Earlier, some time ago, I was talking about thermodynamics and exergy. When talking about energy, we tend to lump al forms of them together as if they were the same--oil, nuclear, wind, solar, electric and what have you. But energy comes in many different forms. Recall the First Law of Thermodynamics says that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It merely changes form.
Exergy is a measure of the quality of the different types of energy, the amount of work available in the energy to do something useful for us. It's an analysis of energy using the Second Law of Thermodynamics--entropy.
Let's take the example of electric heat--driving a current through a resistor to produce heat. From a First Law perspective, this is very efficient. Every watt of energy pushed through turns to heat, which is exactly what we wanted--virtually 100% efficient. But from a Second Law perspective, from a measure of energy quality, you're taking a form of energy (electricity) capable of heating a tungsten filament in a light bulb to 3000°C and you're using it to heat a room by five degrees. It's like, "Pass me that grenade, I think I see a fly on the wall."
To turn oil into electricity, the crude must first be accessed by drilling a whole into the ground, then pumped out, treated, pumped again, refined, pumped again, burned in a burner which heats water to produce steam to drive turbines which rotate a generator coil to produce electricity. A tremendous amount of heat is generated by the friction of the drill in the rock, as well as the heat given off by all the pump motors and through the refining process. Coal plants have vast cooling towers where the steam is cooled back to water, to be pumped once again through the burner. All that heat wasted just so you can take the final product--electricity--to heat your room. If some of that "waste" heat were captured, you wouldn't need that electricity to start with.
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| Cooling Towers at Ferrybridge Power, West Yorkshire |
This isn't news to power engineers. That's why they developed co-generation plants at several pulp mills in BC. They use their waste wood in a traditional turbine generator to make electricity. A typically set up is about 50% efficient, with the other 50% lost to "waste heat." IN a cogeneration plant, this heat is captured to provide heat for the mill. So the mill is creating surplus electricity to sell to the grid, and creating heat for the mill.
Or there's urban geothermal heating, where water is pumped deep into the earth, heated up, and then pumped as hot water to a bunch of surrounding buildings. Here you are matching a low-quality energy (geothermal heat) to a low-quality use (indoor heating).
Or there's architectural methods to conserve heat, or, more commonly, to conserve cool. Putting trees on the roof, using "light shelves" to channel natural sunlight to interior offices, making the building itself a solar cell. I don't know much about that end, but it seems to me, with these new incredibly efficient buildings, that the architects are charting the path here.
There are, of course, challenges. We already have a ready infrastructure to transmit electricity, but to pump hot water around a high density area requires a whole new insulated piping system. And collecting waste heat from industrial operations is an intensive undertaking. There's fugitive heat coming from every pump, every reactor, every piston.
And, more vexing, oil and coal are just so darned cheap and packed with energy. To use a mining analogy, who wants to go around picking up gold flecks when there's big nuggets everywhere. Put another way, we are not being efficient, because we don't have to be efficient.
But, as we all know, both population and per capita consumption are rising exponentially (actually, logarithmically, to be perfect correct), and the amount of available coal, oil and gas is limited.
(You often here folks say we have enough coal, or bitumen or shale to last hundreds of years, but that again is more like a First Law analysis--i.e. just an accounting of the total volume of hydrocarbon out there. However, from a Second Law analysis, a lot of that hydrocarbon isn't available, since it takes more than a barrel's worth of oil in energy to extract and refine a barrel of it. This is why some people were floating the idea of a nuclear power plant in the Alberta oil sands--so they wouldn't be burning oil to get oil.)
Anyway, energy scarcity--or peak oil, if you will--seems to me like a mathematical inevitability, barring some kind of apocalypse or other. The society that has already examined ways to use energy more efficiently is going to be further ahead I the long haul.
Adam, I disagree. Energy scarcity is far from a mathematical inevitability. That POV takes into account only the crude oil energy factor and current tech. Refining our collection methods (much like we did for gas mileage when they said it couldn`t be done) and collection sources is the key. Your point may hold true if hydrocarbons (or any extractable source) was our only source but both wind & solar continue to grow. In addition, tidal power gets better. If their efficiency progressed along the lines of other tech then we are laughing. Imagine every building with a small but high efficiency solar & wind generator. They provide the bulk of the power backed up with other power sources such as nuclear power with end products we can deal with. Hell, hooking exercise bikes up to the grid good do the trick.
ReplyDeleteI think your argument is flawed because it seems based on the belief we are at our techno peak for energy extraction and that big oil controls the skies.
On the flip side I have invented a formula to synthesize dithium crystals. Let me know if you want in.
Energy scarcity seems to me to be a mathematical inevitability if you take an absurdly long-term view; in the most extreme, you have things like the Big Freeze theory of the eventual destination of the universe or "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. But there are plenty of temporary fixes we can use in the relative short term (decades and centuries) to keep our civilization going.
ReplyDeleteYou say we aren't efficient because we don't need to be. I agree. And when we start needing to be, we will adapt pretty quickly. People are pushing for cheaper transportation already, with gas prices at $3-4/gallon (still dramatically less than Europe's prices).
My geeky side loves the technology of energy efficiency and renewable energy extraction, but my political side gets irate when taxpayer dollars or government policies hard-sell them to people. I think the choices that make sense for people planning their own individual futures will adapt pretty well to the century-long process of price increases from growing scarcity.
Sorry I missed your post, Grayson. I actually should have more correctly used the term oil scarcity, not ebergy scarcity. My bad. As it stands now, though, wind and solar are just scribblig in the margins and there is the not insiginificant impediment of the intermittency of the two (Earth-based solar only makes power when the sun is out). So if there's no wind or sun at the time, how does your building get power?
ReplyDeleteI think the answer is a resilient energy strategy using all forms of power available. I'm also a futurist at heart, so, while I'm not holding my breath for dilithium crystals, I'd like to see more reserach directed at space-based solar power and nuclear fusion. I've heard some stuff about "light" fission reactors too, though haven't really looked into it.
Psudo, you make the classic economic argument, which I believe they call substitutionalization or something. Basically the idea that the free market will provide. While that argument may be true, it is also irresponsible to completely ignore future scenarios.
ReplyDeleteIt's reminescent of my "yeast cells" argument in an earlier post. Yeast cells (presumably) do not plan well into the future. They merely make use of the resources at their disposal in an efficient a manner as they are forced to. When times are good, they pig out, and when they aren't they starve.
My argument, at the time, was that we (at a population, not an individual, level) are really no different, despite all our pretensions of rationality and humanity. The "free market wil provide" argument kind of supports that thesis, since it advocates a Darwinian approach" "Don't think about the future, only think about serving your individual desire right now."
I don't think much of anyone advocates "Don't think about the future." I think the far more common advocacy is "Everyone plan for your own future as rationally as possible." Shortsightedness is wrong (because it's stupid), choosing competition if cooperation works better is wrong (because it's stupid), but the choice between competition and cooperation should be decentralized, each person choosing for themselves. What argument justifies the use of force? The assumption that self-interest means ignorant self-indulgence?
ReplyDeleteAnd if things ever do get so bad that humanity cannot all make it, is it better for those in power to choose their favorite sons or for the people who made the best preparations be rewarded with survival?
I don't disagree with much you've said, in principle. Indeed, I said that "The society that has already examined ways to use energy more efficiently is going to be further ahead I the long haul."
ReplyDeleteI would say that self-interest may not not necessarily manifest itself as "ignorant self-indulgence" but there is no shortage of examples where that is exactly the case. The investment bankers and the recent mortgage meltdown in the US is an example.
If you have a democratic government, then you have a medium of collective decision making, in principle. I suppose that justifies the use of force (for example, environmental regulation) insofar as you accept that a democratic government is supposed to carry out the will of the (majority of) people.
I don't disagree wiht the decentralization argument. Indeed, as a long-time government worker I know first hand the adage that "any policy that does not take into account that individuals will seek to maximize their own interests is doomed to failure." I guess then you could say that a good role for government is to provide more complete information, (since people may then change their idea of what constitues their best interests) as opposed to the use of force.
The philosophy supporting democracy as responsible governance inherently has cravats. Anciently, it was thought that democracies would inevitably discover that they could vote monetary gifts for themselves and drive the nation into bankruptcy. In the modern form, we constitutionally limit what can be democratically chosen through individual rights that government may not violate. In either case, the principle is consistent: democracy is expected to be subject to limitations to what force it can use or quickly fail. Majority support cannot be a blanket excuse for using force because it is known to be capable of forcefully undermining the society it is meant to protect.
ReplyDeleteThe old adage is that democracy is two lions and a gazelle voting for what to have for lunch. If everyone were perfectly rational and far-sighted in their thinking, perhaps even the lions would choose not to eat the gazelle because what would they have for lunch tomorrow? But since (as you pointed out) rational self-interest is a virtue instead of a given, we have limited government to protect the gazelle's rights.
Should environmental regulation be limited? I think so. Not abolished, of course, but not automatically assumed harmless to enduring, valuable governance, either. It ought to be considered on a case-by-case basis, accepted when proper and rejected when not. The precise definition of "proper" eludes me, but in general it should be judged by that democratic government to be in the nation's rational self-interest, violate no residents' rights, and should be minimalist in it's use of force and fiat.
I like your idea of government providing more complete information; that is certainly a valuable start. I don't mean to suggest government regulatory power be inherently limited to advice and education, though.
Some proposed policies, like cap-and-trade and Kyoto, do concern me. Kyoto seemed more likely to give China an industrial advantage than to actually reduce global carbon emissions, and cap-and-trade cannot be a good idea while government fiat distributes carbon credits to favorite sons. Both work better as power-grabs than as environmental protections, calling into question government's ability to determine rational self-interest better than the populace. At the very least, that appearance impeded their effectiveness as environmental policy.
I'm also skeptical, though less so, of tax credits for solar panels; they risk that cycle of people voting themselves money until government is broke, and the US government is already pretty broke. I wonder if there's a way to combine that with some existing program, such as Social Security, such that recipients of an existing program get more money (due to some solar energy proceeds) at the same time that government pays less (also getting some of the energy proceeds). That might lessen some of the back-breaking weight of entitlement spending that government is carrying while increasing seniors' benefits, something that almost sounds too good to be true.
Anyway... I've wandered all around the point, so hopefully I've added something meaningful. Also, I'm sure I've covered ground you already know; please take that as the dedication to thoroughness it is intended to be, not a clearly false accusation of ignorance.
Holy crap that was long. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteI agree that government regulation should be limited. Lord knows I've complained enough about the Nanny State and Mandatory Safety. But the environment is a particularly hard policy nut to crack. Individuals and companies will generally seek to privatize their profits and socialize their costs. No one has yet found a workable way to attach a value to a tree, or to account for pollution in the air (or to account for "externalities," to use the economists jargon).
ReplyDeleteCap-and-trade was actually an effort for regulatiors to be "new age." Instead of using a "command & control" type of regulation (which have been shown to stifle innovation) they attempted to create an economy whcih would allow innovation. This is something that the private sector said they wanted. But of course, it's kind of an artificial economy adn you get folks trying to control that economy rather than play within it. You get powerful interests trying to "game" the system to their advantage at the political/lobby level.
I always think that if the Libertarians wantd to do something useful, they could figure out a way to privatize environmental impacts. I've seen some folks have a go at it, but never a workable solution. If you privatized air, period, you could do it, but then you'd have to charge people to breathe. ha ha ha