Renewables & efficiency – June 2

June 2, 2009

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The Renewables Hump 3: The Target

Jeff Vail, blog
In the last post in this series, I discussed the criticality of accurately measuring EROEI of potential alternative energy technologies. If the EROEI of a renewable energy is high enough, then a relatively small initial investment of energy can lead to the rapid scale-up of renewable generation by bootstrapping its own energy production to finance (in energy terms) its own growth. However, if EROEI is too low, then the amount of energy that society must invest to meet a renewable target would be so great as to be effectively impracticable (because it would cause sufficient energy price spikes as to threaten so much immediate economic damage as to be politically impossible).

Before proceeding with this discussion of EROEI, I thought it would be worth defining what this target for a renewable transition actually looks like:

… it seems clear that a renewable energy transition will need to, at a minimum, replace the decline in oil production with renewable energy generation. I’ll elaborate on why I draw this line in the sand below, but in brief the viridian vision (by which I mean a general continuation of our current neo-liberal, capitalist/market-socialist civilizational structure into the distant future by leveraging technological advances and a transition to a renewable energy base and “green” economic foundation) requires that we maintain generally the same level of present energy consumption into the foreseeable future.

Why this focus on the “viridian vision”? I think my personal biases are clear: I’m very skeptical about the practicality of viridian vision–to be more plain, I don’t think it’s realistic, and further I think it’s the modern opiate of the masses when it comes to confronting current energy issues. That said, I think anyone who refuses to recognize that both 1) the viridian may be possible, and that 2) it may be fundamentally impossible is taking a faith-based and irrational position.

… For lack of a better analogy, it’s a bit like our childhood fantasies: at some point, the little league baseball player needs to give up on the dream of becoming a star professional athlete and focus on a more realistic plan for the future. Sure, for any given kid it’s a possibility to become the next big star, but it would be folly to advise all of them to pursue that dream at all expense.

It’s also important to point out the obvious, that there are significant differences between the energy produced by renewable technologies (that, for our purposes, produce electricity) and the energy lost by declining oil production.

Jeff Vail is an attorney at Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP in Denver, Colorado specializing in litigation and energy issues. He is a former intelligence officer with the US Air Force and energy infrastructure counterterrorism specialist with the US Department of the Interior.
(1 June 2009)
Jeff Vail has been a contributor to Energy Bulletin and The Oil Drum.


Electricity figures show energy efficiency isn’t working

CarbonCommentary, Guardian
Electricity demand has fallen substantially in the last couple of years and shows no sign of recovery. The cause could be:

* The impact of economic slowdown
* Better energy efficiency
* Demand reduction because of the high prices seen in recent years.

If the cause is the contraction in the economy, then we can expect electricity use to rise again when growth resumes. On other hand if it is energy efficiency, then it is reasonable to expect that the reduction will persist. Electricity demand is usually thought to be insensitive to the price of power. If it is high prices that are driving usage reductions, we have gained important information about how to reduce electricity use, and thus carbon emissions.

The conclusion of the analysis in this short note is that almost all of the reduction in energy demand comes from cuts in usage in big industrial and commercial users. This means that the most likely cause of the cut is the fall in economic activity. Household demand seems to have remained about constant.

… Why is this disappointing? We might have hoped that the squeeze on personal incomes, high electricity prices, and improved energy efficiency in appliances would by now be making a measurable impact on electricity use in the home. But there’s no evidence of this from the data. Second, we might also have been optimistic that energy reduction programmes in some industries would have reduced use. But, if anything, the reverse is true.
(1 June 2009)


‘Clean-tech’ start-ups are pushing the green button

Dan Fost, Los Angeles Times
Hara, which launches today, is the latest IT effort to help firms and the planet through software to manage water and energy use.

Reporting from San Francisco — Amit Chatterjee worked for three Silicon Valley start-ups and software company SAP, but he was growing increasingly intrigued by global warming and climate change. The more he delved into the issue, the more he became convinced that there was a way to use software to help tackle the problem.

His idea — to help companies track and manage their use of energy, water and other resources — drew the backing of the valley’s most prominent venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

… Hara’s arrival, after operating quietly for the last year and a half, shows how the tech wizards behind many Internet companies are now hard at work building digital solutions to save water, money, energy and maybe even the planet.
(1 June 2009)


Tags: Consumption & Demand, Electricity, Energy Policy, Renewable Energy, Transportation