If wind energy does not reduce CO2 emissions, why bother?
Peter Lang has published an intriguing guest post at Brave New Climate titled CO2 avoidance cost with wind energy in Australia and carbon price implications. It has attracted about 125 lengthy, mostly well-referenced comments and repeat visits from Michael Goggin of the American Wind Energy Association.
I think renewable energy mythology is a clever distraction created by the same kinds of skilled product marketing experts who used to be employed to convince us that we could put a “tiger in our tank” by buying a certain brand of gasoline.
I will warn you. The post and the comment thread sucked me in and caused me to spend about 90 valuable minutes reading some, skimming some and calculating some. Visit the discussion at your own risk and with a large, fresh cup of coffee at your side. You might even want to dig up a pocket calculator or use the software version installed on your computer.
After working my way through the highly engaging technical discussion, I decided it might be useful to add some thoughts from a geopolitical and economic perspective. So I do not lose track of what I said there, I figured I would store a copy here to share with you.
As is often the case, I have been completely intrigued by the discussion and humbled by the mathematical and technical expertise of most of the contributors.
At risk of being considered slightly off topic, I would like to introduce the question of the source of funding and political power behind the incredibly successful sales job regarding wind and solar energy that we have all been subjected to for several decades.
Though it might seem counterintuitive, I strongly suspect that the marketing has not come from the counter culture environmentalists who are often credited with being the force that has opposed nuclear, supported arguments about climate change, and demanded increased portions of our power be produced by warm and fuzzy renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
Instead, I think renewable energy mythology is a clever distraction created by the same kinds of skilled product marketing experts who used to be employed to convince us that we could put a “tiger in our tank” by buying a certain brand of gasoline. It has been supported by the industrial economy establishment of people who benefit greatly from the nearly complete addiction to hydrocarbons that fuels modern society.
The wealth and power of that establishment was severely threatened by a tiny band of curious people who not only found that the nuclei of uranium and thorium contained 2 million times as much energy per unit mass as the most energy dense hydrocarbon, but they also created the machinery required to turn that energy into a commercially useful, competitive product a mere 15-20 years after it was first discovered.
In 1956, my favorite American President of the 20th century sent an envoy to the king of Saudi Arabia to tell him to stop supporting Egypt in the Suez Crisis or he would turn atomic energy loose in an effort to make oil irrelevant and worth far less as an economic bargaining chip. Warnings like that caused the fossil establishment to scramble and strategize for ways to derail the nuclear juggernaut that was inevitably going to take market share.
It took several decades of steady, well supported effort, but eventually that effort halted the growth of nuclear energy at its production level of about 12 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. That is roughly the same daily contribution to the world’s energy supply as the total output of Saudi Arabia PLUS the output of Kuwait. It took the established energy industry another decade and a half to encourage increased consumption enough to overcome the low prices created by the “over supply” produced by the uncontrolled introduction of that new energy into “their” energy market.
A part of the program was an effort to support the “research” of people like Amory Lovins, who has been called an energy guru for his constant refrains about taking “the soft energy path.” A part of the evidence for my story is the fact that this man, a college dropout from two schools, managed to publish a very lengthy piece in Foreign Affairs in 1976, just in time to influence the US Presidential election held that year. (Foreign Affairs is a publication supported by the fossil fuel establishment funded Council on Foreign Relations.)
The establishment is very much aware of the fact that wind and solar energy systems are material intensive and require government assistance. (That’s okay with companies like GE, Siemens, Iberdrola, and Vestas. They LIKE selling material and have always had excellent lobbying organizations.) The establishment is also quite aware of the inefficient gas burning required to support unreliable wind and solar. (That is okay with companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Elf, Total, Anadarko, and Aramaco. They all sell substantial quantities of natural gas. Many of the multinational oil companies are about 50-50 in their energy output – 50% methane and 50% liquid hydrocarbons.)
In the meanwhile, nuclear energy languishes from lack of investment by the major market banking establishment. That is okay with them, most are holding huge quantities of paper associated with the capital intensive effort to locate, extract, transport, store, process, and deliver hydrocarbons to the world’s thirsty markets.
What is the answer to the conundrum I have posed – that nuclear energy threatens a very large and powerful establishment that has carefully sold the mirage that wind and solar are our saviors?
My answer is to remember that there are far more energy consumers than energy producers. There are very powerful potential allies who do not make their money from their association with the fossil fuel supply chain. We also have a huge energy density and low emission advantage that can overcome other issues. Nuclear fission is not just marginally better, but radically, disruptively better than all other alternatives.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
As part of my personal action plan to begin chipping away at the establishment’s marketing plan of continued dependence on fossil fuels while being distracted by the mirage of a renewable energy future, I hosted a discussion with some nuclear energy communicators on the topic of advertising the benefits of our favorite power source. You can eavesdrop on that brainstorming session by visiting Atomic Show #166 – Nuclear Energy Advertising.
@ Rod,
You said, “You might even want to dig up a pocket calculator or use the software version installed on your computer.”
I recommend using Wolfram Alpha as a handy tool. There’s a website http://www.wolframalpha.com/ as well as iPhone and Android applications. Wolfram Alpha is a computational search engine. It will calculate, integrate, plot, unit conversion, and search technical data. It even does nuclide data (enter “Am-241”). A wind example is the use of the Weibull distribution, is a good functional description of the wind speed distribution. Say the mean wind is 7 m/s. Given a power curve of a typical windmill, the probability of finding a windmill at or above its capacity factor can be found by inputing “Integrate[PDF[WeibullDistribution[2,14/Sqrt[Pi]],x],{x,8,25}]” on the Wolfram Alpha site. In this case it’s about 0.35.
Don’t know if you noticed that someone posted this link in the thread on BraveNewClimate:
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/57905/wind-power-and-co2-emissions
But, if you would like to waste (use?) a bit more time. This essay is even better than Lang’s.
This is one of the greatest articles I’ve read on nuclear. But how do we “unscare” the public? How can we get to the masses without using the scare tactics and dirty politics that wind/solar are using?
This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time. But how do we “unscare” the public? How do we reach the masses without the scare tactics and dirty politics that wind/solar are using?
Is it still a “scare tactic” when the topic, such as having your house blown to matchsticks by natural gas, is actually scary?
Sadly I don’t think we can. The general public simply aren’t the logical types we want (need?) them to be.
The slick marketing machine we are facing knows this and has for a long long time. There’s a precedent mentioned in the above article (tiger in your tank anyone?)
Maybe the way to “unscare” them is to “scare” them to the point where they don’t “care”?
Pardon the puns!
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
Agent Kay, Men in Black (1997)
Having an impact on public perceptions of cheap and easy energy. A man in 1970 Dallas, Texas drove a car around town using Fusion Energy. He scared the Hell out of the establishment to the extent his marketing efforts were “put to rest”.
Bring about the Phoenix of that car and the public would jump at the technology.
Now comes the rub. Your portfolio includes energy dependent stocks and retirement plan based upon energy of the carbon signature kind. This pyramid economic structure, of which most of us are a part, can’t tolerate change.
Adapting our energy portfolio to include fusion powered cars would disturb our mindset, not to mention major oil companies. It has been done and then buried and who the hell ever saw a phoenix anyway? Answer: It lurks beneath the waves on a boat named Sarov. Project Phoenix surfaces every so often.
Rod – great as always. I’ve tangled the comments and posts over at my comment on another BNC thread. Thanks for the Atomic Show link as well.
There is good news. The Greenies are now victims of their own over reaching. The solar and wind plants they advocated have been built at sufficient scale to demonstrate their failings.
The tide is turning with breath taking speed. Look at what is going on in New Jersey:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/26/new-jersey-announces-intent-to-pull-out-of-rggi-cap-and-trade/
Why nuclear is still unpopular with the masses: http://deregulatetheatom.com/2011/04/nuclear-advocates-dont-just-react-solicit-outside-your-own-circle/
The simple reason to build wind mills if they don’t reduce co2 is that they are profitable for the people building them.
Eventually as gas prices rise nuclear will become more and more profitable. As a result they will be built more then, regardless of their co2 emissions.
Jason – wind mills are ONLY profitable with a combination of subsidies and policies. At current gas prices, the rate of construction has slowed by about 50% this year compared to last even with the following banquet of incentives:
30% of project cost available as a tax credit in lieu of a long term production tax credit
loan guarantees
federal government payment of the required credit subsidy cost for the loan guarantee
renewable portfolio standards in many locales
free federal land
renewable energy certificates that can be traded for cash
lots of free advertising by the Department of Energy
no requirements for any decommissioning plan for the foundations or towers
guaranteed head of line privileges in the power grid – even if there is little demand for power, other generators have to curtail their production and opportunity to obtain revenue
Industrial scale wind power generation is a scam. The large corporations that are behind the political decisions to award all of those incentives are making some money at the scam, but there are going to be an awful lot of taxpayers, ratepayers and stockholders left holding the bag when reality finally starts to sink in. The managers and executives will work hard to absolve themselves of any responsibility and will most likely fail to repay any of the incentive bonuses that they have awarded to themselves by controlling their captive boards of directors. There are going to be a large number of workers who receive lasting harm due to investing time and money learning skills that have no market. There will be large, empty industrial facilities left to blight the land and many small towns who thought that the factories were so valuable that they offered long term tax incentives.
I just hope I can help stop some of the damage.
I wasn’t trying to say that wind is profitable without all the hand outs. My post was just a direct answer to your title of the thread. I guess I could have elaborated upon why they are profitable for the builders.
Fusion energy to propel a car? Ridiculous. Physically impossible. There is today no known mechanism to produce sustained nuclear fusion. Cold fusion has been shown decisively to be a fraud.
Please read this article.
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/57905/wind-power-and-co2-emissions