Discussion with Supervisor

A few of us in a small town in Northern California have just finished presenting an appeal to the County Board of Supervisors concerning a decision made by the Planning Commission to allow the installation of a large wind turbine in an established riparian zone that is the home of several endangered species of birds, bats and other bird not on the endangered species list.  In addition, this turbine was planned to be placed in relatively close proximity to a small town and school.  The appeal did a small amount of good in that it resulted in the movement of the turbine by about 1300 feet, and added a requirement that the owner monitor and report the number of birds and bats that they find that have been killed by the turbines. 

A few days after our defeat I decided to once again write to one of the County Supervisors concerning the issues associated with these turbines.  Interestingly, I actually got a response and we carried on a bit of an email dialogue.  I am putting this dialogue in this blog because I think it has some interesting, and possibly important, information concerning various aspects of the County decision making process.

ME:

I don't know if you have been following this link on wind power.  news@wind-watch.org

I have been hesitant to send it to you guys because I am pretty sure that you all (the BOS and the Planning Commission - the "deciders" of Yolo County) will take it as just a bunch of NIMBY's complaining about negative changes in their neighborhood.  I have subscribed to it so that I can follow the discussions as they come up.  I find it pretty interesting reading.  It consists of lots and lots and lots of scientific, engineering and medical studies.  A few are positive about the prospects of wind, most are not (I am convinced that this is because there is almost nothing positive to say about them).  It also contains hundreds (possibly thousands) of daily news articles from all around the world concerning local citizens who are actively opposing wind installations (including Zamora and Yolo County newspaper articles and reports from the BOD meetings) as well as hundreds of first person discussions from people who are now subjected to the installations.  I notice that it takes about a day for a news article to appear in the Democrat before it shows up on this web site.  There is such a groundswell of discontent and objection that you would think the governments would sit up and notice that maybe it isn't the desires of, on in the best interests of, the citizens.  Obviously we are all being totally ignored - just as you guys are ignoring us.  The message is clear - to heck with the public - there is GOLD in them thar hills.  Nothing will stop the gold rush bubble until we have yet another inevitable financial disaster created by the wild and unreasonable speculation bought and paid for by the tax and rate payers.  In this case, most of the speculation is from over seas firms, but it will have the same impact in the end.

You might find it interesting and thought provoking to take a look.  I am impressed at the neutral approach that this web site has taken.  They are just publishing things that are in newspapers and magazines around the world, and are reporting (and including) hundreds of scientific reports that should be the "smoking gun" stopping their installation, but of course it is not because of the vast amounts of gold involved.

I don't think you have to believe or not for this web site to be interesting - it just gives a flavor of opinion in various countries.  A little like the "occupy" folks - you don't have to side with them, but it seems reasonable to pay attention to the message - which is exactly the same message that you can find in all sorts of places like this wind web site.  There is a feeling that the 1% are running over all the rest of us, and nobody is going to stand in their way.

SUPERVISOR:

You can believe whatever you like.  You somehow want to prove that wind power is bad and therefore it should be banned.

I happen to think that smoking is bad... but I am not in favor of banning the activity because adults can make their own decision about smoking or not.  I feel the same way about tattoos, fast food, and riding a motor cycle without a helmet.

You have certain abilities to shape the use of the property of another person.  That ability is limited by the law and the property rights of other land owners.

The question for me is not if wind power is good or bad.  That is not the relevant decision point to me. ..... but seems to be a key point for you.  The real question is does it interfere enough with the land owners around it. My general inclination is that it does not.

ME:

You presented some interesting points of view. 

However, you totally misunderstand my point of view.  My point of view has nothing to do with beliefs that something is "bad" or "good" - it has everything to do with finding the most effective solution.  I admit, a couple of years ago I did deal with this issue from the point of view of a "belief" - and that belief was that wind turbines are a good solution to the energy problem and that they are a necessary evil (evil in the sense of having many negative environmental impacts for wildlife and the local communities).  I based my opinion on a belief because I did not take the time or effort to find out whether my belief was correct or not, I was busy doing other things.   However, as I studied this further I discovered that my belief was unfounded and incorrect - the facts of the matter are that the approach of installing large numbers of wind turbines is an ineffective, and very costly, approach that causes much damage to the environment,  community and near-by neighbors.  Not only that, but it is an approach that is not necessary to achieve the stated goals of getting our electrical power from clean, renewable energy sources.  In fact, it gets in the way of implementing a better solution.  As far as I have been able to determine, these are not "beliefs" - they are facts. 

My basic approach to understanding this rather complex issue has three parts. 

1) The first part is that I try to perform a cost-benefit type of evaluation.  The question is whether or not the benefits are worth the costs.  In answering this question, I have been considering the entire set of costs and benefits in terms of dollars, energy production, carbon dioxide reduction, environmental impacts, impacts upon communities, impacts upon quality of life and others.  When I research these issues, it becomes clear that once the amount of power from wind reaches about 5% penetration they start to become much less effective, and at about 10% penetration they are predicted (by energy experts - not me) to provide no net energy or net reduction in CO2.  That means that there are very few, if any, benefits and there are lots of costs.  This is especially the case if the benefits are judged to be in comparison with other available options.  

2)The second part is a consideration of whether or not there are better, less costly, solutions to the problem as required by the CEQA regulations and common sense.  There is at least one such solution, which is small scale "roof top" PV solar.  There is more than enough space to get all of our power from these roof top sources without ANY appreciable negative environment impact with regard to their installation and operation.  They are much less expensive by all measures, and require much less (or no) government incentives to be highly effective and affordable.  They result in a significant decrease in the cost of power to the consumer rather than a significant increase, and they can easily be paid for by the owner without any money being required from taxpayers or rate payers beyond low cost initial financing that can easily and affordable be paid off in just a few years.  So from everything that I have been able to find out, there are MUCH less damaging alternatives that actually achieve the desired goals effectively and are much more affordable to the tax payers and rate payers than the wind turbine solutions. In addition to this, there is solid engineering evidence that a significant increase in the number of wind turbines beyond those that are currently installed bring with them a real risk of the total collapse of the power grid for extended periods of time (over a year).

3) The third part has to do with the "fairness" about who gets the benefits and who pays the costs.  It turns out that the only ones that get a benefit are those who make money on the installation, hosting (landowners) and operation of the wind turbines.  Since they are actually not effective at making clean, renewable energy there are no other benefits for anyone (possibly the County will get some tax dollars as a benefit).  The costs are borne by the tax payers, the rate payers, the local community, neighbors (noise, view scape, lighting problems, etc), and natural environment (water, erosion, birds, bats, etc). To me, this is not a "fair" situation because many pay the costs, but do not share in the benefits in any discernible way.

As you can see, none of these approaches are based upon untestable or unknowable "beliefs" - they are all discoverable by analysis, testing, and observation.  I have spent many, many hours searching the literature and talking to experts in the energy field to determine if my assessments are correct, or if I am somehow missing critical information.  If I am missing information, or am using incorrect information, I am quite happy to change my position. However, so far that has not been the case.  In every instance that I have delved deeply into the subjects, it turns out that the negative impacts are worse than I had originally assumed, and the positive benefits are less.  It is not a case of beliefs, it is a case of scientific, engineering and economic facts.  I try my best not do things, or take important positions, based upon unsubstantiated beliefs - I am afraid I am a died-in-the-wool believer in science and use that as my method of arriving at my opinions and decisions whenever possible. 

There is nothing in this whole thing that is even remotely related to your examples of smoking, fast food or riding a motorcycle without a helmet.  You are talking about personal risk taking behavior, the wind turbines are very different.  I question the right of a person to take risks that cost society large amounts of money such as those that you listed, but fully understand that we cannot, and should not, prevent an individual from injuring themselves by engaging in risky behavior.  However, building giant machines that have a large direct impact on others and the environment is a very different issue.  I don't believe that just because a person can build something they should have the right to do so.  There are the rights of both those who reap the benefits, and of those that pay the costs, to consider - not to mention the impacts upon the environment that need to be considered.

Your discussion of my rights to shape the use of the property of another person is pretty confusing.  I wonder what the right might be based upon.  My understanding is that the right to do so it based upon a community benefit from the activity that is believed to offset the personal costs to the one that is negatively impacted.  The role of the planning commission (and the BOS) seems to be to ensure that the negative impacts are in accordance with the desires and benefits of the community.  It is really a cost/benefit analysis from the point of view of the community, the neighbors and the environment, as well as the desires of the landowner.  Yes, these rights are to be considered in terms of the law and property rights of the land owners - both of which are defined by the law makers in terms of a cost benefit type of evaluation. However, the rights don't come from "on high," they come from men trying to find a reasonable solution to the problems of property rights and impacts upon those who bear the negative impacts upon the activities.  It is one of those "your rights end where my nose starts" kind of things. 

Now to your last paragraph.  As I have already indicated, the issue of "good" or "bad" has absolutely no importance or meaning to me.  Questions such as "does it work?", "is it worth it?" and "is there a more effective and less damaging solution?" are ALL that I care about.  I don't even know what you mean by "bad" and "good" in terms of wind turbines, solar arrays, or coal power plants for that matter.  None of these are inherently good or bad, but some are "better" than others in terms of costs and benefits.

Your bottom line question really confuses me.  You say that the real question is whether it interferes "enough."  I wonder what the criteria for determining what is "enough" might be.  It seems to depend upon who is making that decision. Is being driven from your home because of the neighbors wind turbines count as "enough?"  Does destroying the beauty and serenity of the countryside count as "enough?"  Is killing one, or ten, a thousand or ten thousand birds "enough?"  It seems to me that there are two ways to determine what is "enough." One definition has to do with the specifics of laws, regulations and ordinances.  The other has to do with answering the three questions that I posed at the beginning of this letter.  Is it worth it? Is there a better solution?  Is the apportionment of cost to benefits "fair?"  There are other factors that need to be included, but I think this gives my general understanding of how the determination what is "enough" is made. 

You said you have a general inclination that the negative impacts are not "too much" for something, but it isn't at all clear what that something might be.  (I think your having a "general inclination" means that you really haven't researched the issues enough to have solid evidence.)  Maybe my confusion is because you aren't thinking in terms of costs and benefits, or fairness, or utility - maybe you are of the opinion that landowners have the right to do whatever they want as long as they don't cause "too much" damage to their neighbors or the environment.  I suppose there is a kind of logic to this approach - using this logic it really doesn't matter at all what the person wants to do with their land, it only matters that they want to do something.  If that is the case, then the whole concept of a use permit gets kind of shaky.  Who cares what the use is?  By that logic, the regulations should specify the amount of damage and costs to others or the environment that is considered to be "acceptable."   All projects would be considered equal, none would have special treatment because they are important.  If this is the approach, then the regulations should be silent on anything to do with uses of land, they should only talk about acceptable (or unacceptable) damage or negative impacts.  That approach would eliminate all considerations of community planning and other similar aspects of the planning function. It should not matter where the negative impacts are located, the only issue would be whether or not the cumulative negative impacts are "enough" to prevent the activity.  Maybe this is a good approach, but it isn't the approach that is currently being followed by the County, the State or the Country. 

I really want to thank you for your response.  It has really helped me to better understand the criteria that you, and I assume the other BOS and Planning Commissioners, use in making judgement concerning whether or not an activity is considered to be acceptable to the County.  It seems to be based upon how much damage will be done to others, and whether or not it violates an existing law (such as CEQA, which was pretty much ignored in this case).

SUPERVISOR:

Don't those landowners have the right to be wrong?

ME:

Not if they are wrong on my nickel.

NEXT MORNING, ME AGAIN:

First off, I want to thank you for taking the time and energy to carry on a bit of email dialogue with me on the topic.  It is very unusual to get any response at all from politicians - normally everything just goes into a black hole never to be heard from again.  I have found your comments to be very interesting and useful.

Concerning my rather flippant response to your question about whether or not the landowner can be allowed to fail.  When I responded with "not if it is on my nickel" I was speaking figuratively.  What I really was trying to express was the idea that I agree that they should be able to fail as long as all of the costs of the failure are paid entirely by them.  This includes tax incentives, price supports,  impacts to the community, impacts to neighbors, impacts to the environment - or impacts to any shared resources such as the utility grid or utility prices.  Basically, as long as there are no negative impacts beyond what the landowner owns (including impacts following a sale where the landowner no longer owns that land), then as far as I am concerned they are free to fail or not without any interference.  As soon as the impacts go beyond their fence line (including noise and visual impacts), then they no longer have such freedom.  It might be that we (as a community) decide to let some things go by without interference, but that is a decision that we get to make, it is not their "right."  It is my understand that part of the reason for a Planning Commission and a Planning function is to bundle some of these issues so that they don't have to be re-decided every single time.  However, that doesn't mean that the community doesn't have the right to restrict any and all impacts that go beyond the fence line or that impact shared resources (such as water, soil, wildlife, noise, view, roads, streams, airspace, quality of life, etc).

One of my major frustrations with the process that you just went through with the wind turbine decision is that the State handed you (the County decision makers) a great tool to get the necessary information required to make an educated decision.  This tool is in the form of CEQA.  All that the County had to do was to invoke CEQA and the developer would have had to pay for the analyses and assessments necessary to identify the pros and cons, quantify the risks, and compare their chosen solution to the feasible alternatives, including the "no action" alternative.  They would have had to identify and quantify the impacts and show how they were going to mitigate them, which would have then formed the basis of a contract between them and the County requiring them to implement the mitigating actions.  It won't have cost the County anything to do this, and you would have gotten some pretty good information for this and future similar applications.  Choosing to ignore this tool seems to be shortsighted to me.  The reason that I have been doing the research and sending you guys the information that I have been sending is an attempt to provide you with a little bit of the information that you would have gotten from that study.   (Performing these kinds of environmental impact studies is part of my business practices, and in doing this work for free I gave the County a gift worth tens of thousands of dollars.)   Sure, it would have cost the developer a little bit (about 1% - 2%of the cost of the project), and it would have slowed the process a bit, but I believe that would have been a small price to pay for better information and more knowledge about the topics in specific relationship to the County, the community and the local environment.  There was no reason to guess at the impacts, the costs or the appropriate mitigation.  There will be many more applications for wind turbines to follow by the same developer but I am afraid that now there has been a precedent set concerning the imposition of CEQA regulations that will be very difficult to change in the future. The reason that the timing is so important to the developer is that a little bit of the incentive money goes away by the end of the year and the entire project is financially unsound without the the entire stimulus/incentive package - which should tell us a little bit about the financial viability of these systems.  They certainly are operating on the bitter edge of financial viability if they are so dependent upon tax supported incentives.

Letter to Jerry Brown

I sent the following letter to Jerry Brown.  Maybe you would like to send something similar or along the same lines.

Honorable Governor Brown,

The question that immediately came to mind by everyone concerning energy is whether or not it is feasible to reach the goal in nine years.

I believe it is totally feasible as long as it is NOT done with very large desert power plants.  There are many significant problems with the proposed desert power plants - including environmental hurdles, high costs, high power costs, need for new transmission lines,  and others. These will all get in the way of meeting your goal.

However, instead of the State and Feds putting up billions in grants and financial support for a few large companies to help them destroy the deserts and jack up the price of electricity to consumers - go small and put the same money into supporting small locally produced and used systems (rooftops, parking lots, etc) - net metering plus the ability to sell back extra power at wholesale electricity prices.

Small systems have little or no environmental impact (because they are installed on locations that are already impacted); require no new power lines (because they decrease the power on the grid, not increase it); save the consumer money (because they make their own power for free rather than purchase all of their power from the utilities); are more affordable (because the local owner is more willing to invest when they can get a direct savings); are faster to install (because of little or no need for exhaustive permitting, environmental impact reports, design and construction of new power grid, etc); and create far more jobs (because they require about 10-20 times as much local labor as big centralized power plants).

The according to the news media, government is already offering grants to the large power plants of about $5/installed watt plus giving them almost free land, plus giving them tax breaks for the power they produce, plus giving them rate hikes for their new power, plus helping to pay for new transmission lines.  Give the $5/watt to homeowners and small businesses and solar will blossom without the need for any of the extra "Plus costs."

If given incentives close to those proposed from the large (German, Spanish and Chinese owned) power plants, local solar will meet the goals within five years without a negative environmental impact - while saving the consumer billions of dollars a year.

If you persist in going with the large centralized power plants, the costs will sky rocket; there will be extensive delays because of environmental impacts (especially when the public realizes that you are talking about hundreds of square miles of desert environment being totally destroyed by leveling, paved with gravel, sprayed with herbicides and fenced off from all wildlife); there will be massive problems with creating the temporary infrastructures to support a short term burst of workers during construction; they will severely impact the water supplies in the desert communities during construction and operation; and the will require building many new high tension transmission lines.  I believe it is unlikely that all of these obstacles, and others, can be overcome in time to meet your schedule deadline of 2020.


There are enough rooftops in California to meet 100% of California's electrical energy needs.  If all 6,540,000 single family dwellings were to install solar electrical systems, that would produce over 125,000 gwhr/yr of power. We currently use a total of 129, 000 gwhr/yr of electrical power and are making 42,000 from installed renewable sources (other than large hyrdro).  Add business roofs, parking lots, and other similar locations and the amount of space and power produced is far in excess of 100% of the total power needs for the State.

Desert Solar

I happened to be listening to the PBS news today and heard an interesting, and infuriating, bit concerning a proposed new solar power plant for the Mojave Desert in Southern California.  This new power plant is supposed to be able to power 85,000 homes (I wonder how much power is assumed for a home?  Maybe 7000 watts of solar panels per home.)  In order to do so, they are expecting to get $1.5B in incentive money from the Federal government.  The new plant will undoubtedly be several square miles in extent, and be placed on almost "free" BLM land (more than likely a zero cost,  20 year lease).  In addition, it is probably going to require some new power lines and things like that - which will probably be incentivized by the government either in the form of outright grants or generous tax breaks.  Once on line, I assume even more juicy tax breaks on the profits of the plant.  It is hard to know for sure how much the total bill to taxpayers will be - but I think it is reasonable to assume a cost to the taxpayers of at least $2B over the 20 year or so expected life. They claim that it will create about 350 new construction jobs for one year (about $5.5M per job!).

Just for fun, I did a little math to see how that works out per house.  That comes out to about $24,000 per home.  An individual solar system to power an "average" home costs about $30,000.  If that money were to go into solar on homes instead of in the desert, the same money would provide about 75% of the cost of the solar for the 85,000 homes - and would result in the interesting result that 85,000 homes would no longer have a power bill for a $6,000 per homeowner investment! In reality, it is a little hard to figure out the projected costs because that many installations might push the price of solar installations up, or down.  I predict a downward trend.

It seems unfair that some people would get free "free" power, so to be "fair" the homeowner needs to somehow pay a "reasonable" amount.  One approach would be to provide low (or no) cost loans for the extra $6,000 so that the homeowner has an invested stake and ends up paying something toward the cost of installation, with no up-front cost.  The entire upfront cost to the homeowner would be zero dollars, with something like 3/4 of their current bill going to pay off the loan in 10 years.  The money going back into the system could end up leveraging the money so that close to 100,000 homes could get enough power from their roofs for the same tax dollar.

It wouldn't be "free" to the homeowner, but it would be without upfront cost, would reduce their utility bill, and would give them "free"  power after ten years in return for the use of their roof space.

The number of jobs necessary to install the 100,000 systems would be substantial. Assuming that a crew of three could install a system in two days - that would amount to 600,000 man-days, or about 2,400 full time positions - eight times as much as the power plant in the desert.

So, there seems to be a choice.  We (the taxpayers) could use this same amount of money to do one of two things:

1 - we could give it to a large corporation (almost certainly owned by an European company like the others being built or planned in the desert).  This would create power for 85,000 homes; would cost about $2B in tax dollars; would create 350 jobs in the desert; would require the building of new power lines; would result in the creation of a short lived "boom town" in the desert for a year or so, which would then have to be abandoned; would destroy several square miles of pristine desert ecology; and would result in an increase in utility bills for everyone involved (the prices will go up for this power because it is going to be sold as "offset" power to help companies and municipalities meet the new green house gas requirements). 

2 - We could spend the same amount of money; provide power for 100,000 homes; not impact any land or ecology (because it is already impacted by the existing homes); would use existing power lines; and would  reduce the utility bills for 100,000 tax payers (to be used to fuel the local economy); would provide 2400 jobs locally from the existing communities; and would be included in the municipalities' green house goals with no additional cost to the community.

The only downside to the second approach that I can think of is that it eliminates 100,000 customers from the utilities' income base.  We would be using tax payer money to offset power, and offset utility costs,  but it would also offset anticipated revenues to the  power companies.  There's the rub. 

It is this last reason that makes me think that utilities should be either publicly owned, or not-for-profit companies.  Because they are privately owned, we (the taxpayers) can't seem to make logical and reasonable decisions about how to spend our tax money to get us off of our  "addiction" to fossil fuels. 

Back of the envelop calculations

After I finished my last blog concerning how much area it would take to switch to 100% renewable power in California I decided to perform a few "first cut" calculations to see it is really as obvious as I think it is.  I looked up power use by the State, various production amounts by energy source and calculated how much power could be produced per square foot of panel per year (based upon 2009 actual amounts for the State).  It works out kind of like this:

Total electrical used by California = 205,695 GWh/yr

Production:
large hydro = 25,094 GWh/yr
small hydro = 4,181 GWh/yr
geothermal = 12,907 GWh/yr
renewable = 28,567 GWh/yr
biomass = 5,685 GWh/yr

The amount that needs to be produced in excess of these amounts is 129,261 GWh/yr

There are 6,540,000 single family residences in California.  If you assume that each has about 1500 sq ft of roof and can accommodate about 1000 sq ft of solar panels, then the rooftop power would equal about 125,000 GWhr/yr.  Thus, there are enough residential roof tops in California to produce about 97% of the additional power needs.

I haven't yet made a guess at the available area on the roofs of businesses, parking lots and south facing windows in tall office buildings, but I think it is substantial.  I would think that it is probably at least 25% of the area of the residential roofs.  Together, the solar on residential rooftops and the solar on businesses and parking lots would easily exceed the "non-renewable" electrical requirements for the State. Of course, this figure will undoubtedly go up as the cost of solar electricity goes down (because of private investment of locally produced electricity), but there is some extra power available in the figures that I am using.  And this does not include the impact of further efficiencies in our use patterns, which could be substantial if we actually make it a top priority.

An interesting feature of this calculation is that there is already about a third of our electrical power produced by renewable and controllable sources which could easily be available for times when solar is not available. This doesn't include the 31,509 GWh/yr we are currently getting from nuclear power plants.  This can also be used for power during off solar times.  It seems pretty clear that we already have the ability to keep running when the sun isn't shining.  Maybe there will be some small shifts required in scheduling the use of power, but it appears that no new systems will need to be designed or built to allow this to happen. Until the system shakes down into a stable supply and demand mode, there is another 116,716 GWh/yr capability from natural gas power plants, which can be used as "peaking" sources (just as they are used today).

Based upon this admittedly simplified analysis, it seems pretty clear that we have a mixture of renewable power plants currently available to allow us to produce all of our electrical needs using renewable sources (including solar) without needing to impact ANY additional land for large scale solar or wind power plants.  There are of course some questions regarding the design and implementation of the power grid that will need to be evaluated and modified, but that will need to be done no matter how or where the wind and solar power is to be produced. We are not going to be able to get off of polluting, non-renewable, carbon dioxide producing power without some significant changes to the grid because the grid was never really designed, it grew up topsy to meet the needs as they developed.  It will just have to keep doing that and shift in ways that make the new energy sources work.

Size considerations for renewable energy

I just found out that some company is planning on building a wind "farm" (power plant) a couple of miles to the west of my home.  It is going to be something like 40,000 acres in size (62.5 square miles), using the biggest of the biggest wind turbines.  At a discussion on this topic, one of the participants said something like, "it isn't perfect, but we need to do something about the energy problem."  That is a true statement, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the "something" needs to be huge new power plants, or new high tension power lines to support those new power plants.

It has become abundantly clear that a massive effort is underway to shape the future of renewable power, and the approach that is currently winning is one where very large corporations will win by invading the public "commons" and corralling the available profits for themselves.  Current legislation and financing is strongly biased toward huge, centralized, power generation facilities.  These facilities are taking the form of the very large wind generation facilities, and the very large solar arrays using a variety of technologies.  Almost no serious consideration is being made for planning toward small scale, localized power generation.  There are currently laws on the books requiring power companies to accept locally produced power, but only up to a very small percentage of the total use.  In California we are very close to those maximum limits - after which the only new renewable generation accepted will be from very large power plants covering hundreds of  square miles of land. 

One of the big problems with these very large installations is that they cause very large, negative, environmental and social problems.  For example, wind turbines seem benign, but that is not the case if you happen to live near them.  They are noisy, cause lots of bird deaths, and are an eye-sore.  They prevent the land from being used for a large number of other uses, such as residential properties and other uses.  Very large solar arrays also have heavy negative environmental impact in that they require large tracts of land to be flattened, graveled and sterilized with herbicides.  All of the large arrays that are currently proposed take large tracts of land (usually publicly owned lands) out of the local ecosystem by fencing off and denuding dozens of square miles of land.  This land is currently in the "commons" (where we all benefit), but are slated to be placed under corporate ownership and use for the profit of the corporate owners.

As far as I can determine, what is happening is that our common ownership of resources is being taken away and given to a few very wealthy individuals.  What we collectively own is more than just the value of the land being used, it includes viewscapes from the installations and the new high tension power lines that will be required to support these huge installations, ecosystems and other important attributes.  They have very definite, and potentially important, environmental impacts - but currently our regulatory watchdogs are placing an extremely low value upon these impacts.  They acknowledge the presence of the impacts, but then judge them to be so low as to not require much, or any, corrective action. Basically, they are taking the position that these impacts are acceptable and need not be mitigated - with the result that the project can go ahead regardless of the impacts.  Kind of the position of, "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

This might be a reasonable position to take if there weren't better alternatives, but there are better alternatives that don't require the negative impacts or the creation of a whole new infrastructure supporting the new high tension power lines heading off into isolated parts of our country.  We already have a solution that does not require new power lines and does not take any land out of use, or cause other environmental impacts.  This solution is small scale, locally sited, solar (PV) power plants situated in locations that already are in use for other purpose. 

It is my opinion that before we start messing with the large systems, we should maximize our use of small scale systems. If we then still need more power, we can think about the next step.  We are not there at this time.   For example, almost every single family dwelling the United States can harvest two to three times their energy needs from the area of their roof.  It is true that many of the roofs are not oriented optimally, but that doesn't make them ineffective, it only makes them a bit more expensive to use.  An east-west orientation is perfectly fine for harvesting solar energy, but it will take a few more modules to do so.  They still have two to three times more power available than they need.  Another example are parking lots.  These are areas that are already pretty ugly and have been set aside for the sole purpose of parking cars.  They could easily, and relatively inexpensively, be covered over with solar arrays.  This would provide shading, cut down on the impacts of their "heat island" problems, and provide a lot of renewable power to the grid.  They would turn parking lots from being a net expense to being a profit center for the owners.  Not only that, but as we move into more and more electric cars, they could provide local charging for those vehicles, avoiding the requirement to ship the power off-site - an making even more profits for the owners of the arrays.  Roofs and windows of large buildings such as shopping centers and factories are another good place to install solar modules.  (Solar panels can be made to be transparent for use as windows.)  They could be sized to take care of most, or all, of the power requirements of the building - or designed to make a profit for the building owners by selling excess power to the grid.  Road sides along or between freeways are other examples.  Once you start looking around you will find many, many ideal locations for solar modules that have little, or no, negative environmental impact.

Given a little thought, it becomes clear that we have thousands of miles of surface area that have already been taken over for uses such as these, there is no need to take any additional land to provide the amount of solar arrays that are needed to provide a major share of our energy needs.  For example, in California there are about 6.5 million single family dwellings.  If these average a roof area of 1500 square feet, that means there are about 360 square miles of roofs on homes.  That is enough roof space to produce over 65 gW of power - it takes about 25 gW to provide electrical power for the entire state of California.  It is clear that if we just used the available roof top space on the homes we would have far more power than we use to provide the energy needs of the entire State.  Add to that the opportunities afforded by other spaces such as business rooftops and parking lots, and it is clear that there is not a "need" to use any other spaces. There is a desire to do so, but not a need.  The interesting point is that this math works out for all States in the Union, not just California.  All States have much more roof top and parking lot space to offset their entire energy budget, plus a very large surplus.  There are differences in costs between locations, but not in the basic fact that there is more than enough energy available. All could easily produce excess energy at all times of the year for less than the current cost of power - generating a net savings, not an additional expense.

What this gets down to is a battle about who gets to benefit from solar production.  If the modules are placed on homes, then the homeowner will benefit through vastly reduced power costs, and the potential to make a little on the side.  If the sources of renewable energy are concentrated in large, centralized power plants, then the owners of those power plants will reap the profits.  There is also the impact on the job force of these two approaches.  Putting solar on homes and businesses will create a very large need for workers and will create hundreds of new businesses to service those needs.  Putting solar in large centralized locations will produce a short term need for a few workers, and will create almost no new businesses because that work will be performed by existing very large construction firms.

That brings us to the point where the decision to go with small, local production or huge centralized production is really an economic decision/choice, it is not one having anything to do with physics or engineering limitations favoring either choice. Obviously the big players (the corporations that make their money selling power) would really like to maintain that business model.  If we all make our own power, then their business becomes one of storage and distribution, not primary producers of energy.  The big profits are involved in taking raw energy sources from the commons (from nature) and converting that to a salable product.  They don't want to lose that profit source.  However, losing the ability to be the primary energy producers does not mean that they wouldn't have an opportunity to make profits - there will still be a very large need for storage, distribution and providing off-time energy supplies.  It will just be a different business model, but not the end of business.

There is of course a question of how all of these new solar systems would be financed. In many cases, they would be financed by the property owner who is looking for a better way to get a return on investment of their savings.  However, in most cases, they would be financed just like power plants and things are financed right now, through loans from private financial institutions and government subsidies in the form of loan guarantees, tax incentives and outright grants - just like we have always done for the large power producers. By far the biggest "welfare" cost in the United States is the money that we give to wealthy power companies, we give them trillions of dollars to produce energy to sell to us at huge profit margins.   The "welfare" to the power producers would be the same as it is today, but it would go to the individual home and business owner, not to the very large power companies. It would be money from the general public back to the general public, rather than from the general public to the very wealthy. 

While it is abundantly clear that there is more than enough wasted space available to produce all the power we need, at a price that is much less than what we are currently paying, it is not at all clear how to convinced the large companies to play the game for our mutual benefit.  There will need to be some significant modifications to the current power creating and distribution system to accomplish this, but that will be needed no matter which approach is used. The scary part is that we are at a turning point.  Since the grid and supplies will need modification in any case, the decisions being made today will impact which approach we use in the future.  We need to make the correct decision right now, not wait for the system to change and then attempt to go back and do the right thing.

The new role for the power companies is too much for this blog posting.  That discussion will have to wait for another time. 

PV Power Ratings

I have found that there is some confusion concerning how to interpret the power rating of Photovoltaic (PV) modules (panels).  We often hear about “cost per watt.”  It seems that one of the first questions that gets asked about a PV installation is how many kilowatts does it produce.  However, there is a bit of a problem with this because there are several different answers to the question of how to rate the output of PV modules.  It all depends upon how the watts are measured.

PV modules are rated by PV manufactures in terms of watts per module.  This rating is usually based upon what is referred to as “Standard Test Conditions” (or STC for short).  This is an industrial test standard performed at a cell temperature of 25°C (77°F), 1000 watts per square meter and a 1.5 Air Mass. The measurement is made by flashing a calibrated light at a temperature controlled module and measuring the output voltage and current, which is used to calculate power (watts).  The flash lamp is designed to closely match the spectrum and intensity of the sun on a clear, sunny day at sea level in the mid-latitudes.  This is a useful measurement since it provides a repeatable and comparable test for comparison purposes.  However, it does not represent an output that would be anticipated by any real system. 

A second method of rating PV panels was developed in Davis, California at a large test and demonstration installation called Photovoltaics for Utility Scale Applications (PVUSA). This rating is called the PTC (PVUSA Test Conditions) rating.  The PTC rating is designed to represent a "more real life condition" of 1,000 watts per square meter solar irradiance, 1.5 Air Mass, and 20°C ambient temperature measured at 10 meters above ground level and a wind speed of 1 meter per second.  The PTC rating is lower than the STC rating. 

Both of these ratings are at the module level, and do not include reductions in power caused by soiling, shading, module mismatch, wire losses, inverter and transformer losses, shortfalls in actual nameplate ratings, panel degradation over time, and high-temperature losses for arrays mounted close to or integrated within a roofline. These loss factors can vary by season, geographic location, mounting technique, azimuth, and array tilt.  The California Energy Commission (CEC) provides an on-line calculator that attempts to predict system performance based upon the entire system, including derating factors to account for several of these conditions.  The CEC rating is used to predict overall system ratings in watts, and annual performance in kWhrs per year, for a specific system design at a specific geographic location.  The CEC rating is used to calculate the incentive rebate provided to offset the high cost of new installations.  (Currently, the CEC incentive in PG&E’s territory is $0.35 per CEC watt.) 

The CEC incentive calculator is based upon a simplified simulation model called PVWatts.  The estimations of module performance using the CEC incentive calculator is only marginally accurate, and there are no provisions for adjusting derating factors such as wire size and length.  Generic derating factors are used, which gives a quick and easy calculation used to determine the amount of incentive payment, but that does not necessarily predict the actual performance of an installed system.  The CEC web site is very specific that the values provided are only intended for determining incentive payments; they are not considered adequate for system design purposes.

 There are a number of computer simulation programs available that provide a much better prediction of production in the field.  Two of my favorites are “PV Design Pro” by Maui Solar Energy Software Corporation and System Advisor Model (SAM) created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).  Both of these models are based upon decades of research by Sandia and NREL.  The differences between the two models are mainly in presentation and user interface. Both require detailed test characterization of each type of PV module for maximum accuracy.  Unfortunately, not all manufacturers provide the details that are required for these more accurate simulations, meaning that the only choice is to revert to the simplified PVWatts model.  PV Design Pro does not provide the ability to select this less accurate model from within the software, whereas SAM does.  Both programs provide pull-down pick lists allowing the user to select make and model of PV module to be used.  Both allow for a much more detailed selection and optimization of derating factors.  Both models provide hour-by-hour simulations based upon local weather conditions available from drop down selection lists or information provided by the user.

The system rating as predicted by these more sophisticated (and accurate) software programs differs from each of the other ratings.  So do you want to talk about STC, PTC, CEC or Sandia ratings?  It is my opinion that the Sandia ratings are closest to the actual situation when available.  If not, then the CEC ratings as calculated by SAM are probably the next best rating.  However, in almost all cases people talk about the STC ratings of their systems because that is the larger number and is the value most often quoted when talking about system costs in terms of dollars per watt.

There is one more little trick to this whole rating business, and that has to do with system degradation over time.  It is known that PV modules degrade over time, but discussions concerning the amount of degradation to expect vary by more than ten times, depending upon who is making the claim. 

Manufacturers typically guarantee there modules to degrade less than 1% a year for the first 25 years.  While this might seem like a small number, it ends up being 25% in 25 years (the length of the warranty).  That would mean that a 10,000 watt system would only be providing 7,500 watts at the end of the period – a huge reduction in power!

However, that number seems to be wildly exaggerated.  In discussions with solar personnel at Sandia and reading a lot of scientific literature on the subject, it appears that the degradation is much less than that.  For mono or poly crystalline silicon (the most popular substrates today), the degradation is typically less then 1% the first year, and near zero after that.  In other words, there is often a bit of early degradation, but as long as the modules do not become damaged, they tend to be stable for the rest of their service life.  The guarantee of less than 1% a year is very conservative, the manufacturers can be assured that they will not have to pay off on this promise.

However, the same does not necessarily apply to other technologies such as thin film and materials other than silicon based cells.  It is my understanding that some thin film cells degrade more than 1% per year, and continue that trend over time, seriously impacting their future performance and therefore their overall cost effectiveness.  We are currently in a time when many new technologies are being tried and introduced into the marketplace.  It will take time before they are fielded in actual installations before we will know what to expect.  There are lots of short term test results, and results from accelerated testing protocols, but it is currently unknown how this will work out over time in an actual installation.

Letter to California's Governor Brown

           It looks to me like a crisis is coming upon the State with regard to the continued expansion of small scale PV energy industry.  The problem is that the major utilities (particularly PG&E) have made it abundantly clear that they intend to stop accepting new electricity produced under the net metering agreements as soon as the total production in their service areas hits the mandated 5% of their peak demand.  The installed base is now more than 3% and rising rapidly as the economics of distributed small scale power has improved in the past few years.   I predict that if the current trends continue, the 5% limit will be reached within two years – stopping further installation of renewable energy systems that are designed to offset the power on a meter-by-meter basis (residential, small commercial, agricultural, etc.). Therefore, just about the time when raising power costs and lowering PV system costs will make distributed power generating systems affordable without government subsidies, the ability to install the systems will be curtailed by the utility companies.

            The small scale renewable industry is just starting to bloom, creating new jobs, creating new investments and finally moving toward reducing our dependence upon non-renewable energy sources.  In two or three years, the economics for renewable energy systems will change to make them not only affordable, but will produce a net positive rate of return - without subsidies, incentives or pollution.

            It appears that the goal of the utility companies is to own and control the sources of electricity on the grid rather than allow its small users to be producers.  The plethora of proposals for very large scale solar power plants in California makes it clear that they intend to purchase most of their solar produced energy from huge installations covering large tracts of desert land, causing extreme and largely unknown environmental impacts to these important ecological systems and the local communities.

            There are many down sides to the very large installations.  They will be heavily subsidized by taxes and by being given the use of “free” public land (mostly BLM land).  The installations will create short term bursts of employment during the installation process (seriously straining the community resources in the proposed remote areas), but will require a very small staff for maintenance and operations.  The result is likely to be the creation of what amount to desert ghost towns following a building boom.  In addition, several of the proposed systems are owned by foreign investors; Americans don’t even get the benefit of our tax subsidies or land donations. 

            On the other hand, distributed small scale systems are largely environmentally benign because they are placed on land that has already been taken out of service (roof tops, parking lots, alongside roadways, etc.).  The investment money largely comes from individuals and small businesses rather than large, often foreign, investors.  In addition, there is becoming a new, large, labor base to provide sales, installation and maintenance of these distributed systems.  

            Without government intervention, the current trend toward the installation of residential and small commercial renewable energy systems will come to a quick halt.  I strongly recommend and request that the State mandate the acceptance of small scale renewable electric production onto the grid without having to meet the stringent regulatory requirements applicable to large scale power plants.  The power doesn’t necessarily need to be purchased using the “net metering” model, but it needs to be purchased at a fair price (as a minimum, it should equal the wholesale cost for identical power when the power is produced).  

            The current state of uncertainty with regards to what will happen once the 5% limit has been reached is stifling grown and continued investment in renewable energy at the “grass roots” level.

Letter to Yolo County Planning Commission

I following material is the body of a letter that I sent to the Yolo County Planning Commission based upon issues that came up during a Planning Commission meeting concerning recommendations to the County Board of Supervisors concerning developing a plan to meet the State of California's green house gas requirements.

- Should zoning requirements be based upon Kilowatts or acres?

There was a discussion about whether to provide zoning regulations based upon kilowatts or land area.  Since the ordnance seems to be focusing on land-use, I suggest it be based upon land area.  The problem with basing it upon kilowatt outputs is that the efficiency of various technologies varies greatly, and is likely to shift in the near future.  With current technologies, the amount of land required to produce a given amount of power can vary by a factor of ten (e.g., from one acre to ten acres, depending upon the technology used).  This means that the amount of area required to operate a 1 hp pump is about 3 - 40”x67” poly-crystalline silicon PV modules (“panels”).    This is about 55 square feet.  Using other technologies, it could be as large as 100 square feet, or as small as 10 square feet.

 

Not only does the area required to capture the energy vary greatly, but the on-site infrastructure required to support various technologies can use more or less area.  PV systems may only require inverters and switch boards – a small contribution to the required foot print.  However, some technologies, such as the trough systems that focus light on pipes containing a heat transfer fluid that then boils water creating steam to turn a turbine, may require a large power plant and hot fluid storage tanks to make use of the energy.  

Different technologies have different land use and environmental impacts.  It is my suggestion that if “land use” is the item being regulated, then the criteria should be based upon land use.  If the item to be regulated is “power,” then power should be used as the criteria.   Otherwise some technologies will be unfairly penalized, or promoted.

- Achieving the 2020 emissions reduction target:

I think there is an additional opportunity to use solar to achieve the 2020 emissions reduction target.  The presentation lists irrigation return pumps as a likely use of solar energy.  I predict that irrigation water pumping from wells will also become very important in the near future as the price of energy goes up and the price of solar modules continues to decline.

For a typical field irrigated from March to October using a 60 hp pump, it takes about 100 standard sized PV panels (about 2000 square feet) to off-set the cost of electricity if used in a net metering mode.  At the current cost of utility power and PV systems, it requires incentives or tax breaks amounting to about 35% of the initial cost of the installation to achieve a seven year payback (about 10% Return on Investment - ROI).  However, assuming power costs continue to rise at the historical level of about 7% a year, coupled with a continued projected decrease in PV system cost, in about four years there will no longer be a need for such government incentives.  At that point in time PV will be provide an approximately 10% ROI on their own.  I think it is reasonable to assume that from that point forward, PV will begin to off-set a significant portion of the power used for pumping – even in a deep well application.

It is my suggestion that additional uses for PV power be included in planning considerations if that would result in regulations or standards promoting these types of applications. 

-Community Choice Aggregation Program.

I have no specific problem with the idea of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) programs, but I do not believe that it should be the first, or even the foremost, choice for meeting the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target. 

The inevitable outcome of all, or even a majority, of the 58 counties entering into these types of contracts to meet their GHG targets is that the price of “green” power will skyrocket, and the creation of many extremely large (in the order of ten square miles or more) solar facilities to meet the demand.  The result will be high power costs and very large negative environmental impacts caused by the centralized power plants.  Examples include the permitted and proposed solar power plants near Blythe, Calico and in Imperial Valley.  Each of these plants is over ten square miles in extent.  The areas where these plants are located will be graded and rocked, and periodically sprayed with herbicides to prevent vegetation from growing.  They will be very large, bare fields devoid of all wildlife and vegetation.  There are more than a dozen such plants in the permitting stages in California at this time, and they will proliferate as the price of renewable energy increases because of the demands of similar CCA programs that are designed to assist counties to meet their GH Gas emission budgets.  It is quite possible that similar systems will be proposed for Yolo County. 

I think it is much better to instead focus on renewable energy opportunities at the local level, produced where the power is needed.  Once all of the feasible local energy production/reduction options have been met, then it might be necessary to include the very large, environmental damaging, systems into the mix. However, it is my opinion that the need will not come if counties such as Yolo actively promote the creation of small, local options. 

My suggestion is to focus on the “low hanging fruit” of locally produced power used where produced first, rather than invest in CCA options that will undoubtedly become expensive and environmental damaging as the State wide use grows.   The CCA approach might need to be in the mix of options while the transition to local power occurs, but it should not be considered the final or even desirable long term solution. 

- Locally produced power

Yolo County has a plethora of opportunities to produce power that is produced where used, eliminating or minimizing land use impacts and modifications to the power distribution grid.

Residential, commercial and agricultural installations

Examples of opportunities of environmental neutral opportunities abound.  For example, almost all of the homes in Yolo County can be self sufficient given the current costs of electricity and PV systems, paying their owners back the installation cost in about six years.  The same or similar payback and return is possible for many commercial and agricultural applications.   As the price of power increases, and the cost of PV systems decreases, it is only a three or four years before they are economically viable without any subsides or tax incentives.  At that point in time, it will be highly feasible and cost effective to replace nearly all electricity used within Yolo County with renewable sources, funded in part or wholly by the user of the power (homeowners, farmers, business owners, etc.).  

Transportation

As the prices of utility power goes up, and the cost of PV systems goes down, it will become feasible to power vehicles on PV produced electricity.  The new generation of electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles will allow a transition to renewable energy created within the County.  Most, or all, of this power offset can be accomplished with PV systems located where they do little or no damage to the environment through land use degradation by placing the collectors on roof tops, over parking lots, in unused areas within agricultural areas and other locations that have already been taken out of use.  There is currently no need to take land out of production or change the land use if the generation facilities are carefully sited and installed. 

The near term future of solar energy and fuel cells

I seem to have gotten all fired up about the future of solar power and hydrogen fuel cells.  It has recently come to my attention that solar power is on the verge of becoming a reality – big time.  As we know, it has been around for a long time and has slowly become accepted as a possible power source for small applications, or for people who desire to be in on the good thing early.  As usual, those early pioneers do so at an extra financial cost, but get the satisfaction of doing the right thing at the right time.  Now that is all changing.  New solar photovoltaic technologies have come out of the research labs, and are being used to make the new generation of panels.  For example, Shell solar (who are the new owners of Seimens solar) has new non-silicon, thin film panels for sale.  They claim that this new manufacturing technology decreases the manufacturing costs by a factor of ten.  (It is interesting to note that while their costs may have gone down by a factor of ten, the cost to the consumer of the panels has gone up about 20%).  Not only has the costs dropped significantly, they are about to drop much further and faster during the next year or so.  There are several new companies getting into the business this year who are intentionally planning on driving the costs, and the price to the consumer, down even more than the 10 fold decrease claimed by Shell.  I suspect that it will end up about 1/20 of today’s costs.  That means that the $40,000 for panels that I was planning to power my house will only cost $2,000 in a year or two.  At that point, it will be clearly crazy not to invest.  The reason that the price will drop like that is that they supply will be huge and the manufacturing costs very low.  Unless something completely unforeseen happens, the market will be flooded with panels in the very near future.

One of the sticking points in California will be the laws regarding selling power back to the power companies.  Right now they have to allow “net metering,” (running the electric meter backwards when producing power and forward when using it), which is a good thing – but not good enough.  A customer can reduce their power costs this way, but any extra power produced goes to the power company free of change.  When the price of panels drops to the truly affordable level, it will be important to be able to get paid for extra power.   Europe has just changed their laws to mandate this type of arrangement in anticipation of the coming solar revolution.  We need to do they same.  If I can actually turn a profit off of my solar panels, I will be much more interested in willing to maximize my investment and the amount of power I produce.  I can easily make 5-10 times the power that I can use.  I would like to do that, and sell it to the utilities.  We need to change the laws in California to mandate this type of sale to the power companies at a reasonable rate.  Small producers need to be able to get at least as much for their power as the large power plants get – maybe more because it does not deplete our natural resources.  I believe that there should be a significant cost benefit for producing non-polluting, renewable power.  It needs to be either subsidized, or at least paid for at the top of the price paid for power, rather than at they bottom, which is of course where the power companies will want to set the prices.

Once we switch to the use of a significant about of solar electricity, the issue of using hydrogen becomes much more viable.  Right now almost all hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, which is not smart and does nothing to decrease our use of petroleum.  However, if it is made from solar power, then it represents a decrease in the use of petroleum and the associated pollution.   It becomes a renewable, pollution free energy storage medium (not an energy source, but rather just a method of storing energy for mobile or night time applications).  Water to hydrogen and oxygen – back to water.  No pollution and no net use of resources, including water.

The interesting part of this whole scenario is that all of the pieces are not only in place to allow it to happen from a technological point of view, but it is actually happening right now.  Huge manufacturing facilities are being constructed all over the world to produce low cost solar panels, hydrogen fuel cell cars are cruising our highways daily, the technology for producing fuel cells and storing it is in place, the technology for using electricity to produce hydrogen has been in place for decades.  All  that has to happen is that it has to happen.

Hydrogen fuel cells seem to be the “sticking point” for some reason.  Part of the reason is the extremely high price of the membrane that is used to convert hydrogen and air to electricity.  The membrane is very inexpensive to manufacture, but is very expensive to purchase.  An almost identical membrane is used by the petroleum industry for their refining processes, and this membrane is very inexpensive.  So far the manufactures have managed to keep the prices artificially high because they have what amounts to a monopoly on the produce.   That needs to change.  The material is similar to plastic wrap with a tiny bit of platinum in it which is the catalyst that makes the process go.  Right now it is hundreds of dollars a square foot – it would be pennies a square foot.  The other reason for the high cost of fuel cells is the current manufacturing techniques are done by hand, and use expensive materials and processes.  There is no reason that this should be the case any longer.  It was the only way to do it when doing research, but now that research has been completed – it is time to switch to much, much lower manufacturing techniques.  I don’t know what the final costs will turn out to be, but I see no reason that a fuel cell power plant for an automobile should be any more expensive than a modern motor.  It should actually be less expensive because the parts are simpler and there are many less pieces.  

Storage of enough hydrogen to be practical in a car is a slight problem.  If they use standard pressure vessels (5,000 psi bottles) they are limited to about 100 miles range while being able to “hide” the bottles from view.  However, a few years ago they came out with a new design that allows the use of up to 15,000 psi – potentially tripling the range to a usable 300 miles.  My guess is that there is room to improve vehicle efficiency (road friction, regenerative braking, etc) and layout of bottles within the vehicle to increase this a bit more.  In any case, 300 miles seems to be enough to make it a viable energy source.

There is a question about lack of infrastructure for hydrogen.  This is a red herring.   We currently have an infrastructure that is perfectly capable of providing the needed hydrogen and bootstrapping the supply to meet an increase in demand.    All towns of reasonable size have welding supply houses that provide various types of specialty gases, including hydrogen.  If you want hydrogen today, all you have to do is go purchase it.  This would clearly not work for a vast number of vehicles, but it will take a bit of time before there are vast numbers of vehicles.  As the numbers of fuel cell vehicles grows, the infrastructure will grow with it, there will never be a lack of infrastructure.  At some point I expect to see tube trailers being used to transport hydrogen from the manufacturing facility to the distribution point (similarly to what we do now with gasoline).  As the need goes up, I expect to see service stations making their own supply of hydrogen from electricity.  If by that time the photovoltaic supply has grown enough to be providing net power to the grid, then this electricity created hydrogen will be from the sun and be pollution free.  I would expect that in addition to this on the spot made hydrogen, there will be others who make solar hydrogen as an additional income from their parking lots and unused farm land.  The point is that the infrastructure is here right now, and will easily grow to meet the demand as the demand grows.  I personally like the idea of using my rooftop solar collectors on my house to make hydrogen to power my own car.  There is enough power available on my roofs to power my house, irrigate my fields, power my car, and sell a little to the power companies.  All that it takes is cheap enough solar panels and the right types of laws to support this sort of thing.

I find all of the quite exciting, and interesting.  We are on the verge of a possible transformation of our power system.  However, when this transition happens there will be some who fear great financial loss (such as the oil industry).  I wonder if they will have enough wisdom to allow and support the change, or if they and politicians attempt to scuttle the whole thing.  It is there for the taking, but those that fear losing will likely fight very hard to maintain the status quo.   In addition, they will likely do things like try to pump as much oil out of Alaska as possible so they can make their fortunes before the demand for oil drops to the point that it is obviously not needed.  They will want to get their money while the getting is good.

We are in for an interesting few years as the world adjusts to a new paradigm in energy production and use.

An Inconvient Truth

I went to see the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” the other evening in San Jose. It was an odd experience. The first thing that I noticed is that it was pretty easy to find a place to sit with less then 20 people in the theater.  To be fair, I didn’t see any more people going to the other shows in the six-plex, Maybe it just wasn’t a movie night.

The movie itself was very different from anything I have ever seen.  It was in the format of a slide show presentation in a hall.  Gore was on the stage presenting “his slideshow” and an audience was watching.  It was kind of like a video of a presentation.  There was more to it than that, often we would be shown clips of various places around the world to illustrate his point.  These filled the screen, and were therefore different from what a person would experience in the audience of his talk.  However, basically it was a lecture by Gore on the threat of global warming.  

I already was aware of almost all of the things that he presented, but I may be unusually interested in the topic so have made the effort to educate myself on the topic before seeing the movie.  Even with these things he did a nice job of explaining them, and illustrated them in new ways.  For me it only brought a couple of new items, but there would probably be much more for folks who have not spent much time thinking about the problem.  I think he did a good job of cutting through the controversy to the heart of the matter – we are causing the earth to enter an era of heating that is unprecedented in our knowledge of the past many millions of years.  We have already driven the CO2 concentration higher than it has been at any time in the past 600,000 years, which includes six ice ages and huge fluctuations in CO2 and temperature.  What we have already done is far out of the normal, and what will happen in the next few years if we don’t really get serious about stopping it will be orders of magnitude worse than anything that the earth has experienced in millions of years.  As far as we can tell, it appears that will be a far larger effect than volcanoes, ice ages, or whatever other unbalances the earth has been subjected to.

Just as a note to those that believe the oceans can absorb the extra CO2 in the atmosphere.  That is probably correct at any instance in time.  If we stopped producing new CO2, the oceans could probably absorb the extra and bring it back into equilibrium.  However, that is not what is happening.  The oceans are right now absorbing as much as they can, but we are clearly adding more faster than can be absorbed, that is why the concentration continues to increase.  It is a good thing that there are large “sinks” available, otherwise there would be no hope in reducing the concentrations, and the temperature, even if are capable of solving the problem of adding too much.  In any case, it is clear that the oceans are not capable of absorbing it nearly as fast as we are in making it, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing the increases that are very evident.

I think the scariest part of Gore’s talk was his clear presentation of the idea that this is a process that accelerates on itself, meaning there is positive feedback.  For example, the more ice melts on the poles exposing open water, the less sunlight gets reflected back into space, meaning that more sun goes to warming the exposed oceans, meaning that the ice melts faster.  There are many positive feedback loops involved, and few negative ones. (There are a few negative ones that I know of which he didn’t mention, such as plants growing faster in warming weather, using more carbon dioxide to add to their growth.)  However, the overall effect is that the feedback is a positive one, leading toward run-away (moving away from equilibrium) increases in global temperatures.

Then of course there is the big potential problem of turning off the huge energy pump sometimes called the “conveyor belt” that runs around the world through our oceans.  This giant “heat pump” is responsible for much of our excellent weather because it transfers excess heat from the tropics up to the northern regions, and brings cold water back to the tropics to cool them.  It results in moderating the overall temperature of earth.  If this stops working, then the tropics will get much warmer, and the poles much colder – throwing us into another ice age.  So global heating results in ice ages – interesting.  This is most likely to occur if the ice melts and changes the salinity of the oceans in the vicinity of the down currents.  

If the ice melts, stopping the conveyor belt, the same water would result in raising the oceans about 20 feet.  If the ice on the other pole melts also, it would add another 20 feet.  Hum, that would be a problem.

Gore ended up with a bunch of recommendations on how to get ourselves out of this mess, made a compelling point that this effort would be good for the economies of the world (including the USA).  He also pointed out that we have been successful in banding together to solve the ozone depletion problem, and have all of the tools and know how necessary to solve this one – but seem to be lacking the will to do so.

I find it very odd that people object to doing anything because it would be inconvenient and expensive to do anything about it.  That seems like a pretty short sided view of expense and convenience to me.  If the oceans rise 30 feet or so, it will destroy untold trillions of dollars worth of property and real estate, not to mention the cost of displacing billions of people.  I think that could be considered to be “expensive” by any ones thinking.  What good it is to save a few billion dollars if the outcome of doing this is to destroy most of human civilization and wealth.  This doesn’t include the effects of changing the climates so that floods and draughts prevail over large parts of the world, making it impossible to grow enough food to sustain our population.  Large scale death and disease is bound to result, which is both quite inconvenient and costly.

To me it just makes no sense at all to not take on this problem.  We know it is there, there is scientific question that it is happening, that it will happen faster and we could do something about it.  It is about as close to a scientific certainty as science can get.    I talked to a local friend about this last night and his response was, “it doesn’t matter, God is coming back soon.”  That is taking a whole lot of faith that I don’t see any reason at all to support.

Even if it turns out that we aren’t on the verge of causing a global catastrophe with our use of petroleum products, what harm could possible be caused by cutting back on that by conservation, creating new and more efficient products, in using renewable (non-polluting) energy sources?  How could not burning fuel have a negative impact on us, particularly if we are careful and do it in ways that do not reduce, but rather enhance, our style of living and productivity?  For example, how has cutting automobile pollution resulted in anything bad happening to us or the economy?  It looks like we still have pretty good cars, that we still go where we want, and that our lifestyle is better, not worse.  Why does the prospect of a change necessarily mean reverting to the dark ages?  (Actually, not making the changes might very well mean reverting to the dark ages.)

The biggest problem and complaint that I had with the movie was the more or less constant self-aggrandizing of Gore as a person and a politician.  He should have stayed with his topic, and stayed away from any discussion of the person of Gore.  As it is, there is so much political stuff in the movie that I can’t honestly recommend it to my conservative “friends”.  They will just see it as the beginning of a run for the Presidency.  They will entirely miss the good points that he is making because they are forced to see Gore the politician, rather than Gore the concerned citizen.  This is a very big, and nasty mistake.  It is similar to the mistakes that Gore made in his last run for the Presidency.  Instead of telling us what he thinks and believes, he tried to tell all of America what he thought that we wanted to hear.  This didn’t work at all.  We just needed to hear him say what he believes in, and let the chips fall as they may.  This is the same.  We need to hear about global warming, not about Gore.  Once again he has ruined the opportunity by using the forum for multiple messages.