Hello!
The comments on this profile are unclaimed and thus are unverified.
Do they belong to you? Claim these comments.
Roger Sweeny
Is this you? Claim Profile »
11 months ago
in No Limits to Growth on Will Wilkinson
I don't think ethanol is a good example of abundant usable energy. Growing corn doesn't just require sunlight. It also requires land and water (and fertilizer and tractors and ...). Most of the energy of the sun goes to making roots and stems and leaves and cobs, and to keeping the plant alive for 4 months. Very little makes it into the kernels. Even the little bit of ethanol we have produced so far has taken a large chunk of land.
1 reply
11 months ago
in No Limits to Growth on Will Wilkinson
The problem is that a) is irrelevant. The question isn't whether energy is scarce; the question is whether usable energy is scarce. It is, and always will be.
The question then is, "how scarce?" The answer to that depends on the state of the world (how much oil is in big, easily reached pockets? how much does the sun shine?) and the state of technology.
The state of the world is changing as we pick the low hanging fruit, e.g., drain the big oil and natural gas reservoirs. Prices go up because it's more expensive to pick the fruit that's way up. That creates incentives to develop and implement new technologies that can undersell the remaining fruit. Agreed.
However ... New technology may make if possible to get usable energy at low costs--with costs defined broadly to include environmental costs. For example, it may be possible to genetically modify bacteria to make usable hydrocarbons from water, carbon dioxide, and sunshine. Or it may not.
The question then is, "how scarce?" The answer to that depends on the state of the world (how much oil is in big, easily reached pockets? how much does the sun shine?) and the state of technology.
The state of the world is changing as we pick the low hanging fruit, e.g., drain the big oil and natural gas reservoirs. Prices go up because it's more expensive to pick the fruit that's way up. That creates incentives to develop and implement new technologies that can undersell the remaining fruit. Agreed.
However ... New technology may make if possible to get usable energy at low costs--with costs defined broadly to include environmental costs. For example, it may be possible to genetically modify bacteria to make usable hydrocarbons from water, carbon dioxide, and sunshine. Or it may not.
1 reply
kanaman
Roger,
Good point about usable energy. I think we can all agree that energy is abundant - it's radiating from the sun all day, every day, and it will continue so for longer than is relevant to plan for. And for electricity, I'm convinced we can rely on non-fossil fuels, many countries already do.
The problem is liquid fuels for transportation. Can we rely on the sun for that? Yes, ethanol works just fine. Growing crops for ethanol is a very obvious sort of use of solar energy. Thus, usable energy is abundant.
Good point about usable energy. I think we can all agree that energy is abundant - it's radiating from the sun all day, every day, and it will continue so for longer than is relevant to plan for. And for electricity, I'm convinced we can rely on non-fossil fuels, many countries already do.
The problem is liquid fuels for transportation. Can we rely on the sun for that? Yes, ethanol works just fine. Growing crops for ethanol is a very obvious sort of use of solar energy. Thus, usable energy is abundant.
Perfectly valid point about corn ethanol. But I never mentioned corn as the crop of choice. I hear swithchgrass, for example, has a superior yield - seems to me that the choice of corn as a source in the US has more to do with the influence of Big Corn and other political reasons. Up here in Sweden we are apparently making ethanol out of branches and tops of trees, which are not useful for making paper. So the land and tractors and what not is already out there.