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Heinberg: Our Renewable Future

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The next few decades will see a profound and all-encompassing energy transformation throughout the world. Whereas society now derives the great majority of its energy from fossil fuels, by the end of the century we will depend primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power.

Two irresistible forces will drive this historic transition.

The first is the necessity of avoiding catastrophic climate change. In December 2015, 196 nations unanimously agreed to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.[1] While some of this reduction could technically be achieved by carbon capture and storage from coal power plants, carbon sequestration in soils and forests, and other “negative emissions” technologies and efforts, the great majority of it will require dramatic cuts in fossil fuel consumption.

The second force driving a post-carbon energy shift is the ongoing depletion of the world’s oil, coal, and natural gas resources. Even if we do nothing to avoid climate change, our current energy regime remains unsustainable. Though Earth’s crust still holds enormous quantities of fossil fuels, economically useful portions of this resource base are much smaller, and the fossil fuel industry has typically targeted the highest-quality, easiest-to-access resources first.

All fossil fuel producers face the problem of declining resource quality, but the problem is most apparent in the petroleum sector. During the decade from 2005 to 2015, the oil industry’s costs of production rose by over 10 percent per year because the world’s cheap, conventional oil reserves—the “low-hanging fruit”—are now dwindling (fig. I.1). While new extraction technologies make lower-quality resources accessible (like tar sands and tight oil from fracking), these technologies require higher levels of investment and usually entail heightened environmental risks. World coal and gas supplies have yet to reach the same higher-cost tipping point; however, several recent studies suggest that the end of affordable supplies of these fuels may be years—not decades—away.[2] We will be consuming fossil fuels for many years to come, no doubt; but their decline is inevitable. We are headed to a nonfossil future whether we’re ready or not.

WEB-Figure-I-1-Crude-oil-costs-and-production
Figure I.1. Change in world oil industry capital expenditures (CAPEX) and crude oil production, 2005 vs. 1998 and 2013 vs. 2005. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration and Steven Kopits, “Oil and Economic Growth: A Supply Constrained View,” presentation at Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, New York, NY, February 11, 2014.

Nuclear fission power is not likely to play a larger role in our energy future than it does today, outside of China and a few other nations, if current trends continue. Indeed, high investment and (post-Fukushima) safety requirements, growing challenges of waste storage and disposal, and the risks of catastrophic accidents and weapons proliferation may together result in a significant overall shrinkage of the nuclear industry by the end of the century. Despite recent press reports about progress in hot fusion power and claims for “cold fusion,” these energy sources currently produce no commercial energy and—even if claims turn out to be justified—they are unlikely to do so on a significant scale for decades to come.

Fossil fuels are on their way out one way or another, and nuclear energy is a dead end. That leaves renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, to shoulder the burden of powering future society. While it is probably an oversimplification to say that people in the not-too-distant-future will inhabit a 100 percent renewably powered world, it is worth exploring what a complete, or nearly complete, shift in our energy systems would actually mean. Because energy is implicit not only in everything we do but also in the built environment around us (which requires energy for its construction, maintenance, and disposal/decommissioning), it is in effect the wellspring of our existence. As the world embarks on a transformative change in its energy sources, the eventual impacts may include a profound alteration of people’s personal and collective habits and expectations, as well as a transformation of the structures and infrastructure around us. Our lives, communities, and economies changed radically with the transition from wood and muscle power to fossil fuels, and so it is logical that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables—that is, a fundamental change in the quantity and quality of energy available to power human civilization—will also entail a major shift in how we live.

How would a 100 percent renewable world look and feel? How might the great-grandchildren of today’s college students move through a typical day without using fossil fuels either directly or indirectly? Where will their food come from? How will they get from place to place? What will the buildings they inhabit look like, and how will those buildings function? Visions of the future are always wrong in detail, and often even in broad strokes; but sometimes they can be wrong in useful ways. Scenario exercises can help us evaluate and prepare for a variety of outcomes, even if we don’t know precisely which reality will emerge. Further, by imagining the future we often help create it: advertisers and industrialists long ago learned that creative product developers, marketers, and commercial artists can shape the choices, actions, and expectations of entire societies. If we are embarking upon what may turn out to be history’s most significant energy transition, we should spend some effort now to imagine an all-renewable world, even though the exercise will inevitably involve guesswork and oversimplification.

A good way to begin visualizing the post-carbon future might be to explore how and why we came to construct our current “normal” reality of energy consumption.

How “Normal” Came to Be

For most people living in the early nineteenth century, firewood was the dominant fuel and muscles were the primary source of power. The entire economy—including the design of towns and homes, and people’s daily routines—was structured to take advantage of the capabilities of wood and human or animal muscle. Food staples were often grown close to the point of consumption in order to minimize the need for slow and expensive horse- or sail-drawn transport. Many people worked as farmers or farm laborers, because many hands were required to do the fieldwork needed to produce sufficient food for the entire population. Traction animals were significant symbols of wealth: a prosperous farmer might own a team of oxen or mules, while his well-off cousin in the city might keep a horse or two to provide personal mobility. In slave-holding portions of the United States, some humans claimed ownership of other humans so as to make economic use of their intelligently directed muscles—a horrific practice that shattered the lives of millions (its effects continue to reverberate) and was ended only by an epic war. Meanwhile, vast tracts of forest in the northeastern United States were being cleared to provide fuel for home heating and, increasingly, for the operation of industrial machinery, including steamboats and steam locomotives.

WEB-Image-I-1-Carl_Conrad_Dahlberg
Agrarian life in the nineteenth century. (Credit: Carl Conrad Dahlberg, Malmö Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Then, in the mid-1800s, along came fossil fuels. Compared to firewood, coal and oil were more energy dense and therefore more portable, and they could be made available in greater quantities (especially since forests were disappearing due to overcutting). Compared to muscles, fuel-fed machines were formidable and tireless. Nineteenth-century inventors had already been devising ways to reduce labor through mechanization and to create new opportunities for mobility, communication, and amenity with devices ranging from the telegraph to the rail locomotive. The advent of cheap, abundant, and transportable fossil energy sources encouraged a flood of new or improved energy-consuming technologies.

A series of significant inventions—including the electricity generator, alternating current, and the electric motor—made energy from coal (also from moving water and later from natural gas and nuclear fission) available in homes and offices. This opened the potential for electric lighting, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and an ever-expanding array of entertainment and communications devices, including telephones, radios, televisions, and computers.

Meanwhile, liquid fuels made from petroleum mobilized the economy as never before. Automobiles, airplanes, trucks, ships, and diesel-fueled trains began hauling people and freight at distances and speeds—and in quantities—that were previously unimaginable. Oil products also began fueling society’s raw materials extraction processes—mining, forestry, and fishing—resulting in far higher rates of production at much lower costs. By the mid-twentieth century, oil was increasingly transformed into plastics, chemicals, lubricants, and pharmaceuticals. And oil-powered machinery replaced human labor in agriculture, resulting in one of the most significant demographic shifts in history as the bulk of humanity left farms and moved to cities (fig. I.2).

WEB-Figure-I-2-World-urban-and-rural-population
Figure I.2. World rural and urban population, 1950–2015. Source:United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Urbanization Prospects 2014”.

Because fossil fuels were so cheap relative to the power of muscles, machines took over much of the drudgery of life. Whereas human slavery had figured prominently in parts of the U.S. economy in the early nineteenth century, today each American commands the services of hundreds of “energy slaves”[3] counted as the number of persons whose full-time labor would be required to substitute for the services currently provided by powered machinery.

As energy is consumed in the making of roads, buildings, pipelines, food, clothing, and other products, it is effectively embedded or embodied in those objects. The built environment around us, and the manufactured goods with which we surround ourselves, represent immense amounts of fossil energy—energy used in the production of materials and goods through the operations of mining equipment, smelters, cement makers, trucks, road surfacers, and factories.

During the same period in which fossil fuels began to power most aspects of daily life, we began to design our homes and cities to fit the machines and products that used those fuels or embodied the energy from their combustion. The automobile became the design centerpiece for suburbs, shopping malls, parking lots, garages, and highways. Meanwhile, expansion of transport by airplane required the construction of airports—the largest of which cover as much space as was formerly occupied by entire towns.

All of this was undertaken with the tacit assumption that society would always have more fossil energy with which to maintain and operate its ever-expanding infrastructure. There was no long-range grand plan guiding the project. The fossil-fueling of the economy happened bit by bit, each new element building on the last, with opportunity leading to innovation. What was technically possible became economically necessary . . . and hence normal.

It is easy now to take it all for granted. But we shouldn’t. As the energy sources that built the twentieth century ebb, it may be helpful to disabuse ourselves of many of our assumptions and expectations by observing how different “normal” is for North Americans as compared with people in rural villages in less industrialized countries, or by reading first-person narratives of daily life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As profoundly dissimilar as our current “normal” is to human experience prior to the industrial revolution, the future may be just as different again.

Why a Renewable World Will Be Different

Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal generators produce electricity, and we already have an abundance of technologies that rely on electricity. So why should we need to change the ways we use energy? Presumably all that’s necessary is to unplug coal power plants, plug in solar panels and wind turbines, and continue living as we do currently.

This is a misleading way of imagining the energy transition for six important reasons.

 

  1. Intermittency. As we will see in chapter 3, the on-demand way we use electricity now is unsuited to variable renewable supplies from solar and wind. Power engineers designed our current electricity production, distribution, and consumption systems around controllable inputs (hydro, coal, natural gas, and nuclear), but solar and wind are inherently uncontrollable: we cannot force the sun to shine or the wind to blow to suit our desires. It may be possible, to a limited degree, to make intermittent solar or wind energy act like fossil fuels by storing some of the electricity generated for later use, building extra capacity, or redesigning electricity grids. But this costs both money and energy. To avoid enormous overall system costs for capacity redundancy, energy storage, and multiple long-distance grid interconnections, it will be necessary to find more and more ways to shift electricity demand from times of convenience to times of abundant supply, and to significantly reduce overall demand.
  2. The liquid fuels problem. As we will see in chapter 4, electricity doesn’t supply all our current energy usage and is unlikely to do so in a renewable future. Our single largest source of energy is oil, which still fuels nearly all transportation as well as many industrial processes. While there are renewable replacements for some oil products (e.g., biofuels), these are in most cases not direct substitutes (few automobiles, trucks, ships, or airplanes can burn a pure biofuel without costly engine retrofitting) and have other substantial drawbacks and limitations.[4] Only portions of our transport infrastructure lend themselves easily to electrification—another potential substitution strategy. Thus a renewable future is likely to be characterized by less mobility, and this has significant implications for the entire economy.
  3. Other uses of fossil fuels. Society currently uses the energy from fossil fuels for other essential purposes as well, including the production of high temperatures for making steel and other metals, cement, rubber, ceramics, glass, and other manufactured goods. Fossil fuels also serve as feedstocks for materials (e.g., plastics, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals). As we will see in chapter 5, all of these pose substitution or adaptation quandaries.
  4. Area density of energy collection activities. In the energy transition, we will move from sources with a small geographic footprint (e.g., a natural gas well) toward ones with much larger footprints (large wind and solar farms collecting diffuse or ambient sources of energy). As we do, there will be unavoidable costs, inefficiencies, and environmental impacts resulting from the increasing spatial extent of energy collection activities. While the environmental impacts of a wind farm are substantially less than those from drilling for, distributing, and burning natural gas, or from mining, transporting, and burning coal, capturing renewable energy at the scale required to offset all gas and coal energy would nevertheless entail environmental impacts that are far from trivial. Minimizing these costs will entail planning and adaptation.
  5. Location. Sunlight, wind, hydropower, and biomass are more readily available in some places than others. Long-distance transmission entails significant investment costs and energy losses. Moreover, transporting biomass energy resources (e.g., biofuels or wood) reduces the overall energy profitability of their use.This implies that, as the energy transition accelerates, energy production will shift from large, centralized processing and distribution centers (e.g., a 500,000 barrel per day refinery) to distributed and smaller-scale facilities (e.g., a local or regional biofuel factory within a defined collection zone or “shed”), since the same amount of “feedstock” cannot be concentrated in one place. It also implies that population centers may tend to reorganize themselves geographically around available energy sources.
  6. Energy quantity. As we will see in chapter 6, quantities of energy available will also change during the transition. Since the mid-nineteenth century, annual global energy consumption has grown exponentially to over 500 exajoules (fig. I.3). Even assuming a massive build-out of solar and wind capacity during the next 35 years, renewables will probably be unable to fully replace the quantity of energy currently provided by fossil fuels, let alone meet projected energy demand growth. This raises profound questions not only about how much energy will be available but also for widespread expectations and assumptions about global economic growth.

 

WEB-Figure-I-3-World-primary-energy-consumption-by-fuel
Figure I.3. World primary energy consumption by fuel type, 1850–2014. Primary electricity converted by direct equivalent method. Source: Data compiled by J. David Hughes. Post-1965 data from BP, Statistical Review of World Energy (annual). Pre-1965 data from Arnulf Grubler, “Technology and Global Change: Data Appendix,” (1998).

For these six reasons, we should explore now how energy usage must and will evolve during the next few decades as the world transitions (willingly or not) to renewable energy. As we’ve already seen, our current patterns of energy use developed in response to the qualities and quantities of the energy available to us during the past century. Fossil fuels provided significant advantages: they were available on demand, cheap, portable, and energy dense. They also entailed costs, including climate change and other environmental and social impacts.[5] Renewables offer their own suite of advantages, the most obvious of which are that, with solar and wind, there is no fuel cost, and they have far lower climate and health impacts. But that doesn’t mean these are truly free or limitless energy sources: the devices used to capture energy from sunlight and wind require materials and embodied energy. Further, the energy we get from these sources is variable and won’t substitute for all current fossil fuel uses. And the technologies we use to harvest energy from sunlight and wind have their own environmental impacts.

Engineers will certainly make every effort to adapt new energy resources to familiar usage patterns (e.g., by replacing gasoline-fueled cars with electric cars). We can, to a certain limited extent, press solar and wind into the mold of our current energy system by buffering their variability with energy storage technology and grid enhancements. But the larger the proportion of our total energy we get from these resources, the more our buffering efforts will cost in both money and energy. Over the long run, usage patterns will almost certainly change substantially as we adapt to renewable energy resources.

The problem with our current energy usage patterns is not simply that they are wasteful (though they often are) or that we use energy to do things that are harmful (though we often do). Even disregarding those legitimate concerns, many current energy usage patterns probably just won’t work in an all-renewable world.

Overview of This Book

While the main thrust of this book is to examine how energy usage is likely to change in an all-renewable world, we will begin by reviewing the basics of energy and looking closely at how we currently power society.

Then we will take a survey of energy supply and demand issues, exploring the changed circumstances to which society will be adapting. This portion of the book consists of five chapters—three discussing energy quality (one on electricity, one on liquid fuels, one on other energy uses), one exploring how much renewable energy capacity might be available by midcentury, and one answering various objections likely to be raised to our conclusions about future energy supply.

The book concludes by discussing the critically important questions of how to ensure thateveryone benefits from the renewable energy transition and what steps can and should be taken now to put us on a path toward a truly just and sustainable future.

The goal of this book is to help readers think more clearly and intelligently about our renewable future. An all-renewable world will present opportunities as well as challenges. And building that world will entail more than just the construction of enormous numbers of solar panels and wind turbines. Along the way, we will learn that how we use energy is as important as how we get it. Indeed, unless we adapt our energy usage patterns with the same vigor as is devoted to changing energy sources, the transition could result in a substantial reduction of economic functionality for society as a whole.

BUY THE BOOK

Island Press is offering a 20% discount for friends of PCI. Use the discount code 4RENEW

VISIT OURRENEWABLEFUTURE.ORG

The Boiling Pot

On the surface, things appear normal. The status quo of life in America circa 2016 isn’t to everyone’s liking, but at least the system is still working after a fashion. The price of oil is going up a bit: that means the cost of driving is also creeping higher, but steeper prices provide a little welcome relief for an oil industry otherwise teetering on the brink of financial ruin. There are tiresomely long lines at airports, but that means people have the wherewithal to pay for plane tickets. Most people are disgusted with the presumptive U.S. presidential candidates, but at least the machine of electoral politics is still marginally functioning. The stock market is up, unemployment is down. We’re muddling through.

Or are we? Beneath the lid, a pot of trends is coming to a boil. If Carl Jung was right about the existence of a collective unconscious, it must be seething with nightmares right about now.

So far, 2016 is the hottest year in history. And not by just a smidgen: every single month so far has set a record. This handy little animation has been making the rounds of environmental websites in the last couple of weeks; it shows a climate system that is shooting off the rails.

Slow, linear change is giving way to self-reinforcing feedbacks and non-linear lurches. Last December (just 6 months ago), delegates to climate talks in Paris agreed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. Extend the temperature trend shown in that animation for just another few months and we may well be beyond that threshold. How long until we get to two degrees? Three?

Arctic sea ice this month is by far at the lowest extent ever recorded and temperatures in Siberia are rising four times faster than in the rest of the world, releasing enormous amounts of methane and carbon stored in permafrost.

In the energy world, the growth of unconventional oil and gas supplies appears to have postponed peak oil for a decade (conventional oil production flatlined starting in 2005; all the supply increase since then has come from tight oil, tar sands, heavy oil, and deepwater oil)—but at what cost? Unconventional oil production carries higher environmental risks, including increased greenhouse gas emissions per liter of finished fuel.

And it took massive investment to finance the surge in unconventionals. If it hadn’t been for easy-money central bank policies in the wake of the 2008 global financial crash, it’s likely the fracking boom would have been an unnoticeable blip. A few years of sky-high oil prices were also necessary. But high prices weakened demand for oil, just as drillers flooded the market with the wrong grades of crude in the wrong places at the wrong time. The result: an oil price crash (starting in mid-2014) and financial bloodletting within the industry.

We appear to be in a new era in which oil prices are either high enough to stimulate new supply, in which case they are also high enough to cripple the economy; or they are low enough to stimulate the economy, but also so low as to decimate the industry. There is no longer any tenable middle ground.

Today’s price of $50 per barrel is high in historic terms, but still too low to allow the industry to recover from the past two years of staggering losses. The trouble is, the unconventional production binge required a lot of cash, and most of it was borrowed. According to data compiled by FactSet and Yahoo Finance, the U.S. energy sector is drowning in $370 billion of debt, double the amount a decade ago. Just to make interest payments, energy companies shelled out $16.7 billion in 2015—half of their total operating profit. And despite rebounding oil prices, the situation is getting worse, with over 86 percent of energy sector operating profits going to interest payments in the first quarter of 2016. Unless prices zoom back past $100 a barrel, the tens of billions of dollars in debt coming due between 2017 and 2020 will likely trigger a wave of defaults and bankruptcies.

That could spell serious trouble for an economy that has been on life support for eight years now. After the nearly catastrophic crash of 2008, low interest rates, bailouts, and quantitative easing succeeded in restoring a sense of economic normalcy, though at the cost of more financial bubbles (in housing, fracking, and tech) and increased economic inequality. But what will the wizards of finance do when things turn ugly again—as they inevitably will, sooner or later? Negative interest rates will prove more than a little unpopular with savers, and throwing trillions more at banks and investors won’t help the masses afford to pay interest on their mounting debt or to buy more consumer goods.

A pressure cooker needs an escape valve, and this year politics is serving that function for the pressure cooker that American society has lately become. Bernie Sanders is giving voice to popular anger at increasing economic inequality, and at Wall Street’s immunity from being held culpable for the 2008 crash and its continued predation on the rest of the economy. Donald Trump is a megaphone for the blind fury of the wage class at its ongoing destruction by globalization and immigration. There is a heavy scent of anti-establishmentarianism in the air; that leaves poor Hillary Clinton, the consummate establishment politician, trying desperately to sound like an outsider and a critic of the globalized, financialized governmental megamachine she has labored for decades to help build, manage, and sell to voters.

For the next six months the upcoming U.S. presidential election will probably be the main focus of discussion for both the media and Main Street. A lot depends on the outcome, but a good outcome is hard to imagine; only shades of bad. Sanders is the only candidate with a sound energy and climate policy, but he has a vanishingly small chance of actually becoming the next president. Clinton is the odds-on favorite: she has the backing of Wall Street, the Washington foreign policy establishment, and the military-industrial complex. She would doubtless continue most of the current administration’s domestic policies (including its confused and largely self-defeating climate and energy policies), but her stance toward Russia, China, and the Middle East would likely be far more combative—hardly what we need at a moment when global tensions are likely to be exacerbated by weakened economies.

But don’t count Trump out. Riding on a tide of white working-class wrath, he has managed to surpass the expectations of all of his critics. While it is next to impossible to divine actual policy proposals from his muddled, self-aggrandizing speeches, he did manage to give broad hints at his energy and climate intentions in a talk in North Dakota last week, where he made it fairly clear that he just doesn’t care about climate change, that he really likes fossil fuels (including coal), that he doesn’t like wind or solar that much, and that he understands so little about the country’s resource reserves and energy production statistics that he somehow thinks it physically possible for the U.S. to become a significant net exporter of oil and gas. As to his likely foreign policies, your guess is as good as mine.

A Trump presidency could lead to a nearly unprecedented period of turmoil for the nation: blue states and red states would be at each other’s throats. The fallout for relations with other countries are unknown, but the implications for climate and energy would clearly be horrific.

“Blowing off steam” is a phrase often used to describe the harmless pranks of teenagers, though it could also apply to a continent-destroying super-volcano. In the American political context, the scale of the impending steam and magma release is uncertain. But pressure is building and the available outlets are few.

Whoever the next president turns out to be, her or his term in office will likely coincide with another financial crash, which could well turn out to be much worse than the 2008 debacle. Social pressures from rising inequality and dashed expectations will build to explosive levels. And climate impacts may well take forms that even a Donald Trump cannot ignore.

Altogether, the next eight years are unlikely to be as safely corked and bottled as the last. They say crisis is opportunity. We may be facing more opportunities than we know what to do with; may we seize them skillfully!

Heinberg



39 Comments on "Heinberg: Our Renewable Future"

  1. Blumburg on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 12:53 pm 

    Junk energy is not power. Unreliable, low quality, unpredictable energy supplies can only run a nation into the ground.

    No fuel, no hospitals, no traffic control, no food. Want to kill the economy. Force junk energy down its throat!

  2. Plantagenet on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 1:27 pm 

    Weinberg thinks we will avoid climate change by switching to renewable energy. Isn’t he a silly willy little optimist.

    We are emitting more CO2 and CH4 then ever before. The Paris climate accords are a sham that don’t require anyone to do anything, and climate change will become irreversible as more CO2 will be emitted from thawing permafrost then from all human FF consumption.

    Nope—its too late to stop climate change.

    Cheers!

  3. Plantagenet on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 1:28 pm 

    Its Heinberg—not Weinberg.

    Cheers!

  4. PracticalMaina on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 1:39 pm 

    Blumberg, most hospitals would be far more secure in a crisis situation if they had access to alt power. In my state a lot of the traffic control is solar powered. All of the flashing construction signs or traffic signs are solar powered. They will probably outlast the grid.

  5. oracle on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 1:44 pm 

    Blumberg, Well then, let’s party like it’s 1959!

  6. Apneaman on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 3:57 pm 

    Blumburg, do have an example where someone had “junk energy” or any energy for that matter forced “down its throat!”? What country does this supposed forcing take place in? In my entire life the only things I can recall that resemble being forced to buy are home and auto insurance. The bank would not give me the mortgage unless I bought (forced) insurance. The province wouldn’t let me drive my car unless I bought (forced) insurance. Other than that, I can’t recall any other forced purchases and I did not actually need the house and car to survive – they were really just nice to haves when you get right down to it. I no longer have either house or car, yet miraculously am still breathing and have my sight and hearing. You must live in one hard assed country if they force people buy energy N stuff. I bet that Musk dude is behind it – he evil.

  7. makati1 on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 6:15 pm 

    Practical, and that ‘alternate energy; has hydrocarbon backup or it would not work. Somewhere there is a power plant idling, like a car parked at the curb with it’s motor running, so it can take over when the ‘alternate’ source drops below required levels. Check it out.

  8. yoshua on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 6:35 pm 

    Musk says SolarCity deal about synergy but it may be about debt

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-says-solarcity-deal-about-synergy-but-it-may-be-about-debt/ar-AAhu9vZ?ocid=spartanntp

    While SolarCity’s sales have tripled in three years, it has posted losses in all but three quarters since its 2012 initial public offering while investing heavily in future growth. Its negative cash flows have grown worse, while its interest payment obligations keep rising.

  9. Sissyfuss on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 7:19 pm 

    Planty, I thought you were going for Whineberg.

  10. Apneaman on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 7:23 pm 

    “With the Northern Hemisphere Pole warming at a rate 2-3 times faster than the rest of the globe, there’s a risk that we start to set off a kind of runaway warming feedback. We may be near that threshold now… God help us if we’ve crossed it…”

    https://robertscribbler.com/2016/06/22/co2s-vertigo-inducing-rate-of-rise-in-first-5-months-of-2016-hothouse-gas-concentration-rocketed-3-7-parts-per-million-above-2015/

  11. MSN Fanboy on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 7:47 pm 

    Apneaman, you always post good stuff, cheers! I can’t wait for the breakdown of society 😛 Going to settle a score or two before I die of starvation/ murdered!

  12. Apneaman on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 7:50 pm 

    Face it, the humans are a fucking cancer. We infect everything in proximity. From the heavens – tons of toxic low orbit space junk – to the depths of the oceans. One big pollution machine.

    Man-Made Pollutants Found in Earth’s Deepest Ocean Trenches
    Crustaceans at 10,000 meters contain higher concentrations of chemicals than some animals in coastal waters

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/man-made-pollutants-found-in-earth-s-deepest-ocean-trenches/

  13. Apneaman on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 8:02 pm 

    MSN Fanboy, I bet you’re not the only one. Can you imagine the prison (2 million US) population on the loose?

  14. shortonoil on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 8:14 pm 

    ” During the decade from 2005 to 2015, the oil industry’s costs of production rose by over 10 percent per year because the world’s cheap, conventional oil reserves—the “low-hanging fruit”—are now dwindling “

    This estimate, that was first stated by Steve Kopits, was later checked by us using the ERoEI/Energy Density equation derived from the Etp Model. According to that equation the cost of production between 2005 and 2015 increased by 117.2% to $117.70 / barrel.

    Further more the increase between 2015 to 2025 will be another 44.6% to $213.78/ barrel. Heinberg is correct in assuming that petroleum will soon price itself out of the market.

    The only question is whether or not his time to transition is realistic?

    http://www.thehillsgroup.org/

  15. Dustin Hoffman on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 8:18 pm 

    Apeman, how about all those mentally ill patients in I institutions? Or those drug addicts out there once their supply dries up? Never mind all those taking antidepressant meds and no longer get their scripts filled? Bedlum, that’s what you get!

  16. Davy on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 8:19 pm 

    MSM, what is your take on Brexit?

  17. makati1 on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 8:49 pm 

    Warm North Pole = open Arctic ocean, methane released from millions of square miles of permafrost and ocean bottom, and the faster melting of glaciers on Greenland, possibly affecting the Gulf Stream. It is possible that we have hit the hockey stick part of the global warming chart. We shall see.

  18. onlooker on Wed, 22nd Jun 2016 9:27 pm 

    No doubt we have activate some climate feedbacks , the only question now is how soon will the changing climate cause mass human die off

  19. Anonymous on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 12:04 am 

    Interesting to note the article you linked mentioned the worlds greatest terrorist threat is also contributing to deep ocean pollution. Im referring of course, to the uS corporate military.

    “the researchers suspect that the proximity of the Mariana Trench to large plastic manufacturers in Asia, as well as to a long-term US military base on the island of Guam, may have contributed to its high PCB levels.”

    The worlds greatest threat to peace, is also the world’s greatest institutional polluter.

    http://projectcensored.org/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/

    Henberg, despite being a reasonable and pleasant fellow, and hardly stupid, still seems to think that amerika will continue to direct 1/3 of the entire planets resources to less than 5% of the worlds pop..forever, or so he seems to think. All so they(amerikkka) can build the solar and wind powered utopia to come. I guess the rest of world will just sit there will amerika siphons off all the wealth of the world so they can build solar-powered parking meters for a nation of fat lazy idiots that drive everywhere. Even to the curb to pick up their junk mail.

  20. simonr on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 12:25 pm 

    Hi Mak

    Not strictly true about the Hydrocarbon stations. There are 5555 methods for mitigating renewables dropping below a required level.
    1) Interconnectors, when the renewables drop, simply import the power from an area where they have not
    2) Pumped storage, used to even out flow, but can be used for unexpected outages
    3) Peaker generators, cheap to bring on-line, but expensive to run.
    4) Last is keeping a station idling, after all who pays for the idling costs ?!?

    The thing to remember is that the EU and USA (cant answer for the rest of the world) have very sophisticated forecasting systems, these are a major part in any generation strategy, and whilst not 100% with a couple of pumped storage stations a few interconnectors and a peaker or two, are more than adequate to deal with the occasional unplanned outage.
    Hydrocarbon generators alos have unplanned outages (many reasons)

    Simon

  21. simonr on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 12:26 pm 

    Doh … meant 4 strategies (at least)

  22. sunweb on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 3:54 pm 

    I have challenged Heinberg to look at the underwriting of “renewables” by the fossil fuel supply system and the global industrial infrastructure with videos from the industries themselves: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html

    I get no response – perhaps it doesn’t sell books.

    How will we use the electricity from these solar energy capturing devices?
    This isn’t a trick question. There is no hidden trap.

    It however is a question that I ask of promoters of these devices and I get no answer.
    So it is business as usual. Put up as many wind turbines and solar collecting devices as the earth can bear. Build all the auxiliary equipment to run these devices. Consume by mining, refining, fabricating, manufacturing and transporting all the toys and tools we want to use.
    It is like a person diagnosed with lung cancer saying he/she will just smoke these organic, non sprayed cigarettes for a little bit longer instead of facing the reality of the situation, quitting and taking the treatment – or perhaps extinction.

    Lament climate change but blind yourself to the energy and resource needs of these devices.

    Can we honestly call this green. Call it renewable. Call it sustainable.
    It is more business as usual.

    It will be continued consumerism and destruction if we don’t define what is truly important to use the electricity for: for instance a hospital? Even that needs to be assessed.

    We will either make these mature, difficult decisions or we will continue down the path of destruction and possilble extinction.

  23. Don Stewart on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 4:28 pm 

    Sunweb
    Have you looked at
    http://ourrenewablefuture.org/chapter-11/
    Heinberg and Fridley are very much looking at ‘making mature, difficult decisions’, and they are well aware of the dependence on fossil fuels…see Exhibit 11.4.

    It is true that they approach the subject from a ‘limitation of emissions’ standpoint rather than a ‘peak fossil fuels’ standpoint. Opinions vary. My own opinion is that, whichever position you choose, Heinberg and Fridley’s conclusion that, particularly in the US, a whole lot less energy consumption lies in our future.

    Don Stewart

  24. Apneaman on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 5:11 pm 

    Record rainfall for Orange

    http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/3985830/record-rainfall-for-orange/

    PHOTOS: Travel grinds to a halt in London after nearly 1 month’s worth of rain falls on EU referendum polling day

    http://www.accuweather.com/en/features/trend/photos_london_downpours_flooding_travel_delays_eu_referendum_polling_day_brexit/58346217

  25. makati1 on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 5:16 pm 

    Don, but can the Us survive the “less energy” world? I don’t think so. There is zero cultural support or education for 3rd world living, not to mention the lack of resources to do so. Maybe when the Us population is under a few million, those who survive will be those who already stepped down the ladder voluntarily and learned the skills to survive in a “less energy” world.

  26. Apneaman on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 5:39 pm 

    Half of Thailand’s Weather Sites Break All-time Heat Records in 42 Days

    https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=338

  27. makati1 on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 6:02 pm 

    Ap, temps here in Manila have been averaging 2-4F above normal this year. Rainfall is down, but I don’t know the stats. I just notice the lack for this time of year.

    Weather here is not tracked in detail like in the US. No visible sign that it is affecting the ecology. What difference is there between 6 inches of rain per month or 5 inches of rain in the tropics?

  28. Don Stewart on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 6:21 pm 

    makati1
    I don’t know whether the US can survive on less energy. We certainly survived the Depression. Whether we could survive a ‘long emergency’ I simply don’t know.

    Basically, I just don’t like people taking potshots at Heinberg and Fridley who haven’t actually read what they have to say. A friend of mine who knows Heinberg (I do not) says he is a very sobering guy to talk with.

    Based on the current election cycle in the US, and given my predisposition to think that the Hill’s Group model is pretty close to the truth, I expect the worst for our society. I think Heinberg and Fridley lay out the dilemmas in terms of a decade or so to react and everyone is sane and sensible. I don’t think we have that long and I don’t think we can count on the body politic to react sanely and sensibly.

    Don Stewart

  29. Davy on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 6:42 pm 

    “How Is Climate Change Affecting the Philippines?”
    http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/22/climate-change-affecting-the-philippines/

    “The Global Climate Risk Index 2015 listed the Philippines as the number one most affected country by climate change, using 2013’s data. This is thanks, in part, to its geography. The Philippines is located in the western Pacific Ocean, surrounded by naturally warm waters that will likely get even warmer as average sea-surface temperatures continue to rise.”

  30. onlooker on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 6:55 pm 

    Just recently typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was categorized as the strongest hurricane to ever make landfall

  31. sunweb on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 7:00 pm 

    Don – firstly, this isn’t a pot shot. I have presented my information to Heinberg for over a year and in different places. He has never truly addressed them. I scanned the chapter as I have read his other stuff. What he and possibly you are missing is the machine making the machines making the machines. The videos I have presented which are from the industries themselves all show massive industrial infrastructure underwriting these so called renewables. And that equipment needs to be manufactured with the energy and resources required. It is a massively interlinked complex system.
    Secondly, don’t talk about reduction in general terms, what do you need the electricity for?

  32. sunweb on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 7:03 pm 

    And finally, I have done this for energy in general also. I have done this since the 1980s and the percentages have not changed. I have also shared this with Heinberg.

    Without constraints on electrical usage (toys and tools) then the gross energy inequality globally will continue with solar and wind energy underwriting it. (below find Excel spread sheet info) Without constraints on energy use solar and wind devices and their auxiliary accessories are elitist equipment of the entitled.

    There are two critical questions of the energy/electricity that we are requiring. How do we bring more equitable distribution of energy resources? Is this imbalance and the consequent strife our destiny and our demise?

    Secondly, what do we need the energy for? This must be one of the mantras for survival now and tomorrow. Imagine beginning at the earth resources –the mine and the well- and the subsequent flow of these products. This creates a tremendous picture in motion of “energy” and resources flowing around the world. It is a Catch 22; we can’t live with it and can’t live presently without it.

    I took the table from this site:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption

    I copied it to an Excel spread sheet. I rank ordered the least energy use to the most and then did an accumulation of population from least energy use to most. I could then look at what 50% or 80% of the world’s population used compared to the US of A.

    Caveat: these figures are approximate however, realistic.

    Caveat: These per capita figures are misleading
    because the wealthy get the “lion’s share.”

    – 50% of the people in the world use only 9% of the electricity generated globally (see caveat above)

    – people living in countries in the top half of “energy-per-capita consuming countries” consume more than 90% of all electricity consumed (or more than 1.8 times an equitable share);

    – people living in countries in the top 20% of “energy-per-capita consuming countries” consume almost 57% of all electricity consumed (or roughly 2.8 times an equitable share);

    – people living in countries in the top 10% of “energy-per-capita consuming countries” consume almost 40% of all electricity consumed (or roughly 4 times an equitable share); and

    – people living in countries in the top 5% of “energy-per-capita consuming countries” consume about 25% of all electricity consumed (or about 5 times an equitable share).

    Even that is misleading, because all the products made elsewhere
    and shipped to the USA add to the electrical (and total energy)
    available for our consumption.

    See more at: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/07/electrical-constraint-and-inequality.html

  33. makati1 on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 8:01 pm 

    onlooker, yes, that is true. However, temps can be survived,to a point, if there is water available. Ask, Texas if water is a problem? Ask California if water is a problem. Ask New Orleans, Chicago, etc. Water is going to be a problem for all of us eventually.

    http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/7000/7079/tropical_cyclone_map_lrg.gif

    One storm (Hayian) does not make it impossible to live and move forward. The Ps has averaged 8-10 typhoons per year for most of it’s history. Yet it still survives and the GDP is growing at 6% annually not to mention the population. A different culture. Imagine a Cat 5 hurricane hitting New York. (Sandy was a Cat 1 when it hit – WIKI) Sandy did $75 Billion in damages. (Katrina cost even more.)

    I’ll stay here in the Ps where storms are the major problem. It is much safer than the streets of America or it’s government.

  34. Don Stewart on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 8:05 pm 

    Sunweb
    Heinberg and Fridley have a section titled something like ‘the Market is inadequate for doling out the remaining fossil fuels’. The same point you are making. They are essentially talking about the need for rationing.

    Don Stewart

  35. Don Stewart on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 8:18 pm 

    makati1
    Can the US survive? I was just reading James Kunstler’s latest, The Harrows of Spring. He tells a little story about the town doctor who remembers all his training, but who no longer has the tools needed to do what he needs to do. The doctor remembers that the British forgot how to make pottery after the Romans left the islands. The doctor sees the inevitability of a new dark age.

    The doctor is training his son to be a doctor. But, of course, the training won’t involve all of the high-tech tools that the father learned on. The doctor speculates that the son may be a better doctor than he is, in the new, reduced circumstances.

    I worked on a farm with a young man who was living very simply. He lived in a tent, and mostly tended his own injuries. He worked barefoot. He stepped on a nail in an old board. I was scared he would develop tetanus. But he treated the deep wound with honey, and recovered. Was he just lucky, or did the traditional treatment actually work? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect we will see the world evolve in the direction that Kunstler’s doctor anticipates.

    Don Stewart

  36. Davy on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 9:09 pm 

    Makati Bill, you are so far up the river of denial it is hilarious. Did you read the article? This is about much more than storms. It is a whole list of issues. You always want to be #1 well, there you go. You moved to the #1 worst place to go in regards to climate change and you brush it off. What a joke!

  37. makati1 on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 10:09 pm 

    Don, there are a few in the US who have made or are making the effort to decouple from the dying economy and lifestyle of the West. They may just survive and prosper in the coming years.

    I have a step sister and her family, that emptied their 401k and other “retirement” mutual funds to buy a small farm and go back to the land several years ago. She, then at age 45, went back to college and became a registered nurse, a skill less likely to be not needed in the future.

    I’m decoupling in a different way, but stepping down the ladder before it is pulled out from under me. I may have a few more decades and I want them to be a help to my friends, family and neighbors. Not a hindrance or drain.

  38. GregT on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 11:42 pm 

    “Did you read the article? This is about much more than storms. It is a whole list of issues.”

    From the “article”:

    “As the energy sources that built the twentieth century ebb, it may be helpful to disabuse ourselves of many of our assumptions and expectations by observing how different “normal” is for North Americans as compared with people in rural villages in less industrialized countries”

    The very point that many here have been making for quite some time. We in North America have a much bigger adjustment to make than people who are already living in what we would consider to be abject poverty. Those people (us) who are most dependant on modern industrial society, are those who’s lives will be affected the greatest. Those who are the least reliant on what we take for granted on a day to day basis, will notice little difference in their lives.

    Climate change is an entirely different matter. It will affect everyone globally. There is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. No country or region on the entire planet will be left unscathed.

  39. GregT on Thu, 23rd Jun 2016 11:51 pm 

    I might add;

    It would appear that the most serious effects of CC will become problematic long after most of us here are gone. Unless of course CC goes/has already gone non-linear. In that case we’re all pretty much toast.

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