Jed have you looked at Dr John Bockris' work on solar hydrogen. The
solar chimny technology in deserts even at halve the size and power
output numbers of the original solar hydrogen book would work given some
of the inovations that have come up since. Solar hydrogen has been
getting less press lately mainly because John, its loudest advovate, has
switched to cold fusion and that realy got the greens confused. :-\
PS If you get to chat with Dr Bockris give him my regards and my email.
I bootlegged one of his books so I owe him some money for copy right. ;-)
Jed Rothwell wrote:
I wrote:
For $1 trillion we could end the use of oil completely. We could
replace it with something like wind-power generated hydrogen . . .
Of course that is a very rough approximation, but I think it is
correct to within 20%. It is not difficult to make a very rough
estimate. $1 trillion equals $3,300 per person or about $10,000 per
household.
Taking into account all forms of energy used by corporations farmers
and at home, the average household consumes about 3 kW continuously, I
think. $10,000 would buy you 1 kW of nuclear power plus 2 kW of wind
power, which would be more than enough to replace the energy used for
transportation, even if we used hydrogen generated at home, with
plug-in hybrids. (That is inefficient and expensive but it would not
require much of a distribution network.)
Actually I think $10,000 would be enough to eliminate 80% of oil and
80% of coal as well. Natural gas still abundant and it does not
generate as much carbon dioxide so I would reduce it by, say, 20%.
This would be done over 20 years.
The $1 trillion would only be the cost of converting to new energy
systems; we would also have to spend whatever we plan spend on fuel
and new automobiles during this period anyway. When we finished, we
would still spend almost as much for energy on a daily basis as we do
now.
In practical terms, here is approximately how I would divvy up the
money per household:
$4,000 for a plug-in hybrid cars. That is to say, $4,000 more than the
family would spend for conventional cars. I am assuming that in 10
years nearly all cars will have to be replaced anyway, so the family
would have to buy two cars in 20 years. The first plug-in hybrid car
would cost ~$3,000 more than a conventional car, in the second one
only $1,000 more. As I said earlier, for the average commuter a plug
in hybrid car would reduce the use of gasoline by 90%. Delivery trucks
and long-haul trucks would be a problem, and aircraft would still
consume petroleum.
$2,000 for conservation: improved insulation, compact fluorescent
lights, better refrigerators, and so on. This would greatly reduce the
need for additional generator capacity. We would still need additional
generator capacity for the plug-in hybrids, but not as much.
$4,000 for additional generator capacity, split between wind and
nuclear power. Wind would be ideal for recharging automobiles at night
with power supplies that could be controlled by the electric power
companies remotely via the Internet, as we discussed here earlier.
Nuclear power would be needed in places which do not have much wind,
and during periods when the wind is not blowing much. About half of
our electricity now comes from coal. I hope this can be reduced to 10%.
As I said, this estimate might be off by 20%; it might take an extra
$2000 per household (1 kW of wind capacity). On the other hand it
might be substantially cheaper because this plan would call for
roughly 200 new nuclear power plants, and I think the cost of nuclear
power would fall substantially if we build that many plants. Nuclear
power now cost roughly $6,000 per kilowatt of capacity; it might fall
to $2,000 or $3,000. Uranium fuel is very cheap and abundant. Cleaning
up spent fuel is reasonably cheap, but of course it is a huge
political problem.
Generally speaking, conventional alternative energy cannot compete
with fossil fuel for two reasons:
1. Fossil fuel benefits from enormous subsidies, both direct and
hidden. Hidden subsidies include the cost of war to secure oil
supplies ($1 trillion), and the death of 20,000 people a year from
coal pollution.
2. The startup costs for alternative energy tend to be higher,
although the incremental fuel costs thereafter are lower for things
like wind and nuclear power.
The $1 trillion I am discussing here would only be used for the
startup costs, not for ongoing costs such as fuel and maintenance. The
most extreme example of high startup costs followed by low operating
costs would be for space-based solar power. The initial startup cost
would be astronomical. A small space elevator costs $6 billion and I
suppose an industrial scale one would cost $200 billion or more.
However, once the system is in place you can add another square
kilometer of photovoltaic collection panels and microwave transmitters
very cheaply. A space-based collector would be in sunlight nearly all
the time. Transmission back to earth would be about 80% efficient, so
overall this would be about 5 times more effective than ground-based
solar, and it would be impervious to the weather, seasons or diurnal
cycle. See:
http://www.bookrags.com/sciences/astronomy/energy-from-space-spsc-01.html
Cold fusion is far better than any of these alternatives because
instead of costing $1 trillion for the transition, it would cost only
a few hundred billion. The biggest cost would be to convert factories
and retire manufacture equipment. All manufacturing equipment has to
be retired anyway after 10 or 20 years, but cold fusion would make it
obsolete, and it would be retired ahead of schedule. After the
conversion is complete, individual machines such as cars and water
heaters will be cheaper than present-day models, and fuel costs will
be virtually zero. I describe this in considerable detail in my book.
This $1 trillion would only be enough to convert the U.S. I suppose it
would cost another $1 or $2 trillion to convert the rest of the world.
It would be good for the US to go first because we could develop the
technology, absorb the cost of the development, and later make a large
profit selling the equipment to other countries. It seems extremely
unlikely the US will do anything like this, but Japan and China may
well. As I mentioned, China is now developing a 40 to 50 mpg car they
hope to sell for $6,000 in the U.S. I saw a photo of a prototype. It
is not a micro-sized car like the ones you see in Japan and Italy, or
a Mini Cooper but more like a small Corolla. If the Chinese succeed,
than within 30 years this car will evolve into a plug-in hybrid, while
the cost of gasoline rises to $10 per gallon, and the Chinese will
drive both Ford and GM into bankruptcy.
- Jed
