DOCTORS FOR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS NEWSLETTER

The editorial for the Aug 14, 2008, issue of Nature [2008;454(7206)], “A Task of Terawatts,” announces that “the challenge is not how to save the world most efficiently–just how to save the world. Getting to the right place the wrong way is better than going nowhere, even if waste is involved.” The “right place,” of course, is energy without carbon.

“The world has an abundance of renewable energy to offer, the question is how to harness it” [sic]. The sun shines down on the earth with a power of 174,000 terawatts (TW). Electricity generation provides 18,000 TW-hour of energy per year, around 40% of humanity's energy use. That requires a generating capacity of 2 TW. Nature discusses the potential of sources that don't use “fossil fuels”–except in manufacture or installation.

A review of units: 1 TW is a trillion (10¹²) watts. A gigawatt (GW) is a billion (10⁹) watts. A watt is a unit of power, that is a rate of energy conversion: 1 watt = 1 joule/sec = 0.00134 horsepower. A watt-hour, kilowatt-hour (kWh), or TW-hour is a unit of energy.

Hydropower: The world has 65,000 large dams, and many small ones, supplying about 20% of the electricity consumed worldwide. Current capacity of 800 GW possibly could be tripled. Cost: $0.03 - $0.10 per kWh. A “disadvantage”: biomass decomposing in reservoirs could release as much CO₂ as is “saved” by not burning hydrocarbons (ibid.).

Nuclear fission: There are 439 reactors in operation, generating 15% of the world's electricity, and 35 were under construction in 2007, mostly in Asia. Capacity: 370 GW. Cost: $0.025 - $0.07 per kWh. With breeders, the world could go 100% nuclear; without them, capacity could be doubled or tripled. Disadvantages include a possible shortage of skilled workers, and political factors (ibid.). For a summary of new reactor designs, see S.S. Penner's presentation at the 2005 DDP meeting (www.ddponline.org/penner05.pdf).

Biomass: This, of course, is made of carbon, but it is carbon that was recently in the atmosphere instead of below ground. It is the only technology that could be “carbon negative,” if the CO₂ sucked out of the air is then stored underground, so that no other green plants can use it again. Cost is claimed to be as low as $0.02 per kWh, and the IPCC claims that 5 TW could be available by 2050. This involves “some fairly extreme assumptions about the conversion of land to the production of energy crops.” It is acknowledged that “bioenergy dependence could open the doors to energy crises caused by drought or pestilence,” and land-use changes could produce emissions (Nature, op. cit.).

At the 2008 meeting Penner reviewed past experience with failures in the real world. With zero cost for land use, a competitive product could be developed. However, all the usable land turned out to be owned by someone who wanted a fair price–which made gasoline substitutes prohibitively expensive. Penner said, however, that waste-to-energy systems could contribute 5%-10% of total usable energy. U.S. applications were stopped because of concerns about toxic dioxin emissions, even when the emissions contained less dioxin than the ambient air (www.ddponline.org/penner08.pdf).

Wind: Currently installed world capacity is 94 GW–which operates at 20% capacity, compared to 90% for nuclear. Cost is said to be $0.05 - $0.09 per kWh. It is claimed that a capacity of 1 TW or more is plausible (Nature, op. cit.). Penner calls it, like photovoltaics, geothermal, and tidal generators, a “minor source.” A report by Ian Fells of Newcastle University warned that because of unreliability, wind power “cannot replace a single watt of permanent generating capacity”–despite government expenditures of £1 billion in subsidies (Telegraph 9/17/08). The need for back-up is a windfall for gas sellers.

Built by “lobbying, heavy borrowing, and good timing,” the $7 billion windmill empire of Tulsi Tanti, the richest green-power mogul in the world, will either “be a huge success–or it's going to blow up.” So far, “only” 45 of its 144-ft turbine blades have cracked in the Midwest's unexpectedly violent changes in wind direction (Wall St J 4/8/08).

Geothermal: Current capacity is only 10 GW. It is thought that 70 GW of global heat flux might be exploitable with current technology, at unstated but high cost. But CO₂ even leaks out of some geothermal fields! (Nature, op. cit.)

Solar: Although the industry has experienced remarkable growth over the last 5 years, the capacity of installed photovoltaics is estimated at only 9 GW. It generates much less energy than that; the capacity factor of 14% is the lowest of the renewables. Cost: $0.25 - $0.40 per kWh. Despite its disadvantages, especially limited storage capacity for electricity needed during darkness, Nature considers solar the “most promising carbon-free technology.”

What is the environmental impact of carpeting the desert with collectors? The Bureau of Land Management decided to waive the requirement to study it (Heartland 9/1/08).

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors estimated that it would take 100-200 years to recoup the cost of a home solar installation. Average lifespan of a solar panel: 30 years.

Meeting the Demand: U.S. electricity demand is growing at twice the pace of new supplies. If this continues, there will be a supply imbalance in a couple of years, states the North American Energy Reliability Council (Ariz Daily Star 10/17/07). In the UK, supply is actually slated to shrink dramatically, when 23 GW of coal and nuclear capacity is decommissioned in 2020 (Telegraph 9/17/08). Carbon-free electricity will not keep the lights on.

Costs: Seven Western states and four Canadian provinces, representing 20% and 70% of the nation's economy, respectively, proposed the sweeping Western Climate Initiative, which “cracks down on global warming emissions” (LA Times 9/24/08). Arizona is now weighing the costs–after the governor agreed to the plan. Everybody agrees that the cost of electricity will go up–nobody knows by how much, or whether the benefits of fighting climate change will ultimately outweigh the cost (Ariz Daily Star 9/29/08).

One way of measuring the cost is by amount of taxpayer money used to subsidize each unit of energy generated. The total in direct subsidies, tax breaks, loan guarantees, and the like is $16.6 billion, doubled from 8 years ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The breakdown per megawatt-hour of electricity produced:

The subsidy for fuels, per BTU of non-electrical uses:

The fraudulent argument used by almost major every politician in the world is that, however great the cost of action, the cost of inaction is greater, writes Bjorn Lomborg (Australian 9/15/08). This is based on the assumption that the action will balance all the effects of inaction. It's like advising a man with a gangrenous leg that paying $50,000 for an aspirin compares favorably to the cost of losing a leg–obviously ridiculous.

Even assuming that man's CO₂ emissions are warming the world, the con has been exposed: Doing nothing about global warming turns out to be cheaper than “doing something”–every single time (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun 9/10/08).

DDP, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, (520)325-2680, www.oism.org/ddp