versus Fossil Fuels or Nuclear - Energy Has to Become DECENTRALIZED
Proponents for oil, gas, nuclear and coal claim that we must expand these risky and oftentimes deadly types of energy production, or we will shiver in the dark like cavemen.
Proponents
of alternative forms of energy say we should switch over to cleaner
fuels to avoid a parade of horribles ... and point to the Gulf oil
spill, the Japanese nuclear crisis and the destruction of aquifers with
natural gas fracking as examples. Defenders of fossil fuels and nuclear
rebut this by saying that alternative energy isn't ready for prime time yet.
Who's right?
As I'll show below, the question is not as simple as it may sound.
Return on Investment
As Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Trudeau Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, notes:
A better measure of the cost of oil, or any energy source, is the amount of energy required to produce it.
Just as we evaluate a financial investment by comparing the size of
the return with the size of the original expenditure, we can evaluate
any project that generates energy by dividing the amount of energy the
project produces by the amount it consumes.
Economists and physicists call this quantity the "energy return on investment"
or E.R.O.I. For a modern coal mine, for instance, we divide the
useful energy in the coal that the mine produces by the total of all
the energy needed to dig the coal from the ground and prepare it for
burning - including the energy in the diesel fuel that powers the
jackhammers, shovels and off-road dump trucks, the energy in the
electricity that runs the machines that crush and sort the coal, as
well as all the energy needed to build and maintain these machines.
As
the average E.R.O.I. of an economy's energy sources drops toward 1 to
1, an ever-larger fraction of the economy's wealth must go to finding
and producing energy. This means less wealth is left over for
everything else that needs to be done, from building houses to moving
around information to educating children. The energy return on investment for conventional oil,
which provides about 40 percent of the world's commercial energy and
more than 95 percent of America's transportation energy, has been falling for decades.
The trend is most advanced in United States production, where
petroleum resources have been exploited the longest and drillers have
been forced to look for ever-smaller and ever-deeper pools of oil.
Cutler
Cleveland, an energy scientist at Boston University who helped
developed the concept of E.R.O.I. two decades ago, calculates that from
the early 1970s to today the return on investment of oil and natural
gas extraction in the United States fell from about 25 to 1 to about
15 to 1.
This
basic trend can be seen around the globe with many energy sources.
We've most likely already found and tapped the biggest, most
accessible and highest-E.R.O.I. oil and gas fields, just as we've
already exploited the best rivers for hydropower. Now, as we're
extracting new oil and gas in more extreme environments - in deep water
far offshore, for example - and as we're turning to energy
alternatives like nuclear power and converting tar sands to gasoline, we're spending steadily more energy to get energy.
For
example, the tar sands of Alberta, likely to be a prime energy source
for the United States in the future, have an E.R.O.I. of around 4 to
1, because a huge amount of energy (mainly from natural gas) is needed
to convert the sands' raw bitumen into useable oil.
Professor Charles Hall of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry provides the following graphic to illustrate the point:
“Balloongraph” representing quality (y graph) and quantity (x graph) of the
United States economy for various fuels at various times. Arrows
connect fuels from various times (i.e. domestic oil in 1930, 1970,
2005), and the size of the “balloon” represents part
of the uncertainty associated with EROI estimates.
(Source: US EIA, Cutler Cleveland and C. Hall’s own EROI work in preparation)Click to Enlarge.
(click for larger image.)
The
take away message from the graph is that the energy return on
investment was very high for oil in 1930, but it is very low today,
since the cheap, easy-to-get-to (and less dangerous) oil is gone.
But what about alternative energies? Professor Hall writes:
The EROI for wind turbines compares favorably with other power generation systems (Figure 3). Baseload coal-fired power generation has an EROI between 5 and 10:1. Nuclear
power is probably no greater than 5:1, although there is considerable
debate regarding how to calculate its EROI. The EROI for hydropower
probably exceed 10, but in most places in the world the most favorable
sites have been developed.
Figure 3: EROI of various electric power generators.
("PV" stands for photovoltaic - i.e. direct solar power.) Solar thermal has a much lower EROI, although Hall notes elsewhere:
Because
passive solar design is incredibly site specific it is very difficult
to determine just what the EROI might be. Rarely does an architect get
quantitative feedback on the system, finding a numerical Energy Return
on Investment (EROI) is nearly impossible.(Lyng 2006, Spanos 2005).
Nevertheless if various passive solar designs are built into the house
from the beginning then fairly large energy gains can be obtained with
little or no investments. In other words it may cost little to put
most of the windows on the south side, although that may greatly
increase the gain.
An EROI could be calculated for a
case specific location by dividing the energy saved each year over the
energy inputted to make that house passive solar. The EROI for a
passive solar would be very high because building passive solar is a
one time expense and houses last half a century or more. Studies have
shown that the energy savings can range anywhere from 30-70%, this
would cause the EROI to change vastly from case to case. If the
payback period is five years and the house lasts for 50 then the EROI
would be, apparently, 10:1.
So what does this mean? Comparing Professor Hall's two graphs, we can see that virtually all forms
of alternative energy - wind, geothermal, photovoltaic, and hydro -
have greater or equal EROI than fossil fuels and nuclear. Passive
solar might be lower, unless it is incorporated into original building
construction.
However, Professor Hall's figures were generated in 2006. All forms of alternative energy have become more efficient since 2006.
But - as we'll see below - it's not just a question of fossil fuels and nuclear versus alternative energy. It's also a question of centralization versus decentralization.
The U.S. Wastes More Energy Than it Uses - Partly Because of the Centralization of Power
As shown by the following graphic from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the U.S. wastes a lot more energy than it uses:
(click for giant graphic.)
America uses 39.97 quads of energy, while it wastes 54.64 quads (i.e. "rejected energy").
As CNET noted in 2007:
Sixty-two percent of the energy consumed in America today is lost
through transmission and general inefficiency. In other words, it
doesn't go toward running your car or keeping your lights on.
Put another way:
- We waste 650% more energy than all of our nuclear power plants produce
- We waste 280% more energy than we produce by coal
- We waste 150% more energy than we generate with other petroleum products
The Department of Energy notes:
Only
about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your
tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful
accessories, such as air conditioning. The rest of the energy is
lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling.
Therefore, the potential to improve fuel efficiency with
advanced technologies is enormous.
According to the DOE, California lost 6.8% of the total amount of electricity used in the state in 2008 through transmission line inefficiencies and losses.
The National Academies Press notes:
By
the time energy is delivered to us in a usable form, it has typically
undergone several conversions. Every time energy changes forms, some
portion is “lost.” It doesn't disappear, of course. In nature, energy
is always conserved. That is, there is exactly as much of it around
after something happens as there was before. But with each change,
some amount of the original energy turns into forms we don't want or
can't use, typically as so-called waste heat that is so diffuse it
can't be captured.
Reducing the amount
lost – also known as increasing efficiency – is as important to our
energy future as finding new sources because gigantic amounts of
energy are lost every minute of every day in conversions. Electricity
is a good example. By the time the energy content of electric power
reaches the end user, it has taken many forms. Most commonly, the
process begins when coal is burned in a power station. The chemical
energy stored in the coal is liberated in combustion, generating heat
that is used to produce steam. The steam turns a turbine, and that
mechanical energy is used to turn a generator to produce the
electricity.
In the process, the original
energy has taken on a series of four different identities and
experienced four conversion losses. A
typical coal-fired electrical plant might be 38% efficient, so a little
more than one-third of the chemical energy content of the fuel is
ultimately converted to usable electricity. In other words, as
much as 62% of the original energy fails to find its way to the
electrical grid. Once electricity leaves the plant, further losses
occur during delivery. Finally, it reaches an incandescent lightbulb
where it heats a thin wire filament until the metal glows, wasting
still more energy as heat. The resulting light contains only about 2% of the energy content of the coal used to produce it.
Swap that bulb for a compact fluorescent and the efficiency rises to
around 5% – better, but still a small fraction of the original.
Example
of energy lost during conversion and transmission. Imagine that the
coal needed to illuminate an incandescent light bulb contains 100 units
of energy when it enters the power plant. Only two units of that energy
eventually light the bulb. The remaining 98 units are lost along the
way, primarily as heat.
Moreover, many appliances use energy even when they are turned off. As Cornell University noted in 2002:
The
typical American home has 20 electrical appliances that bleed
consumers of money. That's because the appliances continue to suck
electricity even when they're off, says a Cornell University energy
expert. His studies estimate that these so-called "vampire" appliances
cost consumers $3 billion a year -- or about $200 per household.***
"As
a result, we're using the equivalent of seven electrical generating
plants just to supply the amount of electricity needed to support the
standby power of our vampire appliances when they're off."
***
Worldwide,
standby power consumes an average of 7 percent of a home's total
electricity bill, although that figure is as much as 25 percent in some
homes. In Australia, standby power accounts for 13 percent of total
energy use; in Japan it accounts for 12 percent; and in the United
States, 5 percent.
Increasing the efficiency of
appliances would cut standby power consumption by about 72 percent,
according to a recent study by the International Energy Agency in
France.
(Lawrence Berkeley National Lab provides data on the standby power drawn by different appliances.)
We can't prevent all of the loss of energy from energy production, transmission or usage. As the National Academies Press puts it:
Efficiencies
of heat engines can be improved further, but only to a degree.
Principles of physics place upper limits on how efficient they can be.
But we can prevent a lot of energy loss. For example, the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that we could reduce energy use by a third:
Massive
inefficiencies across the US's energy network can be eliminated
relatively easily, cutting about a third off the nation's energy use,
according to a major new analysis of power consumption.
The study from environmental think tank the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), entitled Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the US Efficiency Opportunity, argues that wholescale efficiency improvements could be in place by 2020 ....
***
If
the rest of the country achieved the electric productivity already
attained by the top-performing states, the country would save a total of
1.2m gigawatt-hours annually – equivalent to 30 per cent of the
nation's annual electricity use or 62 per cent of US coal-fired
electrical power.
***
"In
2020, if the US can, on average, achieve the electric productivity of
the top-performing states today, we can anticipate a 34 per cent
reduction in projected electricity demand," he said.
How do we increase energy efficiency and reduce loss?
Sure, we could talk about energy efficient appliances and cars, and providing smarter systems - such as using power controlling devices which make sure that only the amount of power each device requires each moment is delivered.
But the bigger picture is decentralizing power generation and transmission.
As the Rocky Mountain Institute writes:
Often the cheapest, and most reliable, distributed power is the power produced at or near the customer. Distributed energy -- often called micropower -- refers to a variety of small, self-contained energy sources located near the final point of energy consumption.
This
is in contrast to a more traditional system, where power is generated
by a remotely-located, large-scale plant and electricity is sent down
power lines to the consumer -- often over vast distances.
RMI's extensive research (culminating in "Small is Profitable," the Economist's
2002 Book of Year) on distributed energy resources found that properly
considering the economic benefits of 'distributed' (decentralized)
electrical resources typically raises their value by improving system
planning, construction, operation and service quality.
Centralized electricity systems with giant power plants are becoming obsolete. In their place are emerging "distributed
resources" — smaller, decentralized electricity supply sources
(including efficiency) that are cheaper, cleaner, less risky, more
flexible, and quicker to deploy.
***
Electricity
production at or near the point of use can greatly improve efficiency
and reduce the costs and energy losses associated with the national
grid while increasing security and reliability.
Micro
or distributed power (also called "micro generation") can take the form
of local solar, wind power, hydro, geothermal ... or even making
alcohol out of stale donuts to run your car. See this, this and this.
Indeed, even nuclear power can be generated and then used locally at the neighborhood scale - and a lot safer than Tepco or GE can do it in a giant nuclear plant.
Power can also be captured from excess heat energy. As I've previously noted:
Heat can be used to generate electricity.
This is true not only on the industrial scale, but even on the level
of your home faucet. Indeed, inventors have already built home faucet
kits which turn the unused heat from your hot water into electricity.
In hot climates, black thermal-electric mats could be installed on roofs to generate electricity.
Heat
is a byproduct of other processes, and so nothing special needs to be
done to create it. Just about every human activity and many natural
processes create heat, so we just have to utilize it.
A
dramatic example of wasted heat energy is the Oak Creek coal-fired power
plant in Wisconsin. The two units at Oak Creek suck up two billion gallons of water from Lake Michigan each day, and pipe it back into lake 10-15 degrees warmer. All of that heat energy is wasted.
I've also noted that there might be a lot of untapped "stomp" energy:
Another use of a free, wasted byproduct to generate electricity is piezo-electric energy. "Piezo" means pressure. Anything that produces pressure can produce energy.
For
example, a train station in Japan installed piezo-electric equipment
in the ground, so that the foot traffic of those walking through the
train station generates electricity (turnstiles at train, subway and
ferry stations, ballparks and amusement parks can also generate
electricity).
Similarly, all exercise machines at the gym or at home can be hooked up to produce electricity.
But
perhaps the greatest untapped sources of piezo-electric energy are
freeways and busy roads. If piezo-electric mats were installed under
the busiest sections [a little ways under the surface], the thousands of
tons of vehicles passing over each day would generate massive amounts
of electricity for the city's use.
As Ken Alex - director of California Governor's Office of Planning and Research - notes:
One
possible way to reduce the need for transmission lines has received
little attention until lately. “Distributed solar” is the term for
solar PV projects in and around population areas that feed directly into
existing transmission.... Rooftop solar is part of that mix,
potentially providing more than 40,000 MW to the system (from commercial
and residential roofs). That’s about 2/3 of California’s power needs,
although it’s not likely we will get close to 100% of what is
available. Ground mounted solar PV projects of up to 20 MW each could
provide much more, by some estimates many tens of thousands of MW.
Modest-sized systems could be sited at utility right of ways, along
highways, on the outskirts of some urban areas, even along the
California aqueduct.***
Distributed
solar is not a panacea, but it could provide a much more significant
percentage of renewable power for the state than currently contemplated,
and it could happen quickly.
Alex also points out:
“Distributed storage” could become a significant contributor. Many
sources of renewable power, such as wind and solar, are intermittent;
they are not necessarily available when customers need power. And
electricity is notoriously difficult to store. That’s a big reason why
California has a lot of "peakers" – expensive, often highly
polluting, high CO2 generating power plants that run only during peak
demand, usually in the late afternoon on hot summer days. If we can’t
efficiently store power for peak demand periods, we need extra power
plants just for those high usage times.
Something like
50% of peak demand in the summer in CA results from use of air
conditioners, pushing peak power requirements to about 65,000 MW.
Cutting peak demand reduces the need for peakers, and makes it easier
to achieve the 33% renewable goal. So, peak load can be shed through
action like "cycling",” where the utility cycles down individual air
conditioners for a few minutes each hour, and by storing power
generated off-peak for use on-peak.
Power
storage takes many forms. It can be as simple (conceptually, anyway) as
moving water uphill, and sending it back downhill across turbines to
generate power when needed, or it can involve exotic technologies. It
has tended to be expensive and inefficient. But that may be changing.
As battery technology improves for hybrid and electric cars, it also
has applications for localized electricity storage. For example, an
air conditioning unit might be paired with a modest battery storage
system that runs the unit during peak demand. Other approaches include
using off-peak power to make ice and then using the ice for air
conditioning on-peak.
Indeed, huge breakthroughs in local energy storage are taking place. For example, as I noted last year:
A scientist has figured out how to make and store energy by splitting water with sunlight. He says: "You've made your house into a fuel station [and we can get] rid of all the ... grids" [he's recently discovered an even cheaper way to do this]
So alternative energy versus fossil fuel and nuclear is only part of
the question. At least as important, power must become distributed
through micro power at the local level closer to the end user.
Indeed, given all of the mischief that the energy giants are causing, there is an argument that decentralizing power would help restore our democracy and our freedoms:
Wars are being fought in our name over oil.
***
Huge
energy companies -- some with earnings bigger than many countries --
are calling the shots. As long as we rely on them to provide our power
to us, we are buying into the imperial wars, injustice and destruction
of our liberties.
If we install solar, wind, or
whatever other micro equipment we can in our homes and offices, then we
could decentralize power-generation -- and thus -- decentralize power
away from the energy giants and their imperial political allies.
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JW
Excellent article, GW.
For years now, I've been searching for a home flywheel storage solution. Problem is, everything I find is intended to replace short-term batteries in a UPS, with power depleting from it rapidly. These units tend to be tall, closet sized devices that run at a high RPM. What I envision is a large, flat wheel that can be inlaid into a concrete floor, which turns at a relatively low RPM, primarily to be used as a load balancer, up until I could conceivably obtain enough input power to detach from the grid altogether.
Does you know of anyone working on such a device?
Why not a large air compressor with a storage tank to store energy? When the energy is needed it could work in reverse generating electricity. And when the air expands in the process of generation, it's much colder than the surrounding air so that it can also be use as a source of air conditioning. This is a pretty low tech solution -- not rocket science.
You would also have a source of air to inflate your bicycle tires.
One should never forget that PV=nRT!
Another interesting idea. I wonder how much efficiency there is in that method? Of course, even if it isn't highly efficient, it still could be worthwhile to do in off-peak hours, if I could get a rate reduction for smoothing out my load (similar to GW's water-pumping scenario (which I can also do as I've got over 200' of elevation change on my property)).
The efficiency can be very high if there's a real need for the air conditioning and there's a system to use the waste cooled air. There's also waste heat from the compression cycle that could be used.
Why so high-tech? The Hari Krishnas fill a big pit with manure, cover it, and pipe the resulting methane gas to provide heat for DHW and cooking. Just route your sewer discharge to the pit and it's a renewable energy source!
Now where's that tax credit form?
Damn, I already turned one septic tank into a cistern to collect rain water. It was backing up anyway everytime it rained so I figured what the heck.
Hmm... I do have a septic tank...
This has been one of the primary barriers to diversifying the energy mix of the nation all along, and nobody talks about it. The grid was originally developed slowly as the nation developed geographically. Due the scale required now to diversify to additional sources, the cost, operational and logistical complexities of developing source diversification at scale are daunting. Distributed generation solutions can contribute to breaking out of this conundrum. To the extent these kinds of projects can be controlled at anywhere from the state down to the household level, and not driven at the federal level, so much the better.
Mao tried this in the '70s. He shut down the universities and large factories and sent the elites into the countryside to gain revolutionary insight from the farmers and proles. Backyard steel mills, micro-manufacturing and water wheel generators, talk about greenie eco-orgasms. The result was some "minor" starvation with millions dead and China's economy wrecked for a decade, but hey, what the heck.
That's the thing, even though it was decentralized, it was still centralized planning in the way they did it.
The decentralization of power generation will be the death knell for the ruling oligarchs. The twin headed viper of finance and energy are the underpinnings of the control matrix they use to keep the world's population under their thumbs. Produce energy locally? That's a non-starter because the oligarch's can't control it. Of course, this will ultimately happen when the lights go out after the collapse. After all, necessity is the mother of invention. You can then thankfully kiss the underpinnings of modern finace goodbye.
Absolutely! And those oligarchs will sacrifice as many of the proles as needed to maintain their death grip on control of the planet's energy resources. This includes prohibiting competitive real alternative energy solutions that they do not have control over.
Modern finance is an artificial construct. It exists at the pleasure of the flock owners. It's easier to manage that the old system of starvation of the serfs.
It is interesting to note the amount of control over electricity generation equipment that GE has.
You are on the right road when it comes to evaluating the optimal energy production profiles of the coming age; as the earth's crust, its vast oceans and stratosphere, are further depleted/polluted towards the 'red' danger zone. We have to add to this energy economic analysis a new paradigm for understanding what 'economic value added' means in a non sustainable world and where the trade offs between population growth, economic consumption/production, People's social/survival aspirations have to be redefined. The current economic paradigm of the USA is NOT applicable world wide. Period.
"If we install solar, wind, or whatever other micro equipment we can in our homes and offices, then we could decentralize power-generation -- and thus -- decentralize power away from the energy giants and their imperial political allies."
As I and others have pointed out before. governments have tried and are trying to lay claim to owning the rain water that falls on your property. They really think they can do this. What would stop them from laying claim to the wind and the sunlight in order to protect their crony corporate interests. The only way to decentralize anything is by making it a necessity. Crash the fucking system already.
If the fucking system does crash, most of us and our families will likely not survive.
What do you mean trying? In most western states the Feds own all water and mineral rights, even on "private" property.
I have water "shares" and own all the mineral rights on my property in Utah. Yes, I had to pay extra for the mineral rights, but the water shares came with the property.
I bet a few rounds of .40 S&W would stop them.
Here at Fukushima Farms, we're hard at work decentralizing energy every day.
Lower risk? Really? If the risk is 10% of what it is at large scale nuclear facilities, but these small scale nuke power stations are 100 times as common, are they really lower risk? Seems to me they're higher risk.
I'd also point out that most people have migrated to CFL lighting or are in the process of doing so, and in some cases they're even using LED. The inefficiency claims aren't based on today's consumption patterns.
To biased for me... sorry. There's a thinly veiled attempt at selling something here.
Decentralization wins all day long, if quality of life and RISK management are important.
Look at the systemic risk of having 20% of your power off the grid for a year due to a major problem or supply shortage. Look at the risk to health with fission based nuclear. The point of this article is that it doesn't matter which form wins, you're not heavily invested in a $200 billion plant that loses a large % of the energy it produces before it even gets to you and another large % because it cannot recycle heat. As new technology comes along, you replace it on a smaller scale.
From an economic perspective, the "green" energy movement fails because it tries to take on coal & nuclear in a kw/h centralized formula. It's never going to make sense on a farm level (especially since it is subject to the same costs of centralization). But, when you add in all of the infrastructure that the State requires for new construction + utility meters that's probably as much if not just slightly less than designing a home to be 90% more efficient than they are currently (which is more driven to save union trades & material providers, but that's another topic) + some form of hydrogen/solar/gas to take you off the grid. Now, who in the world would mind never paying another energy bill again for the same cost you'd currently be paying for a home?
Decentralization and thinking about process & design is the most important mentality shift in this country for just about everything that's really screwed up because of central planning... food, water, education. The closer we can get these to be local & as cheap as possible without taxation, the richer everyone will be.
You didn't read the article, did you?
no shit, but who doesn't have an agenda?
Informative. Before we can really explore all solutions the lobbying efforts of the powers that be have to be shut down first. Just think if even half of the lobbying funds went directly into executing a plan of action on alternatives. Good food for thought over lunch.
The article is missing a 'Pro' (to make the word 'Proponents') at the beginning...
Nice article... informative...
I agree. Good article. One of the things we're going to have to overcome is the absurd zoning restrictions on stuff like home solar, wind and rainwater collection. While I certainly wouldn't want a 500foot windmill on my neighbor's lawn, we should be able to tailor sensible restrictions instead of zero.
Except that wind energy, while efficient to generate, is so erratic that it is monumentally inefficient as an input to a power system, since it requires expensive other spinning sources to compensate for its swings. So wind energy does not work, despite the bogus "efficiency" argument. Surely they know this at RMI, so there is an apparent cover up.
Some evil oil and gas ETF investor gave under 5 stars.
Decentralized energy = BINGO!!!
Check the history. Originally decentralized electricity was the thing, but then things changed. Why? Decentralized electricity is inherently democratic. It does nothing for our masters. If you move away from oil, coal and the grid, they are not interested. Alcohol, natural gas, and alternative energies need not apply.