MonteQuest wrote:In my opinion, the following qualities are critical:
First, the new energy technologies must be renewable and sustainable.
Second, they must provide for a decentralization of energy production and be scalable.
Third, they must eliminate or substantially reduce carbon emissions.
The diffuse nature of incoming solar radiation requires a significant investment of energy and materials to capture, collect, and concentrate sunlight. This means that many solar technologies deliver a lower energy surplus than fossil fuels. Equally important, the huge infrastructure required to collect solar energy is made from fossil fuels. Solar technologies, therefore, currently are “parasites” on fossil fuel systems because they cannot “reproduce” themselves.
So, to make the transition to renewable energies, we must “powerdown” our civilization and learn to live in a world of modest, bio-regionally organized communities living on received solar energy. For the next half-century there will be just enough energy resources left to enable either a horrific and futile contest for the remaining spoils, or a heroic cooperative effort toward radical conservation and transition to a post-fossil-fuel energy regime. Technological change is shaped in part by the physical attributes of the energies available from the environment, so a world based upon renewable solar technologies is going to be different than the one we now live in.
Zentric wrote:I will also add, concisely, that the methodology you're using to reach your proposed "Powerdown Solution:Renewable Energy" could possibly be flawed. ...
And not until a consensus is reached - by hopefully knowledgable, reasonable, altruistic people - on the answers to many of these questions, and perhaps also to thousands of other questions like them, only then might we be able to take confident steps towards building out this sustainable, nearly steady-state local or regional energy infrastructure of which you speak.
For example, you have yet to decide who exactly gets to live or die, be enslaved or allowed to remain free
From what I've heard (from Simmons, Smalley, etc.) we need to find a brand new energy, and/or capture it in a way we're not currently capable of.
If we have to wait to take steps until everyone , or at least, from what you say, all altruistic people, make a consensus decision, then we are truly doomed.
Any focus on renewable energy must first look at deconsumption, IMO.
Wind is 1:30 now.
First, the new energy technologies must be renewable and sustainable.
Second, they must provide for a decentralization of energy production and be scalable.
Third, they must eliminate or substantially reduce carbon emissions.
Vestas calculations are about as reliable as the USGS predicting peak in 2030. In other words a "crafted" result, where the study "results" define the viability of their product
backstop wrote:Therefore I propose that the title of this phase be revised to SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT.
In my opinion, the following qualities are critical:
First, the new energy technologies must be renewable and sustainable.
Aaron wrote:First, the new energy technologies must be renewable and sustainable.
Second, they must provide for a decentralization of energy production and be scalable.
Third, they must eliminate or substantially reduce carbon emissions.
Fourth, they must be scalable.
Oh yeah... & they must be scalable.
Montequest wrote:Second, they must provide for a decentralization of energy production and be scalable.
EnergySpin wrote:Vestas calculations are about as reliable as the USGS predicting peak in 2030. In other words a "crafted" result, where the study "results" define the viability of their product
So you read the 50 pages LCA Aaron?
Funny because I did ... checked the material consumptions against other industries and they seem to be right.
Where do you base this conclusion?
In fact the energy payback time for wind is down to a few months now.
Horns Rev the only real offshore plan had to go through an extensive assessment of environmental impact, as well as economics and the numbers do hold. The mistake they did is that no storage was planned, which puts them in a situtation where they have to pay the Swedes to get the extra electricity when the wind blows and pay the Swedes again to receive electricity when the wind does not.
1. Develop Wind Power for local communities.
2. Implement passive solar energy -- heating, cooling, cooking, refrigeration, etc. -- in order to relieve the energy burden. (rephrase, anyone?)
3. Unnecessary transportation, construction, manufacturing, and other heavily oil-dependent energy uses must be excised. [Egad, I'm having a Jeavon's Paradox "moment" -- it's really rather difficult to come up with "solutions" to problems that don't create their own problems...]
4. Make agriculture more organic and sustainable -- i.e. reduce oil inputs drastically. The decrease in mechanization could be offset by an influx of workers from excised high-energy professions.
5. Decentralize huge international corporations in order to facilitate the relocalization and thus deconsumption movement.
backstop wrote:From this perspective, if a technology fails to approach zero net carbon emissions (ZNCE) it ain't sustanable and has no place here.
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