I’ve mentioned quite a few times the spurious calculations offered by Ted Trainer of the Simplicity Institute, purporting to prove that renewable energy can’t sustain a modern lifestyle. But I haven’t looked hard at the other side of the coin; the idea that ‘degrowth’ could provide us with a sustainable, low-tech but still comfortable way of living, based on local self-sufficiency.
Samuel Alexander, also of the Simplicity Institute, has a piece in the Conversation, making this claim. Presumably, unlike energy technology, this is an area where the Institute ought to have some special expertise. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case.
Alexander makes two points of particular interest.
First, he suggests that we (that is, urban dwellers) could meet our food needs through a combination of suburban gardening and trade with nearby farmers. This is illustrated by a picture of a community garden in San Francisco.
Second, he observes that this is not a process that should be sought through top-down measures from government, but rather through ‘bottom-up’ initiatives from individuals and groups.
I’ll deal with the second point first. Rather than putting this discussion in the future tense, why not look at attempts to move in this direction, which have been going on for at least forty years (there was a big movement to Nimbin on the NSW North Coast in the early 1970s, for example). As far as I know, none of these have got anywhere near achieving self-sufficiency in food, let alone fibre for clothing, timber for building and so on. And, as far as I can see, there is less going on in this direction now than there was 40 years ago.
That’s not to say of course, that self-sufficiency is impossible. For thousands of years, the majority of the world’s population lived by subsistence agriculture, and a billion or more still do. The only problems were
(i) It’s a life of miserable, back-breaking work from which people have always fled at the earliest opportunity, even when the alternative was near-starvation in a disease-ridden urban slum or shantytown
(ii) The current world population could not possibly be fed (even on a meat-free diet) with the yields typical of traditional subsistence agriculture
Perhaps the Simplicity Institute is counting on using more modern (but sustainable) technology to achieve high food yields. At one level, this might just be feasible. ‘Organic’ farmers have shown that it’s possible to achieve commercial yields without using pesticides or manufactured fertilisers, though other costs are higher, so that it is necessary to charge a premium price. But this only works on a significant scale if, in other respects, standard energy-intenisve industrial technologies (farm machinery, food processing and so on) are used.
Alexander makes it pretty clear that (as with the Institute’s attacks on renewable energy) this kind of modest tinkering is not what he has in mind. So, let’s take a look at the community garden he uses to illustrate the simpler approach. The photo shows about 20 people and a dozen or so garden beds, each about 1-2 sq m in area.
I’m not much of a gardener, but the total area looks pretty comparable to the backyard patch we had when I was a kid, which certainly didn’t feed our family. Rather than rely on such impressionistic stuff, though, it seems better to look at some proper data. Alexander doesn’t offer any and neither does the Simplicity Institute website, but the Internet has plenty of information.
Typical estimates seem to be that you need somewhere from 100-400 sq m to supply enough vegetables for a single person.
That includes a carbohydrate source such as potatoes, and perhaps fruit, but no meat, eggs, milk, grain or plant protein sources like soybeans.
Taking the most optimistic numbers possible, the garden plots illustrated by Alexander would meet less than half the vegetable needs of one person. This isn’t a remotely serious analysis: it’s more like claiming that a household could supply its own electricity by pedalling a stationary bike.
A more immediate objection relates to the transition path. Suppose that the Simplicity Institute managed to convince everyone that it is necessary to adopt the ‘degrowth’ approach they advocate. This would require a comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy: food production and distribution systems are just one example.
How rapidly could such a transformation be achieved? An obvious answer is to run the tape in reverse. The shift from a largely agricultural economy to our current post-industrial economy took about 200 years in the leading economies, and has nowhere been achieved in less than two generations (say 60 years). It seems reasonably to assume that reversing the process would take just as long, even granting the improbable premise that we started tomorrow[^1]
We don’t have 60 years to spare. If the world economy isn’t thoroughly decarbonized by 2050 (a little over 30 years away), the chance of holding global warming to 2 degrees C will have been lost.
The only chance of decarbonization is an approach that is focused much more narrowly on reducing CO2 emissions, through energy efficiency, renewable energy and a shift away from the most energy-intensive forms of consumption. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, this can be done at very low cost, but we need to move much faster than we are doing.
Those, like Trainer and Alexander, who oppose any effective action to reduce CO2 emissions, while demanding a massively larger agenda reflecting their social and ideological preferences, are effective (and sometimes actual [^2]) allies of the rightwing denialists.
fn1. The UN Climate Change Framework Convention process started more than 20 years ago, and is only now producing any significant (though still inadequate) action. ‘Degrowth’ isn’t a process or even the basis of a movement, it’s just an idea.
fn2. One notable meeting place was Barry Brooks’ Brave New Climate site, where denunciations of renewable energy from Trainer and Peter Lang, a denialist who used to comment here, sit side by side
John Quiggin 
Ah, no, it isn’t, and they don’t – unless certain further features also apply. Maintaining a household usually only takes about twenty hours of work per adult per week on average, with seasonal bursts for harvests etc. (it may need more to clear and break in new land as well, but that’s transitional). Of course, a household that has to do further work to pay rents and/or taxes can get up into the range of “miserable, back-breaking work”, but that isn’t down to the subsistence agriculture – and that’s what the history is generally describing. About the only time that overwork issue comes up is with marginal land that needs regular work to maintain its fertility, like the farmers in the west of Ireland who farmed rocks by collecting and piling up seaweed on them. Apart from that, people can get poor from not having enough subsistence resources – but then they don’t have much work to do on the little they have, either. Flight from the land is associated with poor information, with land loss, and with disruptions from wars or from local big men taking all the water or similar (that’s why “fair trade coffee” is a bad thing – the coffee farmers are usually big men who do well out of it at the same time as using much of the water that the subsistence farmers can’t get any more).
Actually, it probably could, given that it is being fed by agribusiness right now. Traditional subsistence agriculture wouldn’t have the fossil fuel inputs for farm equipment and fertiliser manufacture, but then again it wouldn’t need the power for the equipment and it would be very practical to apply local measures to maintain fertility and to add to it slowly over time; all you really need is a combination of nitrogen fixing plants, ash and waste retention, and some seafood acquired from outside to bring in added stocks. Of course, a transition to that could well have many casualties if it were not done well.
I suspect some people are going to pooh pooh that rather than looking for evidence one way or the other. They should consider that, if this is wrong, it was physically impossible for there ever to have been an elite supported by the working base. For those who are willing to look, the mutualist Kevin Carson has gathered together a lot of source material for his own work; google that.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4104925.htm
Naomi Klein on degrowth. There is a transcript and the degrowth part starts about a third of the way down.
“I think just a strategic economy or a deliberate economy is what we’re talking about, because they don’t think all aspects of our economy should contract. When they say strategic they mean we need to… we need to shrink the parts of our economy that use up the most natural resources that are just based on mindless consumption and we need to expand the parts of our economy that are already low carbon and that are going to get us off fossil fuels.”
I doubt that few people over 30 who weren’t born to a life of subsistence farming could adjust to it. If subsistence farming, fuedual farming etc. was easy I wonder why these events occurred.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
Some might say but these were caused by droughts, pests, floods, frosts, plagues, storms and so on. To which I would say “Precisely!”.
Subsistence farming might seem pleasantly viable and almost bucolic in a very good year. However, have one bad year and you are on starvation row. And some places, like Australia, can dish up 5 bad years in a row very easily.
Our modern system, as well being far more productive, is far more distributed and connected. Local famines need not occur and do not occur in developed countries. Having said all that, there are plenty of aspects to the industrialisation of food that I do not think are good. However that might lead off topic.
When it comes to de-growth some forms of selective de-growth will have to occur. The fossil fuel economy will have to de-grow. The number of IC engine cars on the road will have to deogrow. I do think the economy and people will have to become leaner and meaner. But a “lean” economy by current standards (less outright luxuries, less waste, less extravagance) could still employ, feed, educate and care for everyone if it was done correctly. Wealth disparities would have to reduce a great deal for instance.
A person told me with a straight face that their double decker sandwich was an example of food self sufficiency because it contained a leaf of homegrown lettuce. Therein lies Trainer’s central point; that we like to kid ourselves a fair bit. The IEA tells us that 83% (if I recall) of our primary energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Surely that will be hard to turn around.
My garden has about 20 mature fruit and nut trees, a shade house, a greenhouse, a dozen raised growing beds, a vegetable cellar and a solar irrigation system. The compost heap is as big as a car. No permanent animals. I live in 1200mm rainfall country on rich soil and I’m nowhere close to self sufficiency. Considered as fuel supermarket food is said to have an EROEI of 0.1 ie 10 calories or kilojoules (mostly petroleum derived) in for every one out. Volumetric peak liquid fuel is expected before 2020 with peak crude oil already having passed without concern. Based on personal observation and official predictions I think we should worry. On our present path I expect our future will be like Cuba.
John Quiggin
“Those, like Trainer and Alexander, who oppose any effective action to reduce CO2 emissions,…”
I don’t know anything about Ted Trainer – but this is not true of Samuel Alexander as far as I know. His main area at uni is on voluntary simplicity – so that is his area of research and also what he practices to a degree in his life (I think he lives in the city but does work with sustainable simple vernacular building practices in the country as well ).
Also complaining that he overstates his case in the article is unfair since everyone was overstating that Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation low cost report (that exceeded 2 degrees when you would go to the effort of reading it) just the other week – and both my complaints to Climate Spectator and The Conversation have to so far resulted in any sort of corrections for the overstating of the report. You need to complain about overstating of things consistently – so then you should complain about the Deep Decarbonisation Report as well as the Simplicity Institute reports. Possibly the editors of The Conversation and Climate Spectator would listen to you since you are a Professor .
I think you are expecting a bit much from him that he should invent a program of transition to sustainability with all the numbers and steps of implementation for the whole of Australia by himself – this would be too big a task for one person or for an institute of the size of the Simplicity Institute. At his recent book launch he said he thought the voluntary simplicity movement would be helpful in finding ways to live contentedly with restrained consumption – and be an example to others – but that in our society it is difficult given the infrastructure and social systems in place at the moment – so it is hard to live a ‘pure’ simple life. His earlier book I think (not having read it) envisioned a utopia of simple living after a great collapse so the population had decreased a great deal. So at the moment he is looking at positives of simplicity as a counter to our current great over consumption of resources globally.
“We don’t have 60 years to spare. If the world economy isn’t thoroughly decarbonized by 2050 (a little over 30 years away), the chance of holding global warming to 2 degrees C will have been lost.
The only chance of decarbonization is an approach that is focused much more narrowly on reducing CO2 emissions, through energy efficiency, renewable energy and a shift away from the most energy-intensive forms of consumption.”
I am certain you know very well that decarbonisation needs to be accompanied by de-methanisation and de-nitrousoxidation – as well as de-[those other less prominent ghgs] – to stay within the whole ghg budget to keep within 2 degrees (or less for lower targets like returning to 350ppmco2e).
In terms of stationary energy where the most technical work has been done – Mark Diesendorf’s book says we also need to conserve our use of energy – as well as having more efficient technologies and 100% renewable energy technologies.
In terms of transport energy – I have not seen a zero emissions transport energy plan for Australia – BZE are working on one and have said it is proving technically very difficult. I have not heard of a zero emissions transport plan for any other state or country either. Air travel simply needs banning – but no-one prominent ever mentions this except Dick Smith who says it should be banned except for some Very Important People like himself – which is sure to go down well in the community
There is also energy for farm and mine and forestry and construction machines – this might be included in transport energy but I am not sure? Anyway – I have not seen a technical report on this either.
Then there is methane and nitrous oxide – so animal farming needs to be banned or severely constrained – waste management systems need a complete overhaul – and farming needs to stop using artificial fertilisers producing nitrous oxide (does this mean 100% organic fertiliser ? I don’t know because no one has done a technical report on zero emissions farming and food production. Waste management is a huge issue – because presumably it is going to entail not just making a new system – but dealing with currently existing landfill to prevent ghg emissions from it over time as everything in landfill breaks down at different rates and with different sorts of emissions.
Then we have the need to reforest to draw down emissions – since we need to ban or severely constrain animal farming this land will be free.
I understand BZE are releasing their Land Use Plan now which should hopefully explore agriculture, waste, and reforestation – which they have said will be a game changer because they have found the amount of ghg emissions from land uses has been underestimated.
However – someone who I spoke with who I think is more involved in Melbourne climate change activist network and likely to be familiar with BZE work as it develop- told me earlier this year that as he understood it the technical work at this stage has not showed a path to zero ghg emissions and draw down of existing ghg emissions which is sufficient to avoid climate change to the point where geo-engineering is considered because you will be in a scenario where lives will be lost at that point.
I hope that this is because the technical work is like that overstated Deep Decarbonisations Report and has not been able to keep within 2 degrees because of wanting to please rich people – rather than because of technical reasons. If it is pleasing rich people – then this can be changed by not worrying about selfish rich people. If it is technical – then we are already at a point where it is not going to be possible to avoid going over 2 degrees and lives will be lost and geo-engineering will be being considered.
“As has been repeatedly demonstrated, this can be done at very low cost, but we need to move much faster than we are doing.”
Low cost estimates have not been demonstrated – they have been put forward while still having dodgy assumptions in them. We do need to move faster indeed.
“Those, like Trainer and Alexander, who oppose any effective action to reduce CO2 emissions, while demanding a massively larger agenda reflecting their social and ideological preferences, are effective (and sometimes actual [^2]) allies of the rightwing denialists.”
I would like to know how you reconcile your arguments on the unfairness of the discount rate used in mainstream climate change economics with your position on Australia maintaining growth in consumption at this time?
Discount rates apply to the needs of people separated from us by space and time.
1. Global consumption of resources is too high and not managed at the moment – we are denuding forests which maintain the climate as well as providing living spaces for animals and keeping biodiversity, our agriculture is ruining soil and losing biodiversity of food plants through monocultures , we are using up underground water and drying up rivers like the Murray/Dhungala, our waste management is increasing toxicity on land, air and in the oceans etc etc.
2. Global consumption is unfairly distributed – some one in America or Australia consumes a high amount while billions of people are hungry and live in torrid conditions.
3. Globalisation has increased consumption of goods produced in foreign jurisdictions – so someone in a rich country (R) consumes goods produced by people in a poor country (P) so the environmental damage from (R)’s over-consumption is felt by P rather than R
3. Over consumption by R has negative consequences i. right now for (P) and ii. in the future for generations (F)
4. Overconsumption has led to many Ps aspiring to have material consumption of a level similar to Rs – this has caused increase loss of forests and other land available for non farmed plants and animals/nature (N)
4. So – We have a discount rate question – How much is the utility (R) gains by their overconsumption worth so much more than both the present and future utility lost to (P) and (F) and (N) by (R)’s over consumption?
It seems to me if you think material consumption should keep growing in Australia – you disagree with your own critiques of mainstream discounting and value Rs utility much more highly than P F and Ns lost utility
Shortly before my father died about a year ago he told me how they survived through the depression and drought years of the thirties on their farm close to the Goyder line near Robertstown in SA.
He said they never went hungry even though the cereal crops failed. They collected enough water in dams and from roofs to have a vegetable garden and fruit trees, household scraps were recycled through pigs and chickens and being Germans, nothing was wasted.
They made bank payments and other financial commitments for many years by cutting the mallee scrub on the property for firewood and selling rabbit skins. Underground mutton was a frequent meal.
Eventually they went broke but not hungry.
I say all this as an example of what can be done in dire circustances to be nourished and how it can come undone due to finances.
I think degrowth (in carbon part of economy) could still provide us with a comfortable standard of living, but I am sensitive to problems with this approach.
1) how do you get hedge funds and pension funds etc to fall into line?
2) if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?
3) how can you have capitalism with degrowth?
Unfortunately degrowth will create a lot of red-herrings and enable deniers to run interference.
I suspect the answer has to lie in population controls, massive public expenditure in research and development, and cooperative forms of economy.
In this framework, it looks plausible or at least can be suggested. With no framework it is just a nice poetic concept for the chattering classes to congratulate themselves about.
@Salient Green
Have only read your quote, but I find this version of degrowth a lot more appealing than that of the Simplicity Institute
I think you know perfectly well that Peter Lang was banned form BNC many moons ago. The link you are referring to is from 2010. Are you trying to start a blogfight? I thought you didn’t like them.
Yes John, our society is too complex for backyard solutions to be efficient without huge changes to infrastructure among other things. There is a lot of wasted food growing area within our urban and rural areas. I grow stone and some citrus fruit where the inter-row space is currently sod culture which could produce vegetables instead with the same water, in a pinch but my water is hugely less expensive than urban water which is treated to potable standard.
There are currently way too many chemicals flushed into the waste water system to make sewerage sludge safe for use in food growing long term.
Everything that needs to be done for sustainability can be done technically but the political and economic system need to change.
Free public transport would immediately make a huge cut to carbon emissions.
The “cost” wouldn’t be that high when balanced against other savings (e.g. road building/repairs, congestion/travel time, air quality..).
It has to be completely free rather than discounted fares. Most commuters would get out of their cars if it was free.
Megan,
“October 12th, 2014 at 20:00 | #11 Reply | Quote
Free public transport would immediately make a huge cut to carbon emissions.”
In Victoria our public transport system is already overcrowded at peak times – so now metro trains skip stations at peak times fairly often. The transport system needs investment in to even keep up with current peak demand .
@wilful
The material is still posted on the site, as of now, and presented as authoritative – no reader would know that the author was banned. And this is far from unusual from BNC. Here, Barry gives a broadly favorable review of an anti-solar book, after noting that the author is a denialist.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/03/18/the-solar-fraud/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Howard_Hayden
And if Lang was banned, it seems that the ban has been revoked
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/10/07/the-left-vs-the-climate/#comment-313683
@ZM
Then massive investment it is!
We’ll obviously need to hugely increase capacity to take all those single occupant cars off the road. So be it…. this is serious, and if we are to be serious we need to take that sort of action. But it’s very “doable”. Right now.
Yes – I agree we need to invest in public transport. But making it free right now would not help in Victoria – because it is already overly full and squashy at peak times. I think I remember there being reduced prices for going in to the city before peak time in the morning – but people didn’t appreciate having to get to work 2 hours before their workday began.
They could make it cheaper at non-peak times in the afternoon and night to increase usage then. But because it is overseen by state government and run by private companies – making it free right now is tricky. Why should tax payers pay for the private companies to make money even more than they already do? And how can the state government collect extra revenue to make up for the ticket prices plus what is needed extra for investment?
State governments revenue powers are limited – maybe they could make a new sustainability bond to be paid for through land value? Or they could charge for crown of [insert state name] environmental services like fresh air and climate (if this is constitutionally allowed)?
My favourite example of the problems with self-sufficiency is the wholesale price of wheat flour – $690 per tonne. (75 cents per Kg in Coles. Don’t know why retail price only bit higher than wholesale price). 0.21 tonne of flour would supply the energy and protein requirements for one adult for a year at a cost of $147. I hate to think how many hours of labour (and human kJ expended) would be required for me to grow enough wheat in my back yard to make 0.21 tonne of flour. Much more economical to pay $147 to the wheat farmer to grow the wheat and to the miller to mill it. Although I’m sure there is some ecological damage (including climate change problems) because of the way wheat is grown on Australian farms, it wouldn’t require much of a higher payment to ensure that the growing of wheat was sustainable. Especially as because of the move to low-tillage methods, the ecological damage these days is much less.
@ZM
Melbourne’s East-West link (huge toll-road project), according to Wikipedia:
Apparently it’s one of those discredited PPPs which means it will ultimately cost the citizens even more than the cost of building it, with the difference going to the private sector as profits – otherwise the private sector wouldn’t be involved.
We could buy the extra busses, trams, trains etc… with that money NOW.
It can work. There are plenty of cities around the world doing it already and reaping the benefits.
I think that we have to move forward in steps and within our fields. By far the most significant improvement can be made from roof top solar for both domestic and small to medium business.
I’ve recently thrashed this out with Bruce of Newcastle at catallaxy. BoN was arguing that solar cannot possibly be cost effective, insisting that to be pure it should be of grid, and to that effect he produced an NPV “calculation” to demonstrate the grid equivalency cost would 40 cents per unit when the opportunity cost was taken into account. I produced a counter spreadsheet to of the system that I will ultimately install on my house this being a 4.5 kw pv and a 4.5 kw thermal compound system with 16 kw of battery power and a 2.2kw natural gas powered backup generator. In my model at costs that I am able to locate on the web I was able to demonstrate an 8 year payback at 7% interest, and a Aud 21,000 profit at 40 years with the the gains compounded at 7% and including battery replacement every 10 years and the generator replaced every 2600 hours of operation. With an additional 1.5 kw pv added the system would charge an 8.5 kilowatt plug in hybride car for 50 klms of commute each day. The offset electricity prices were 25 cents per unit main and 13 cents per unit off peak (against the solar thermal content).
This calculation demonstrates that going renewables does not require loss of lifestyle or situation. Having gone this first step then other options can be explored.
Once such panel systems are readily available in this format and offering these yields without subsidy then the systems will become attractive for bank financing enabling a rapid national rollout. The off grid component should be unnecessary where grid energy providers structure their assets properly with a national energy strategy in mind.
As far as the food component is concerned I believe that 2/3 of an acre are required per person. this is impractical for urban back yards, and who wants to plant out the pool area with wheat. I think the most likely solution is community food cooperatives in which farmers get to be farmers and consumers have a direct connection to produce with a minimum of overhead in between. Inter coop trading would set the price bench marks.
fn1 Solar PV/Thermal are regular panels with a thermal energy absorbing back panel. Therefore the same roof area collects more than twice the energy where the thermal energy can be efficiently used. Other advantages are that the PV part of the panels run cooler during the mid day, making them electrically more efficient (more electricity) and less thermally stressed (longer life).the total energy collection efficiency goes from 15% to 40% for the same roof area.
I just put up a post with two links which is in moderation. Anyway I’ve written about this on my blog recently (Different responses to Climate Action) having heard these two approaches at the Climate Action Summit. I think ProfQ is being disrespectful of some of the really good work that is going on in permaculture and local self- sufficiency. In particular I suggest it’s worth googling Morag Gamble of Seed International, who was an inspiring speaker.
Basically I don’t think this (more local self sufficiency vs improved technology) is an either/or question and it seems misleading to present it that way.
@Ivor
Ivor, with regard to your point (2), Victoria’s Hazelwood coal power plant and mine produces an average of about 33 watts per square meter. Modern rooftop solar can produce an average of over 40 watts per square meter in Australia and we put them on roofs, not in what was arable land in the Latrobe Valley so they do not remove land from use. New wind power in Australia produces an average of 200+ watts per square meter of land removed from its original use. That’s over 6 times as much electricity per square meter as Hazelwood Power Station. So, in general, renewables reduce the amount of land required to generate electricity.
@Megan Taking cars off the road would be much more doable now this government has closed down the auto industry. No jobs left to lose. The fact that we would not have to import cars would help balance of payments. Irony meter in play,
@Ronald Brak
A data source is necessary here.
Coal fired plants capacity is in the neighborhood of 33,000 MW.
So this implies Australia to have 1,000 square Km for mines and plant.
Its seems to me that this figure is more like land area owned by such firms – not production itself per sq. meter.
Has anyone actually produced “average solar production per sq meter per day, or per year” data?
Another thing – there is an issue even if we just stick to decarbonisation (although we cant do this we have to address the other ghg too) and energy.
In Australia we have a lot of land in relation to our population – and a lot of sunlight. Not all countries are in this position. We have also deindustrialised, and not all countries have done that (or we would have no industrial consumer goods).
Samuel Alexander writes “Renewable cannot sustain an energy-intensive global society of high-end consumers. A degrowth society embraces the necessity of “energy descent”, turning our energy crises into an opportunity for civilisational renewal.”
Professor Quiggin says in the OP that this critique of renewable energy is wrong.
But thinking about this – around 30% of our energy use is embodied in consumer goods (not including foods which are have another 30% embodied in them) . But since Australia has deindustrialised lots of our embodied energy is generated in other countries with more industry.
I asked a panel at a conference at uni a question : being that we are largely deindustrialised in Australia our decarbonisation RET technical reports do not look at energy generation and systems needed for an industrialised country — so what are the reports saying for countries like China that have a lot of industry and how all countries decarbonise energy?
The CEO from the Climate Authority’s answer said that some countries would have nuclear energy – not just renewable energy technology.
Leaving aside that this is unfair (making poor countries do all our manufacturing and then have to have nuclear power as well) (and also leaving aside that other countries keep asking us in Australia to mind their hazardous nuclear waste for them even though we don’t need more hazards here when we already have plenty of fires and floods) — this statement implies that the Climate Authority CEO would think the basic claim of both Samuel Alexander and Will Boisvert is correct : that renewables can not provide the amount of energy globally for consumption at current levels and/or as projected.
I write and/or because I am unsure because of the technical nature of this problem. And the technical work is still more pioneering than it is thorough and well trodden on this matter in Australia and globally. I think renewables would generate quite a bit of energy in Australia (although we need to do a fair bit of reorganising of things, worry about storage, and address other ghg). But, say the whole world was to go to renewables — then how much energy could be produced and in what sort of scenarios in terms of the production, mobility, land use, and material use implications of RET?
If the CEO, Samuel Alexander, and Will Boisvert are right — it seems there is now a fairly big choice to be made — either:
1. To manage/decrease the use of energy globally to be at a level that 100% renewable energy technology can provide and so also alter our production and consumption and mobility etc to fit in with this aim (appropriately managed production and consumption and mobility could also fit in with other ghg management and sustainability issues such as changes to agriculture, forest management and biodiversity, waste management etc) – we can call this The Technically and Administratively Enhanced Samuel Alexander Scenario
Or
2. We globally increase the amount of nuclear energy generation to provide current demand and projected future demand of energy without fossil fuels and keep growing material consumption. As consumption requires materials as well as energy — we will continue over-exploiting natural resources and causing loss of biodiversity and extinctions etc . How are methane and nitrous oxide dealt with in this scenario? Proponents of this growth based decarbonisation idea tend to ignore other ghg. We can call this The Nuclear Powered Uber-Growth Will Boisvert Scenario* (*with or without uncertain unmentioned other GHG management techniques).
I suppose there is also another option if the basic claim of renewables not being able to meet high and increasing global energy demand is wrong:
3. Renewable energy technology can provide enough energy globally for everyone to consume at least as much energy as Australians do today or even more — so decarbonisation of energy does not require conservative energy use. Remedies for other GHG emissions and sustainability issues remain To Be Advised. We can call this The Awaiting Confirming Technical Reports and Further Advice Scenario.
I bring up Will Boisvert because the article linked to above (with the comment of Lang in) is by Will Boisvert in response to Naomi Klein’s recent book. The article promotes high energy economies based on nuclear power — which we know he promotes as much as is humanly possible for a freelance writer .
Since I read the whole article since it was linked to – I will sum it up with commentary to save anyone else the trouble:
Mr Boisvert deplores the idea of anyone thinking that “the fight for a sustainable economy is also the fight for a fair and humane one” (I do fear for his chances to earn a living if he ever seeks to take up advertising: “Our [Product] – furthering the pursuit of unfair and inhumane economies everywhere” )
The article complains grievously of Naomi Klein’s “myopic boosterism of renewables and an unthinking rejection of nuclear power and other low-carbon energy sources” and Mr Boisvert is mightily outraged at the wrong done by arguments that “the fossil fuel sector has pervasively thwarted sustainability reforms by bribing politicians, defanging environmental groups, sponsoring fraudulent science, and plowing ahead with monstrous projects that will grind on for decades to amortize their huge costs. ” Of course – since he requires of Naomi Klein that she “needs to know how everything works and interacts” – you would think Mr Boisvert would provide us with an account of how this terrible defamation of the fossil fuel companies came about and some detail about their great innocence — but Mr Boisvert here falls short of his own high standards.
Mr Boisvert forgets his own Higher Self again in the next sentence where he outlines the great injury done to Capitalism by the assertion that it “is allergic to the strict regulation, public investment, growth constraints and redistributive cost-sharing that decisive climate policy requires.” If only Mr Boisvert after making this lament would have been so kind as to furnish us with an account of how corporations always are pleading for more regulation, how corporations are always asking the government to invest more in public goods, and are always so joyous to encounter constraints on growth while also being the loudest voices in the world in favour of redistribution. But, cruel world, there is nothing showing Mr Boisvert “know[s] how everything works and interacts” to prove to us fulsomely that corporations have a stedfast and hearty over-enthusiam for regulation and redistribution.
Sadly – what the article lacks in “know[ing] how everything works and interacts” is made up only with historical inaccuracy when Mr Boisvert further complains that Ms Klein writes that “coal and other fossil fuels enabled the capitalist West to control everyone and everything” in the period of European colonialism. Taking umbrage — this claim — he writes — “makes as much sense” as if Ms Klein were “condemning wind turbines because sailing ships carried the conquistadors”. I hope some one can tactfully mention to inform Mr Boisvert that coal was indeed used in the European colonial-industrial enterprise but wind turbines were not however used by conquistadors — perhaps he has read a steam-punk book instead of a history book to acquire this “know[ledge] of how everything works and interacts”.
Mr Boisvert goes on to criticise Ms Klein for not being critical enough of the literature on the feasibility of Renewable Energy Technology “especially Mark Z. Jacobson’s controversial papers” and is most upset at the lack of discussion of “the real-world performance and feasibility of renewable generators”. As we readers here know — Mr Boisvert is famed for his own most critical readings of the literature written in favour of nuclear energy technology – and is always discussing the real performance of nuclear power giving particular attention to disasters, hazadous waste, and realistic insurance costs. I am being sarcastic of course, because Mr Boisvert’s assertion in his article of “the chaotic unreliability of weather-dependent wind and solar power” will sound most familiar and wearisome to regular readers, as will his complaint that Ms “Klein simply doesn’t understand” “the risks of nuclear waste and the allegedly high costs and slow roll-out of nuclear power” so she “can’t discuss them intelligibly”.
Mr Boisvert — reverting back to his Higher Self again — has his sensibility most offended by Ms Klein’s “shallow and one-sided” style of discussion of the costs, roll out times, and risks of nuclear waste — so I had my hopes raised to think I could expect some depthy fair-minded discussion on these matters — but these hopes came to naught and were cruelly dashed upon the rocks as the author quickly just skipped on to praise nuclear “reactors [as] prodigious sources of clean energy” and telling us “Nuclear power is… among the least environmentally intrusive of energy sources” while “Renewable technologies…would require an unprecedented industrial reengineering of the landscape. ”
While Mr Boisvert begins to end on sturdier ground in his agreement that a “thoroughgoing mobilization of public resources is necessary to confront the challenge of climate change” – he loses ground again when he says part of this would require the Left “redoing its risk assessments and rethinking its phobic hostility to nuclear power”.
The area point is a good one, Ronald B. The coal mine that fed Munmora Power station was a 40 square kilometer chunk of land for instance. That at 50 megawatts per square kilometer equals 2 gigawatt or about two thirds of Munmora’s baseload delivery, assuming it was in the optimal location for CSP.
The Hunter valley open cut mines cover an area of some 600 square kilometers and are up to 200 meters deep (60 meters avarage). The same area covered with PV panels would generate most of Australia’s electricity needs.
Its a simple calculation. 600 million square meters with 20% efficient panels time 275 days of 7.5 hour exposure (average) is 600,000,000 * .2 * 275 * 7.5 /3 times 2 (spacing) gives 165 billion kilowatt hours per years or 73% of Australia’s current electricity consumption.
Obviously it is very hard to find a fair figure for excavation. the swimming pool figure is around $200 per cubic meter. even if you divide that by four that gives a per meter of depth of $50 so to excavate to 100 meters would be $5000 per meter area, or 5 billion dollars per square kilometer to get to the coal at 100 meters down.
Economies of scale are going to mean that they excavated those huge holes for less cost that that but no matter how you discount the cost it comes to nothing like as little as the cost of covering that hole area with solar panels. Even if we use a high figure of $500 per square meter (5 per watt) the cost to fit out the Hunter is $200 billion dollars and would have an annual earning value of $8.25 billion with a retail value of $31 billion (19 cents per unit average).
Perhaps the best way to calculate the the comparative value of solar against mining is compare the cost of covering the holes with solar to the cost of filling in the holes.
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1242461/hole-truth-after-the-coal-is-gone/
These are all figures that the mining industry never want the public to know about, so once you have read this information and understood it, shoot your self in the head.
…50 megawatts per square kilometer for CSP…
Some further inconvenient truths.
Going on this 2010 NSW Mining fact sheet, the earning power of the Hunter valley from coal is only twice the earning power of the equivalent area put to the generation of electricity from PV panels at 5 cents per unit (coal equivalent cost).
8.25 billion PV electricity versus 15 billion coal sales.
Will Boisvert has a lot of catching up to do.
“Mineral Resources in the Hunter
The Hunter is currently the biggest coal producing
region in the NSW, providing 64% of production. In
2008-09 the Hunter produced 97 million tonnes (Mt)
of saleable coal.2
90Mt of coal worth nearly $15
billion was exported from Newcastle to international
destinations like Japan, the Republic of Korea,
Taiwan and China in 2008-09.3
The Hunter Valley
Coal Chain is made up of 14 coal producers, 35
mines, 24 rail load points, and 15,000 loaded rail trips
each year, ending at the Port of Newcastle, the
biggest coal port in the world.”
Click to access Fact-Sheet-Mining-and-the-Hunter-Valley.pdf
Agreed, but that’s definitely the way that Trainer and Alexander present it, so it’s appropriate to assess it that way.
@ ZM 24:
Thanks for your comments on my review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. I Just want to correct a few misperceptions (without getting into certain topics that might get me censored):
1. In the review I actually agree with much of Klein’s critique of the failures of neoliberal approaches to sustainability. I largely agree with her argument that “the fossil fuel sector has pervasively thwarted sustainability reforms by bribing politicians, defanging environmental groups, sponsoring fraudulent science, and plowing ahead with monstrous projects that will grind on for decades to amortize their huge costs,” and that it ““is allergic to the strict regulation, public investment, growth constraints and redistributive cost-sharing that decisive climate policy requires.” In these passages I was restating Klein’s argument, not disputing or “deploring” it.
2. I do, however, write that Klein’s grasp of energy policy is extraordinarily weak and biased, and that her anathematization of some clean-energy sources–including hydro–is counterproductive to decarbonization efforts. I give several detailed examples of how this leads to distorted and deceptive analysis on her part.
3. Most pertinent to this post, I also criticize Klein’s austerian impulses. Her prescription for a sustainable civilization and economy contain strong, though vague and confused, calls for austerity, including an endorsement of “selective degrowth”–the very nonsense that John Quiggin rightly denounces here. Like him, I believe that feasible sustainability is to be found in technologies that accommodate economic growth and a high standard of living for everyone–but cleanly–rather than in retrenchment, austerity and a reversal of growth.
@Ivor
Ivor, the Hazelwood Power Station and mine is probably exceptional given it is the least efficient coal plant in the developed world and has a large cooling pond (which is chock-full of tropical fish). But the point I am trying to make is that rooftop solar removes about infinity times less land from its original use than coal power, and wind power can remove significantly less land from use than coal power, so you don’t have to worry about:
“2) if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?”
Has this information I’ve kindly provided you with helped put your mind at ease? If so, a simple thank you would be appreciated.
I want to take up a point John Quiggin made.
“How rapidly could such a transformation be achieved? An obvious answer is to run the tape in reverse. The shift from a largely agricultural economy to our current post-industrial economy took about 200 years in the leading economies, and has nowhere been achieved in less than two generations (say 60 years). It seems reasonably to assume that reversing the process would take just as long, even granting the improbable premise that we started tomorrow.”
The transformation John refers to is the de-growth transition path that “would require a comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy: food production and distribution systems are just one example.”
I agree with John’s point and now want to raise this same point of “comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy” in relation to the transition from an 80% fossil fuel powered economy to a 0% fossil fuel powered economy. In that form it sounds somewhat silly so let’s reverse it. We need to go from a 20% non-fossil fuel powered economy to a 100% non-fossil fuel powered economy.
Do we not face exactly the same issue here as John referred to in relation to de-growth? This issue is a “comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy: food production and distribution systems are just one example.” The choices for, say the rest of this century, are “de-growth” or “alternative growth”. Let us assume that “alternative growth” ecapsulates the idea of at least a partial move from quantitative growth to qualitative growth. This is so people like me won’t loudly squawk on about limits to growth.
Removing the 80% of energy from fossil fuels from our energy mix will entail a “comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy: food production and distribution systems are just one example.” There will need to be a massive re-tooling of about 80% of our manfuacturing, farming and transport industries and the massive retirement/transition of not all our infrastructure but of that proportion that relies upon or supports fossil fuel motive energy.
Nuclear power will do about what it does now (provide about 5% of our total energy needs) until about 2050 when it will tail off due to uranium exhaustion. This will remain true without moving away from mostly once-through fuel cycles and without some Gen IV breakthrough. I don’t want to re-start this argument but I agree with John that a nuclear renaissance seems unlikely at this point.
This is my question set for John and others. How difficult substitionally, technically, industrially, socially and economically will this transition and transformation be? Do we have 2 generations (60 years) to complete it? Would it be acceptable to reach zero fossil fuel use by January 2075?
Producing 100% of Germany`s current electricity consumption from solar would requires arround 2% of the aviable land. Thats without trying to build dense or particular efficient installations. I can see the problem in 100 or 200 years. For now, it shouldnt be much of a concern, even in say Japan (they`ll have to build longer transmission lines and build at suboptimum northern locations, but that should still be quite cheap if prices move as they did so far). The land wont be damaged either. One could even keep using it for agriculture if one absolutly wants. (Calculation base: 700 billion kwh consumption, 1000 kwh per kwp, 10 square meter per kwp, 357000 square kilometer land)
@hix
Addition: Note that swiching to 100% electricity for heating and transportation purpose would require far less primary energy than the current fossil fuel dominated system, so additional electricty demand would not even increase twofold in this case. Space just isnt a serious constraint in the next decades.
@Ronald Brak
You gave 4 figures – 33, 40, 200+, 6 – with no source.
You were asked for the data. It is possible to skew data if no source is provided.
If these numbers exist (other than with you) then where?
How does proposing solar at 40 watts per square metre fit in with my issue at the earlier point 2)?
A reality check to those who think we are on the cusp of revolutionary change is to look at some official statistics
Click to access 2014-australian-energy-statistics.pdf
We see for example from Table 2 that fossil fuels account for 94.4% of our primary energy input (transport, direct heat and fuel for electricity generation) while renewables (mostly 20th century built hydro) account for the other 5.6%. Good luck turning that around anytime soon.
I see little point in claiming that large energy fluxes like sunlight are largely untapped. It comes down to cost and convenience. We could irrigate the Simpson Desert by desalinating abundant seawater but for some reason it’s not happening.
@hix
I am not looking at physical space as the constraint although you might not be answering my post. I am asking about;
(1) substitutability (enough lithium, neodymium etc. to substitute an electrical economy for a fossil fuel economy)
(2) technical constraints (Eg. Will Gen IV nuclear power ever be feasible and safe? Or will it ever be possible to have electric tractors, electric earth moving etc. on a large scale?)
(3) industrial constraints (How do we reconfigure or replace cement making which is a big CO2 emitter?)
(4) social constraints (Not an absolute problem but definitely a transition problem involving a huge changes in expectations. When people en masse realise the giant-SUV-for-every-family dream is over forever how do they take it? Do Bogans riot when they realise they can’t have their petrol-head V8s for ever? Ok, I am joking a bit here but there will be serious issues in re-aligning our workforce, soaking up mass unemployment from layoffs in the old industries and so on. Suburban sprawl will have to be re-configured. The issues go on and on.)
(5) economic constraints (and energy constraints) – The re-tooling of our entire economy and the re-configuring our entire infrastructure are going to have to occur. This is a gargantuan unertaking. Economic management of this and attendent social issues will be enormously challenging. The energy problem might be a changover problem. We still need to burn a certain amount of fossil fuel to build the renewable energy infrastructure to a point where it can fund its own further growth energetically and financially speaking as well as meeting our other needs. It’s a fixed capital transformation problem. (I hope economists understand me here as it is a very important point and I don’t know the proper technical terms economists use.)
Existing fixed capital must be dynamically transformed into new fixed capital. The way this happens is that existing fixed capital is initially employed to build the new fixed capital (infrastructure, power generation etc). As it does this the existing fixed capital is slowly, retired; de-commissioned, dismantled. Progressively the new fixed capital takes on the task of replicating itself.
We have a good analogy in mammalian biology. A healthy polar bear can bring up a cub until the cub matures into at least a sub-adult and becomes self-maintaining (accidents and mischance aside). An old, ill or injured mother will struggle to do this and may die when the cub is too young. The cub then dies too. Our fossil fuel economy not only could die naturally before the renewable cub is sub-adult but we will almost certainly have to deliberately strangle the fossil-fuel mother economy whilst the renewable offspring is still quite young. Can it survive and grow after that point?
@Ivor
Ivor, go find a rooftop solar system. It shouldn’t be difficult if you are in Australia. If you look carefully at it you will see that it removes no land from its original use. So if rooftop solar removes no land from its original use and coal power removes some land from its original use then rooftop solar removes much less land from its original use than coal power. You can determine this for yourself mathematically by dividing zero by some. If the information I’ve just provided helps you to determine that determine that rooftop solar removes less land from its original use than coal power, please let me know.
One could, but building commercial/industrial/residential structures underneath the solar panels lets you build synergistically on the “blocking out the sun” effect that solar panels offer.
[if one wanted to be particularly fancy, one could do the whole thing backwards, building solar panels on “brownfield” sites, those already occupied by structures.]
Hix,
Germany needs only 3,500 square kilometers of gross area to produce their 700 billion kwhrs using 20% efficient panels.
3500 * 1000000 * 200 (kwhrs per square meter annually)
That is without spacing and seasonal fluctuations.
Dear Hermit. You are not seeing the power of exponential growth. The graph at the attached reference shows wind and solar growing at enormous rates, so although they were insignificant a few years ago, they are now leaving poor nuclear in the dust. So luck won’t be needed to decarbonise the economy.
By the way if you go on the reneweconomy mailing list you will daily get lots of good information about the renewable revolution.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/wind-solar-energy-generation-capacities-catching-nuclear-23306
Footnote: What I have called a “fixed capital transformation problem” might well be different from the so-called “transformation problem” in classical and even possibly Marxian economics.
I am literally saying we may have a problem in transforming exisiting fixed capital (coal power stations, oil based transport) into new fixed capital (solar and wind power generators and all-electric transport) because of problems related to substitutability, technical constraints, industrial constraints, social constraints and economic constraints including the problem of “fixed capital transformation” (my ideosyncratic term) itself.
@Ronald Brak
I have developed the simple formula that if we can “roof it” we can “solar-panel” it. If we can find the materials for one, we can find the materials for the other. The common materials of the two processes are close to superabundant (steel and aluminium or iron ore and bauxite). The major new material required (silicon) makes up 25.7% of the earth’s crust so it is superabundant. Trace elements required might be an issue. These are the rare metals or so-called “rare earths”.
Roofing has now been developed that is a roofing-panel and solar-panel all in one. The “rare earths” constraint has been exaggerated by many critics but there is still some reality to it. I suspect however that technical advances will obviate this limit. The most likely areas are nano-engineering including but not limited to nantennas based solar panels which will produce power from all spectra of elctro-magnetic radiation not just the visible spectrum.
(Note: This does not obviate my concerns about the overall “fixed capital infrastructure tansformation problem” as I term it.
@John Goss
Yairs it’s quite strange how I how haven’t drunk the renewables Kool Aid since I’ve had PV since 2005, make my own car fuel from used cooking oil, cook on a wood stove and I’m involved in several district renewable energy projects. After all that I’ve come to the conclusion that renewables will not make a serious enough dent in our fossil fuel dependence.
I think wind and solar still have room to grow even without mandates. In Australia they represent 2.9% and 1.5% of our electricity according to BREE. Beyond currently unknown levels of penetration without Gwh scale energy storage I think they will hit diminishing returns (to cost or emissions) as Germany vividly demonstrates. I suspect we will not have enough low carbon energy be it renewable, nuclear or CCS to replace unhindered fossil fuels therefore we are unwittingly on an energy descent path.
> without Gwh scale energy storage
We don’t actually need 100% reliable electricity, you know. We’ve got pretty good real-world examples of how unreliable electricity affects society [third world, etc], and it really doesn’t seem to cause any more than marginal problems until you hit pretty high levels, short-notice cutoffs of hours-per-week for industrial/commercial, or even higher for residential.
[any place that needs/wants 100% reliable electricity _already_ has backup power, you know. Equipment failures mean that our current electricity distribution process is already noticeably unreliable.]
@Hermit
You are still doing the right thing with respect to your own situation. You are becoming as energy self-sufficient as possible. I take it you are in a rural or semi-rural environment. Your lifestyle can putter on while (and if) the cities struggle. Just watch out for carloads of bogans coming in the farm gate to steal you biodiesel, chickens, lambs and vegtables.
@Ikonoclast
Ikonoclast, I certainly agree there isn’t any shortage of materials to make solar PV. Even rare earths aren’t even really an issue for silicon PV as common doping elements boron and phosphorous are used in such small amounts that boron’s rareness isn’t a real problem and phosphorous isn’t rare at all. (And I’ll mention that neither are expecially toxic.) Neither boron nor phosphorous are technically rare earths, but that’s okay. And I’ll just stress how little material is required for doping. Depending on the desired effect, one atom of dope per million other atoms can be sufficient.
@Collin Street
I was in Kashmir in about 1983. The lake near Srinagar had houseboats all along the shore and it was obvious the lake was eutrified from unproccessed sewerage waste. The hash we got hold of was VERY strong and Indian rum is real rotgut. That’s just to set the scene. 😉
Electricity was an interesting case. All along the roads around the lake and in town, people would throw wires with hooks on the end up to the power lines to steal power. Early evening, lights and electric cookers would glow dimly because of the serious voltage drop. As the evening wore on the lights would become brighter and brighter. One would pass out in dim, pleasant light on the houseboat and then wake up at 2 am with all the same lights blazing away at full intensity. The first time that happened it was a real WTF moment!
I enjoyed the critique, but are these degrowth people really likely to have a serious impact on policy, rather than simply waste their own time entertaining a ridiculous fantasy?
What struck me about the article is how little effort is made to justify the core idea of self sufficiency in terms of the need to reduce environmental impacts. If we have to live in mud huts–I mean cob houses–why do we have to build them ourselves rather than engage in specialisation and (local) trade? If we have to recycle rather than make new clothes, why does it have to be do-it-yourself? Why do fashion and marketing industries have to die? What’s the environmental benefit from substituting home production in place of traded products?
I think most people can see through the degrowthers’ marketing spin. I mean, it’s pretty good–I’m sure there’s an advertising job for Samuel Alexander somewhere (perhaps selling Coalition budget cuts?), with impressive-sounding but meaningless phrases like “in our simplicity, we would be rich” and ”a life of frugal abundance”.
But the reality of the degrowth he envisages is revealed in Alexander’s other work (http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TheSufficiencyEconomy3.pdf). For example, on housing he writes:
“…This might involve things like taking in boarders or putting a caravan in the driveway to help resist further urban sprawl…”
“‘Retired’ shipping containers can be easily converted into humble abodes, and students could easily spend their student years or beyond living simply in a shed or a tent in someone’s backyard”
This makes the excuse he relies upon for the failure of people to embrace degrowth–that capitalism makes the cost of decent housing so expensive that people have to spend their lives working to pay for it–seem utterly bizarre. His alternative–for people to live in caravans or sheds or tents–is already highly affordable, especially when combined with his penchant for re-ruralisation. It’s just rejected by almost everybody as grossly inadequate (for others, as well as themselves) for some strange reason.
@BilB
I assume your figure of 3,500 square kilometers relates to just the panels and assuming they are all facing the right way (azmith) at the correct angle (elevation). The actual roof area would be greater.
If the panels are not perfectly aligned and are not unobstructed – presumably you could double your figure.
@Ikonoclast
So far the only raiders are for firewood and they get the evil eye. Not sure where future thieves will get petrol for their vehicles. Nor can bushies get to distant supermarkets. I’ve mentioned this before but some people with a bush block nearby were looking at $10k + for grid connection so they went for tracking PV, microwind, battery bank and generator, all trouble plagued. One of them said ‘I’m getting too old for this sh#t’. Without prompting then said it would be much simpler if we were all on a nuclear powered grid. Dare I suggest that keen readers of Renew Economy don’t have the character building advantage of actually doing this stuff.