The Energy Grid Blog is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them The question is, is the energy crisis a manifestation of political failures or technological shortcomings? The answer is both, plus a third factor, one that Coby identified last week: the need to curtail our rapacious habits. I'd rank the obstacles this way:
Consumption > Politics > Technology
While it would be foolish to deny that advances in energy production technologies would be helpful -- LED lights, for example, are even more efficient than compact fluorescents, but we need to find a way to make them much cheaper -- it's just as naive to believe that the political status quo doesn't present as challenging an obstacle to a cleaner, sustainable energy grid.
Governments around the world continue to subsidize the fossil fuels industry to the tune of $300 billion a year, according to one U.N. report. Channeling that money into renewable energy alternatives would almost certainly create more jobs per dollar, and in some cases allow marginal enterprises to survive. The only reason we don't do this is entrenched interests like things the way they are now.
There are something like four lobbyists in Washington, D.C. for every member of Congress, and a good number of them are paid from the coffers of the likes of the American Coalition for [the mythical] Clean Coal Electricity. The just-assembled 932-page Waxman-Markey bill, which represents the first serious effort at addressing both climate change and energy security, has already been seriously watered down thanks to Democrats from coal-dependent states. And it hasn't even gotten out of committee yet.
It's difficult to quantify this sort of thing, but to my mind, it's pretty near incontrovertible that politics is the primary reason why there's been so little progress bringing efficient technologies to market. Urban mass transit systems weren't dismantled in the 1950s because of technological problems. It was a conscious political decision to favor car-oriented planning. The fact that today's American cars get the same mileage (25 mpg), on average as they did 100 years ago is not a reflection of any physical limit, not in a world where information technologies double in efficiency every 18 months.
The technological question is murkier. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the minds behind the Breakthrough Institute, would have us believe that the U.S. needs to spend around $30 billion a year researching new energy technologies because the stuff on the shelf today isn't up to the job. That kind of investment wouldn't be wasted, but many of their critics point out that existing gear can do far more than they acknowledge. Who's right? The fact that there's so much disagreement on just how much of a contribution existing technologies can make to the crisis suggests to me that any genuine shortcomings aren't that big a challenge.
Which leaves us with consumption, on which the numbers are the most dramatic. My favorite anecdote on this issue comes to us courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Its original, super-insulated, headquarters, in not-exactly-tropical Snowmass, Colorado, is heated almost entirely by passive solar radiation. Staff only fire up their woods stoves on the coldest of days. The energy-saving features cost just $6,000 and were paid back in 10 months. And that was more than 25 years ago. So don't try to tell me that American society doesn't gobble far more power than necessary.
Feedback through smart metering, just giving making homeowners and tenants aware of their power usage patterns, can cut electricity usage by upwards of 15%. Loads more energy could be saved by changing our excessive lifestyle. More workers could carpool. More employers could embrace telecommuting. More cities could adopt proper, mixed-use zoning that does away with the need to drive anywhere.
Last week in Nashville, Tenn., IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri addressed member of The Climate Project, Al Gore's volunteer army of slide show presenters, of which I am one. His talk was focused on the human cost of climate change, and he explicitly challenged Americans to rethink their wasteful ways. "Some say 'The American way of life is not up for negotiation.' But why not?" he asked.
Indeed, why not? I doubt that a more efficient way of life will be in any significant way less amenable to the pursuit of happiness than the current one.
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I live comfortably. I walk most places, or take a bus, and only drive when circumstances necessitate it. I do most of my own cooking, and raise a garden when possible. I live comfortably.
According to a quiz I found somewhere on the net my comfortable lifestyle would require almost two planets worth of resources if everyone lived that way - and the average of their respondents was somewhere up near ten worlds of resources.....
I live comfortably, and I could easily live considerably more simply with some infrastructure changes. I am not a paragon of virtue, I firmly believe I enjoy my conspicuous and pointless consumption as much as any American.
I cannot imagine living a life that used up resources five times as fast as I do now - but supposedly that is the authentic typical American lifestyle. What ever do people do with all of those resources? Are there parties going on that I am not invited to? Five times the comfort level that I live at is a huge amount of comfort.....
Posted by: oscar zoalaster | May 19, 2009 9:46 PM
In my opinion, you pose the wrong question by allowing only three options. But what, then, is the energy crisis a manifestation of? I would couch the question in ecological terms. Humans for the longest time (at least beginning 10,000 years with the origins of agriculture and settled village life) have obtained energy subsidies by taking over resources that increased biological success. This included taking over habitats for increased agricultural production, intensification of production by use of draught animals and human labor (slavery) and the emergence of more complex societies designed to maintain success and advantage in the face of growing populations, limited resources, and conflict (social hierarchies, labor specialization, standing armies, etc.). Still, limits to growth were imposed by the availability of arable land, other people, fresh water, and sunlight. All energy was “renewable” but not necessarily replaced as quickly as it was used, as exemplified by the deforestation of Europe during the middle ages. Things could well have gone badly, sooner, had we not been able to obtain the largest energy subsidy in the history of planetary life—ancient sunlight. Science and technology have since been employed (part of their mystique) in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of declining efficiencies, depletions, growing populations,and environmental degradation. Thus began, and continues, a gargantuan drawdown of stored, accessible, and portable source of energy that we have been spending as if it were income—yet it is only a temporary deposit to our savings account. In the meantime a good portion of the species has enjoyed unprecedented biological success—unheard of wealth, the rise of a comfortable middle class, explosive population growth, but also at the expense of the physical environment. Certainly consumption (over-consumption) has become a way of life. But it has been made possible (and viewed more-or-less as an entitlement) due to the very events that made industrial society such a success in the first place. There is no blame. It is interesting to note that the total contribution of renewable energy today is barely twice that of the 1850 levels.
The energy crisis is thus a manifestation of a biological imperative and any species would be “proud” to have attained such astounding success. But the gains are temporary (and made possible because of our big, clever brains) and with the colossal inputs of fossil energy the human carrying capacity of the earth has been exceeded probably by many times. Topsoil these days, or what is left of it, is more-or-less a sponge for hydrocarbon based fertilizers and pesticides. Even a return to pre-industrial technologies could be problematic. Nor is it just the fact the those sources of energy may soon enter or already be in their depletion phase, but equally so far a variety of resources, even those that figure into high tech energy “solutions.”
Thus it is likely to be wishful thinking that technology can continue to keep pace of explosive growth, or given the time frames, be scaled up to provide substitutes for depleting fossil fuel sources or to satisfy the need to combat global climate change in a timely way. Here’s a fun exercise: How many nuclear reactors of average size would be needed to provide the total annual electrical consumption of the United States? How many more reactors (substitute wind turbines, solar panels, etc.), for argument sake, would also be needed to provide the electrical energy equivalent to the energy of combustion of all of the gasoline used to power our current fleet of automobiles (shoot—even if the current fleet were all hybrids) for one year? We face an overwhelming ecological crisis, not just an energy crisis and not just a climate change crisis. And make no mistake, this would all entail incredible sums of money to even begin to solve and it is not completely disingenuous to broach this ugly fact when tossing around traditional solutions. For most people and certainly for me, the future may revolve around finding or keeping a job, feeding my family, wondering if I have enough gas for my car (can’t afford a new fancy thing) or if I should be armed when filling the tank, wondering if there will be food in the grocery store, wondering if the city will dispose of my trash, wondering if I will receive police protection for my property, wondering if I can afford electricity (or even if there will be electricity), and the list goes on. This is the prelude to ecological collapse.
Do not look for political solutions, technological solutions, or efficiency and consumption rate solutions. All are inadequate. Look for a future with far less energy to go around and probably far fewer humans walking the earth, and perhaps massive social dislocation. Look for an ecological transition as significant as the origins of plant and animal domestication were to the history of the species 10,000 years ago. However, it is perhaps reassuring (at least to some) that we probably behave no differently than any other organism faced with the same circumstances. It would appear that humans may be more clever, but certainly no smarter, than yeast.
Posted by: Eric the Leaf | May 20, 2009 12:25 AM
The problem you run up against with the 'efficiency solution' (meaning as well the contribution increased efficiency makes to a more holistic approach) is that increasing the efficiency per capita simply makes room for more capita. That is, if three people start consuming as much as two people did previously, a third person 'fits' into the energy/matter economy. The efficiency is wasted by complementary population growth. Of course, there's other factors that limit growth aside from energy, but this has to be considered as a negative feedback of sorts on the efficiency solution.
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So you have to go to politics anyway: in order to capitalise on increased efficiency, one must limit the number of agents consuming matter and energy in the system. Since population control is political suicide, it's actually MORE reasonable to push political and technological solutions to the energy problem, while increasing efficiency where possible.
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Or have I missed something? Please point it out if I have.
Posted by: Nils Ross | May 20, 2009 12:44 AM
Yes, Nils, is this not known as Jevon's paradox?
Posted by: Eric the Leaf | May 20, 2009 2:59 PM
I'm not so sure that population is or need be political suicide. One thing for sure though is that if it is not addressed now, and in a big way all other efforts to avoid coming up against ecological/resource limits to growth will be to no avail.
In my experience more and more people are recognizing the problem that population growth presents for us in finding an acceptable way out of the mess we are in.
If, for instance, the developed world were to spend as much money on helping the high population growth third world empower women to control their own fertility rates as it does now on subsidizing fossil fuels, that alone would be a big step in the right direction.
Of course some countries in the developed world such as the US, Australia and Canada would also have to adopt measures to discourage rather than encourage their own population growth rates.
In all these matters vested interests and religion are the "enemy'.
Posted by: Ian Rudd | May 28, 2009 12:54 AM