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.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, February 4, 2011
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.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
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.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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