Energy: Renewables and Efficiency won't work, but the Molten Salt Reactor can.

In order to be reasonable assured that replacement energy resources of the current fossil fuel based energy economy, serious attempts should be made to identify plausible options. Most 2050 replacement energy plans, both for the United States and globally, do not offer anywhere near a one for one replacement for current energy sources. Indeed, much of the energy in future energy plans comes from a source that can be labeled, unwarranted assumptions.

Take for example the Zero Carbon Australia, 2020 report which claimed that all of Australian energy could com from renewable energy sources by 2020. Ted (F.E.) Trainer, a well known Australian energy theorist pointed to some of the plans flaws,

To summarise, my back of the envelope impression is that when the foregoing points are added the ZCA conclusion is out by the following factors:
i. The efficiency gain assumed for electric vehicles should be perhaps halved.
ii. The assumed proportion of travel that can be transferred to electric vehicles is too high, in view of how well people and freight can be got to intended destinations by light vehicles and public transport, and in view of what people will accept.
iii. The embodied energy costs of plant might be much more than 10 times as high as has been assumed.
iv. Far more storage for solar thermal needs to be assumed, perhaps 96 hours, as distinct from 17.
v. The amount of solar thermal capacity might need to be trebled I am right about the peak vs average issue.
vi. Very optimistic assumptions and estimates have been made throughout, including regarding costs.

Trainer was not the only critic of the ZCA plan to point out its unrealistic optimism. DaveBurraston has offered fact based critiques of the ZCA plans assumptions about wind implementation time, and solar facility construction times Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang, offered a long and detailed critique of the ZCA plan. They note,

BZE make a number of assumptions in assessing the electricity demand used to calculate the generating capacity needed by 2020. In summary these are:
1. 2008 is used as the benchmark year for the analysis. BZE defend this by saying “ZCA2020 intends to decouple energy use from GDP growth. Energy use per capitais used as a reference, taking into account medium-range population growth.”.
2. Various industrial energy demands in 2020 are reduced including gas used in the export of LNG, energy used in coal mining, parasitic electricity losses, off-grid electricity and coal for smelting.
3. Nearly all transport is electrified and a substantial proportion of the travel kmsare moved from road to electrified rail including 50% of urban passenger and truckkms and all bus kms. All domestic air and shipping is also moved to electric rail.
4. All fossil fuels energy, both domestic and industrial, is replaced with electricity.
Demand is reduced through energy efficiency and the use of onsite solar energy.

Thus

the net effect of these assumptions is to reduce the 2020 total energy by 58% below the 2008 benchmark and 63% below the ABARE estimate for 2020.

The plan thus assumes that over 50% of energy demand will simply disappear by 2020 because of efficiency improvements. Even given wildly optimistic assumptions about the growth of energy efficiency and its permanence, it is unrealistic to imagine that efficiency growth would lead to a 50% decline in Australian energy demand by 2020. But beyond ZCA's highly improbable assumptions about the gross increase in efficiency, is the highly questionable assumption that all efficiency gains will endure without rollbacks. In this respect ZCA resemble other pro-renewable ideology driven future energy plans. Yet a well established principle of classic economic theory suggest that efficiency is far from being a royal road to energy savings . The principle, called Jevons Paradox asserts that increased energy efficiency leads to increased energy use. Numerous scholars including Blake Alcott have questioned assumptions about energy efficiency made by Amory Lovins, and numerous renewables advocates. Alcott writes,

One certain conclusion, though, is that if Jevons is right, then efficiency policies are simply counter-productive. Even taxes on fuel or CO2 will be compensated by efficiency increases, and moreover they face the problem that tax revenue also gets spent on material and energy (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, p. 20).

And finds a further paradox,

By enabling population and affluence to rise, both business-as-usual and policy-induced efficiency gains are partial causes of environmental stress.

Thus at the very least, the assumption that efficiency gains will bridge the gap between current fossil fuel powered energy sources and the limited capacity of renewable energy sources to meet future societal demand for energy, we must acknowledge that the argument for a Malthusian collapse of civilization in a future energy crisis, has a real basis. Yet conventional renewable energy plans such as the ZCA2020 plan suffer from a serious flaw. They assume that nuclear power cannot and will not play an important role in the transition to a post carbon energy order. Were this assumption were to prove true, it can be argued that little will prevent the Malthusian collapse of civilization, but there are strong reasons for rejecting the assumption of a none nuclear future.

Critics of nuclear power assert that nuclear power is too expensive to serve as a practical source of post-carbon energy. The best thought out presentation of this argument is presented by Mark Cooper. But Cooper's research is seriously flawed, by a perspective that is limited to France and the United States, and by a perspective that assumes only the highest possible costs, rather than a range of future cost possibilities.. In fact new nuclear costs in Asia are quite low. For example the EIA reports that current levelized nuclear power costs in South Korea run from $0.029 to $0.048 per kWh. the high rang assumes a higher than current interest range. The levelized cost for nuclear power in China runs from $0.03 to $0.055 per kWh. These prices are very competitive with coal and extremely competitive with renewable costs in China and South Korea. The same source reports the levelized power costs of nuclear power in the United States to be $0.048 to $0.077, a cost which is very competitive with renewables. The levelized nuclear cost range for France is similar. These cost ranges fall within the current range of electrical prices charged in the United States, and are well below the current electrical price range in France.

But beyond the exaggerated cost claims about nuclear power, critics of nuclear power frequently ignore opportunities to decrease nuclear costs. In fact numerous steps can be taken to lower nuclear costs. These include factory manufacture of reactors, recycling the site and equipment from old coal fired power plants. It is far easier to transport small reactors than large reactors from factories, and small reactors can be set up far more quickly. Rapid manufacture lowers interest cost. Thus the movement to small, factory manufactured reactors holds potential for lowering nuclear cost.

In addition a switch to a more advanced nuclear technology, the molten salt reactor, has a significant potential for further lowering nuclear cost. MSRs are both simple and compact, thus potentially lowering materials input costs, as well as manufacturing cost. MSRs also produce far higher temperatures, opening the door to providing industrial heat, and combined heat and power uses. Waste heat from MSRs could be used in nuclear desalinization systems, opening the does for further income streams. Thus rather than offering one use for its heat, a MSR could operate an industrial heat topping cycle, an electrical middle cycle, and a desalinization bottom cycle, easily pushing total thermal efficiency to well above .50. These multiple uses would significantly lower the levelized cost for electrical generation.

Because of their high thermal efficiency MSRs can be manufactured in small sizes without sacrificing their efficiency when compared to large conventional reactors. Thus the MSR is an excellent candidate for factory manufacture. Molten Salt Reactors can also be air cooled, a feature that adds to their flexibility.

Because of their simplicity, safety, potential ease of manufacturing rapid set up, and because they have a virtually unlimited fuel supply, Molten Salt Reactors like the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor offer a significant route to a post carbon energy deployment. LFTRs in particular offer solutions to the nuclear waste problem, can produce their own fuel in a way that will prevent nuclear proliferation, and have the potential to produce electricity at a cost that is lower than conventional nuclear power plants, or renewable electrical sources. Thus MSR technology as to potential to be the energy silver bullet.

Energy Decision Making

Memo to President Obama on a Blue Ribbon Energy Panel
Part One: Energy Decision Making
In October 2008 I sat out a rational for a Blue Ribbon Energy Commission, which I hoped that Barack Obama, when he became President, would appoint. Of course, I failed to make the important step of consulting Mr. Obama before I offered this advice, and he came into office without a perception that such a panel was necessary. The President came to office at a moment in history where other significant problems were on his plate, including a national, and indeed world economic emergency, and a long deferred national decision on health care. The upshot was the the President appears to have failed to grasp the energy problem, and the decisions that he faced. So I am reposting my original posts. as advice to the President on energy, should he ever see the need for it.

Energy Decision Making

During the next few years our society faces basic choices on its energy future. The decisions have been long deferred. The decision making process should be finished by the end of the next administration, and implementation should be underway. The decision making process should be public, and should bring the best minds in the country to the table to share in the decision making process.

The decision making process should begin by identifying potentially valuable candidate technologies for resolution of components of the energy crisis. These technologies would include solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and other technologies for electrical generation; electrical and liquid fuels for transportation; solar, nuclear and other sources of process heat for Industry; and solar and electrical technologies for heating and cooling, In some cases the decision might not involve exclusive use of one technology. Air transportation would be impossible without liquid fuel, and without a carbon neutral liquid fuel technology we will simply loose the ability to achieve transportation through the air.

The decisions related to electricity generation will be perhaps the most important, because potentially up to 80% of the energy in a post carbon society will be transmitted through electrical lines. Decisions cannot be left to the market. The market, while providing efficient mechanisms to determine price, and product choice, is poorly equipped to make strategic choices for the future. Decision makers have to basically anticipate future markets. That involves informed guesses, something the market regards as speculation. Markets like to gamble only if there is a great deal of money potentially to be made on bets. There is far too much at risk, and too much uncertainty about the energy future at the moment for most investors to feel comfortable about the risks involved in future energy investments. In the case of solar and wind generated electricity, this has led to the demand for government subsidies, both for the construction of generating facilities, and in tax linked support of revenue produced from energy generation.

The stake in the decision making process is such that wrong decisions could easily lead to the misspending of tens, or hundreds of billions of dollars and perhaps even trillions of dollars of tax payer, rate payer, and investor money, without the production of a satisfactory electrical system. Impossible you say. Well just pay careful attention to where the decision making process is today. Mark my word, if the decision making process is not improved, it will lead to very unsatisfactory outcome.

We cannot hope to reach a proper decision without a judicious determination of facts, and there are at present a lot of of enemies of facts in the environment. Enemies of facts include people who are selling flawed ideas and flawed products. Fact finding needs to be turned over to people who are skilled in determining facts, and this would certainly include Nobel prize winning scientists. Others who are somehow representative of the general public need to included among the fact finders, and the fact finding process needs to be open to the public. The fact finders need a first rate staff, and the ability to commission research.

The fact finders need to be aided by skilled politicians who have ascended to the rank of statesmen. My father observed one such politician while attending a hearing for Project Independence in 1974. "I was most impressed," my father wrote. "He is young, intelligent, and highly articulate." Such a figure, if he were still around 34 years later, might well prove a valuable asset to the fact finders, perhaps as chairman of a fact finding commission. And if the politician, by now an elder statesman, were to hold high political office, so much the better. The name of the young politician who so impressed my father was Joseph Biden.

Any group of fact finders would need to carefully separate fact from hype before reaching its decision. As I have demonstrated on Nuclear Green there is a lot of hype in our current discussion of energy options. In fact the hype to information ratio in any discussion of renewable electrical sources is astonishingly high.

During a discussion with wind advocate on The Oil Drum wind advocate "Jerome a Paris"acknowledged that a basic assumption of wind advocates was an electrical grid to which a very large number of fossil fuel burning electrical generators were attached, which would pick up the slack when the wind does not blow. In this view the function of wind is to partially and temporarily defer fossil fuel burning rather than replace it.

It might be added that solar power also partially defers rather than replaces fossil fuel use. Nuclear reactors can replace fossil fuel fuel burning facilities.

Thus the choice between nuclear power and renewables is a choice between an approach designed to stop emitting CO2 in the generation of electricity, or to decrease the burning of carbon based fuels. This is a choice of fundamental importance and should be the focus of an important decision about energy.

Atmospheric scientist James Hanson argues that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries. Hanson argues, "the only realistic way to sharply curtail CO2 emissions is to phase out coal use . . ." While the use of wind and solar defers the burning of some coal, renewables by themselves would never be able to replace the burning of coal.

Hanson envisions coal fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration (CC&S), but the Energy Returned on Energy invested (EREOI) of CC&S is very unfavorable, with somewhere between half and three-fourths of the energy produced by burning coal being going into CC&S. Thus electricity from CC&S plants will be very expensive. In addition we appear to be facing the almost immediate prospect of peak oil, with a significant decline in oil production looming in the near future. Energy currently derived from oil, including energy used in transportation, must be replaced by energy from other sources. Among the proposals are the use of fuels derived from biological sources, but this proposal like coal CC&S has a low EROEI. Other liquid fuel options include hydrogen production, and the production of methanol from atmospheric CO2. The later two options would require massive amounts of process heat from non-carbon sources. There is one further option, to power land based transportation with electricity. This is technologically possible, but still leaves an energy gap for water born shipping and air transportation. Switching the land transportation system to electrical energy will increase the demand for reliable carbon free electrical production.

Efficiency Hoover Style: There is a wide spread belief in American society that energy efficiency will make up for short falls in carbon free generating capacity, but far to much is expected of electrical efficiency. The belief in efficiency as an economic solution is an old one in the United States, and is called Hooverizing after the 31st president of the United States, who was a great proponent of efficiency and enemy of waste. (World War I propaganda posters from the Herbert Hoover lead Food Administration contained slogans like, "Feed a Fighter: Eat only what you need. Waste nothing, that he and his family may have enough.") First achieving high levels of energy use savings through Hooverizing electricity would require very large capitol investments. Secondly some energy uses may be relatively impervious to the Hooverizing approach. If effective post carbon energy sources are available at reasonable prices, then it may be more cost effective to invest in them rather than higher priced efficiency measures.

We need to know a great deal more about the impact of efficiency before we will know how much impact greater efficiency will have on the energy situation, but given the possibility of electrifying land transportation, it is not a safe bet that Hooverizing will lower our demand for electricity.

Such is the American faith in Hooverization, that it will take us some time and considerable discussion before we realize that efficiency and renewables will not by themselves replace coal. Once attention is fixed on our problems, it will then take us some time as a country, before we clearly focus on our energy options, and begin the process of making choices.

Personal Note: I am American enough to admire efficiency, I just cannot accept the blind faith that it is will so remedy for our energy problems that a nuclear solution is unneeded.

The word "efficiency" really means "scarcity"

The new San Francisco Federal Office building has become emblemstic of theconcept of the energy efficient building and its discontents. California architect Thomas Mayne designed the building to function without air conditioning. during the day time, rge building's concrete core is expected to soak up heat, lowering building temperature, at night the buildings ventilation system admits cool sea breezes, which absorbs heat from the building's core. In practice however, the natural temperature control system has not proven entirely satisfactory. In fact BryondChron writer Rusty Shaw has stated the

"verdict on the structure’s function as a office space for federal employees is nearly unanimous: it is a disaster."

Simply put, the energy efficient temperature control system is a failure. Shaw describes the situation:n

The first fact about the building that may cause surprise is its lack of air conditioning or heat. According to Mayne, “a bike rack and air conditioning get you the same point. I’d much rather see BTU and CO2 requirements and let the professional community solve the problem.”

I apparently lack sufficient understanding of green technology, as it does not seem that a bike rack would “get you to the same point” in terms of keeping workers cool. In the real world on the 15th floor of the Federal Building, workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible.

When I spoke with a Labor Department worker at the building (who noted that she is encountering the type of bad work conditions that her agency is supposed to enforce against), she confirmed what might have been an urban legend: that some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles.

The lack of internal climate controls has left some workers too cold and others too hot. A happy medium has proved elusive. And while the managers’ offices do have heat and air conditioning -- a two-tiered approach fitting in a building named for Bush -- the “green” design apparently has messed with the effectiveness of these systems, leaving these top staff as physically uncomfortable as the line workers.

Green does not have to mean that energy efficiency is taken beyond human comfort, however. Some good energy efficiency technologies are consistent with both. Heat pumps are moree efficient than direct heating, and although not as efficient ground soce heat pumps, air source heat pumps are more practical for homes in many areas. Solar hot water heaters are efficiency aids in many areas and solar heating works some places.

Beyond that building efficiency has to rely on local wisdom, and good energy management. I believe that more attention needs to be paid to energy efficient computers. Energy consumed by computers is often paid for twice, The first time wnen the electricity used by the computer is paid for. The second time is when the cost of cooling the heat from computers is added to the electrical costs. It is certainly possible to cut down on computer related electrical use, for example by adopting electrical efficient laptop computer technology in desk top computers.

Thus while improved energy efficiencies are possible, building energy efficiency cannot be counted on to displace significant power demand. Thus the inclusion of significant energy savings in future energy plans is at the very least premature. What energy planners mean when they argue for energy efficiency is for future energy supply cuts. The problem for renewables energy planners is simple, it is impossible that renewable technology would be able to supply all of the energy required by the national economy at present rates of energy consumption. "Efficiency" is the word used to cover the fact that no energy source is available to cover all future energy needs. The San Francisco Federal office Building is an experiment by the government, to see how welll workers can tolderate a no air conditioning energy environment. The answer is not well.

Thus politicians contemplating a post-carbon, post-nuclear energy future will have to contemplate how they plan to deal with worker dissatisfaction with their working conditions. So far politicians like Al Gore have listened to Amory Lovins. They have bought into the belief that future energy scarcity can be papered over by the word efficiency. Ya, sure.

The building energy efficiency fraud

The super energy efficient Federal Building in San Francisco Showing us how energy efficiency works.

Buiilding energy use represents about 40% of the energy used in the United States. Self proclaimed energy efficiency expert Amory Lovins tells us, that by improving building design and installing more efficient energy technology enormous energy savings will be realized. The experience of The United States Green Building Council suggests, however that things are no where nerat as simple as Lovins suggest. Henry Grifford has pointed out that the USGBC's onw study showed that the average LEED certified building used more energy than the average non certified building. Gifford pointed to poor energy us management practices as a possible source of this paradox. Good energy practices must be localized. No universal standard is likely to yield optimal building energy efficiency. Even within a single locality different building sites may call for different efficiency standards.

There is no doubt that building energy efficiency is desirable and that there are considerable potentials for efficiency, but given the diverse challenges which building designers and managers face, getting anywhere close to the potential maximum efficiency out of buildings will not be easy. In the case of office buildings, tenant cooperation may be an important factor in the efficient operation of buildings. Yet building efficiency certification ignores tenant issues and behavior.

Recently, I posted a discussion about the shockingly shoddy greenwashing activities of the United States Green Buildings Council, and the efforts by building owner Henry Gifford to expose them. It is clear that the USGBC does not actually investigate the energy management practices of buildings it certifies to be green, does not conduct real research on best practices for energy efficiency of buildings, does not research the effects of energy consumption of gadgets it touts, and indeed does nothing substantial to pormote energy efficiency in buildings. The only study it conducted on the energy efficiency of buildings the USGBC has certified, while not scientifically valid, did suggest that USGBC certified buildings are less energy efficient than non certified buildings built at the same time. Brendan Owen of the USGBC acknowledged that he had been prepared to hide unfavorable results of the certified building study, or to publish results in statistically impenetrable forms. In fact the USGBC data wackers excluded especially inefficient certified buildings from their data set, and hid the poor performance of average LEED certified buildings. When the inefficient buildings are included it turns out that USGBC that average certified building was more energy inefficient than the average non-certified building.

Buildings consume 40% of the energy used in the United States. The saga of the USGBC and Henry Gifford reveals that the LEED efficiency standard for buildings is a travisty, and that the evidence, such as it is, is that LEED certified buildings are less energy efficient than non certified buildings. The failure of the LEED energy efficiency to establish effective standards for grading building energy efficiency, in turn raises serious questions about the validity of Green and renewables energy plans that call for significant energy savings through efficiency.

Renewable energy advocates are simply pulling a Bernie Madoff style energy fraud, telling us that money spent on green certifications programs mean that energy goals will be meet in the future.

Needless to say, green advocates never allow the lack of scientific evidence stand in their war. We are told that adopting LEED standards will help us reach future energy goals, without building new power plants. LEED certification certainly would not mean that valid empirical tests have shown the LEED buildings to be more efficient. It certainly does not mean that building energy management practices are consistent with energy conservation goals. It does not mean that weare making progress toward a goal of sustainable eenergy use savings. The notion that we are going to solve our energy problems through efficiency is another green fraud.