Today is World Environment Day, and it’s a good day to celebrate past achievements and point out the errors of the doomsayers who’ve long been over-represented in the environment debate. The central message of the doomsday school is simple:
we can’t protect the environment unless we are willing to accept a radical reduction in our standard of living.
Although they agree on this point, they disagree radically about its implications, dividing into two opposed groups[1]
* Deep Greens who say that we should radically reduce our standard of living and protect the environment
* Dark Browns who say that we should do nothing to protect the environment because to do so will wreck our standards of living
Experience since the first World Environment Day in 1972 suggests that neither of these positions is true.
On the one hand, claims that we are bound to run out of resources, made most vigorously by the Club of Rome in the 1970s, have repeatedly been refuted by experience. Most natural resources have actually become cheaper, but even in cases where prices have risen, such as that of oil, the economic impact has been marginal, relative to the long-run trend of increasing income. The recent increase in the price of oil, for example, might, if sustained, reduce income by about 1 per cent, or around 4 months of economic growth.
At this point, doomsayers usually point to a growing world population and the increased demands on resources that will arise when people in China and India aspire to Western living standards. The tone isn’t quite as apocalyptic as in the 1970s, when the Paddock brothers were advocating letting Bangladesh starve, but the analysis often hasn’t caught up with the data. Population growth peaked (in absolute terms – the percentage growth rate has been declining for decades) around 1990. Current UN estimates have a population of 9 billion in 2050, but if the declining fertility in wealthy countries is followed elsewhere this will probably turn out to be an overestimate.
In most respects, economic growth is consistent with improvements in the environment rather than degradation. Wealthy countries are unwilling to put up with polluted air and water and have the technical and scientific resources to fix them.
On the other hand, the Brown doomsayers have an equally bad record. Time after time, they’ve opposed environmental improvements as too costly, repeatedly overestimating the costs and underestimating the benefits. The debate over CFCs and the ozone layer provides a good example, since it was one of the first issues to be addressed on a global scale. The doomsayers repeatedly attacked both the science behind the ban on CFCs and the economics of the policy, claiming it would cause massive economic damage. In reality, even without taking account of health benefits, it seems likely that the CFC ban yielded positive net economic benefits. Most of the leading participants in this debate (Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Julian Simon, Tom DeLay, the Marshall and Oregon Institutes) are familiar to anyone who’s followed the global warming debate, except that Bjorn Lomborg has taken Simon’s place.
All of this leads up to the one big remaining problem that of global warming (and the inter-related debate about Peak Oil). The doomsayers on both sides are out in force on this one. For the Deep Greens, it’s the one remaining chance to achieve support for radical change. For the Dark Browns, this is the real fight, for which the CFC debate was just a rehearsal.
All the evidence, though, is that we can reduce emissions to levels consistent with stabilising global CO2 levels over the next few decades at a cost of around 5 per cent of GDP – a few years worth of economic growth at the most. Quite possibly, as in previous cases, this wll turn out to be an overestimate.
fn1. Both groups engage in a fair bit of wishful thinking about their position, the Greens arguing that we’ll all be happier in the long run and the Browns claiming that the environmental problems will solve themselves if we ignore them.
John Quiggin 
“Did I ever tell you that several of my relatives suffered from dementia?”
Is this a hereditary thing in your family, Katz? Is it early onset? Just curious…
John:
“Obviously, there’s an implicit reference to the environmental Kuznets curve in my post. On the other hand, it’s important to note that this depends on societies making the right choices.”
So VERY important it makes your “all we have to do is shave 5% off GDP” seem, well, a tad glib.
Hmmm… the choice to make more money or less… to act now for the future’s sake or to stay in government… to accurately report scientific findings that Rupert doesn’t like or to keep my job… to take the precautionary principle AGAINST the wishes of powerful corporate lobby groups or to roll over and get me a tummy rub… hmmm…. tummy rub…
Have ANY of these decisions EVER gone the right way, John?
Katz & Dogz, please divert this to the Monday Message Board thread. I’d like to keep discussion vaguely on-topi.c
SimonJM, I don’t regard Lovins as a doomsayer precisely because he argues that, with smarter personal and social policies we can have both environmental protection and high living standards/
“single person travel in cars”
This is a particular bugbear of mine. Many places in the US have HOV (High-Occupancy-Vehicle) lanes where “High Occupancy” means greater than 1. But you see very few people in those lanes. Even in really bad sections of the more leftie parts of the country, like the 101 south from San Fancisco. Why? Because car pooling SUCKS! So much organizational overhead and hassle compared to just jumping in the car on your own.
Don’t try to change human nature; work around it.
One thing that’s been missed in this generally interesting debate are a few fundamental facts about water resources. Us Australians will quite soon change our lifestyles and mindsets and urban and much farming water will become far more efficient. But groundwater in India, China, the middle east may become virtually nonexistent as aquifers are drained and do not refill in the forseeable future. Meanwhile, soil loss from inappropriate farming practices continues in both northern and southern countries.
And this all happens while inevitable climate change is underway.
So while I’m a moderate green and generally think we’ll muddle through, the prospect of massive desertification and famine remain very real, for at least the next century. As a rich whitey, I may be privileged enough to check out the (biologically impoverished) 22nd century.
“Homo mega sapiens machinis sounds very much like some sort of sci-fi monster to me. Do you really want to become a machine? Is that the best that you can do?”
I’d love to be able to read any book in 5 minutes, and remember every word perfectly for the rest of my life. Not to mention the names of every person I’ve ever met.
I’d love to have 2000/1 vision (see clearly at 2000 feet what a normal person can only see at one foot). Not to mention the ability to see infrared (see all the insulation deficiencies in my house) and x-ray (in case I break a bone).
Right now my heart is in pretty good shape. But when I’m 80 years old, if I could buy a heart or hearts that would function as well or better than mine does now for the next 300 years…yeah, I’d definitely do that.
Who wouldn’t?
As Woody Allen said, I don’t care much about achieving immortality through my work. I’d prefer to achieve it by not dying.
“As Woody Allen said, I don’t care much about achieving immortality through my work. I’d prefer to achieve it by not dying. “
Too right. Unfortunately, he was also right about physics:
” “It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Sooner or later everything turns to shit.â€?
“The only major problem with fusion is that it is vapourware. TODAY the technologies exist to implement wind/solar/IGCC coal with electric transport as storage.
Why wait???”
Here’s what the U.S. Department of Energy should do. Offer the following technology prizes for (non-tokamak) fusion:
1) Five prizes of $10 million each for generating 10 fusion watts for 1 hour, within a factor of 10 of breakeven.
2) Five prizes of $50 million each for generating 100 fusion watts for 1 day, within a factor of 4 of breakeven.
3) Three prizes of $100 million each for generating 1000 fusion watts for 1 week, wtihin a factor of 2 of breakeven.
4) Three prizes of $1 billion each for generating 1 megaWatt by fusion, for one year, at at least 10 percent greater than breakeven.
For a total of $3.6 billion, fusion would be close enough to commercial that investors would be willing to go the rest of the way.
And if no firms could meet the criteria for any of the rewards, the U.S. government would pay nothing.
“It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Sooner or later everything turns to shit.�
As I wrote, suppose I can buy a new heart 30 years from now that will last me another 30 years. Then 30 years after that, another heart. Keep that up for 300+ years, and you’ve really got something. (Heck, even 30 years extra would be pretty amazing.)
SimonJM, have you heard of substitute goods?
Funnily enough, in the construction sector, the rise in copper prices has seen a switch to aluminium for wiring and PVC for plumbing.
Aluminium is the most abundant metallic element in the Earth’s crust. All you need is energy to separate it into its pure form. PVC can be crunched out of any hydrocarbon source, and chlorine (which is available in virtually unlimited quantities from seawater).
If you want to worry about running out of some crucial metal (or, more accurately, it becoming too expensive to use in crucial applications), platinum is probably a much better candidate, particularly if fuel cell technology takes off.
Last comment for the night. (See, why do I have to sleep 7 hours a night. Waste of time!)
“Us Australians will quite soon change our lifestyles and mindsets and urban and much farming water will become far more efficient. But groundwater in India, China, the middle east may become virtually nonexistent as aquifers are drained and do not refill in the forseeable future.”
Google “Mark Bahner, costs of desalination.” The first hit should be Roger Pielke Jr.’s Prometheus website.
My comments start February 16 at 10:17 am, and continue periodically thereafter. Here’s a cut/paste from that first comment:
Yes, and this completely ignores the potential for desalination. The simple facts of desalination are:
1) Two-thirds of the planet is covered with water (the only problem being it has salt in it),
2) 39% of the world’s present population lives within 100 km of the sea,
3) Worldwide water desalination increased from 2 million cubic meters in 1972 to approximately 24 million cubic meters in 2000,
4) At least two countries (Qatar and Kuwait) already get 100% of their water from desalination,
5) The costs for water desalination–particularly reverse osmosis, which is rapidly displacing thermal desalination–are dropping steadily. In 1960, the cost of conventional water treatment systems (i.e., for freshwater, prior to retail sale) were $0.10 to $0.50 per 1000 cubic meters. In contrast, the cost of thermal desalination of seawater averaged approximately $2.20 per 1000 cubic meters, and reverse osmosis desalination was not even commercially available. By 2000, the average cost for both thermal desalination and reverse osmosis desalination had dropped to $1.20 per 1000 cubic meters.
Click to access medrc.pdf
In another 40 years, it’s easily conceivable that desalination costs will have dropped even closer to the cost of supplying treated freshwater. Does any analysis of water availability by anyone in the “climate change community” take into account the likely progress in desalination technology 40, 80, or 100 years into the future?
Dogz – “Eg, non-sequestering IGCC reduces CO2 emissions by about 20% compared to traditional pulverised coal-fired generation, while the first zero-emissions IGCC plant is not slated to come online until 2012”
No-one said anything about sequestering the CO2. IGCC plants eliminate the toxic emissions of coal namely mercury. You can sequester the CO2 if you like however that is years away. Natural gas CCGT plants and newer coal plants can continue to deliver base load with an acceptable emission of CO2.
Both plug in hybrids and battery electric cars that can deliver power to the grid are a reality. It is called Vehicle to Grid or V2G.
“If you have an alternative energy proposal, please put some real analysis behind it instead of just repeatedly telling us it is all ready TODAY.”
People do have an alternative vision with todays technology here is one of them:
1. Increase energy efficiency with known technologies with incentives to replace inefficient refrigerators, airconditioners etc with more efficient types. Enforce insulation of homes.
2. Increase the share of renewables (solar, wind, biomass) payed for with a carbon tax to something approaching 60% in a distibuted smart grid incorporating electric transport as peaking storage.
3. Tax off the road internal combustion cars/trucks except plug in hybrids.
Subsidise ethanol PHEVs, battery electric vehicles that all have to be capable of interacting with the grid.
4. Eliminate all thermal power plants. Replace baseload with fast reacting Natural Gas CCGT and IGCC coal plants that can interact on a minute by minute basis with renewable resources. Look no further than Esperance where this is working well today.
5. Make solar hotwater and solar PV installations mandatory (with almost 100% subsidies from the carbon tax) for all new homes and existing homes when sold.
Did I leave anything out Dogz? One of the major problems with 19th century power generation like thermal coal plants and the electrical generation part of a nuclear power station is that they are unable to cop with fast changing power demand conditions. Gas turbines can. One of the reasons that you think renewables cannot be employed on a large scale is that the century old power grid cannot cope with the newer renewable technology leading to power wastage and inefficiencies. Usually the renewables are blamed however it is the old monolithic grid that is the fault. It is a bit like mainframe people in the 80s saying that PCs are no good because they do not connect to hosts properly and contribute to instability on the computing grid so they should be eliminated and/or replaced by good old dependable mainframe terminals and more mainframes.
You are firmly arguing for the continuation of the mainframe era whereas I forsee a PC/Internet decentralised and smart future for power generation. Mainframes still have their place however no-one has a home mainframe.
Mark:
“As I wrote, suppose I can buy a new heart 30 years from now that will last me another 30 years. Then 30 years after that, another heart. Keep that up for 300+ years, and you’ve really got something. (Heck, even 30 years extra would be pretty amazing.)”
It would only be amazing for you, and even then only if you did something useful with those years. By which I mean something other than agitating for enormous sums to be offered up as prizes for more longevity initiatives. LOL.
Just be satisfied with how much you can **** the planet up in one, regulation biological life, Mark. Or think about how you could leave a positive legacy when YOU INEVITABLY DIE. Perhaps one where you cared about the future intrinsically, rather than as a place for you to keep on living forever.
Mark = “For a total of $3.6 billion, fusion would be close enough to commercial that investors would be willing to go the rest of the way.”
And for that money you could have the same power starting TODAY from solar/wind/biomass. Why wait for technologies that may NEVER work properly. And if they do fusion can be neatly integrated, where appropriate, in the renewable smart grid of the future.
Small scale solar/wind is far far more appropriate for 3rd world countries that lack the electrical distributions system. Fusion power in massive power plants is only well suited to the first world where such systems are in place. Even the promise of fusion does nothing for the 3rd world – why not use the fusion reactor in the sky and use wind/solar – it is distributed for free.
Mark bahner, I’m not talking about first world potable drinking water, I’m sure we’ll be able to afford a drink, I’m talking about third world’s use of untreated ‘fossil water’ for agriculture.
In another 40 years, it’s easily conceivable that desalination costs will have dropped even closer to the cost of supplying treated freshwater. Does any analysis of water availability by anyone in the “climate change community� take into account the likely progress in desalination technology 40, 80, or 100 years into the future?
Desalination requires energy, lots of it at the moment, and that’s another debate, but I’m not talking about in 40 years!
David,
I would strongly argue the converse of “…[t]hese time spans are simply not long enough to grant any confidence in any optimistic claims that the Homo sapiens can endure”.
There is simply no data for you to say that we cannot only endure, but prosper. On the contrary, there is abundent data that shows that, unique amongst the species, we have been able to mould our environment to our needs. This has, of course, come with problems, some of which we are only gradually learning about.
The fact that we can learn and adapt without waiting for evolution has been proven time and again. Personally, I intend to ensure there is a good, if not great, future for my children. I am confident that they, and we, can succeed if we try.
To me, this is what this debate is about. If we accept your viewpoint this debate is moot and we may as well commit suicide.
“IGCC plants eliminate the toxic emissions of coal namely mercury.”
I see. So now the CO2 is non-toxic? If so, why bother with renewables at all?
“Did I leave anything out Dogz?”
Yeah, costs. Yet again. I guess you’re not an investor, but here’s how it works in the real world: Before any investor decides to invest in a new project they require strict analyses of costs and risks. They want to know the likelihood that the project will succeed, how much money is required, what are the major risks to success, etc.
We have a really good handle on the costs and risks associated with large-scale power generation, as it is practiced today. You need to analyse the costs and risks associated with introducing alternative forms of energy generation, unless you are claiming there are no costs or risks at all (in which case I don’t believe you)?
“Katz & Dogz…”
Way to go Ender!
Of course, none of your (excellent) suggestions will actually happen 😦
Re: 3. I’d like to see a biodiesel-fuelled hybrid. The technology is perfectly feasible today (unlike say, fuel-cells, fusion etc) and such a vehicle could probably achieve 3L/100km for a Toyota Corolla sized car.
Re: 5. Home PV systems are hopelessly uneconomic ATM. The payback period is 20-30 years without rebates. You’d need to spend ~$30K for a system that produces as much power as a fairly efficient family home. The average Aussie would much rather spend that on a new kitchen/bathroom/pool. OTOH, the payback period for solar hotwater is closer to 5 years.
On the alternate energy front I am very keen to see how the commercialisation costs and return on investment pans out for the Solar Tower. Everything I read about the technology sounds so promising however Enviromission seems very quite lately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney
“Home PV systems are hopelessly uneconomic ATM. The payback period is 20-30 years without rebates.”
True, but the question is this – which is more likely to become economic soon – PV systems which currently work, have been falling in price for decades and where methods of building them that will be cheaper and more effecient have been demonstrated, or Fusion, which has never been made to produce a single watt of commercial power.
If we throw enough research dollars at each of them they’ll both leave coal, and fission, in their wake. But comparing the tens of billions being plowed into fusion with the hundreds of millions going into solar I know which is better value for money.
It is interesting that the same environmentalists who scoff at “technofixers” are themselves hoping that technology will solve the problems with PV.
Tens of billions is spent on fusion research because it costs $10B just to build a single, experimental reactor.
PV research is much cheaper to conduct, hence has less spent on it. Hundreds of millions of dollars is still a lot of money, and you have to admit, progress in PV has been awfully slow despite that large investment.
You wrote :
“… claims that we are bound to run out of resources, made most vigorously by the Club of Rome in the 1970s, have repeatedly been refuted by experience.”
Untrue. Their first prediction, published in Limits to Growth in 1971, was that food production would peak in 2008, then Resource Extraction would peak in 2010. This is the “Standard Run” scenario. So none of their predictions have yet transpired, let alone been found wrong.
In their “Double Resources” scenario, the food production peak moves out to 2015 and the Peak Resources rate is at 2030, which is 20 years after the standard scenario.
Please see my article “Limits to growth – the Standard Run and Double Resource predictions” at http://home.austarnet.com.au/davekimble/peakoil/limits.htm
Dogz – “I see. So now the CO2 is non-toxic? If so, why bother with renewables at all?”
CO2 is non-toxic in small concentrations. A build up of it could change the world’s climate however it still will be non-toxic as toxicity is generally defined. Mercury causes all sort of health problems. Coal plants also emit copious amounts of carcogens in the form of particulates. IGCC eliminates most of these.
“Yeah, costs. Yet again. I guess you’re not an investor, but here’s how it works in the real world: Before any investor decides to invest in a new project they require strict analyses of costs and risks. They want to know the likelihood that the project will succeed, how much money is required, what are the major risks to success, etc.”
So are these criteria going to be applied to the nuclear debate? As no purely private sector nuclear reactor has been built in 30 years then perhaps market forces have spoken. Our own ANSTO study is suggesting that the government subsidise the cost of the reactor and the insurance.
“We have a really good handle on the costs and risks associated with large-scale power generation, as it is practiced today. You need to analyse the costs and risks associated with introducing alternative forms of energy generation, unless you are claiming there are no costs or risks at all (in which case I don’t believe you)?”
I am not proposing any new forms of power generation. Solar thermal, wind, Combined Cycle Gas Turbines are all in use today. Electric cars and hybrids are in use today. Plug in hybrids, either biodiesel or ethanol, are a very small step from the current Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid. Using the batteries from cars is only increasing the total storage space available for peaking power and spinning reserve. Currently schemes like pumping water up hill in off-peak times are used to store power.
There is nothing new in what I propose – costing are something I have tried however I am not an economist and I cannot really do it thoroughly. I am sure someone far more qualified than me has done some sort of analysis.
Home PV systems obviously … but in the near term it will only be rich greenies and do-gooders that install home PV systems. For 99.9% of the population there’s no incentive to fork out $30K of their hard earned salary for something that will do precisely nothing for them. A carbon tax could change that, but there is zero political will to impose a carbon tax, here, or in the U.S. or in Asia.
Robert Merkel yes I’m aware of them and it will be interestng given the myriad different uses of copper how many of them can easy be substituted.
BTW I would hazard a guess that it takes more energy to produce Aluminium which is exactly the direction we want to avoid.
Mark Bahner Says:
I think you’ve got your costs wrong, by a factor of 1,000.
JQ the ‘green’ movement obviously has many different members but in my opinion the stance of Lovins is considered mainstream with Ted Trainer somewhat behind.
While some might advocate going back to a self sufficient small villages most are just looking to cut back on extravagant consumption, cutting back a bit but not all life’s luxuries, being more efficient and paying the true cost or a fair price for those things we want.
BTW on a side note the Downshifting/Slow Food movements with more emphasis on quality personal time with relationships etc rather than material goods is a good indicator that less consumption of material goods doesn’t automatically mean a cut in your standard of living; in fact quite the opposite.
“BTW on a side note the Downshifting/Slow Food movements with more emphasis on quality personal time with relationships etc rather than material goods is a good indicator that less consumption of material goods doesn’t automatically mean a cut in your standard of living; in fact quite the opposite.”
A good point, and one I’ll certainly be addressing when I do a longer version of this post.
Although it’s only impressionistic, I’d make a pretty sharp distinction between Lovins (an optimist like me) and Trainer (a doomsayer in my view).
David Mitchie – “Home PV systems obviously … but in the near term it will only be rich greenies and do-gooders that install home PV systems. For 99.9% of the population there’s no incentive to fork out $30K of their hard earned salary for something that will do precisely nothing for them.”
Thats because we do not charge for electricity with sliding scales for increased usage. There is no penalty for large electricity users so there is no real incentive to save power.
To change this make the first say 20kWh per day charged at normal tariffs then the next 20kWh per day is charged at 1.5 the tarriffs, then the next 20kWr is charged at double tariff and so on. For businesses it could be a higher threshold. Then there would be incentive to save power and a home or business PV system would pay for itself really quickly. If you have an airconditioner then it is most used for cooling when it is sunny and hot – most of the power for it could be obtained from the PV panels on your roof and not contribute to your daily usage.
These are two very useful sources of relevant info:
Scientific American, September 2005 issue (‘Crossroads For Planet Earth’). Especially the article on energy eficiency (page 52), by the aforementioned Amory Lovins (who is undoubtedly one of the saner voices in this debate).
And ‘The CSIRO Energy and Transport Sector Outlook to 2020 (3MB)’, published in September 2002.
Sorry, the CSIRO report can be found in pdf form on this page: http://www.det.csiro.au
Ender, I completely agree with you, but it won’t happen. What politician in their right mind is going to make electricity so expensive that a home PV system is viable? Look at the ALP bleating about high petrol prices when high petrol prices are exactly what’s needed to make technologies such as hybrid cars viable … and this is from the party of the left! Imagine by some miracle Beazley wins the next election and introduces a sliding scale of carbon taxes on coal-generated electricity. What fun the conservatives would have with that!
Professor Q says he’s optimistic but he doesn’t explain how the huge changes required to address climate change will be managed politically. I don’t see any Al Gore equivalents running around our Parliament.
BTW, this is worth a listen:
Al Gore interview on NPR
So Howard has appointed Ziggy to investigate nuclear power in Australia. What Howard doesn’t say, and (AFAIK) what he never says, is why we need an investigation into nuclear power right now.
Nuclear power wasn’t even on the radar five years ago. What’s changed? Coal is cheap, coal is plentiful, we have enough reserves in Australia to last us 300 years. Why do we suddenly need nukes Johnny?
Either this is just some silly political game designed to tear the ALP apart, or Howard has had a religious conversion on global warming (but can’t bring himself to say it in public). Much as I suspect the former, I can’t discount the latter.
I watched a lengthy interview with Howard on the 7:30 report tonight, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t mention global warming once. Neither did Red Kez for that matter. As PJK would say: The elephant in the living room.
ProfQ, sorry for getting a bit offtopic, but…
Ender, if we are using PHEVs as an energy storage device, any intermittant storage will do. In which case, why the hell would we bother with solar photovoltaic when wind is a tenth the price?
By the way, are you aware of any modelling to see what your scheme of using the batteries in hybrid vehicles as a domestic energy store does to the battery life? batteries for a practical PHEV are extremely expensive; if you halve their lifespan using them to run your telly that becomes a ridiculously expensive proposition.
“Just be satisfied with how much you can **** the planet up in one, regulation biological life, Mark.”
I’m an environmental engineer. I spend the a large part of my waking time helping the planet.
Just what do YOU do for a living, FDB? When I was spending 12, 14, and 16 hour days doing stack emissions compliance and air pollution research testing, I don’t recall seeing you there…
I wrote, “For a total of $3.6 billion, fusion would be close enough to commercial that investors would be willing to go the rest of the way.�
Ender replied, “And for that money you could have the same power starting TODAY from solar/wind/biomass. Why wait for technologies that may NEVER work properly. And if they do fusion can be neatly integrated, where appropriate, in the renewable smart grid of the future.”
The reason to offer technology prizes for fusion is that solar (photovoltaics or thermal), wind, and biomass simply come nowhere near the potential of controlled fusion as an energy source.
Let’s take some examples:
1) A large ocean container ship uses about 11 TONS of fuel oil per hour to cruise at 25 knots. That same ship could be powered by a fusion reactor that used less than 1 POUND of hydrogen and boron per hour. (A container ship could also be powered by a fission reactor, but a fission reactor contains extraordinarily dangerous material that can be released during a meltdown.)
2) A 200-seat aircraft flying from New York to Los Angeles requires about 15,000 gallons of jet fuel. If powered by fusion, the same plane could fly the same distance using less than 10 pounds of hydrogen and boron.
3) New York City requires an average of approximately 10,000 megawatts of electrical energy. That’s 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. To supply that energy requires approximately 30 million tons of coal per year. Or it would take roughly 30,000 1-megawatt wind turbines (because the turbine only produces about 1/3rd its rated capacity, on average). Even coating every horizontal surface in NYC with photovoltaics (including roofs, roads, and sidewalks) wouldn’t produce that electricity (and would produce nothing during the 12 hours of darkness on the average day). In contrast, that power could be produced by 100, 100-MW fusion plants, located right in buildings in Manhattan. If the buildings were destroyed, the fusion reactors would simply shut down (with no loss of radioactive material, if the reactors were hydrogen-boron reactors).
4) The Saturn rocket used for Apollo 11 weighed 13 times as much as the Statue of Liberty, and most of that weight was fuel. The comparable fuel to get men to the moon with a fusion powered rocket would would be less than the weight of a single man.
So *that’s* why it makes sense to offer technology prizes to private entities who develop fusion systems. Controlled fusion makes all other energy sources essentially unneccessary…including solar, wind, and biomass.
Fusion?
Fusion power is a daydream. $Tens of billions have been spent with still very little fusion going on. No real progress has been made. I don’t expect to see controlled fusion power plants in my lifetime. (even if I do live 115 years)
Fusion doesn’t look too promising overall. Still far too many technical problems, and the economics are not clear.
Maybe a hundred years from now. But it doesn’t have a place in any policy decisions that have to be made soon.
However, I certainly support some basic ongoing research into fusion. If it can be made to work it would be great.
Quiggin — nice post, and I particularly appreciate the wunderground history of ozone hole “skeptic” tactics.
On skeptics being converted by evidence — arguably Kyoto was the global warming equivalent of the Montreal accord for ozone, until the US president pulled us out of it.
Fusion is only a few times denser (in Joules/kilogram-fuel) than fission, which we actually have working and which can go a long time. Fusion makes less waste true, though the kind most research looks at is deuterium-tritium which makes more neutrons than fisison. I’m happy for research to continue but I wouldn’t bet on fusion soon.
“Do you really want to become a machine?” We *are* machines, of soft and evolved design, often quite brilliant, sometimes quite stupid (appendix), and poorly designed for ongoing maintenance and spare parts.
“Kuznets curves… as countries become richer they export their pollution.” This is demonstrably false in at least some cases. The smog of Los Angeles comes from cars, whose function cannot be exported, and air quality there, while still not great, has gotten much better over the past few decades thanks to the cars becoming cleaner and more efficient. Similarly, if there’s less acid rain in North America now, it’s because the coal plants dump less pollution than the used to. (Also due to some switching to gas plants, probably.) Water treatment improves as well.
“Poorer countries have laxer pollution laws that richer countries exploit.” Exactly, and those laws work — if the production current done in China was being done in the US or Europe, it would be less polluting than it is in China.
Fusion power is a daydream.”
You think so? Well, if you’re right, then there will be no technological prize money awarded for increasing levels of achievement of fusion power. That’s the beauty of technology prizes, versus direct funding of research. With technology prizes, if there is no breakthrough, there is no payment. In contrast, when the government(s) directly fund energy research, there is a direct incentive to run into as many problems as possible. (Research funds dry up when the technology becomes commercial.)
However, your opinion on fusion is apparently not shared by Vince Page, a Technology Officer at General Electric. At a recent fusion conference, he estimated the costs to achieve breakeven for various fusion technologies:
Fusion prospects
The 7th slide assesses the times to small-scale net energy production for the Plasma Focus, Field Reversed Configuration, and Koloc Spherical Plasma of 6 years, 8 years, and 10 years, respectively. Further, the estimated costs to achieve net energy production are only $18 million, $75 million, and $25 million, respectively. Finally, the estimated probabilities of success for larger plant sizes if the small-scale energy concept works are 80%, 60%, and 80%, respectively.
“$Tens of billions have been spent with still very little fusion going on.”
To my knowledge, the number (at least in the U.S.) is approximately $10 billion.
But regarding cost versus actual power produced, there is likewise very little photovoltaic energy being produced. When I was in college in 1979, the head of the Department of Energy’s Photovoltaics Program came to Virginia Tech, and described the steps that would produce photovoltaic power for prices comparable with coal-fired power by the mid 1980s. Now, it’s 2006, and photovoltaics still are more than a factor of 3 more expensive than power from the grid in the U.S., in most cases. Less than 0.01 percent of the power in the U.S. is generated with photovoltaics.
While there is more wind power being generated, in the U.S., wind still generates less than 2% of the total electrical power. I would be absolutely shocked if wind power EVER generates even 20% of the total electrical power in the U.S.
In contrast, fusion power could easily generate many times the total energy demand of humans for millions of years. Just to give one example of the use of that energy…snow making machines could be placed at both poles of sufficient snow-making capacity to generate more snow during their winters than melts during their summers. Such an activity would be virtually impossible with photovoltaics, wind, or any other energy source.
“No real progress has been made.”
That’s not true. First off, tokamak-based fusion devices have increased their time, temperature, and density (“triple T”) values by approximately a factor of 1000 over the last 3 decades.
Fusion progress towards breakeven
They are now close enough to breakeven that the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER) is expected to generate 400 MW more power than is put in.
“I don’t expect to see controlled fusion power plants in my lifetime. (even if I do live 115 years)”
If the U.S. Department of Energy were to offer technology prizes of the approximate magnitude and technical requirements that I’ve outlined, I’d expect to see commercial controlled fusion power plants within 2 decades, at most. By mid-century, I’ll (hopefully) be 92, and would expect to see the majority of electrical power in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and India generated by controlled fusion.
But the United States–or Europe, Japan, India, or China–needs to switch to technology prizes, especially for non-tokamak reactors. The direct funding of tokamak research has been, and will continue to be, a bad idea.
Oops. The fusion progress figure is here:
Fusion progress
Mark – “The reason to offer technology prizes for fusion is that solar (photovoltaics or thermal), wind, and biomass simply come nowhere near the potential of controlled fusion as an energy source.”
Look I am completely with you on fusion. If the promise is realised then it will be a wonderful power source. However we have problems NOW. You do not wait for a revolutionary new way of extinguishing fires when your house is burning down. You use what you have at the time, inefficient as it is, to put the damn fire out and then think about the wonderful new way.
Renewables will do fine if we change a bit to accomodate them. The current situation we are in is an artifical artifact of the incredibly high energy density of fossil fuels and our own self importance. We think that this is how the world should be so we desperately cast around trying to preserve the status-quo without really examining whether the status-quo is sustainable in the long term. By the problems that are occuring in the Earth’s biosystems, our life support, there is a very clear message here, if you want to listen, that perhaps it is not.
We need to change, not back to the stone age or some agrarian utopia that never really happened, but to sustainable technology that does not pile up problems for future people to solve. Will it last for a thousand years should be our motto. When Dick, Burt and Jeanna where building the Voyager round the world aircraft every part they examined to use in the plane was discussed and examined with the idea “will it go around the world?”. If it looked dodgy or bad quality then it was rejected. If we apply the thousand year rule to things then a lot of options get eliminated. Nuclear Fission will not last a thousand years. Fusion might however renewables will.
Well, that’s really weird. Click on the “Achieving fusion conditions” hyperlink on the left, to go to the actual figure.
Here is another figure showing fusion progress:
Another fusion progress figure
Dogz, the federal government has shut down both the CRC for renewable energy and the Energy Research and Development Corporation. This hasn’t entirely shut down renewable energy research in Australia, but has probably halved the rate of progress. The money saved was peanuts compared to that being thrown at Fusion (although so far the Australian government has not participated in that).
PV research is inherently cheaper than fusion as you point out, so you would think that would make people more inclined to invest in it, but the opposite has been the case.
What we have seen is a systematic hobbling of quality research into most renewables, and then people say “see they don’t work we better go chasing nuclear”. It’s like breaking someone’s leg and then saying the fact they didn’t win a race proves they never could.
“In most respects, economic growth is consistent with improvements in the environment rather than degradation.”
Ha ha ha, ha ha. So soil salinity, deforestation, overfishing, heavy metal & POP toxics accumulating in our bodies, climate change and cancer epidemics are evidence of improvements eh?
True, (cherry-picked) air and water quality in some western cities has improved in last decade, but then the US is upping allowable mercury and cyanide, asthma is still rising in Aus., and virtually every other enviro indicator gets worse. Mr Quiggan is obviously unfamiliar with the Aus State of the Environment reports, but then what can you expect from an economist.
No doubt others on this thread would have categorised me as a “deep green” and I would accept this categorisation, even though I would gladly go on accepting many of the benefits of our consumerist society, if I believed it were possible to do so indefinitely into the future.
Given that the past two centuries have been such a huge abberration in human history in terms of how much capital from nature (as opposed to interest) we have consumed, I think the onus should be on those, who believe that we can maintain, indefinitely longer, levels of consumption which are several orders of magnitude greater than what has been consumed for virtually all of human history, even if we achieve ‘factor four’ increases in efficiency, to prove their case.
To all those who wish to remain complacent about the gravity of the threat confronting us (and I include Professor Quiggin in this category), I urge you to read Ronald Wright’s “A brief History of Progress”. The core of it is only 125 pages and it shows that the only differencce between our current global civilisation and those before us which have collapsed is that we have obtained a vast quantity of free energy from under the ground which will soon be exhausted, never to be replaced.
We may still have time to act to prevent catastrophe, but if we don’t act soon, today’s decision makers will be condemned without reservation when the possibly avoidable consequences of their inaction today becomes all too real to deny.
Liam, why don’t we look at the conclusion from the 2001 SoE report on atmosphere.
As I read this, with the exception (a vitally important exception as I said) of greenhouse gases, air quality is improving, and likely to continue doing so. But then, I’m only an economist as you say.
I picked the atmosphere section, because it’s first and probably most important – feel free to point to other areas to support your claim.
Even if breakeven is achieved, there’s no guarantee that fusion would be competitive with the modern grid. The fuel is cheap, but the capital cost is high — even if the fuel is free, if it cost $10 billion to build a gigawatt plant then it wouldn’t be competitive (with solar, let alone coal). Again, fission is similar — the fuel is already a negligible component of the cost. So anticipating fusion-powered snowmakers seems premature.
Also, if we start using much more energy than 10 billion people at US consumption levels, from non-renewable sources, we approach the domain of significantly changing the planet’s heat balance just from generated heat. (Conversely, if we use enough from renewables, we change the heat distribution — I’ve wondered if getting enough power from wind would alter weather patterns.)
But as for James’s challenge, producing enough energy for 10 billion people at US levels — 1e14 watts — hardly seems impossible, with either solar (1e16 watts of land-based electricity available) or nuclear (uranium for millions of years available, with breeders and seawater extraction.) At kilojoules per kilogram, water from reverse osmosis is affordable, leaving rainwater to the non-human ecosystem. With clean energy and water most other things fall into place. Some Americans may have to pay more than they’re used to to drive around. C’est la vie.
Proponents of fusion, hydrogen and indeed nuclear as the only viable low-pollution future sources of energy seem to be limiting their thinking to the current pattern of a small number of very large power generators linked by large grids. Why is so little attention is given to the obvious (to me) alternative of a much larger number of smaller generators? This is where renewables shine, and though I am happy to admit that they may never provide 100% of our future energy needs, they will still be able to provide a substantial fraction of it, and at low pollution levels.
One could be pardoned for thinking that the real arguments for these impractical and dangerous proposals are financial; that large centralised generators need large investments, and consequently offer the prospect of large fees for, eg., promoters of PPP-based projects. Hands up all the commenters who work at Macquarie Bank!