WHAT IS WRONG WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY?

 From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732        1185        246        82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120       572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242       835       130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136      1168        82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571       703        85

Nov    25     2304    12025        620       518      118

Dec    30     3880    14748      1224       299      465

Jan     14       4142    15512       1151         189      712              

          20      4385    17350      1382        152     566

          28       3908   16388      1439       162     555 

Feb      1       1904     9265        609         94     235

            2       3632   14673       1240        113      547

Summary:  There is a definite decline in new deaths from last week.  However, whenever large numbers of people gather together in a closed room, bad things happen, like Thanksgiving and the Christmas/New Year period.  The Super Bowl occurs on Sunday.  We'll know better in a week to ten days if even something like this sporting event (not only in the Tampa stadium, but across America, where too many will idiotically congregate over a television set) can determine lives.  From The New York Times this morning;

 

I've worked on just about every form of renewable energy, from my first job with the sugar industry on biomass, to being on the team that succeeded in the Hawaii Geothermal Project to hiring the people who produced ocean thermal energy conversion electricity and freshwater at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii.  Plus, I've been into fusion energy, wind power and various solar options.  I've delved into the politics, economics, sociological implications and environmental benefits.  I was involved in the initial congressional legislation for wind, ocean and hydrogen when I worked in the U.S. Senate.  I've chaired national committees, formed a couple of companies and served on boards to advise them on their energy future.

No question that these green alternatives are the solution to combat global warming.  Plus, there are the externalities, a not well understood advantage.  That is, if you produce, say, wind energy electricity to reduce the importation of petroleum, the economic benefits are many fold, for jobs are created in your local economy, money does not leave the state to pay for that oil, and the recirculating impact of these compounded gains multiply the worth.  What is this multiplier factor?  There is no consensus, but is nevertheless a definite plus.

It should be understood that major change takes time, and many of these cleaner energy technologies take a generation and more to develop.  There are infrastructure requirements, laws, public opinion and a variety of hurdles to overcome for anything new.  The not in my backyard obstacle is fierce.  But if you don't begin the effort today, you will not be ready when the cost of these cleaner pathways becomes competitive. 

All that aside, society should not willy-nilly jump into exotic options not yet ready for prime time.  Some renewable energy technologies are just too expensive today to  on balance help a particular location.  It makes no sense to spend ten times more to produce OTEC electricity when oil is so relatively cheap.  Sure, there are innumerable ways to produce hydrogen using clean methods.  However, when you analyze the life cycle cost, all of them are just too expensive today. Hydrogen is just another option that will take many decades to make serious inroads.  Someday there will be a hydrogen economy, especially with the advent of this fuel for aviation.  But when?

Universities are the source of considerable research, but there is a disconnect between what they do and what industry does.  I thus helped create the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) to bridge this gap.  Nearly three decades ago PICHTR built an open cycle OTEC plant at the Natural Energy of Laboratory Authority on the Big Island, and attempted to utilize Maui bagasse to produce biomethanol for the direct methanol fuel cell to power ground transport as a bridge to hydrogen. But the Farm Lobby was too strong pushing their ethanol, which turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes made by the Department Energy.  They made sure that methanol was discredited, too, killing this field of study.

Watch this video of a green energy skeptic:

Mark Mills is actually mostly right. Batteries are certainly not the right answer.   However, he fails to provide any solutions. Humanity absolutely needs to do something revolutionary if global warming is truly serious. He failed to mention biofuels, hydrogen, the ocean, fusion and the Greenhouse Effect. We need to start now so that by 2050 the world can begin to overcome.  As I said, things just don't happen overnight.

Anyway, checking into Mark Mills and Prager University, I found several articles that refuted his position.  Here is one in-depth response, and I must use this quote:

“Frack you, mr Mills!”, we already hear Greta Thunberg saying and we can’t help but agree.

Now that Joe Biden is president, and both houses of Congress are run by Democrats, there will be a surge of enthusiasm for more green power.  The pushback by fossil fuel companies will delay progress, for they lobby well and provide considerable financial support to politicians.  They command a lot of jobs.  But caution is not all that bad, for time is a commodity that is not sufficiently appreciated.  Hopefully, the more promising and financially attractive energy options, in consideration of the global warming, will make inroads.  In time, the price of petroleum will zoom up.  But when?  Surely if there is another serious Gulf crisis, and maybe when when Peak Oil becomes reality.  The not knowing about the timeframe only means that some effort should continue to be made so that we can be ready.

My view, further, is that we also need a few, like me, suggesting even longer-term visionary pursuits.  The reason I went into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at the NASA Ames Research Center is for the one chance in a what?--billion, million, ten--an advanced civilization is beaming to us the solution to our energy problem, or maybe world peace.  Then two stints with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for laser fusion.  When I left the field, commercial fusion was 30 years away 30 years ago, and is still today 30 years away, at best.  But a small portion of your tax money should be set aside to continue these endeavors, seeking breakthroughs.

An important part of the solution has to do with politics, certainly not only science and engineering.   Thus, my time with the U.S. Senate.  It was nice to have had the University of Hawaii as my headquarters, for I could do all the above as a valid part of my job.  I even taught Environmental Engineering, so was involved with climate change nearly half a century ago.  Next year I will have had an office on the Manoa Campus that long, so I'm doing something right just to still be functioning.  Perhaps, some of my thoughts and efforts will turn out to eventually be valuable for Humanity and Planet Earth.

The one final personal effort I continue is the Blue Revolution, which will bring together OTEC, hydrogen, ultimate ocean ranches, marine biomass plantations, remediation of climate warming and elimination of hurricanes.  The ocean is today a site to be preserved and not developed.  But our seas could well be part of the answer, and combined with population control, other cleaner options and World Peace, chances are that we should be doing fine...by the year 2100.

The White House administration will probably get close to $1.9 trillion for the latest pandemic/economic package.  That's a lot of money to do what we have already invested once before in the earlier days of this multi-faceted crisis.  

The Mars Project has been said to be achievable for $1.5 trillion.  But to accomplish what?  Someday, perhaps, in the Year 2200.  For that sum, a dozen ocean cities can be built to produce renewable energy, freshwater, and sustainable bio-products, while enhancing the environment.

So what's wrong with renewable energy?  

• Well, geothermal and wind energy facilities are already more economically viable than natural gas, coal and nuclear.  So it can't be the cost if you're wise about which one to pursue today.  
• People object to wind farms.  Yes, but would they rather have nuclear or coal power plants?  Something needs to be better understood about NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).  

• 
  Solar and wind energies are intermittent, for the sun does not always shine and winds come, go and are unpredictable (even the sun, with clouds).  True, but you can combine with base load forms such as geothermal, biomass and even OTEC (although this can get complicated).  

• 
  Plus many of these green options are dispersed, and take up a lot of valuable space.  However, some of them can be combined with, say, ranches and such.

• Batteries can provide some back-up, but as the video above showed, there are downsides.  Other sources could be hydro and pumped storage, hydrogen production, compressed air devices, super capacitors, flywheels, magnets, etc.
• 
  You'd be taking away jobs from the coal, fracking and pipeline industries.  Probably, so re-training is important.  Those industries could lose a couple of hundred thousand jobs.  But Amazon just during the pandemic hired 400,000 workers.  Somewhere here is at least a partial solution.

The reality of a free enterprise system is that companies will mostly attempt to optimize profit.  One possible immediate key for now could be a carbon tax, where revenues are re-distributed to needy areas.  Read one of my Huffington Post articles of more than a decade ago proposing The Carbon Dioxide Credit Program.  While nothing much has changed, note that oil in that period was just at $147/barrel.  Petroleum today sells for around $55/barrel.  CME has oil at $46.56/barrel in December of 2029.  

There are other solutions to global warming.  More than a dozen years ago I wrote on something like geoengineering.  The problem with this pathway is that you are using large sums of money to dabble with Mother Nature.  There is no actual profit included.  This is one reason  why I thought that the Blue Revolution was an ideal total system answer, for not only will you reduce the temperature of the oceans and atmosphere, plus neutralize hurricane formation, but the motivation would be to make money, for you would create exciting new living habitats, while producing sustainable bio-products, renewable energy and freshwater.

Energy and the environment will continue to be contentious issues, for there are huge uncertainties with varying points of view.  But that is the nature of society.  I wish I could be more optimistic about today, but really, what else is there for the future of Humanity in the long term than some form of energy that is sustainable without harming the environment?  

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