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Energy policy – How can we find a path for the future if we don’t know where we are starting from?
This is the first in a planned series of posts on energy policy, arguably one of the most critical, long-term problems facing not only the United States but the world, and an issue that is already being discussed in the current electoral campaigns.
Fundamentals – The nature of energy
What do we mean when we talk about energy? Most people think of oil, and when they think of oil they think of gasoline prices. Some of the more broad-minded think also of electricity, natural gas, and coal. In the end, some nonsense about energy independence is spoken in most discussions about energy policy, with proposals for the future involving some combination of biofuels, wind power, nuclear, and other non-petroleum-based forms of fueling our lifestyle.
The problem we face regarding energy use and future sources is extremely complex, and solutions cannot be analyzed without a good working knowledge of the underlying science and technology. Unfortunately, it is questionable whether the average American citizen has a good working knowledge of science.
This may seem too basic, but it needs to be remembered that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It changes form (including going to and from matter via the infamous E=mc2 relationship), but it has to come from somewhere. Some of the forms energy can take are taught at the middle school level, such as kinetic energy, which is associated with motion, and gravitational potential energy related to elevation changes in a gravitation field, like being on a hill. When we drop a ball, we are converting gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy.
Chemical potential energy is what makes gasoline so useful to us, and that chemical energy is converted to heat when the gasoline is burned in our cars. Some of the heat is then converted by the engine to kinetic energy used to move the vehicle, while most of the heat is wasted.The point is that the energy is not created, nor is it destroyed, it merely changes form. This fundamental law must be kept in mind during any discussion of energy policy.
Many of the misconceptions regarding the feasibility of different technologies associated with energy arise from a lack of knowledge of the nature of energy. A prime example of a misconception of this nature involves biofuels from corn, switchgrass, or some other plant source grown solely for the purpose of making fuel. Close examination reveals that biofuels are merely a highly inefficient form of solar energy. That is what plants do, use the energy from sunlight to drive chemical reactions to create useful organic molecules. We then add more energy to convert those organic molecules that were useful to the plant into organic molecules that are useful to us as fuel.
The energy we put into making biofuels isn’t limited solely to converting the biomass into fuel, we also have to transport the biomass from the fields to the conversion facility, and even before that in the case of corn we have to use fertilizers, pesticides, and tractors for tilling along with pumps for irrigating. This is why the ethanol made from corn or switchgrass is not the perfect solution that some fervently advocate. It makes one question if this is really better than direct conversion of sunlight to electricity through the use of semiconductor solar cells and then using that electricity for making fuels from biomass left over from food production.The use of arable land for making corn-based ethanol is one of the suspected of many causes underlying recent increases in food prices.
I suspect most agree that food for our bodies is more important than food for our cars.
Petroleum has been such an economical and useful source of energy we have forgotten what life was like before the oil age. It is an energy resource that starts out in a relatively easily transportable liquid form when we pump it out of the ground, and the process of refining it into useful forms, while not trivial, is very straightforward. Regardless of the origin of the oil we pump from the ground, whether from dead dinosaurs, anaerobic bacteria, or some other method of formation, we are benefiting today from energy captured and converted long ago into the chemical energy of the organic molecules. The use of the term deposits is telling, because we are using up the energy banked so long ago and now have to move to either another bank account (nuclear), or pay as we go (solar and wind power converting energy real-time into a form we find useful).
Question one we should ask when considering any energy policy is, “Where is the energy coming from?” In the case of biofuels, it is coming from many sources, including the sun along with the energy we put into the process, and we need to evaluate whether the amount of energy we get out of the process is enough in excess of what we put in for it to be feasible.
It is highly unlikely we will find another energy resource as convenient and cheap as petroleum has been because the laws of thermodynamics are against us. The next entry in the series will discuss these laws, but for now accept this admittedly cynical summary:
0. There is a game.
1. You can’t win.
2. You can’t break even.
3. You can’t even get out of the game.
—
Cross-posted to Random Fate.
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8 Responses to “Energy policy – How can we find a path for the future if we don’t know where we are starting from?”
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[...] women guide ][ women know wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt This is the first in a planned series of posts on energy policy, arguably one of the most critical, long-term problems facing not only the United States but the world, and an issue that is already being discussed in the current electoral campaigns. Fundamentals – The nature of energy What do we mean when we talk about energy? Most people think of oil, and when they think of oil they think of gasoline prices. Some of the more broad-minded think also of electricity, natural gas, and coal. In th [...]
You know what? All those scenarios above didn't mention steam shooting straight out of the ground in many locations all over the Western US.
Why not?
We have steam on tap AT SITE with zero secondary energy needs to convert it to electricity.
Why isn't anyone talking about geothermal? Oddly, because it works, is cheap, easy and safe.
It's a riddle that BigOil doesn't want you to figure out.
True but biofuels, like gasoline, are portable which is handy when being used as a method for powering vehicles which solar energy is not.
Yep. That's a point I've been pounding on again and again. That's where partisan politics and ideology run afoul of prudent policy. The reality is that petroleum is going to be important to us for the foreseeable future and, since the countries in the Middle East are the lowest cost producers and, consequently, affect the price, what happens there will be important to us for the foreseeable future, too.
Yes, biofuels are portable. I'll be addressing that point, along with many other concerns, in a future post.
I'm hoping to provide enough information for people to realize how partisan politics and ideology are preventing the adoption of even less imprudent policies.
I look forward to future installments in this series, Jack. Because of its complexity, energy is indeed a difficult topic to discuss clearly and concisely. And I suppose that if there are too many people who can't ace the little science quiz included in your USA Today link, it might explain to some degree why it's often such an uphill climb. But I don't think one needs a very broad background in science to get a decent grasp of the energy issue. However, I would say the ability to move numbers around, and the ability to weigh the effects of multiple variables simultaneously helps a lot.
With regard to biofuels, it is technically correct to state that they are merely a highly inefficient form of solar energy. But I don't think it's particularly useful to think in exclusive terms like that. The reason is that if they were economically viable, had little to no impact on any other resource(s), and had a positive (or zero) carbon footprint, conversion efficiency wouldn't matter very much. Said more specifically, if an infinite amount of cheap land was available to grow biofuel crops, if no irrigation and no fertilizers were required, if the entire production and use cycle was both energy positive (i.e., it generated more energy than it consumed) and carbon negative (i.e., it fixed more carbon in the soil than it released into the atmosphere), who would care if it was an efficient form of solar energy or not? The problem is, none of those things are true (or at least not obvious). And because they aren't, all of them compete for attention and thus have to be considered.
The same is true of any other alternative. Conversion efficiency does not stand alone. It has to be considered relative to its impact on other resources, on emissions (both GHGs and more traditional forms), and on the economics of the entire production, use, and (in the case of renewables) regeneration cycle. Every alternative has costs and benefits — even fossil fuels. The really hard part is trying to get a handle on exactly what those costs and benefits are, how different alternatives compare to each other, and how they might affect each other as their scales change.
So I'd say you have your work cut out for you, lol!