Concerning your April column on whether nuclear power is safe: Nuclear power sucks. Coal power sucks more. Boggles my mind that we don’t just ditch them both and use options we know are better. – Randvek
Ah, a believer in alternative energy. You think if we build enough windmills, install enough solar panels, and distill enough ethanol from corn we’ll be able to dispense with noxious energy sources. I admire this noble goal. One needs to ask, however, whether it’s possible. Let’s see what we can find out.
Here’s just the thing-a 2006 paper by MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera entitled “On the Future of Global Energy.” Nocera’s twofold ambition: one, to see how much energy the world will need by midcentury. Two, to figure out where we might get it. Glancing through this, things are looking grim.
The first thing we learn is that, according to UN experts, world population is expected to reach nine billion people by midcentury and then stabilize. The stabilization part is good. The bad part is that nine billion is two billion more than we’ve got now. Given that almost half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day as it is, you can appreciate that coming up with enough food, shelter, and yes, energy to keep everybody happy will be a challenge.
The second thing to understand is that we damn well better keep everybody happy. The projection that world population is going to stabilize is based on the observation that, as people become more urbanized and at least a little more prosperous, they have smaller families. In Japan and much of Europe, in fact, population is actually declining. The flip side is if people remain impoverished villagers, they continue having big families and total population keeps going up. In other words, a stable future is predicated on a modicum of global urban affluence.
The third thing to understand is that the more affluent people become, the more energy they use. That doesn’t necessarily mean U.S.-scale two-SUVs-and-a-vacation-home-type affluence. Most of the world would be content with, you know, running water and some electric lights.
How much energy will that take? In 2002, Nocera points out, global energy consumption was 13.5 terawatts. What will it be in 2050? If everybody were to burn through the juice at the current U.S. rate, Nocera calculates, we’d need 102 terawatts-seven times as much. Chances of our producing that: zero .
Instead, Nocera conservatively pegs annual global energy usage circa 2050 at between 28 terawatts-which assumes average consumption at the same rate as in present-day Poland-and 35 terawatts, roughly the rate now seen in Samoa. You may say: Samoa sounds like a lifestyle I could get used to. That’s sporting of you, but it still means we’ll need about 15 to 20 more terawatts of energy than we’re consuming right now.
Where will it come from? Nocera runs through some possibilities:
• First, biomass. If we devote all the arable land on earth to energy production rather than food crops and presumably just don’t eat, we could generate 7 to 10 terawatts.
• Next, wind. If we build wind farms on 100 percent of the sufficiently windy land, we could produce 2.1 terawatts.
• Third, hydroelectric. If we dam all the remaining rivers, we could come up with 0.7 to 2 additional terawatts.
• Finally, nuclear. The professor’s thinks we could produce 8 terawatts by constructing 8,000 nuclear power plants, which would mean one new plant every two days for 40 years.
Total: around 18 to 22 terawatts. In other words, if we squeeze out every available watt of alternative energy on the planet, and build nukes at an impossibly aggressive rate, we’ll barely keep up with the energy needed to support even a modest standard of living.
Nocera’s solution is to push for a breakthrough in solar power. Good luck. Barring that, however, we’re stuck with more coal, oil, and gas, and you know the problems with those.
My point isn’t that the situation is hopeless. I’m saying we need to dispense with the illusory notion of “alternative” energy, which suggests we’ll get to be choosy about energy sources. Sorry, not going to happen. We’ll have to use them all.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2011.
For the moment all your point seem valid. I did notice you did not provide and estimate for Photovoltaic Solar Panels. Enough energy falls from the sky in one hour to power the planet for a year. Alternative energy can and will provide all of the energy needed to live a rich full life.
The photovoltaic panels installed this year here on the coast are powering 3 homes year round. The break thur you mentioned is real and possible. Be a part of the solution and install your fair share.
There are so many fallacies in this article.
First, the author doesn’t consider solar as a major source which, oddly enough, has been the a major focus of Daniel Nocera’s work. They say you could power the entire US with an area of Southwest desert roughly 94 miles long and 94 miles wide. I don’t advocate building such a plant, but we can build smaller distributed systems across the country. We have more than enough roof space, particularly on the large flat commercial roofs to make much of the energy we need.They will say that the sun doesn’t shine all the time. It may not be at one particular spot, but,it is shining elsewhere and we have a large interconnected grid. Storage and demand control technologies are improving to balance the load. Utility scale thermal plants are actually able to store the heat using various technologies and can provide power around the clock.
Let’s go over the technologies the author did highlight:
Biomass:
We do not have to use land to primarily produce energy. We can use the land to produce food or other beneficial crops and use the waste from those crops to produce energy. Another promising biomass technology is capturing carbon dioxide from existing power plants and using it to feed algae which are then converted to fuel.
Wind:
While the author underestimated wind potential on land, he ignored offshore wind. Offshore is where we on the coast are likely to get our power someday and the resource is tremendous.
Hydro:
Future large scale hydro is likely to come from wave and tidal power. In this area, we should try to convert all the small dams we see every day to generate electricity. I see dams that were once used as mills, now just letting the water flow without capturing the potential energy.
Nuclear:
Nuclear should only be a transitional technology. For less than what we are paying in our electric bills to build the new reactors at Vogtle, we could be funding a feed in tariff to provide safer, cleaner energy. We have two reactors 50 miles from me at Plant Hatch of the same design as the Japanese reactors that melted down.
Finally,the world, particularly the US, is extremely energy inefficient. Building codes and product efficiency standards have improved dramatically over the years, but are not where they need to be. Lobbying by those who are afraid of change and those who benefit from the current wasteful practices prevent us from moving forward.
It is easy to cherry pick ideas from an old study to support the status quo, but I really don’t understand why someone would want to when a future of clean low cost energy is something we can all look forward to.
By the end of this year, solar PV will have an energy capacity of 50 GW (up from 100 MW in the year 2000). I find it very strange that with a rapidly expanding industry (renewable energy) you would solely cite a study conducted in 2006 – despite the wealth of studies that have been conducted in the past half decade!! You don’t even mention concentrating solar power, which is expected to produce at nearly the capacity of PV. There’s no mention of geothermal generating OR high altitude wind – which we’ve seen extraordinary advances in the past two years!! And possibly the most important change that is pertinent for “alternative energy” is EFFICIENCY!! We consume far more energy than we need to (U.S.). That simply has to change. I will come back on here later to post actual studies worth looking through – not “cherry picked” ones as esprole put it.