Can Alternate Energy Power Europe By 2050?

[Thom]

J D:

I totally agree with your comments. Sometimes a little give and take goes a long way as long as it isn't our core beliefs.

[Outside Bend]

At the pace of technological development, you guys seriously don't think fossil fuels will be obsolete in 40 years? I know some of you guys are old enough to remember promises of flying cars and 2001 Space Odyssey, but come on...

From what I found at the DOE website (attached below), it seems as though fossil fuel productivity is generally declining, while prices are increasing (supply vs demand). At some point the cost of drilling or mining of fossil fuels will outweigh the profits generated by them. It's inevitable.

Before the recession, when gas was 4-5 bucks a gallon, there WAS demand for more fuel efficient vehicles. That's when a lot of the E-85, ethanol, etc really got off the ground. There WAS a demand for fuel-efficient and hybrid cars. Folks couldn't keep Priuses and motorcycles in stock.

I guess folks can point to the idea that there's no market for these products, but I disagree. I think a large part of it is due to the fact that we're in one of the largest global recessions in history, and there simply isn't the venture capital available to be working on ethanol or E-85 or solar or other renewable sources. People can't afford solar panels or a Prius when they're underwater on their mortgage. When things recover, and gas prices return to the new normal, I think we'll see the pendulum swing the other way.

If anyone can do it, I think it's the Europeans. Their governments are investing massive sums into development of renewable energy, and citizens are encouraged (and rewarded) for energy conservation and supporting renewables (Germany pays you for the electricity produced by rooftop solar panels, for example). The EU system enables a large swath of European nations to act similarly. The culture emphasizes conservation and minimal use practices- makes sense in a relatively high-density area like Europe.

Personally, I think our nation sitting on the sidelines watching Germany, Spain and China develop renewable energy at a breakneck pace verges on the obscene. I thought we were supposed to be the most industrious, hardworking, creative, independent, resourceful people on the planet? I thought we were supposed to be on the cutting edge of industry, science, and technology? Where's the Rosie the Riveter, "We Can Do It," mantra?

Instead of developing the technology and exploring the possibilities of the 21st century, we're going to continue relying on a hundred-fifty year old technology, that has caused enormous environmental damage, whose primary source is from nations hostile to our values and way of life, or which require us to poison our water, forgo our wild lands, and despoil our landscape to attain domestically. To me, that flies in the face of everything we ought to believe in.

If China was developing military technology light-years ahead of our own, would we sit on the sidelines and watch? Why is developing renewable energy technology any different? To me it's the same thing as any other arms/space race- knowledge is better, he who has the best technology is best off in the long-term.

Forty years? No problem. The resources are there- it is possible. I have faith the technology can be developed. Whether people have the WILL to do it though, is another question entirely.

Tirade over, I'm going fishing.

*As an aside, one of the attached graphs shows uranium imports. I found it for those folks advocating nuclear power. I may be reading it wrong, but it looks to me like the vast majority of uranium is imported from elsewhere. If that's the case, aren't you just substituting one foreign energy source for another?

coal prices.pdf

crude prices.pdf

gas prices.pdf

natural gas prices.pdf

natural gas well productivity.pdf

oil well productivity.pdf

coal mining productivity.pdf

uranium imports.pdf

cost of drilling wells.pdf

[Thom]

Quote:"(Germany pays you for the electricity produced by rooftop solar panels, for example). "

Interesting. My son in law and daughter harvest the dead wood (firewood) from nearby woods and burn it over winter in an outside furnace that curculates water heated to their gas furnace plenum. This reduced their gas consumpution to less than 10 dollars a month. Their reward from the gas company..... They were charging them a mimumum bill fee of 30 dollars for not using enough gas. At least for a while ... they got rid of their gas furnace and replaced it with an electric one which seldom is even needed in the winter.

Overal savings to them of average of 120 dollars a month.

[jdmidwest]

But wood gives off smoke that is a bigger pollutant than clean burning natural gas. What is the gain there? And if we all start burning wood again, we would deforest more of the land and cause more problems. Most wood burners need more timber than I have on our 300 acre farm as far as dead timber. I know, for I have fed a wood burner for many years. And we still used gas for cooking, dryer, and water heater. There was no need to keep the furnace burning in the summer just to heat water. A healthy forest does not have that much dead wood unless there is storm damage or a timber cut.

[Coldspring]

There's plenty of examples in history of little civilizations cutting down all their trees to build and burn. I've seen some families cut the crap out of their little woods for firewood. In the small towns there are smoke clouds hanging overhead every winter night, no telling what this does to respiratory systems, but it chokes me up. I really don't know how much you save by burning firewood when you have to fuel a pickup, have wear and tear on a pickup, fuel a chainsaw, buy new chains, repair chainsaw, then your man hours spend getting in the woods and cutting, loading, unloading, curing, splitting, putting wood in and tending, etc... Good exercise though.

[Al Agnew]

Timing is everything, and our timing is off. I expect that we'll run out of easily obtainable and therefore not EXTREMELY expensive oil--which most of the world's and now all the world's economy has depended upon for a hundred years--before we put in the capital and effort to replace it. And as the current recession shows, when the economy runs off the tracks, the capital ain't there anymore. So when we run out of "affordable" oil, we run out of capital and we're then in a REAL big hole. I'm afraid we should have been putting in the needed effort into alternative energy starting about 30 years ago. Now it's going to take a truly massive effort to catch up...and we're losing time with a limping economy, not to mention that we don't have the will to do it anyway. Not to mention that we're all under the thumb of the oil companies politically...and economically. It's kind of a perfect storm.

[Thom]

JD:

But wood gives off smoke that is a bigger pollutant than clean burning natural gas. What is the gain there? And if we all start burning wood again, we would deforest more of the land and cause more problems. Most wood burners need more timber than I have on our 300 acre farm as far as dead timber. I know, for I have fed a wood burner for many years. And we still used gas for cooking, dryer, and water heater. There was no need to keep the furnace burning in the summer just to heat water. A healthy forest does not have that much dead wood unless there is storm damage or a timber cut.

My point was not that wood was a better alternative but that any attempt to save energy is often penalized by the utility companies.

Cold spring: NO woods was cut down for this savings to them. Dead wood and wood collected from a stream that was cloging accesses was most of the wood used. My point again was that they were penalized for not putting waste into a landfill and using wood which was mostly not usesble for any other purpose.

I got your points also that wood is not a feasable alternative unless you can get it without cost and have a pick up and chain saw already. THEY DID AND THEY WERE PENALIZED FOR THEIR RECORSOUREFULLNESS.