"Alternative Energy" - Where's the Cheese?
By Skanderbeg Posted in Archived — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I was going to make this a comment to Ben's morning missive, but as I thought about it (and the content has been gestating for a couple weeks as I've been otherwise occupied battling deadlines), I thought I'd make it a separate entry.
As someone with a couple decades of front-line business experience, I am continually bemused (and amused) by the over-supply of macro-level theorists (MLTs) who presently seem to be clogging up the landscape - especially in government.
The MLTs just like to think that they can solve problems by stating that a "solution" would be great - that by throwing a ton of money at a problem and making vague references to "the spirit of innovation," any problem can be washed away. Naturally, the MLTs are the sort who have never actually had to deal first-hand with real problems, so asking them about notions of constraints imposed by hum-drum drivel like physics and engineering and so forth serves only to make them angry.
The last problem with the MLTs is that they're allergic to doing any homework. If this is so obviously a problem, why hasn't it been solved already? More importantly, what have other people already tried to do about this, and what can we learn from their efforts?
That last has been on my mind lately as there have been further paeans to the notion of throwing a gigaton of money at developing so-called "alternative energy."
Back during a stretch of about 1996 - 2001, due to some things I was involved in, I was running back and forth to Switzerland on such a regular basis that I actually started to think that maybe I should just get an apartment there. None of this involved energy, but whenever you'd sit down with Europeans, it was inevitable that our $1/gallon gas and their $3 - $4 gallon gas would come up.
Europeans were already neurotic about this topic back during the 1990s. For example, in the Netherlands, they added on the unique feature of drastically restricting the number of parking spaces allowed at new office buildings to a very low level - to try to discourage driving.
And that was the general pan-European two-track policy - that ultra-high gas taxes were serving the social good of reducing consumption, while also providing a big pot of money to fund "R&D" (sic?) in "alternative energy."
Getting back to the Swiss.... during the 1990s they went crazy for this sort of thing. At some point, I seem to recall that "alternative energy" was elevated all the way to the #2 national sci/tech priority, behind only the universally-frantic efforts of the 1990s to quickly build out ICT infrastructure.
My Swiss friends were very smug about this. They always insisted that while it might not seem necessary now (c. 1998) with low oil prices, it would really be needed and it would prove to have been a wonderful decision that would pay off "someday" when energy became scarce and expensive.
You could see little pieces of this around. At the waterfront in Lausanne, there were a couple of smallish touring boats moored, the "solar-powered" Aquarel I and Aquarel II:
These things weren't large (I think they held 12 passengers, which looks about right in that photo), and clearly you wouldn't want to have them out in rough water. I also put "solar-powered" in quotes because they aren't truly "solar-powered" in total; they had to be charged from the land grid. At their moorings, you could see the charging cables running to the berth.
There were some other things that were in play (pun intended). Some folks were fooling around with solar-powered airplanes - which were these flimsy little gossamer contraptions that couldn't fly at night and couldn't carry any sort of load.
There was also a solar-powered "car" - I seem to recall seeing one proudly on display somewhere, perhaps at the main lobby of the UN complex in Geneva. This "car" looked like a recumbent bicycle with a P-51 Mustang canopy on top of it. It was cute but.... it sure as heck wasn't a serious vehicle.
In any case, I diverted to tell you those stories, and now I have to circle back and quote the punchline which occurred above:
My Swiss friends were very smug about this. They always insisted that while it might not seem necessary now (c. 1998) with low oil prices, it would really be needed and it would prove to have been a wonderful decision that would pay off "someday" when energy became scarce and expensive.
Okay, that was ten years ago. They had more than ten years and a huge amount of money thrown at this.
That "someday" is today.
So, where's the cheese? Where are the fruits of all this "research?"
Maybe our MLTs should pipe down about "alternative energy" until they've done their homework on the Swiss "efforts"....
but it is very expensive and more than a little inconvenient. No ordinary house can run exclusively on any alternative source anywhere in the Country and maintain the kind of comfort and lifestyle most Americans expect however. I posted here:
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/achance/2008/apr/25/energy_costs_get_perso...
about dealing with the sudden five-fold increase in electric rates that we just went through when an avalanche took out the lines that feed hydropower to Juneau. We were able to cut our electricity use by almost sixty percent although I don't think we could have kept that up too much longer, some things you have to do eventually, like clean the carpets, vacuum fairly frequently, and such like, both real energy hogs that we just put off or avoided altogether. But really, mostly what we cut out was wasteful use. Even so, at the miserly consumption we forced ourselves to, no alternative would have been able to meet our needs in this climate and lattitude.
I know lots of people who use alternatives for everything but heat in remote cabins; it's expensive but you can provide lights, pumps, etc. with solar or wind and batteries. I think wood is a horrible, nasty heat source for space and water heating but it is plentiful if you don't mind the work, soot, and smell. Wouldn't want to live that way for long and you can smell people who live that way long before you see them!
My wife and I can live on the kind of energy budget that alternative energy can more or less provide for a couple of weeks on the boat. Unless I run the generator or start a main engine, life is governed by the capacity of two 12v Optima deep-cycle batteries. All the lights are LED, halogen, or flourescent and you don't use them unless you absolutely have to. There's no television. The stereo is on very sparingly unless the engines are running and it is a low power unit. The domestic water heater is only six gallons and the faucets and showerhead are very low flow. You take showers only at the end of run when the water is hot from waste engine heat and you learn to take a quick "navy shower." If you haven't been running the engines, it's a "pit bath" with cold water or sea water, since your fresh water supply is quite limited. I've never met the woman who can do that for long, though I know they exist among the long-distance cruising set. The "hair dryer" is the wind. The refridgerator is off overnight and is opened only when absolutely necessary. Cooking is on a two burner alcohol stove, which will teach you just how little energy is in alcohol as you wait for your coffee water to boil. The heat is off overnight both because the blower drains the batteries and the lamp grade kerosene that the heater burns is about $10/gal.
I just don't see a lot of Americans volunteering to live that way day in and day out and that is the way you have to live if you get your energy from any of the "alternatives."
In Vino Veritas
Clever managers used to put up suggestion boxes that would empty directly into the trash to neutralize the problem.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777