• 560 Days Ago
• 07/29/2010

Decades...

Perhaps decades for renewables to replace fossil fuels, but do we want it to be large or small decades?

How about we start right now and tip the economic scales away from fossil fuels and toward renewables?  Don't we want to free ourselves from shipping boatloads of cash overseas for oil and from the problems created by burning coal?

Make renewables more profitable, fossil fuels a bit less profitable and the rate of installing wind, solar, geothermal, and storage will accelerate. 

Remember, fossil fuels now provide a huge amount more of the power on our grid than do renewables.  Giving fossil fuels even a 1% subsidy cut would free up enough money to boost renewables subsidies by huge percentages and cause investors to rush to renewable projects.

(Then we'll get all that money back later in lower health care costs, cheaper utility bills, a livable future for those who follow us, and being able to tell the oil countries to kiss our grits....)

• 559 Days Ago
• 07/30/2010

pointed out

They make the point most of us are aware of and that is that in 20 years renewables will be a matching force to the current fuels.

Until that time there is limited infrastructure, and a lot more reseacrh into best practices and methodologies of rolling out large scale services needs to be done.

Don't get me wrong they could make petrol immpossible to buy tomorrow, but the world would complain. Hence a sustainable pattern of take-over is required.

The world is in a double recession, caused by the banking industry and housing market...should be 1 house per home-owner and renewable markets and they can remove this recession problem for good.

Unfortunately it wont happen and our next recession will be in 8-10 years after this one, as usual.

I resent prices constantly going up like the next person, and while we have been blaming big companies for the worlds failing for sometime I dont see that changing.

We are in a greed is good, free market.

How else can you get Macdonalds and fast food companies to become immune to prosecution for selling a product that is frankly bad. While associating childrens advertising with a big fat greasy burger.

How else can you get software manufactures becoming immune to prosecution when there software is buggy and losing people there life savings when they use it.

How else can you get a banking industry that charges 100%+ of the money they give to you in payment for a house you cant afford, becuase they put the same rates up so you cant. Knowing they get to resell the house again later... They after all know all the figures...when they put it up they know the precise people who it affects... Becuase i would in there place.

How else can greedy home-owners purchasing a few thousand houses (or 2+) and then rent out entire areas and charge what they like while the government sits back and says good on them.

How else do you get the service industry giving you bigger and bigger bills every year because non-renewable fuel is running out.

How else can your paypacket stay the same year after year, while companies force most of the working world to accept less than the minimum wage, knowing you cant do jack about it if you dont have a union.

How else can you get governments saying unions are bad, when without one people have no rights, or one right only...the right to leave.

Only in a really bad nightmare would i do this to an enemy. Welcome to YOUR Home.

• 559 Days Ago
• 07/30/2010

baseload

Solar may only work when the suns out while wind works best at night (energy storage aside).  The two technologies complement each other, its just the middle point transition time that baseload becomes difficult.

A solution is obviously energy storage (vanadium redox, pumped hydroelectric, heated salts, batteries (A123 Systems), etc) but there's another, equally capable and almost more attractive for its environmental friendliness:  Gasification of MSW, sewage and other waste streams.  

Pyrolysis of our waste offers a steady consistent power to even out the ebb and flow of other renewables.  It turns waste into energy; it allows for a sort of recycling of the near-inevitable by-products of civilization; its cost effective (profitable even), reduces landfill, and promotes recycling of other (less cost effective yet still) recyclable material... as these materials would naturally be filtered in the pre-processing stream, removed and sent off to be recycled... the remaining waste hydrocarbons to be gasified for their energy leaving a small fraction of the original product to be returned to landfill if not sent to other plants for further processing.

Plasma arc gasification also works for the heavy metal containing streams (also easily removed in the sorting process) which would drastically reduce the amount of materials necessary to be mined to begin with.


Also, in your last paragraph you say that there isn't adequate infrastructure in place... you come back and say that one could be built as subsidies are ended and renewables become more competitive (as you state that in the case of wind, they already are) but...

I know this one goes a little counter some of the other comments, as well as an implied suggestion of your post altogether ...

Instead of calling out the (inefficiencies and imbalance in the) subsidies such that they are ended... shift them.  If there was a adequate (yet minimal) period put in place, (say 3-5 years?) for the market to prepare, you could put in place a 10 year transition for this shift to happen. 

My idea would be that, after an adequate 'heads-up' and preparation, the first year subsidies to fossil fuels are reduced by 10% from year 0 to 90%, as that 10% is shifted to renewables. The second year, 80% of what they were in year 0, and raised to 20% for renewables.  so on and so forth until, at the end of the 10th year, renewables are getting 100% of the subsidies from fossil fuels, and fossil fuels possibly only  the subsidies renewables were getting up to year 0.

For the following ten years, cut subsidies for both fossil fuels and renewables by 10% per year, shifting it to nothing (read: less taxes).

This way, after 23+ years, there would be a complete shift of fossil fuel subsidies to renewable subsidies, followed by a complete ramp down of subsidies altogether as the infrastructure is in place and only enough taxes necessary to maintain it are collected... which, even those should be factored into the price of the fuel itself as is. 

Read: Coca Cola and McDonalds would still make plenty of money without our massive government subsidies for the agriculture and shipping industries that support them, as what are currently subsidies (taxes) would be in the citizens pocket to choose what to spend it on versus taxed from the citizen for the government to choose.  The price may raise, but so would the money in the citizens pocket to purchase them... if they so choose.  It would also put pressure on these companies to become (even) more efficient (than they currently are at raping our planet and us) so as to communicate to possibly even lower prices, relatively speaking, than what they're currently charging.

The less taxes charged means the more wealth the individuals in the society have, and the more they have, the more private investment they can choose to make into yet more advanced technologies to accelerate our productiveness.  I would be willing to say that, had that actually been the case to begin with (as it was before this massive redistribution of wealth following the dot.com bubble), we would already have these <$1 per watt solar panels and super-dense, super-fast charging batteries in our plug-in hybrids and electric cars. 

The holdup on the release of the technologies I've read about in this magazine (and others) for years is worth of an issue in and of itself, if not an entire section devoted to it in every subsequent issue.

Have you seen these feel-good info-graphics about the scale of American manufacturing?  The huge pictures of piles and piles of cheeseburgers, coke/pepsi cans, barbie dolls, and Chevy emblems.... the volume we produce (and consume.. and then throw away) is massive.  Honestly, unfathomable for a single mind to wrap itself around.  Look at how much weight Walmart carries in the industry when they have even GE trembling in subservience as they (Walmart) order them to include RFID tags on all incoming pallets.  Walmart alone could create a shift in the industry so large and so fast, all others would copy or die due to inefficiencies.

As Mr Wallace said, tip the scales just a little bit and the whole process will accelerate.

• 559 Days Ago
• 07/30/2010

Fossil Fuel subsidies much higher

The stark contrast of high global subsidies for the fossil fuel industry vs. renewables is even greater than indicated. The recent IEA report cited via the recent BNEF analysis (http://www.iea.org/files/energy_subsidies_slides.pdf) only assessed some global downstream fossil fuel consumption subsidies. Additional global upstream fossil fuel production subsidies are substantial, and more difficult to assess due to the lack of transparency within the respective regulatory bodies (e.g. government granted tax/royalty abatement schemes). Some indicative US related fossil fuel production subsidies research from the past few years, via http://www.elistore.org/reports_detail.asp?ID=11358  and  http://www.foe.org/green-scissors  indicates that these additional upstream fossil fuel production subsidies will be considerable. The IEA, OECD and Global Subsidies Initiative (http://www.globalsubsidies.org/files/assets/effects_ffs.pdf)are each progressing research on these substantial additional upstream global fossil fuel subsidies. Additionally, the global military expenditures to secure fossil fuel production, and access same, provide many US$Billions more, in indirect subsidies, to the global fossil fuel industry. Yet additional climate change related fossil fuel subsidies are, e.g. weather related food production constraints and increased insurance costs, re: higher risks to health and tangible assets. In aggregate, global fossil fuel subsidies related to consumption, production, security and climate change are currently estimated to approach US$1 Trillion/year and the trajectory is projected to be significantly upward (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmtreasy/231/23105.htm#a11). It is not viable to be held hostage to the fossil fuel industry's demand that we continue to subsidise/externalise these fossil-fuel costs at the expense of the mutually inclusive imperatives of economic stability, energy security and environmental responsibility. A swift/deliberate global transition from the fossil-fuel paradigm to responsible renewables is far more viable, e.g. photovoltaic, CSP, solar-thermal, geo-thermal, wind, tidal, non-food-competing bio-fuel. While the struggle will be intense, these mutually inclusive, socio-economic and environmental solutions are well within our grasp (http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/Energy-Revolution-A-Sustainable-World-Energy-Outlook/). The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones...and we now need the emotional maturity to proactively recognise that the fossil fuel paradigm must also end, with most of the fossilised carbon left in the ground.

Tony Sadownichik
International Head of Research
Greenpeace International

• 559 Days Ago
• 07/30/2010

Seems biased

This is the third article I've seen on TR in the past week and a half lending a sympathetic ear to renewables and showing fossil fuels in a bad light. I personally would rather see cleaner energy used, but oil has served us well for over 100 years. I question the Bloomberg report cited in your article as I could not read it from their website, but I'm sure they have no agenda when their homepage is covered in pics of solar panels and wind turbines. I have seen reports like this posted by other readers, and the items called subsidies were more than questionable (like road repair). Wish I could find the other links, but they were almost laughable. Also, they kind of need to include bio-fuels because that may be the biggest subsidy for renewables.

Greed is one reason big oil gets such a bad rap, but unlike most things in life, greed does not discriminate. Christian or Muslim, Republican or Democrat, Capitalist or Socialist, White or Black, Man or Woman- all have greed or corruption in their histories. Clean energy will be no different. Perhaps 100 years from now, these green companies and co-ops will be the bad guys. One day they may have power over our lives controlling what we pay to heat and cool our homes, drive our cars, and power our cities. They too will become big business and another generation will be there to bash them. We may even go to war over the rare earth materials needed to make some clean energy. Some of those materials may damage our planet because of improper usage. Just a thought.

Until then, we'll need to have hope that a Da Vinci or a Tesla or Einstein is out there somewhere making a discovery to make clean energy completely viable and writing articles like this unecessary.

• 559 Days Ago
• 07/30/2010

as long as nobody includes the hidden overhead

We also spend $300 billion overseas providing safety to some of those fossil fuels from the middle east.

And AMAZINGLY the costs for these are still reasonable (as long as nobody includes the hidden overhead).

• 559 Days Ago
• 07/30/2010

the missing link

Global warming is making us think,
That unless we play fair,
And stop polluting the air,
The human race could soon be extinct.

• 558 Days Ago
• 07/31/2010

Circular logic

"If the fossil fuel subsidies disappear, gasoline and electricity prices will increase. That will help renewables compete, and increase in scale, but it will take years--likely decades--for them to reach levels high enough to replace all fossil fuels."

So, your justification for keeping the status-quo is that that is the way the status-quo currently is. Nice circular logic. The oil industry must love you.

• 558 Days Ago
• 07/31/2010

Not comparing apples with apples

It's clear that this report is not comparing apples with apples.
So what if the oil industry gets $600 billion in tax subsidies if it is also generating over a trillion dollars in tax revenue for the government. There's a net generation of tax revenue for the US gov't.

The argument against corn ethanol (and some other government sponsored energy technologies) is that the US gov't will end up spending more in subsidies than it will ever generate in the future.

We need to provide start-up funds to those technologies that can provide net revenue generation after a set amount of time. And right now, corn ethanol will not do this.

• 556 Days Ago
• 08/02/2010

Upgrade the grid

Everyone talks about replacing fossil fuels with wind or solar or other renewable resources, which I'm all for.  Nobody talks about coming up with something new to upgrade the power delivery system in use in this country.  In excess of 60% of generated power is lost due to thermal or other losses.  If we can develop a better means of power delivery all of a sudden our solar and wind capacities are making what we need which will reduce the amount of coal and natural gas required for power generation. 

The only reason I bring this up, is that this is seldom if ever discussed as a solution to be utilized in concert with the wind and solar.

• 545 Days Ago
• 08/13/2010

Here comes the sun

Every Penny spent on natural gas and other fssil fuels will be lost and is useless, as "natural" gas is a fossil fuel and will stay to be one. We should not harvest things, which were created by nature inside the earth in million of years.

Where this is leading to we can easily see at the Gulf of Mexico, in Nigeria, in Indonesia and other crude-oil-rich countries. (I call them: cruel-oil-rich)

We shoud not waste our time with using and harvesting "built-in" resources from the earth   (as they are part of our natural environment, like the air that we breathe)

Instead, we should starting analysing the energy situation as it is today and will stay so for hopefully another millions of years:
The only way, how to survive, is to use smart technology to harvest the immense solar radiation, which is reaching our planet day for day, hour for hour, second for second.

What a smart source of energy. ...At this time, it is "only" used to make natural biomass and heat our planet to an average temperature.
Forget the tiny amounts of electricity, made by wind power or photovoltaics, that is not the point.

Every day we are not starting real, big-scaled initiatives into this direction is lost irretrievable.

I feel sorry for the US American people, (and the rest of the word...) that nobody wants to understand this; and why they start agian to march in the wrong direction.
And wonder, why this is the case.

Arno A. Evers
Starnberg, Germany
www.hydrogenambassadors.com

More:
http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/background/earths-energy-balance.php
The earth energy balance represents the balance between incoming energy from the Sun Sand thermal (longwave) and reflected (shortwave) energy from the Earth. The energy released from the Sun in one hour would be adequate to cover the energy needs of the entire world population for one year. However, when the radiation reaches the Earth, most of it is reflected back to space by the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the atmosphere and at the Earth's surface etc. Only 0,005% of the 5,6 • 1024J emitted by the sun per year is converted into mechanical energy by humans.


--
Arno A. Evers FAIR-PR
Achheimstr. 3 • 82319 Starnberg • Germany
tel.: +49 (0) 8151 998923 fax: +49 (0) 3212 9989243
e-mail: arno@hydrogenambassadors.com
www.hydrogenambassadors.com


Order Arno's new book here:
The Hydrogen Society...more than just a Vision?
http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/order/order.php

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