Sweden. You have to love a country so comfortable in itself that its official government web portal leads with a tongue-heavily-in-cheek year in review. There are many other lovable things about Sweden – their backpackers at the Aussie Open, gravlax, The Hives. But the Swedes got quite a lot of love for environmentalists around the world for their promise, early in 2006, to make Sweden an oil-free economy by 2020.
Like a certain other Prime Minister, Goran Persson called together a bunch of experts to try to figure out how this could actually achieve. However, while I suspect we might be waiting a while for a Swedish translation of the Prime Minister’s uranium review, those clever Swedes have been so kind as to provide an English translation (though given that the average Swede probably speaks better English than the average Briton, that’s perhaps not surprising).
But, aside from being impressed by Swedish thoroughness, how are they actually going to achieve their seemingly hugely ambitious goal?
Well, firstly, “oil-free” is a bit of misnomer. This is what the commission actually recommended as a target:
- Swedish society as a whole should be able to make 20 per cent more efficient use of energy by 2020 and thereby at the same time create intensified, cost-effective prosperity that is sustainable in the long term.
- By 2020 in principle no oil should be used for heating residential and commercial buildings
- Road transport, including transport in the agricultural, forestry, fisheries and building sectors, should reduce use of petrol and diesel by 40-50 per cent by 2020
- Industry should reduce its use of oil by 25-40 per cent by 2020
How do they intend to achieve this? Energy efficiency and biofuels, mainly. Sweden’s car fleet is about 20% less fuel-efficient than much of the rest of northern Europe – Swedes like big cars by European standards, and they drive fewer diesels. They want to fix that through a combination of vehicle and fuel taxation, encouraging smaller, and probably hybrid, vehicles. They propose to encourage public transport, greater use of rail freight, and more efficient trucking systems through better management.
Furthermore, they intend to increase the use of bioethanol and other biofuels in Swedish vehicles. Like some other parts of the EU (and North America), Sweden has considerable areas of potential agricultural land that has been left disused, simply because there’s no demand for fuel. And, further, they advocate the active management of their “forest” (actually, closer to a plantation) reserves to increase tree growth. So Sweden has scope to produce more bioethanol, though how large a percentage of actual demand they actually expect to meet with biofuels is not specified explicitly in the report. This being the EU, they intend to protect their domestic industry rather than simply allow the import of Brazilian bioethanol.
There’s a whole lot more stuff in this plan, to do with industry, domestic heating, and the like, but the transport section is pretty indicative.
One thing worth noting is that electricity plays only a relatively small part in the plan. Why? Because, like most of the world, bugger-all electricity is generated with oil – and, in Sweden’s case, nor with gas. Sweden’s nuclear power program to some extent a separate issue.
So, is their plan workable, would it reduce oil usage as dramatically as claimed, and is it something that Australia could imitate? With the limitations of space, my qualified take is “yes, probably”, “doubt it”, and “maybe”. Getting people into smaller cars and switching to diesel and hybrids, as is the introduction of a small but growing number of biofuel vehicles. There’s no miracle technologies required; getting ethanol from wood has been worked on intensively over the past few years and is well on the way to commercialisation – the limitation is on the amount you can supply. But all of this is fighting an uphill battle. As people get richer, they tend to use more energy, so to get absolute cuts in energy usage by conservation is going to be very tough. Sweden could be making all of this effort only to find that the gains they make are taken up by the relentless increase in aviation fuel usage.
And, yes, Australia could and should do many of the same things. Australia’s prediliction for massive sedans and SUVs means that there’s probably even greater scope for cutting vehicle fuel usage than there is in Sweden.
But the question of whether people will be happy to move out of their big cars to reduce oil usage and emissions is a vexed one – it’s certainly one that both Australian political parties have concluded is far too hot to touch, despite Labor’s commitment to signing Kyoto. And perhaps there’s a lesson in the Swedish experience. Goran Persson’s center-left coalition lost power in the 2006 elections, to be replaced by a center-right alliance.
It always comes back to the car thing, doesn’t it? Which is why a part of me hopes the Peak Oil theorists are spot on, because I don’t think we can be persuaded to give up our cars, not in any significant way; and regulating automobility (to steal Glen Fuller’s favourite word) would be suicide for our government.
Kate, be careful what you wish for. Peak oil, were it to actually occur, could well result in the massive development of plants for converting coal into oil, a process which produces enormous amounts of CO2. Unless the process CO2 is geosequestered, it would be far, far, far worse than even petroleum-based liquid fuels.
Encouraging punters away from the private car will be the biggest challenge. If people could accept frequent, reliable public transport (and that would also require a big govt infrstructure commitment) the goals may be feasible.
A South Ã…frican company (a non-diamond De Beers) has created a process for making distillate (diesel) fuel from algae. Cheap biodegradable distillate might well hasten the transition from oil.
I don’t know if that does anything for plastics, fertilisers and chemicals – but transport might well be feasible.
Sweden demonstrates marvelous leadership.
Real solutions to any technical issue do not eventuate until the full weight of commitment is applied. The fact is that one of the key elements of Sweden’s solution has been in place for many years. European farm subsidies were never really about food production. They were about preserving the unique European landscape, making farms commercially protected against urban spral. Recently they decided to deflect the criticism on subsidised food and now call the payments an environment subsidy. The final step in this process is to require farms to make available a certain amount of biomass for collection for ethanol production and there can no longer be any criticism of the subsidy.
Ethanol can be produced from nearly any cellulose material in a variety of processes. Using the Brazilian flex fuel ignition adapter most cars can now run on anymix of ethanol and petrol from 100 percent petrol and no ethanol to 15 percent petrol and 85 percent ethanol. and it is cheaper than petrol by up to 40 percent. Imagine that!! Do the right thing and save money.
Two minutes of googling Brazil and Ethanol and you will have a clear picture of what iti is about. Give it a go. I found a jpeg image of a Brazil servo shaowing the petrol and ethanol prices to prove the point. And they have been doing this for 25 years. The down side? They’re cutting Amazon rain forest to make way for cane fields. Brazil did not need to do that to produce ethanol for their own useage. The overfarming and inefficient farming is for export ethanol production.
In Australia, however, we rip out cane fields and get paid by the government to do so. Why? Well John doesn’t like ethanol, John is afraid of ethanol. Could he be a closet alcoholic and doesn’t trust himself? Or does he just prefer the smell of petrol? I don’t know.
All around Australia people with land and plant matter are making their own bio diesel and ethanol. The Hartley apple farmer for instance has dozens of vegetable oil drums stacked around his farm sheds. When asked, he makes his bio diesel when the apple picking is done, to run his tractors and is keen to use the apple pulp from his cider making to produce ethanol for his cars.
If you are out in the country try mentioning bio diesel on the CB radio then listen to the chatter. How do you do it, what does it cost, who is using it, …. all of the truckies are keen to know. JUST DON’T TELL JOHN.
Robert, exactly right about using coal to produce synthetic oil. As I recall, the German war machine, with all its vast consumption for tanks, trucks, aircraft, U-boats, etc., was running off synthetic oil in the last couple of years of WW2.
BilB, leaving aside the conspiracy-theorist allegations about how “John is afraid of ethanol”, there must be market based reasons why we don’t use an ethanol mix in our cars. I would guess it’s just due to the extreme cheapness of petrol — it never ceases to amaze me that it’s still less expensive per litre than Coke.
P.S. The first article Robert linked to has destroyed one of my cherished notions: “Otherwise Swedes are eager to correct prejudices about their country: … no, group sex with strangers is unusual.”
Damn.
Coal to liquid was a mainstay of South Africa during apartheid and i fear that our prime miniscule will only back stuff that can be centralised and controlled.
I’m fond of Swedens national strategy of using woodgas in a petroleum emergency. Why muck about collecting, processing and distributing ethanol when you can get about on a bucket full of twigs? http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0512e/t0512e00.htm
http://renascent.ratbag.googlepages.com/wood-gasproducers
Cheers
Paulus, that google thing is really good. If you google the words “ethanol prices”, almost the first item that comes up is a 10 year graph of US ethanol trading prices. This shows that ethanol can be reliably produced and sold for 30 US cents per litre (Brazill can produce ethanol for as little as 7.5 US cents per litre) but in recent years the price has been following petrol prices. Supply and demand. You can buy a kilogram of sugar retail at Woolies for under a dollar. With your Coke you are paying for the container and the water (the water being the most expensive part). Try buying your petrol in 1.25 litre containers and see what that costs. So if there is enough of it (ethanol) then it is far cheaper than petrol ever can be. As a recent article by Peter Garret pointed out CO2 from electricity amounts to only 40 percent of our CO2 emissions. To tackle transport emissions would have a far more immediate and greater effect. Hence the Swedish approach. The Australian approach is neanderthal by comparison. Have you heard Howard make any moves in this direction? I distinctly recall him arguing against ethanol. When 10% was being suggested he was saying that the only safe level was 5%, or better 0%. Chanel 7 did a study and demonstrated that cars got better mileage out of a 30% ethanol 70% petrol mix and it was better for the engines. Then Howard shut up about the whole ethanol thing. That was before he perceived that the great unwashed were actually aware and concerned about these issues. His instant reaction? Nuclear power!!! Follow that logic.
RobW, I’m in favour of using our coal commercially, but for the production of plastic as was done in the early days of plastics. The advantage is that the carbon in the plastic is eventually sequestered in landfills after a far more usefull life compared to digging it up and selling it to China for $7 per tonne for burning in furnaces to make electricity. Wood. One family in the Blue Mountains here who I grew up with always used a chip heater for their baths and showers. A hand full of twigs (more wood falls from above here than water) was all it took to bathe the whole family. I am personally very fond of that approach. But no you don’t have to collect and distribute to make ethanol work. Every golf course will have their own boutique digester making fuel from their grass clippings. So you will only have to make it to the caddy shop to fill up in your neighbour. But you are spot on with the “centralised” point. That is entirely the issue. Howard is a big business boy. Big business loves monopolies. From Howard’s point of view he has more influence talking to fewer people (he will never talk to you, unless you are somehow news worthy) in a monopoly compact world.
ps.
I should have added. The problem with ethanol and bio diesel from the oil industry’s point of view, and thus Howard’s, is that any person and every person can produce it, at home. If bio fuels become accepted then the oil company’s power over and control of the revenue from energy is dramatically reduced. At the moment the Oil Club has control over the energy pipelines, control that has reaped them untold billions of dollars. They are not going to let that go easily. They need the Howards of the world. That is why Howard does not make sense to any thinking person. Sweden on the other hand has nothing to lose. They have no national Oil company. They have no oil or gas reserves. By ditching oil they have far more to gain.
Howard may not be ethanol’s best friend, but the last time I looked a new technology did not need the PM’s written approval before it could be introduced to the market.
I checked out that ‘google’ thing you mentioned and came across an interesting article which pointed out:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/extracting-grain-of-truth-on-ethanol/2006/09/14/1157827091000.html
RobM
On the point of people and their larger vehicles. In the ethanol model they do not have to. Most vehicles run just fine on a 30% ethanol mix. No change to vehicle size or life style. And you are 10% ahead of the Kyoto game straight away while reducing the cost of the fuel substantially. Australia can achieve that target in a blink.
I recently started riding a 400cc maxiscooter, and in the process more than halved my personal petrol consumption. Not every bodies cup of tea, but it suits me fine. As to domestic energy no change yet, but the plan is to mansard the roof of the house (create a flat spot in the middle of the roof not visible from ground level) to create a location for solar water heating for house and pool, and perhaps an experimental solar photovoltaic panel or two to charge batteries for the ever increasing blackouts.
People just need a little guidance. They don’t need Howard sized stumbling blocks.
Just as an aside. When the cyclone has completely flatened your crop of bananas, cane, pineapples, whatever, in an ethanol driven world you scrape the lot up, throw it in the digester and turn it into fuel. It is not such a disaster.
Paulus, good point and good link. Thanks for that.
Several things. The channel 7 test did bare out the argument that ethanol mix gave lower mileage. It was the oposite. If the ethanol is produced and the oil companies do not distribute it then there is no point in producing it. The probability is that most of the ethanol goes off shore. So we, the tax payer, subsidise it but get no direct benefit. On the excise issue (read carbon tax credit), at the end of the day all fossil fuels will incurr an environment levy (carbon tax) and renewable fuels will be exempt, making them cheaper in exactly the way as Howard begrudgingly is prepared to concede a carbon tax for coal in order to make his nuclear dream seem plausible. But it will be some time before a standard carbon tax is implemented. In between time it will be fudged with things like subsidies. But as for the public teat, gas and coal have equally generous subsidies. The core of the thing is in the article and that is the flex fuel converter. The federal government has to make this a requirement for all new cars. When that move has been made independent ethanol filling stations will appear every where, simply because a filling station will make far more from ethanol than they can from petrol.
Most government actions have only a marginal influence on most lives. The energy and environment matters will have a major impact on all of our lives. Stop fiddling around the edges. WE HAVE TO GET THIS RIGHT.
Ethanol is great…except for the following:
Another thing that needs to be kept in mind when it’s claimed that “ethanol is cheaper” – that’s true, but it also contains less energy than petrol; 34 megajoules per litre rather than 21. That is compensated for, to some extent, more efficient combustion if you tune your vehicle for ethanol, but, still, you’ll use roughly 40% more E85 than you would petrol to cover the same distance.
I’m very very skeptical of anyone who makes claims of going oil free. Civilisation as we know it has only occured because of oil. Oil is the culmination of an entire human experiment in energy sources. There’s nothing like it. I live in a solar powered house, powered by no less than 20 panels. Yet every time I drive the 150km to Brisbane, I use as much energy as those panels produce in a fortnight…..
As an energy consultant, I know people have zero understanding of just how much energy they use in their daily lives.
Any man made energy like ethanol, methanol, bio-diesel, solar, wind, etc etc, is just that, man made. It’s not dug out of the ground, nor does it come slurping out, for very little cost and effort. As a result, the energy profit from the energy invested into these processes is either negligible, or in some cases even negative.
Anyone who thinks business as usual can continue because we’re so clever we can substitute for oil, is simply kidding themselves.
Mike S
Mike Stsse, that’s a pretty bleak view of the situation isn’t it? Are you saying we will be forced to go back to 1900’s energy consumption levels?
It sucks God put all the oil under the very people who hate us and believe in another deity.
Corn is an American phenomenon, that would be 38.2% if your input information was correct (I suspect that it is a stretch, 25% is the difference I have heard stated most commonly for the ethanol component), the barrier reef thought is a grasp at straws, and the production argument is a wild statement.
The solar thermal system produces more energy in the form of electricity than can be achieved from farming crops for ethanol, it is claimed. If an area the size of Tasmania can theoretically produce all of the world electricity demand of 37,000 terawatt hours then I suspect some imaginative accounting has been applied to the assertion of the negative case.
This raises the need for a probing Review of the Alternative Energy sector. Every bit as optimistic and one sided as the Nuclear Review is. We need to have all of this information side by side. Then we can make some real choices.
What do you think are the chances of that happening?
BillB.
Regarding ethanol and other alternatives to oil you need to consider the question that they have far lower Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROI) values compared to the EROI values of most of the oil we have used to build and maintain our civilisation over past decades.
The following was cross-posted from a response to an Online Opinion forum in response to an article “In defence of industrialisation and mining”
Anyone who imagines that alternatives to fossil fuels will enable more than 6,500,000,000 humans to maintain and increase their current material standards of living, I suggest he/she read “Peak Oil and the Preservation of knowledge” by Alice Friedemann at http://www.energybulletin.net/18978.html
Here are some excerpts:
Thanks for that James. I’ve had a quick scan of the information. I don’t see the relevance of the mining article, but I will read it more carefully. As to the Peak Oil article it appears to be a very shallow look at history and a simplistic look at fuel production. On the history point in the west our consumption of energy per person has dropped dramatically over the last 100 years vehicular travel aside. Technology has, and very recently, minimised our power consumption requirements. We can use bucket loads of power if we want to be inefficient or we can run our housholds on the energy that falls on the roof of our houses. ie
many large buildings now powering their airconditioning with gas are using absorption type air conditioners, the old style kerosene fridge principle. Now this system works with heat flow, it does not matter where the heat comes from. It can come from combustion or it can come from the sun via a heat pipe. Free airconditioning. The same applies to electricity. google “solar mechanical”. you should find the sterling engine. NZ’s Whispertech has manufactured a sealed power generation unit that has a 40,000 hour running life. This is a gas powered unit but it can run from solar energy as well. There will in due course be a 4.5 Kw version of this unit which is sufficient to provide all of a large household’s power and then some. We all have over 1Kw of energy per square meter falling on our houses. Do the sums it is a lot of energy.
What I am trying to say is that the peak oil appears at a glance to take current practices to project the future. I believe that the writer has taken the worst case american approach. This is not the model that will work.
But I’ll read the article carefully and comment back.
I am a product designer. I thrive on taking difficult to perform manufacturing process modifying them, automating them, and turning a profit from them. The process of optimising our use of the suns energy has only just begun.
I see the kids coming through the schools now and I see a talent pool with immense ability to take charge of their own future. I think that all we have to do is not stand in their way. What they will come up with we can not begin to guess at. The mess that we are handing them will be just another challenge for their imaginations.
May I suggest that the guiding principle of the future will be “less is more”. This is the underlying trend I see in all of the technologies. This, I feel, is the falacy of the peak oil article. It does not take account of this.
Bill B wrote:
I don’t know how you can say this or possibly believe this. Our per capita energy consumption has gone one way in the last century punctuated by things such as the Great Depression and the oil crisis of the 1970’s. Even excluding travel (which in all forms: car, trucks for our goods and services, cheap air tickets have increased constantly), have a look at the demand for electricity. Have you heard of the term “parasitic load”? we all have numerous devices that are permanently plugged in draining power. Things like refrigerators are getting bigger, and even multiplying(i.e. households owning more than one). Air conditioners are also much more common than they used to be. Despite extra generation capacity it can hardly keep up with peak-demand in Summer. Also note that houses are much larger than they use to be, this results in increasing energy consumption to heat / cool and maintain it (e.g. more rooms to vacuum, more surface area of internal/external walls that will eventually need repainting etc.)
Now look at what we eat. Our food is now sourced from places far and wide. The nature of agribusiness has caused mega-farms to be the norm, resulting in the elimination of competing small-scale producers, who sold their produce to a more localised market. So the same basket of groceries you buy at the supermarket now travel further to get to your kitchen. When you buy these goods from distant markets you are responsible for the energy consumption that was required.
I don’t have the figures readily to hand, but the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change states that per capita energy consumption increases as GDP rises. But the increase tapers in more mature economies, presumably because more GDP is made up of intangibles.
What has increased is energy efficiency. In the US it increased from a bit over 2% to nearly 14% in the last century (Chapter 7, Figure 7.5). Presumably this will continue to increase.
Figure B also in Chapter 7 is a wondrous world GHG emissions flow chart from the World Resources Institute. Fron that chart we see that road transport accounts for 9.9% of emissions, the same as residential buildings. But air transport is only 1.6% and rail, ship and other transport 2.3%.
I suspect that shipping food around the world is quite minor in greenhouse terms.
I’m inclined to agree with those that say that the first priority is to decarbonise the electricity grid. This then allows us to use the decarbonised grid to alleviate the transport problem with vehicles fitted with electric, hydrogen or compressed air, all of which could draw their energy ultimately from the grid.
Robert says:
“But the question of whether people will be happy to move out of their big cars to reduce oil usage and emissions is a vexed one – it’s certainly one that both Australian political parties have concluded is far too hot to touch, despite Labor’s commitment to signing Kyoto.”
Higher petrol prices is already resulting in Australians choosing smaller cases. And the humble bicycle has outsold the motor vehicle the seven years straight. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/01/04/1167777218377.html?from=top5
Anyway, good on you Robert for highlighting what the Swedes are up to. The Nordic countries should be like mecca for those who consider themselves social democrats. It is a great pity we don’t hear much about them in this country.
Oldavai.
There are 2 sides to this issue. What we do do, and what we can do. My statement was made based on the history of energy useage graph from the beginning of the Industrial revolution to now. Our total energy useage per person for our primary living is not as high as you might imagine. Of course if you chose to flex your wealth by choosing energy wasting pastimes simply because you can, then your consumption may be a hundred times higher than what it can be. Most of the key aspects to our living are today hugely more efficient than a hundred years ago. The exception is air conditioning. This is a new need that is likely to become more necessary as time goes on. I did point out however that this can be solar powered. The fact that it is not yet is simply because to date there has not been a need. We have plenty of power on tap so why be efficient. If you are interested google “gas powered air conditioning”. For reference anything that is gas powered can be solar powered, if the gas is used simply for heating.
For interest sake compile a list of the aspects of your life that use energy then look at how those things were performed a hundred years ago.
As for the Peak Oil lady, you don’t have to read far into the document to see that the whole idea is built on false arguments. Sentence one in the Introduction, “Since there are no alternative energy sources….”. I beg your pardon but there are plenty of energy sources, solar thermal, wind, wave, geothermal,…. and the blanket statement that fusion power doesn’t work is just not real. The ITER program is well on track and the science and the maths all say that this is a certainty. As for the ethanol arguments it is a case of all evidence to the contrary. US farmers can make ethanol for 30 cents per litre, the Brazillians can do it for 7.5 cents per litre. Is there enough of it? When there is a need there will be. It is simple as that.
It is true that some countries have unsustaineable populations where the solar model does not work if you apply our western life style to their situation, but you will find that these people live on a tiny energy footprint. And with the latest technologies this can be even smaller.
One of the most dramatic pointers to the future is the light emiting diode. These spectacular devices have for 20 years been the gizmos that said that things were on or off. Until someone said how much light can we get out of these devices. Now led’s are rapidly moving into lighting every aspect of our lives. Most new traffic lights are led powered, most new torches are led, tail lights and indicator lights on vehicles are led, but the biggest impact will be when leds move into street lighting. Space lighting wil be next. Some people in China and India may never experience the 100 watt filament light bulb, they are more likely to start their entry into the modern world with led lighting and UMPC’s (ultra mobile personal computers). Total power consumption, 40 watts.
The real debate is how will we shape our lives to fit into the new energy model. I suspect that there will be little change to our core living. Eating, sleeping, home entertaining, working (for services related people) are all low energy consumption. What will change is the excess consumerism (bad news for Kmart and China). This saving will cover our transport energy bills which will increase marginally as we move into a solar powered, ethanol driven world. Your house price will go up to cover the built in solar powered water heating and air conditioning (these devices will not be ugly stick ons, they will be housed in a separate well in the roof, lookup mansard roof) but your power bill will go down. You will live nearer to your work. If you own several vehicles the smaller of them may become electric powered.
The people who will have the most trouble adjusting are those for whom 4 storey houses, 60 foot power launches, weekly air travel, and commuting long distances in multiple 4 tonne vehicles are normal. ie no-one you know.
BillB,
How on earth can you say we use less energy per person than we did 100 years aho, AND keep a straight face!??
Just tell me what people used energy on 100 yrs ago…..
Did we drive cars? no
Did we listen to radio? no
Did we watch TV? no
Did we blog the internet with computers? no
Did we even have power points in every room? no.
Was our food grown on chemically fertilised soil? no.
In fact, TECHNOLOGY is the main reason we use so much energy. It’s BECAUSE we have radios, TVs, computers, fridges, lights in every room, washing machines, etc etc etc ad nauseum that we use energy. Then of course energy is used up in the manufacturing of all the gadgets in your house, and out. 90 barrels of oil to build your car. 300kg of coal and oil to build your computer. pond per pound, 90% of all the food you buy at the supermarket came from oil/gas/coal.
Mike you are quite right.
http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/GS361/electricity generation/HistoricalPerspectives.htm
We do use a lot more energy overall. The point that I was trying to make but very poorly is that we do not have to use any where near as much energy as we do. The technology available today allows us to have a broad living experience without destroying the space we live in. I used the example of the light emitting diode for lighting. The combined technologies allow very efficient use of energy. In my own business this last year I tripled my production whilst reducing my electricity consumption by buying more appropriately sized machinery. I figure 2 in the link document look at the coal consumption graph. That is the graph that I had in mind before shooting my mouth off. To me oil has always been a poor choice off motive fuel on the one hand and on the other I have always resented the total lack of strategic regional planning in our communities the leads to the situation where very large numbers of people drive up to 4 hours each day to access their work. This waste is included in the oil consumption graph. In America’s case it is a huge share of it. Reduce your travel time to work to 10 miutes each way each day and compare your family’s petrol bill. Sydney University has a sutaineable life style programme which can demonstrate a life style where we just sip at the energy rather than guzzle it. On reflection my thought was one of efficeincy rather quantity. Oops. I reitterate the point that our energy consumption is largely due to waste rather than necessity. My family has about ten 300 kilogram (coal equivalent [I wonder what that is in solar terms?]) computers, not because we need that many, it is simply because we can afford to replace them regularly. That is a huge waste. The one that is on the most though is the one that I carry in my pocket which uses about 12 watt hours of power per day.
problem with links
“http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/GS361/electricity generation/HistoricalPerspectives.htm”
Robert Merkel:
The opening words on that link you gave at the top
What a brilliant idea! Maybe we can get a government here that is accountable to the Parliament …. then a lot of our troubles will be solved.
Architecture? Where’s architecture in all this discussion? I’ve spent a lot of my life in Central and North Queenland, where the traditional architure was heavily influenced by the native houses and structures of the Indian Empire, of Malaya and Java and of the Pacific Islands.
Try living in houses on wooden stumps (usually 600mm to 2300mm high) where breezes flow freely under the floorboards and with lap-nailed hardwood weatherboard siding. Houses that have fairly steep high-pitched corrugated iron roofs ventilated by soffits that keep birds out but allow the rapid flow of air (the roofs just don’t become aerofoils in cyclonic winds) then add “chinaman’s hat” passive hot-air exhausts on the rooftop (modern whirleybirds are even better). Houses that have verandahs (usually 1.8 but up to to 3 Metres wide)on more than one side to shield the walls from the blazing sun and also galvanized-iron high and deep window hoods over each exposed external window. Put in ornamental passive ventilator holes in the ceiling of each room and hot air will not be trapped inside. You are 7 to 10 degrees cooler already ….. and that’s without looking at interior lining (usually tongue-&-groove pine boards), curtains, home-made insulation, shady shrubs, vines and trees. Still too hot? Well, if it’s a high-set house then go downstairs, under the house and lay down on your shearers stretcher with its coir (coconut husk fibre) mattress.
And all of this without a nanowatt of electricity for fans, punkahs, coolers, airconditioners or iceblock makers.
Banks and other housing financers are delighted about lending for horribly expensive, grossly inefficient, very badly designed, money-wasting monstrosities but are dismayed at the idea of financing low-cost, low-impact, low-energy, well-designed, efficient and comfortable houses that meet OUR needs, not theirs.
Time to get off that fools’ merry-go-round and take our business elsewhere …. to financiers who are willing to lend for better and cheaper and far more efficient houses.
You’ve certainly got a point about architecture, Graham, but I don’t think it’s the financiers’ fault. I don’t see a gun to the head of the aspirationals buying McMansions.
Governments have done quite a bit of work on energy efficiency regulations, but most of that good work has been eaten up by the ever-increasing size of the average new-build house. The simple fact is that for many people, the best house is the biggest house they can afford, and if it costs a fortune to heat and cool so be it.
The best way to change the envirornmental impact of that is to place a carbon charge on the electricity and gas they use to heat and cool the place. It might turn out that people buy more energy-efficient houses. But, then again, they might continue to buy montrosities and use renewable energy to run their air conditioners. While you and I might find it unsatisfying, as long as they don’t emit CO2 in the process, it doesn’t really matter what they do instead.
Graham’s spot on about Queenslanders – beautiful to live in in Summer – can be a bit chilly in Winter though.
My passion in architecture is for buildings of the Malcolm B Wells variety. Roman style. Large central courtyard rooms all around, blank outer walls, possibly 2 walls common with side neighbours, roof covered with soil grass and trees. Stable all year round temperature, problem in the rain.
Interestingly enough, it is the US that will probably come up with the impetus and the mass-scale technology to switch to biofuels, not Sweden. And it will be biodiesel not alcohol.
Biodiesel is relatively simple to make by transesterification, ie. adding some alcohol to vegetable oil and allowing the compounds to settle and separate and does not require a lot of energy or expensive equipment to process. A side issue would be as BillB already pointed out, a potential cottagisation of the fuel industry, now controlled by gigantic cartels. This is both a Good Thing and the main reason why it hasn’t already happened in the US. But that’s another topic.
First, to summarise: There are two distinct pushes in the US for moving away from petroleum-based energy sources. 1. The realisation that transferring massive petrodollar amounts to the Gulf and Iran doesn’t do the US security any good. 2. Green politics.
The “Peak Oil” concept is I think hyped up beyond reality – while it may cost a bit more, no shortage of petroleum oil will eventuate in the next 50 years, with the Siberian and Caucasus reserves of crude yet literally untapped and the massive Canadian shale oil, petroleum crude reserves and bituminous sands still to be utilised, with some 100 billion barrels of near-surface recoverable hydrocarbon fuel waiting to be tapped.
If green politics were to truly take hold in the US, as they have in Europe and may yet in Australia, biodiesel is an interim energy technology that could within 5 years largely wean the US from its reliance on Middle East oil sources and provide a less environmentally damaging fuel on a massive scale. (The emissions from a properly designed bio-diesel engine with turbo compression and intercooling are surprisingly low albeit still producing C0-2. Exhaust soot is non-existent.)
Biodiesel can be made from any oil-producing biomass, be it leaf, seeds, stalk or whatever. The key is real estate. While common oil producing crops such as coconut will yield up to 70% oil from the interior of the coconut, it takes a long time to grow coconut palms and they take up a lot of space so the actual yield per hectare is not good enough for industrial scale oil for energy.
Look at some comparisons of vegetable oil in litres per hectare: peanuts=1000L per ha; olives=1200L per ha; jojoba=1800L per ha; macadamia=2200L per ha; coconut=2700L per ha; oil palm= 6000L per ha. At these figures, none are serious players. But, wait, there is a biomass that is just right and what’s more, it will grow on damaged land, on salinised land, on brackish water and it loves carbon dioxide. We’re talking about algae, a sun battery par excellence. It it will yield 95,000 to 100,000L of oil per ha. And instead of geo sequestration to uselessly bury C02, take the C02 from the coal fired power station and feed it to algae to make diesel fuel.
Diesel from algae is the only economically viable way of producing an alternative fuel. No other feedstock has the oil yield to produce such large volumes of oil. Michael Briggs of the University of New Hampshire physics department, SEE http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
has worked out that about 10 million acres of land would have to be used for biodiesel cultivation in the US to produce biodiesel to replace all the petrodiesel used currently in that country. This is about 1% of the total land used today for farming and grazing together in the US (about 1 billion acres). Note, this is to replace the current diesel sourced from petroleum crude, not to replace petrol. But it’s a start. If that were to happen, the arse would fall out of the Middle East oil price and the feudal kingdoms would not be able to pay to keep themselves in power or in arms.
I think this will happen sooner rather than later, once the Bushies go.
Robert Merkel:
No gun at the heads of home-buyers but plenty of carrot-and-stick to buy the Mc Mansion (the architectural version of the Edsel and other gas-guzzlers) and to forget about the Queenslander or the efficient cutting-edge one.
More on architecture ((no, I’m not an architect))…. how about the thermally-efficient traditional multi-storey dwellings in Yemen and nearby countries?
Mark:
You are right about Queenslanders being a bit cool in winter but you can always put on a jumper. One of the big differences I noticed between the United States and Europe in wintertime was that houses in the US were a steady tropical 25~30 degrees inside whereas houses in Europe were 10~15 above the outside ambient temperature and everyone wore warm clothes inside.
BilB:
From what I’ve heard, no worries with well-designed bermed earth dwellings.
“Which is why a part of me hopes the Peak Oil theorists are spot on..”
Kate there is no problem with CO2.
There isn’t. You have never seen valid evidence for the likelihood of catastrophic warming. You haven’t read any such evidence because there is no such evidence.
No-one here will come up with any such evidence. And if you went looking for such evidence you will not be able to convince anyone to give you the evidence.
In fact it cannot happen. We have a planetary bias for catastrophic cooling only.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CATASTROPHIC WARMING.
With the North Pole almost surrounded by land….
And North and South America fused cutting off the circulation from one ocean to the other. And with these two continents going most of the distance from Pole to Pole.
And with Antarctica being such a massive Continent and sitting right on top of the South Pole ensuring that this Pole is a long way from the water and almost none of the continent can ever hold water vapour….
With this continental arrangement we have a setup that is highly restrictive to the circulation of water.
No amount of CO2 or Methane that we could put out there could possibly hope to overcome this basic fact.
This poor oceanic circulation gives the planet a permanent one-way bias towards catastrophic COOLING.
And this realisation follows pretty much directly from taking a marginalist (like an ‘Austrian’ Economist) approach to the problem and combining this marginalist approach with the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/stefan.html
“Unless the process CO2 is geosequestered, it would be far, far, far worse than even petroleum-based liquid fuels.”
Why Robert? Why?
The last thing we would want to do is to sequester CO2. And the first thing we should be doing as a matter of utmost urgency is setting up these coal conversion plants.
MANDATORY RENEWABLE ENERGY – THE ENERGY EVOLUTION –R4
In order to insure energy and economic independence as well as better economic growth without being blackmailed by foreign countries, our country, the United States of America’s Utilization of Energy sources must change.
“Energy drives our entire economy.” We must protect it. “Let’s face it, without energy the whole economy and economic society we have set up would come to a halt. So you want to have control over such an important resource that you need for your society and your economy.”
Our continued dependence on fossil fuels could and will lead to catastrophic consequences.
The federal, state and local government should implement a mandatory renewable energy installation program for residential and commercial property on new construction and remodeling projects with the use of energy efficient material, mechanical systems, appliances, lighting, etc. The source of energy must by renewable energy such as Solar-Photovoltaic, Geothermal, Wind, Biofuels, etc. including utilizing water from lakes, rivers and oceans to circulate in cooling towers to produce air conditioning and the utilization of proper landscaping to reduce energy consumption.
The implementation of mandatory renewable energy could be done on a gradual scale over the next 10 years. At the end of the 10 year period all construction and energy use in the structures throughout the United States must be 100% powered by renewable energy.
In addition, the governments must impose laws, rules and regulations whereby the utility companies must comply with a fair “NET METERING� (the buying of excess generation from the consumer), including the promotion of research and production of “renewable energy technology� with various long term incentives and grants. The various foundations in existence should be used to contribute to this cause.
A mandatory time table should also be established for the automobile industry to gradually produce an automobile powered by renewable energy. The American automobile industry is surely capable of accomplishing this task.
This is a way to expedite our energy independence and economic growth. (this will also creat a substantial amount of new jobs) It will take maximum effort and a relentless pursuit of the private, commercial and industrial government sectors commitment to renewable energy – energy generation (wind, solar, hydro, biofuels, geothermal, energy storage (fuel cells, advance batteries), energy infrastructure (management, transmission) and energy efficiency (lighting, sensors, automation, conservation) in order to achieve our energy independence.
Jay Draiman
Northridge, CA. 91325
1-7-2007
P.S. I have a very deep belief in America’s capabilities. Within the next 10 years we can accomplish our energy independence, if we as a nation truly set our goals to accomplish this.
I happen to believe that we can do it. In another crisis–the one in 1942–President Franklin D. Roosevelt said this country would build 60,000 [50,000] military aircraft. By 1943, production in that program had reached 125,000 aircraft annually. They did it then. We can do it now.
The American people resilience and determination to retain the way of life is unconquerable and we as a nation will succeed in this endeavor of Energy Independence.
Solar energy is the source of all energy on the earth (excepting volcanic geothermal). Wind, wave and fossil fuels all get their energy from the sun. Fossil fuels are only a battery which will eventually run out. The sooner we can exploit all forms of Solar energy (cost effectively or not against dubiously cheap FFs)the better off we will all be. If the battery runs out first, the survivors will all be living like in the 18th century again.
Every new home built should come with a solar package. A 1.5 kW per bedroom is a good rule of thumb. The formula 1.5 X’s 5 hrs per day X’s 30 days will produce about 225 kWh per bedroom monthly. This peak production period will offset 17 to 24 cents per kWh with a potential of $160 per month or about $60,000 over the 30-year mortgage period for a three-bedroom home. It is economically feasible at the current energy price and the interest portion of the loan is deductible. Why not?
Title 24 has been mandated forcing developers to build energy efficient homes. Their bull-headedness put them in that position and now they see that Title 24 works with little added cost. Solar should also be mandated and if the developer designs a home that solar is impossible to do then they should pay an equivalent mitigation fee allowing others to put solar on in place of their negligence..
And North and South America fused cutting off the circulation from one ocean to the other. And with these two continents going most of the distance from Pole to Pole.
.. and almost none of the continent can ever hold water vapour….
You see Birdy, this is one of the main reasons why you’re such a major laughing stock in the blogosphere. Not so much because of your appalling bad manners and amazingly low emotional IQ. But because mainly of your blithe disregard of reality in the service of your paranoid and self-stimulating theories.
If you’d announced the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow, we’d shortly all be treated to several thousand words about how daylight is a commie/fascist conspiracy.
If only you’d entered the blogosphere making it it clear you were a crazed glittering poet first (which you are in a weird kinda way) and a deep thinker last – a la Ezra Pound, then you would have got much more of the kind of quality attention you really really crave.
But no. Now you’re a punchline. And other people are writing the jokes.
How many times does it take Graeme Bird to change a light bulb?
Always one more time than it takes others to point out it’s actually a leaky tap.
I took a punt at the possibility of LED street lighting. Five seconds with google and there it is already under way offering a possible 50% saving in street lighting and 4 times the running life. Not a total solution yet but well towards it. And apparentally the rapid shift to LED traffic lights giving power savings up to 90%.
The trouble with our market based economy is that a need to conserve energy to reduce CO2 emissions represents a conflict of interest for the power generators and distributors. What business is going to attract shareholder support by saying “next year we will reduce our output by 30%”? How do you get around that one Johnnie?
As I am pushing the submit button I am thinking that this is probably consumer driven, it is the councils who pay for the power for the lighting. But making Jay’s proposal work requires that the power distributor buys back power from solar equiped houses giving them a credit on their power account. A house with 4.5 Kw of solar collector (of whatever kind) would run at a healthy profit. Not a good look on the distributor’s balance sheet.
By the way, I’ve only recently been made aware that for new buildings you are no longer able to instal resistive element type water heaters. It is now mandatory to instal heat pump type units. Looking at the specs of these they run on about 850 watts (compared to 3500 watts resistive heating elements) for a 270 litre storage capacity. A power saving they claim of up to 75%. Almost enough to offset the consumption from the air conditioner. In NZ they have a programme to external insulation jackets to all existing water heating cylinders to claim an immediate 25% energy saving.
On the other hand Bilb, what company wouldn’t jump at the chance to slash their power bills?
This whole AGW biznis is being sold completely the wrong way. Fuck the planet, would you as an energy-intensive operation like to cut your operating costs by up to a third? Bit of capital investment up front which will be amortised within 36 months through tax breaks and lower outgoings. And then it’s just extra profit.
Hey even the dim bulb scion of a major hydrocarbon clan, Dubya, is right into it personally and at the office.
Or maybe he knows something about peak oil we don’t.
And this would probably piss off folks of all political persuasions but I’d love to be there when Dudya falls off the wagon properly. Damn you’d see some serious Texas-sized drinking then. Speaking as another loudmouthed arrogant male drunk, I’d reckon he’d be a great drinking partner. Supersizedly appallingly lousy POTUS though. Even makes James Buchanan look good.
…But because mainly of your blithe disregard of reality in the service of your paranoid and self-stimulating theories…..â€?
[abusive comments deleted]
And because you have so obviously tried to derail the truth of the matter with your smug dishonesty, ignorance and leftist projection I have not choice but to repeat the lecture.
This time you [deletion]. If you wish to criticise what I say act like the scientist you are pretending to be.
The fact is you don’t know anything about this.
OK. Here it goes again. This time don’t be so dishonest Nabakov:
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CATASTROPHIC WARMING.
With the North Pole almost surrounded by land….
And North and South America fused cutting off the circulation from one ocean to the other. And with these two continents going most of the distance from Pole to Pole.
And with Antarctica being such a massive Continent and sitting right on top of the South Pole ensuring that this Pole is a long way from the water and almost none of the continent can ever hold water vapour….
With this continental arrangement we have a setup that is highly restrictive to the circulation of water.
No amount of CO2 or Methane that we puny humans could put out there could possibly hope to overcome this basic fact.
This poor oceanic circulation gives the planet a permanent one-way bias towards catastrophic COOLING.
And this realisation follows pretty much directly from taking a marginalist (like an ‘Austrian’ Economist) approach to the problem and combining this marginalist approach with the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
You can have your right of reply, Birdy, because I’m in a good mood. But I’ve deleted most of the abuse from it.
Thanks. And you don’t need to post this one of course.
But he brought wanking into it.
I come here under my own name.
He comes here anonymously with his smug ignorance and he brings masturbation into it.
Either wipe his insult or let me through.
This is not acceptable. And the drip-feed censorship is not good either.
Half the time I come on with more abuse then I would if I knew I could get through with some sort of despatch.
This science-gone-bad is a serious subject. And people should know the truth of the matter.
For you only Mark. Check out this conversation I had with a famous scientist. And read between the lines here:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/12/arxived.html#comments
Now I’ve calmed down a little bit.
But I tell you the truth. If someone is coming in under their own name and is insulted it seems a violation of natural justice not to get quick access to a reply. And that strikes me as being doubly the case if the insulter is maligning the other person in a grubby way as well as just being ignorant and smug. And as well if that person is anonymous.
Nice article, thanks
I doubt if some aspects of the Swedish plan will work, like getting industry to use less energy…I know they are implying industries will use energy more efficiently and hence less of it for the same amount of value generated, but even then…
I think the Swedish plan looks mathematically nice on paper, but will face enormous difficulties in implementation. I think a more sensible approach would be to agree that energy conservation and efficiency can do only so much during the next 20-50 years and look for very efficient alternative energy sources.
To give an example of this approach: I co-ordinate Oilgae, a site that explores use of algae as a feedstock for biodiesel, and I can say with some amount of confidence based on my researches that algae appear to be one of the most qualified candidates for biodiesel production.
While the math certainly appears to favor algae as a highly efficient feedstock that has the theoretical possibility of providing us with fossil fuel independence, there are a number of issues to be overcome. These have to do with (1) choosing optimal algal strains, (2) issues faced in cultivation and harvesting (believe me there are some serious bottlenecks here), and (3) cost-effective methods to extract oil and transform it into biodiesel.
So yes, there is still a long way to go before it can be proven with certainty that algal biodiesel can be cost-effective on a large scale, but it is gratifying to see brilliant minds (not to forget VC money) getting into this field. And with institutes like MIT (Boston) getting into the act, I’m optimistic most of the above-mentioned issues will be overcome.
My take on the issue is, while countries stress on energy conservation and efficiency, they should pump in enough investments in researching these new possibilities – such as oil from algae, or wood-based ethanol etc…
Narsi from Oilgae – Oil from Algae
There is regular misconception about business wanting pollution, this is just not true. Business is about getting the maximum return from the inputs (resources) than it uses.
The oil companies want to make money period, if we increase tax on oil imports and subsidise ethanol, (whether that is the best soluion or not) business we react by buying into ethanol production. BP is the world largest solar producer (or one of the largest), why – they went green? No they see it as the next big thing when the oil stops and they want some else to do for work.
If we want to conserve oil ie make what we have last longer giving us more time to find and perfect alternatives and reduce CO2 consumption at the same time then the best way is the market.
From 2009 in Australia no electrical appliance (fridge, freezer, cooker etc) can be sold unless it has a minimum efficiency rating of 4 stars and this raises to 5 stars in 2011. In an instant the business world will push R&D to improve eficiency in it appliances.
Want to reduce fuel – (if ethanol is part of the answer even better) – as of 2011 all cars using over 12L/100km are subject to a pollution tax. This starts at $500 p.a. and increases to $2,000p.a. as the consumption of the vehicle decreases. All farmers and approved users that need 4×4 are exempt, but no office workers in the city centres.
All houses when renovating must was a minimum of R3.5 insulation in the walls and R7 in the ceiling. Any new house built after 2011 over 150 m2 is subject to a pollution tax, this is added to rates. Say the tax starts at $500 p.a. and increases to $2,000 p.a. OK there will be a flood of large houses to beat the exemption, but that will be only a small % of overall housing stock. Inside of 3-5 years house design will come up with ways to use the space much more efficiently.
The tax is then given 50% to industries as grants to improve energy eficiency and 50% for re-forestation, water tanks in houses (rates reduced $100 p.a. if have a tank), $100 p.a. if have full insulation and so on.
OK the car industry in Australia would cry, but they are over now. It is a shame, but China is cheaper and if it were not for Government sales they would be gone now. Australia has excellent engineers, we can use grants to re-employ the workers probably in engine manufacture, which are shipped to China and Thailand (Ford Mondeo factory there now) where the lower technology assemble can be done more cheaply. Australia then concentrate where it can compete in engineering anddesign, plus assembly of the high tech parts like engineer. The UK and Germany assemble the engines for the Ford Mondeo made in Thailand.
Housing will cry and so will the electrical retailers and distributors, but not for long. Then we will have to stop being hypocrits. How many sits in old trendy Footcray, with appalling insulation, eat out all the time from foods from all over the world – so we can have whatever we like rather than what is in season. Get taxis home from the city when we are drunk and then say we ride a bicycle, so it is all OK. It is as if the taxi and food from the other side of the word, like all our imported gadgets from Asia “flew to Australia on Angels wings without CO2″.
Want to stop CO2 stop buying gadgets, stop eating out so much, buy local food and products, only buy what you really need. My Tasmanian wife got me to come and visit, and meet her family five years ago from London and on the plane back form that holiday I asked her two things in Singapore – 1, would she marry me and 2. when are we coming to live in Australia – and I love Hobart and Melbourne where my trendy and even more hypocritical brother in law lives.(There are some real hypocrits in Sneddon and Footcray re-CO2 and business).
Australia has everything it could ever want. I don’t earn what I did in London, but I have learnt you don’t need much to be happy. I live like my Grandparents did in some ways, large veggie patch, walk the dog twice a day, have barbies in our or friends houses. Think what it would be like if we got the train to the coast or filled one or two cars(or walked 10 mins to the beach for me). Walked with family and/ or friends for a couple of hours, eat a picnic on the sand with a couple of bottles of wine, walked some more and then got the train home. Did that most saturdays, rather than driving round shops in the traffic buying things we don’t need.
Big business is not so evil, I worked as a Financial Analyst, I admit I hated it and did it only for the money. As I was not happy I blew it all on drinking too much on friday and saturday nights, shopping for clothes I hardly wore, gadgets I hardly used and holidays to exotic places that I shopped, drank and ate in all day. Then went to the gym three times a week to try to reverse the bad living. But I didn’t spend my time planning what third world baby to eat next, we had to make the maximum return on the resources we had. I teach business now and run a small company renovating and developing houses. I buy on projected profit , but I put in well above the minimum insulation, low water use shower heads, low water use tiolets etc and I get higher prices on re-sales or rents. Everyone wins, business just needs to have the guidelines altered.
Sorry for the rant, but I hear it so much in the college I work at “business bad; social work good”, then the first thing the same people do is buy the cheapest offering in the shop – well that is why business has to be so price conscious and wants to cut all costs it can. People say they want to reduce CO2, but then they buy the cheapest products and have more gadgets than they need.