Integrity at Scale Blog

Chapter 9.

Redesigning Our Energy Sector

 

Irreversibility.  Increasing Damage.  Uncompensability.  The verdict is inescapable.  Fossil fuel energy is a dangerously bad choice, and we need a directional worldview that regularly reminds us how foolish our reliance on fossil fuels has become.

Now to address the other half of our directional problem.  What’s the right course of action?  What sort of reasoning process helps us move forward?  We already know.  Turn the problem logic into solution logic.

• If climate change is to be halted, global warming must be halted.
• If global warming is to be halted, the stock of CO₂ (and other greenhouse gases) must stop growing.
• If the stock of CO₂ is to stop growing, CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels must fall to zero.
• If CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels are to end, the consumption of fossil fuel must be brought to an end. 
• If the consumption of fossil fuel is to end, a full conversion to climate safe energy technologies must be organized and achieved.

 

Similar reasoning helps us understand the solution logic for marine species:

• If marine extinctions from ocean acidification are to be prevented, ocean acidification must be halted.
• If ocean acidification is to be halted, the atmospheric stock of CO₂ must stop growing. 
• If the CO₂ stock is to stop growing, CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels must be halted.
• If CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels are to fall to zero, the consumption of fossil fuels must fall to zero.
• If the consumption of fossil fuels is to fall to zero, a full conversion to climate safe energy technologies must be organized and achieved.

What about carbon sequestration, some might ask.  It is an appropriate question.  If all the carbon dioxide from a coal-fired generating plant were to be captured and sequestered, safely and economically, that particular plant might well have a role in a climate safe energy future.  I have yet to see anyone rate this as a scalable solution though.  For now it is little more than a hypothetical possibility.  Perhaps the proponents will prove the skeptics wrong, but it hasn't happened yet.

What about other sources of greenhouse gas emissions?  Not every source of greenhouse gas production can be fully shut down.  When a forest dies, killed by drought or irresponsible deforestation, its rotting trees give off CO₂.  The manufacture of cement also gives off carbon dioxide. The chemicals used as refrigerants escape slowly into the atmosphere and behave as greenhouse gases.  Methane released in cattle feed lots has greenhouse gas consequences.  Is it possible to achieve a complete cessation of greenhouse gas emissions from all manmade sources? Probably not.  Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity will be difficult to curb entirely, a risk element that adds urgency to the goal of building a post-fossil fuel energy infrastructure.

Once carbon dioxide emissions are halted, once the stock of atmospheric CO₂ is capped, it will still take some time for the average global temperature to level off at its new equilibrium.  Inject a new dose of CO₂ into the atmosphere, and it will take twenty years or more for the warming impact to work its way fully into the surface layers of the world’s oceans.  Not till the average temperature of the ocean has stabilized will it be possible for the average temperature of the planet to level off.

Where the Earth ends up will be a function of the total atmospheric stock of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. 

If one could flip a switch in 2011 and phase out fossil fuels literally overnight, the global stock of CO2 would stabilize at 3,000 billion tonnes and some change.  This is 800 billion tonnes more than the pre-industrial norm, and well above where we might have been had we addressed this issue responsibly thirty some years ago. 

If America and China and everyone else compromise on these issues for several more decades,  the stock of CO2 will surely reach 4,000 billion tonnes and most likely will rise all the way to 4,500 billion tonnes.  Remember three words.  Irreversible.  Deadly.  Uncompensable.  Add a fourth word.  Massive.  And a fifth.  Accelerating.  Humanitarian catastrophes will pile up, one after another, at a dizzying pace.  Vast scale, vast damage.  Ignore integrity at scale and we Americans become co-conspirators in crimes against humanity.  Fecklessness is not a defense.

Bring the dithering to an end today, work together in a serious and concerted way for the next three decades plus, and we may be able to cap the stock of atmospheric CO2 at 3,400 billion tonnes. 

When we do this is up to us.  What will happen to us if we fail to act is entirely up to Mother Nature.  A hotter planet will have a meaner climate.  Think starvation, think tens ofmillions of human beings starving because we couldn't be bothered to act in a timely manner.

We are in a sobering time.  So much human effort and financial investment has been absorbed in the building of the world’s fossil fuel industries.  Yes, for all the catastrophe that lies ahead, there is still a dignity to all this that deserves recognition.  Coal mining is the toughest of occupations.  Wildcatting for oil takes a special breed of craziness and hard work.  These industries have been marvels of human enterprise.

That being said, the evidence is in.  In an orderly and compassionate way, these industries must be given their walking papers.  It is time for America to say to the people of these industries, “Thank you.  As a nation we are proud of your contributions and grateful for your past accomplishments.   But we cannot ignore what we know.  Carbon dioxide emissions on today’s vast global scale are far too risky.  We have an obligation to protect America’s future.  It is time to move on.  It will take us thirty years of hard work to make the full transition.  We will responsibly build the new; we will responsibly phase out the old.”

 

What Does This Teach Us About Ourselves?

Visit the websites of those environmentalists who claim to understand  this problem.  Even our most prominent environmentalists have fallen down on the job.  They cannot walk their website visitors through these issues with any real clarity or rigor.  They do not properly explain the mechanism by which carbon dioxide interferes with the Earth’s natural cooling system.  They cannot bring themselves to explain the cause-and-effect logic chain that connects today’s technology decisions with tomorrow's climate disasters and oceanic disasters. 

And because they haven’t the discipline to explain the problem logic, they also haven’t the discipline to explain the solution logic.

This should teach us something.  It may seem that we are awash in experts, but as a practical matter, our experts are as prone to tunnel vision as everyone else. As a people, we imagine that hastily chosen soundbites can be our guide to a healthy future.  We seldom pause to wonder if our favorite soundbites make any bloody sense or not. 

Think back to the early nineties, when the press first began to mention environmental concerns about global warming.  No one noticed it at the time, but a critical framing decision had been made.  Those at the helm of the environmental movement agreed that this issue was to be framed as "an emission problem;" the required response was to be framed as "emission reduction." 

Even at the outset, this was a terrible choice of terms.  Reduce the rate at which humanity burns fossil fuels and we delay the total climate disaster by a few decades at most. Instead of topping out at 4,500 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2100 say, we top out at 4,500 billion tonnes in 2050. 

Same ultimate stock of carbon dioxide. 

Same ultimate temperature increase for planet Earth. 

Same ultimate cascade of climate disasters and ocean toxicity. 

That's the Emission Reduction End Game.  It is a catastrophic end game, a losing end game, an end game no rational person would embrace.  Same global disaster, modestly stretched out timetable.   

How could all these "experts" have concurred on such a rotten way of framing the problem and its solution?

Part of the explanation is that scientific and environmental thought leaders reflexively adopted the directional worldview that had been used with success in establishing the Clean Air Act.  Air pollution had indeed been an emissions problem.  Clean up the emissions of dirty air and we solve a very real problem.  Pass a law, adopt regulations, and compel industry to reduce dirty emissions.  If it worked once, why not do it again?  Nothing like having a successful worldview right at hand.

It was a deadly mistake.  For two long decades, environmentalists have beaten the wrong drum and hammered the wrong image of the problem into the minds of the public.  

Rigorous thinking matters.  It ALWAYS matters.  We're talking irreversible and catastrophic shifts in the behavior of the global climate, and even in the face of a challenge this grave, no one in authority takes the time to insist on a rigorous reexamination of how this issue is to be understood.  No wonder America is adrift.  Our culture points us toward fast, hastily chosen answers.  On Everything!  The future of the planet is at stake and no one takes the time to piece together the logic chain that families and citizens everywhere must understand. 

Thoughtful members of the American people recognize that fossil fuel energy has to go.  This puts talented entrepreneurs ahead of the nation's environmentalists and their sympathizers in public office.  When Al Gore's film asked us to change light bulbs, sensible Americans flinched.  They were impressed by the scope of the problem; they were puzzled by the wholly inadequate nature of the recommended solution.  Our instincts told us the experts had somehow botched the issue.  Maybe they were well-meaning, but they hadn't come to grips with what a safe and competent energy future had to look like.  

But instinctive realism isn’t enough.  We have to get smarter about how dumb we have been.  We have been dumb about global warming, we have been dumb about Wall Street regulation, we have been dumb about a great number of issues.  None of us is half as clever as we like to imagine ourselves to be.  (Readers of this book will no doubt help me discover shortcomings in my own reasoning.) 

Let's use this massive blunder constructively.  First we have to name it for what it was.  It was a truly terrible error. 

And second, those who participated in committing this error owe the entire world a heartfelt mea culpa. 

It isn't enough to earn an "A" for Caring if one also earns an "F" on Diagnosing and Prescribing.  It isn't enough to be Americans who "care."  We live in a time of massively powerful replication engines.  The templates in play operate at vast scale.  Sloppy thinking may have been acceptable in an earlier era, but it isn't acceptable any longer.  This is the twenty-first century and rigorous thinking is essential.  Until we bring rigor to the table, we haven't brought integrity to the table.

9.1 Revision 2011-06-27

9.2 How Does a Competent Nation Remake Its Energy Sector?

Let’s back up and take it from the top.  The global climate emergency is the inevitable outcome of the technology options we have chosen.  We got where we are because we bought the products our manufacturers offered us.  Our public utilities bought scads of coal-fired and gas-fired power plants.  The equipment purchased by our factories was designed to run on fossil fuels.  The cars we buy as consumers are designed to be powered by gasoline or by diesel fuel.  Our airplanes are designed to run on aviation fuel.  The heating systems in our homes and offices are designed to run on natural gas or heating oil.  And on and on.  One consumer purchase at a time, one capital purchase at a time, we put ourselves in the situation we are in now.  We have limited ourselves to the burning of fossil fuels because those are the fuels our technology purchases require.

We know this.  It’s old news.  And it points us toward the solution we need.  We will migrate to a new energy economy in the same way – one capital purchase at a time, one consumer purchase at a time. 

If there were no urgency to this, we could take our time.  But a cap on atmospheric CO₂ of 3,500 billion tonnes is considerably safer than a cap of 4,000 billion tonnes, which in turn is far safer than a cap of 4,500 billion tonnes, and so on.  We are in a crisis situation.  We need to move forward sensibly and aggressively.  And we will need the spur of public policy to help us act together, as a nation, so that we can resolve this crisis before it turns into an unmitigated disaster.

Let’s walk through each of the major strategies by which we will re-equip our energy sector with a full complement of climate-safe technologies.

 

A New Portfolio of User Technologies

One must begin not with the technologies that supply energy but with the technologies that use energy.  As users, we will change our behaviors and our purchases in four major ways.  We will raise our efficiency standards, so that we don’t need as much energy to accomplish our existing aims.  We will choose new technologies for heating and cooling our buildings.  We will choose new technologies for powering our vehicles.  We will choose new technologies for running our factories.

 

1.  We Will Be More Efficient.  In every area where we depend on energy, we will become more efficient:  our appliances, our buildings, our vehicles, and our manufacturing processes will all become more efficient.  There are enormous savings here.  As a general rule of thumb, $1 invested in efficiency reduces future energy expenditures by $3.  We make money for ourselves by becoming more efficient. 

Most Americans don’t realize that this is primarily a matter of getting the rules of the game defined properly.  California got this right years ago.  Reward public utilities for helping their customers use energy more efficiently; don’t reward them just for building more capacity.  Result? California uses electricity more efficiently than any other state, 7,200 kilowatt-hours per person per year.  Our national average?  12,500 kilowatt-hours per person per year.[i]

Vehicle efficiency standards are essential. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for automakers (CAFE standards) have already made a significant difference, and if applied even more aggressively, they will generate further gains.

Industry has abundant opportunities. United Technologies Chief George David spoke up for efficiency in the Wall Street Journal.  “Too much in the mind of the public is this idea that conservation means deprivation.  You’ve got to be cold at night, shut off the lights, stuff like that.  That’s simply not true.  There’s enormous energy savings potential in the conservation agenda where you do it by efficiency.”  Mr. David’s company dropped energy consumption by 19% over a decade in which it doubled in size.  “All America,” asserts David, “can drop its energy consumption by 20% in a decade easily.”[ii]

 

2.  We Will Free Our Buildings from their Dependence on Fossil Fuels.  American building standards are badly out of date.  We allow developers to undermine the common good with every new structure the build.  A badly under-insulated building forces its occupants to consume wastefully high quantities of energy.  As a homeowner, it pains me that I don’t own the heat in my home, I merely rent it.  My indoor heat escapes to the outdoors much too quickly in the winter; outdoor heat penetrates all too swiftly in the summer and puts my air conditioner into overdrive.

Had the walls of my home been insulated to European passivhaus standards, my furnace would be unnecessary and most likely I wouldn’t need an air conditioner either.[iii]  Washington Post reporter Steven Mufson writes of a well-known success story in Aspen, Colorado.  “Amory B, Lovins’ house runs on the same amount of energy it takes to fuel one conventional light bulb.”[iv]  The three secrets of an energy efficient building?  Insulation.  Insulation.  Insulation.

Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies has a fifty thousand square foot building that is designed to produce as much energy as it consumes.[v]  Passivhaus design provides for full air exchange between the indoors and the outdoors roughly every four hours.  Heat transfer ductwork helps bring fresh air from the outdoors up to (or down to) the temperature of the indoor air.

In a clean energy future, each new building will be properly insulated from the start.  It will be warm enough in the winter not to require a furnace and cool enough in the summer not to require air conditioning. 

The bigger nut to crack is America’s inventory of older buildings.  If we are to halt global warming, we will have to remove every furnace, stove, and hot water heater that relies on natural gas or heating oil.  That’s a very tall order, and a very intimate problem.  Almost every homeowner in the nation will be asked to be part of the solution.  How is this to be done sensibly and effectively?  There’s a lot of brainstorming ahead.

Three main themes will shape our retrofit approach.  We will want to weatherize our homes as effectively as possible.  Parts of our house were recently weatherized, with foam insulation applied both to our attic and the crawl space below our study.  In another year, I imagine that we will have foam insulation added to our exterior walls.  Our energy demands will fall substantially.  But weatherization is a pricey strategy.  Most homeowners will require financial assistance of some sort.

Second, we will want to replace our furnaces with heat pumps.  A furnace that runs on natural gas produces less CO₂ than a heat pump powered by coal-generated electricity, but a heat pump powered by renewable electricity is the best choice of all. 

Third, we will often want to supplement heat pumps with on-site geothermal wells.  Geothermal wells let us take advantage of constant underground temperatures not all that far below the surface.  A geothermal well delivers a constant temperature coolant to a heat pump all year, easing its cooling load in the summer and its warming load in the winter. 

Let’s imagine a five year timetable for all new structures.  No natural gas furnaces will be permitted in new residential and commercial properties built from 2016 on.  Get the job done with insulation and heat pumps and geothermal wells. 

Let’s imagine a thirty year timetable for all retrofits, residential and commercial.  By 2041, let’s be done with natural gas furnaces and heating oil furnaces and natural gas water heaters.  Let’s make this possible with weatherization, with heat pumps, and with geothermal wells.

Let’s brainstorm our hearts out so that we can find a smooth and owner-friendly way of moving the process forward.  It is not an easy thing to challenge ourselves to retrofit our homes no matter how urgent the cause.  We will want everyone to be comfortable that we have figured out the smartest possible methodology. 

 

3.  We Will Free Our Vehicles From Their Dependence On Fossil Fuels.  Let’s imagine, just for a moment, that it is 2040 and that America’s last gasoline-burning cars are being pulled from service.  How shall we honor the day?  Here’s an idea.

Dearborn, Michigan, is home to the Henry Ford Museum and its trove of exhibits – one-horse shays, cars, locomotives.  If Americans once drove it, the Ford Museum displays it.  One of its treasures is a Newcomen steam engine, thought to be the world’s oldest, placed in service in the mid-1700s. It is a behemoth of an engine, powered by coal, originally used to pump water out of English coal mines. 

When the nation’s last gasoline automobiles are finally retired, let’s stage a grand lottery for the owners of all these vehicles.  Let’s choose two winners – one man, one woman.  And let’s honor both winners in three signal ways.  Each will drive a farewell victory lap at the Indy 500.  Each will drive a farewell victory lap at the Daytona 500.  And each will have their cars enshrined as exhibits at the Ford Museum, placed alongside the Newcomen steam engine.  Think of it!  The First and the Last, on display together at the Henry Ford Museum, bookends to humanity’s age of fossil fuels.  Could anything be more fitting?

Now to the practical matter of creating clean energy vehicles so that today’s gasoline and diesel and aviation fuel vehicles can be properly retired.

One begins by acknowledging the multi-faceted character of this challenge.  “Vehicle” is a very broad term.  It takes in cars, pickup trucks, vans, SUVs, motorcycles, motor scooters, stepvans, eighteen-wheelers, agricultural tractors of many kinds, construction vehicles of many kinds, fork lifts, speed boats, ocean liners, ocean freighters, small aircraft, jet aircraft, railroad engines, buses, streetcars, and on and on.   Service requirements vary enormously among all these types.  And yet the goal is ultimately the same – replace all the power plants that require gasoline or petroleum-based diesel fuel or petroleum based aviation fuel with power plants that don’t.  And replace the fossil fuel distribution system of today with a new energy distribution system that doesn’t use a drop of petroleum, a whiff of natural gas, or an ounce of coal.

It will take some time to get all the pieces right, but if we put our minds to it, we ought to be able to get the job done by 2040.  No one knows, yet, just which strategies will be the best.  At a high level, one can anticipate certain rules of thumb being applied. Long-trip vehicles will have first claim on liquid fuels – jet aviation, ocean freighters, eighteen-wheelers.  Short-trip vehicles will be easily powered with electricity.  For most vehicle types, supply abundance will affect manufacturer decisions about the type of power plant to use.

There is one educated guess that we ought to be able to make right now.  (And Congress may soon agree.)  Corn ethanol will never have a major role.  Corn’s ability to convert solar energy into liquid fuel for vehicles is far more limited than ethanol’s proponents have been willing to acknowledge.  If it were possible to capture every photon of solar energy that falls on an acre of farmland and convert it into ethanol, a single acre’s worth of sunshine would give us 300,000 gallons of ethanol each year.

In the real world of corn cultivation and ethanol distilling, the average ethanol operation grosses 400 gallons of ethanol per acre.  Ethanol skeptics believe that it takes 300 gallons worth of ethanol to produce the final 400 gallon yield, so the net yield per acre may be as low as 100 gallons of ethanol per year.  If this rule of thumb is roughly right, then corn ethanol’s net yield is but one three-thousandth of ambient solar energy.  (100 ÷ 300,000 = 1/3,000^th) Hardly a promising ratio!  Photovoltaic panels convert solar energy into electricity with a conversion ratio of ten percent or better.  Compare the two ratios – ethanol with a gross solar conversion ratio slightly higher than one tenth of one percent; PV panels with a gross solar conversion ratio of ten percent.  We would get a hundred times more energy per acre from our corn farmers if we hired them to cover their fields with photovoltaic panels.  (Not that this would be a rational use of good farmland!)

Suppose we did this.  And suppose we used all that electricity to catalyze liquid hydrogen, at current efficiency rates of twenty-five percent.  (It takes four kilowatt-hours of electricity to extract one kilowatt-hour’s worth of liquid hydrogen.) 

We would get twenty-five times more liquid fuel per acre if we went after hydrogen than we now get by pursuing corn ethanol. 

These will not be easy research challenges, but we will make the research effort more successful if we pay close attention to solar conversion ratios.  Technologies with high conversion ratios will always trump technologies that have woefully low solar conversion ratios. 

 

4.  We Will Equip Factories to Run on Clean Energy.  America may not be the manufacturing force that it was, but government figures show industry consuming more energy than residential and commercial users combined.  Most of industry’s needs are presently met with natural gas, oil, and coal.

It isn’t fair to industry to say that public policy is going to ask it to reduce its overall carbon dioxide emissions, and then let it go at that.  Industry needs to hear the truth.  Global warming cannot be halted without ending the use of fossil fuels.  We face a climate change emergency and an ocean acidification emergency, and the only effective way to respond to those twin emergencies is to end our reliance on all technologies that consume oil or natural gas or coal.  Industry needs to know this, and industry needs to know that public policy will in fairly short order make that requirement clear to everyone. 

Capital plans for a post-fossil fuel future will be quite different than capital plans for a reduced-emission fossil fuel future.  We need to lay down the right marker for industry so that its leaders can plan wisely and invest responsibly.  

 

A New Portfolio of Source Technologies

Every user of energy requires a dependable source of energy.  Electricity users require clean electricity.  They require a competently designed and deployed grid, and they require a competent management structure to finance and supervise that grid.  Liquid fuel users require a sufficient supply of liquid fuels.  And users of heat energy require a sufficient supply of heat.  We have our work cut out for us.

 

5.  Tomorrow’s Electricity Will Be Generated By Clean Energy.  In a clean energy economy, the demand for electricity will almost surely be somewhat higher.  And almost all of it will have to come from sources that have not yet been deployed. 

It is essential that we set aside our habits of carelessness and address this issue seriously and thoughtfully.

For starters, we know that we need to get tomorrow’s customers and tomorrow’s suppliers talking together at the same table.  How much electricity is tomorrow’s vehicle sector likely to demand?  How much electricity will tomorrow’s homes and office buildings demand?  What about industry – what sort of electricity need will it want to meet?  Many of these estimates will be tied to guesses about future technology decisions, so it won’t be easy to pin anything down.  What counts is the vigor and foresight of the larger conversation. 

Electric utilities should also be pushed to prepare for a future in which the options of coal and natural gas have been completely taken off the table.  Our public utilities have been reluctant to acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis; it is time to invite them to be partners in shaping a competent solution strategy for ending global warming altogether. 

And it is time to enlist them in figuring out how we as a nation will create the electric generating capacity we need. 

We face a series of technology questions.  We need to think as clearly as we can about the future potential of several different power generation technologies.  Wind power.  Photovoltaic energy.  Concentrating solar energy.  Geothermal energy.  Wave power.  Nuclear energy.  The tethered kite version of wind power.  And others. 

For each of these scenarios, America needs to know both the technology potential and the economic prospects. 

No one can answer questions like this without better information than we now have.  The only way to generate answers quickly is to deploy all the options as energetically as we can for the next five or ten years.  Only through experience can industry leaders and the nation learn which technologies will give America its best mix of long-run capabilities.

As this conversation evolves, it will surface a host of siting issues.  Every gigawatt of capacity has to be put someplace.  Wind towers belong in windy regions.  Concentrating solar facilities belong in sunny regions.  Geothermal generating plants belong in areas of high geothermal potential.  And so on.  In the larger picture, America has more than enough land.  Forty percent of the nation is presently used for farming, so allocating perhaps half a percent of the nation’s land to wind and solar is well within reason.  But how, site by site, is this to be achieved?  The conversation needs to begin early, and it needs to be conducted responsibly and well. 

 

6. Tomorrow’s Electric Grid Will Support Clean Energy.  Oilman Boone Pickens likes to say that today’s electrical grid is an “accidental grid.” It wasn’t planned, it just grew, in small pieces, enmeshed within a crazy quilt of local management authorities.  It distributes, on average, 10 terawatt-hours/day of electricity, and no one knows, yet, how large a grid the nation will need in a clean energy future.  No one knows what sort of management structure ought to be responsible for the grid of tomorrow.  No one knows exactly where tomorrow’s energy will be generated.  Experts aren’t even sure whether tomorrow’s grid should be designed around alternating current or direct current. 

All we know for sure is that today’s management structure isn’t up to the task.  And we know that today’s crazy quilt grid isn’t up to the task.  What we have now isn’t ready for the clean energy future of tomorrow. 

Grid design issues present America with a major challenge and a major opportunity.  If we look forward into the future, perhaps we will decide that an entirely different way of managing the grid is in America’s best interest.  Or perhaps we will decide that each piece of the overall grid needs its own migration path toward a smarter and more responsible future. 

There is a lot of work ahead.  And all of it needs to be done on behalf of the national interest.

 

7.  Liquid Fuels Will Be Clean Energy Fuels.  All we know at the moment about liquid fuel is that we are compelled by circumstances to phase out our reliance on petroleum and find an ample set of alternatives.  (As some readers may not realize, the burning of liquid fuel that has been synthesized from recently grown crops has no effect on total atmospheric CO₂.  The burning of biofuels merely puts back into the atmosphere the CO₂ that was recently removed by photosynthesis. The CO₂ from biofuels is climate safe.)

As many as a dozen different technology strategies for producing liquid fuel have been mentioned as possibilities.  Ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen options presently receive the most press, but dark horse possibilities cannot be ruled out. 

Ethanol from corn has a political following but no realistic chance of meeting the nation’s liquid fuel needs.  Cellulosic ethanol seems promising, but no one has yet shown that it can be dependably produced in large quantities.  Crop-based biodiesel is somewhat more promising than corn ethanol, but crop-based liquid fuels all suffer from the same solar conversion inefficiency issues.  In time, scientists might master the process of extracting diesel fuel from greenhouse-grown algae.  Once someone proves a method for generating several thousand gallons of diesel per acre per year, industry will sit up and take notice.  Today’s manufacturers of diesel engines will benefit greatly should this benchmark be reached. 

Liquid hydrogen as conventionally produced has something of a cost problem.  It takes four kilowatt-hours of electricity, just now, to extract one kilowatt-hour worth of hydrogen from water.  If someone like MIT’s Dan Nocera[vi] can show us a better and cheaper way to extract hydrogen from water, we might just get the liquid fuel answer we need.

No clear winner has yet claimed the stage.  But someone will, because our economy simply cannot operate properly without a reliable source of liquid fuel energy.  A smart nation will invest aggressively in a dozen different possibilities for the next few years, in order to give all options a shot at proving their commercialization potential. 

 

8.  Heat Energy Will Be Clean Energy.  Compared to the markets for electricity and liquid fuels, the markets for heat energy may seem mundane.  Even so, heat energy has a vital role.

Industry will always require process heat.  If it cannot be obtained from oil or natural gas or coal, it will have to come from somewhere.  Where might industry turn in order to satisfy its full demand for process heat? 

The broad term “biomass” covers a range of possibilities.  Think crop waste.  If tomorrow’s process heat is to come from crop waste, will our nation’s farms generate enough crop waste to serve the appetites of the nation’s industries?  And still have enough crop waste left to restore the health of the soil?  We might not have enough biomass to satisfy all the needs of industry.

Think biodiesel, from greenhouse-bred algae.  If crop waste isn’t up to the task, can we create process heat by cultivating algae and stewing them up into delicious batches of biodiesel?  How many square miles of algae greenhouses might we require?  Will the biodiesel industry be able to cover all the nation’s liquid fuel needs, and still have capacity left over to supply industry with fuels for generating process heat?

Think liquid hydrogen.  Clean electricity can be generated in vast quantities if required, and a portion of the nation’s electricity output could be used to catalyze liquid hydrogen. 

As specialists in these matters already know, anything that industry burns in the pursuit of process heat should be asked to play a dual role, first as a manufacturing resource, then as energy for generating electricity. 

The crucial first step is a simple one.  Give industry the right signals.  Let everyone know that we have phase out fossil fuel energy entirely.  This isn’t just a matter of cutting back; this is a matter of creating an entirely new family of technologies at the fastest responsible rate.

 

A Dignified Exit for the Energy Industries of Yesterday

The renewable energy we need is available, in abundance.  Sunshine is free; it doesn’t have to be purchased from petro-dictators.  The challenge is to capture it effectively and efficiently, and convert its raw energy into several different forms so that all the parts of our economy can continue to function properly. 

As American industry moves forward on all fronts toward a clean energy future, the demand for fossil fuels will decline and then disappear.  It is never to early to begin the conversation about how the communities most affected can make a successful transition to a post-fossil fuel future.

It will not be a swift transition.  The true ramping down is still a couple of decades away, and it will not wrap up for good until the early or mid-2040s.  Hiring freezes and early retirements will ease the transition.  Pension benefits, though, will require some attention.  Will retirees have the pension protection they currently expect, if the fossil fuel industry disappears after 2040?  A wise and competent nation honors and supports its retiring fossil fuel workforce, even as it moves forcefully toward a clean energy future.

9.2, Revision 2011-06-27

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[i] Author’s analysis, using figures for 2007 from http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2007-01.xls and http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/sales_state.xls, Total Electric Industry section, Excel lines 1960 through 2011.

[ii] Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2007.

[iii] See Wikipedia, Passive House article. 

[iv] Steven Mufson, “One Man’s Long Battle To Get U.S. to Kick Oil.”  Washington Post, July 25, 2006.

[v] Yale Today.  Summer 2005.

[vi] Type http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html into a browser, or do a Google search on Nocera, MIT, and hydrogen.

9.3 Learning the Numbers

Words alone cannot tell the full story about America’s energy sector.  To understand the energy sector properly, we must know its daily numbers.  These have been laid out in the Sources & Uses Map below, so that all readers can have a proper snapshot of where we are today. 

Energy Sources are listed on the left-hand side of the map, from top to bottom, and shown in four main categories:  Fossil Fuels; Electricity; Liquid Fuel; and Heat.

Energy Uses are listed across the top of the map.  Electricity is both a use and a source; it occupies a special place on the map.  Not counting electricity, six major Uses are shown:  Residential; Commercial; Industrial; Transportation (Gasoline); Transportation (Diesel); and Transportation (Aviation). 

Everything has been quantified in watt-hours per day.  This isn’t always how we consume energy, of course.  When we burn a fuel of any kind, we normally measure its energy content in British thermal units, or Btu, and it has long been the custom in the Department of Energy to state American energy consumption in Btu rather than in watt-hours.  Tomorrow’s energy economy, though, will depend more heavily on electricity than today’s, and it is therefore appropriate to use watt-hours as our base unit rather than British thermal units.

Here we will multiply watt hours by a trillion, so that we can deal in terawatt-hours.  And we will measure daily average usage, expressed as terawatt-hours per day, or TWH/Day.  With terawatt-hours/day as our basic unit of measure, average daily consumption in the American economy turns out to be an easily remembered double digit number.  It turns out that end users in our economy consume 56+ terawatt-hours a day worth of energy.  

Readers will also note that the totals for Sources and Uses exactly match.  56 terawatt-hours/day of energy are produced; 56 terawatt-hours/day of energy are consumed.  The row-by-row total for Sources matches the column-by-column total for Uses. 

Begin with the second column on the Sources & Uses Map, the Electricity Generation column.  A number of energy Sources play a role in generating the nation’s electricity.  Not all the electricity generated, though, ends up being consumed by the nation’s users.  It takes energy to move electricity across the grid, and the map reflects this in the row called Losses.  On an average day, 0.59 terawatt-hours of electricity are expended getting power to the end users, with 10.27 terawatt-hours a day of Net Electricity supplied to the nation’s end users.  Follow the Net Electricity row to the right if you wish to see how much electricity is used in each part of the economy.  Residential users consume 3.97 TWH/Day, Commercial users consume 3.64 TWH/Day, Industrial users consume 2.64 TWH/day, and a comparatively tiny amount of electricity is consumed in Transportation.

[i]

Coal generates almost half of the nation’s gross electricity total, 5.02 TWH/day.  Natural gas generates another 2.46 TWH/Day.  Nuclear power generates 2.21 TWH/Day.  Hydroelectric dams generate 0.70 TWH/Day.  Other sources produce very modest amounts, but the modesty of today’s totals should not obscure the good news.  Renewable sources of electricity are growing rapidly.  The renewable energy sector may be small at the moment, but this is the sector that captures for us the sun’s energy, and in time we shall see it evolve in into the nation’s primary source of electricity. 

The rest of the map is reasonably self-explanatory.  One notes several sources of electricity:  nuclear energy, hydroelectric power, wind, biomass-wood, biomass-waste, geothermal-E (for electricity from the geothermal steam plants that generate electricity), and Solar/PV, an unfortunate hybrid category that combines solar heat for swimming pools and solar penels for electricity.  Other sources will show up on this list as their contributions grow.

One also notes two entries for liquid fuel – ethanol (a fuel based on sugars) and biodiesel (a fuel based on food oils and fats).  And three entries for heat – biomass-wood, solar/PV, and geothermal-H.  This last category refers to shallow geothermal wells used as thermal boosters for heat pumps.

A careful review of the map yields four major takeaways. 

First and most importantly, almost 92% of end use energy is presently derived from fossil fuels, 51.62 TWH/Day out of 56.28. 

Second, oil is by far the most important source of end user energy, worth 29.43 terawatt-hours/day, mostly in transportation.  Natural gas is the second biggest source of end user energy, at 15.78 terawatt-hours/day.  Coal runs a distant third and is in decline.  America burns a lot of coal, but only a third of the energy content in coal actually turns into electricity.  Measured by its contribution to end user consumption, coal’s share is modest, only 11.4 percent of the total.  (6.4 TWH/Day out of 56.3 TWH/Day) 

Third, Transportation as a whole is much the largest consumer of end use energy, consuming 21.59 TWH/Day in gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation fuel.  Industry runs a strong second, consuming 18.14 TWH/Day.  Residential and Commercial users run a distant third and fourth.

Finally, one must also note that electricity, from an end user perspective, gives us only 10.2 TWH/Day out of a total consumption rate almost six times larger.  Electricity is a larger sector when we measure its gross consumption of heat energy at the power plant, but it isn’t nearly so large when we view it from the end user perspective.

9.3 Revision 2011-11-03

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[i] Author’s calculations, derived from the Monthly Energy Review September 2011 (2010 full year data),  U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration.  (www.eia.gov/mer)

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9.4 Now What?

Think, now, about the next question.  What is the appropriate success standard for the American energy sector? 

Some would say “energy independence.”  Drill as aggressively as possible and reduce American dependence on foreign oil. 

Environmentalists have argued for “emission reduction” as our success standard. 

This book argues for a swift transition to a post-fossil fuel energy future, for a clean energy future that powers our economy while averting any further global warming, climate change, and ocean acidification.  A clean energy economy truly achieves energy independence. 

A competent public knows that the endless consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas yields an endless increase in the stock of atmospheric CO₂.  It yields an endless upward creep in global temperatures.  It pulls one climate trigger after another.  It slowly but inexorably produces ocean acidification and eventual massive extinctions for marine species.

A competent public knows that we have a vast abundance of raw solar energy.  If we are smart and aggressive, we certainly have the ability to power the entire American economy with clean energy. 

It is time to set aside “Emission Reduction” as the success standard we hope to achieve.  It is time to affirm Clean Energy as our true success standard.  Let’s reorganize ourselves so that in three decades we will have the tools to run the American economy at full speed without any further consumption of oil, coal, or natural gas.

A competent public knows that a slower consumption rate for fossil fuels doesn’t solve anything.  The total stock of carbon dioxide continues to rise, global warming continues to rise, climate change thresholds get crossed, and the ocean continues to acidify.  Growing the total stock of carbon dioxide by 50 billion tonnes a year instead of 150 billion tonnes a year doesn’t solve anything.  Either way, the stock of atmospheric CO₂ eventually tops out at very nearly the same level.  Topping out quickly or slowly makes little difference over the long run.  One eventually triggers the same string of global disasters either way.  "Emission reduction" is just another way of saying "losing end game."

A Clean Energy success standard calls for a different way of thinking about our solution strategy. 

We need to think holistically.  The entire framework of fossil fuel energy needs to be replaced.  All the user technologies that rely on fossil fuels need to be phased out; all the source technologies that deliver fossil fuel energy need to be phased out.  But none of what we need can be phased out till we are also prepared to phase in an effective portfolio of replacements.  We need an efficiency strategy, a new technology phase-in strategy, an old technology phase-out strategy.

How do we do that, and do it as effectively and swiftly as possible?

It is important to give ourselves ambitious deadlines.  No more gasoline-fueled cars on the road after 2040.  No more natural gas furnaces or heating oil furnaces in use after 2040.  No more electricity generated from coal or natural gas or oil after 2040.  No more manufacturing carried on with fossil fuels after 2040.  No more imports after 2040 from nations that still burn fossil fuels.

There is but one exception.  Any fossil fuel application that sequesters one hundred percent of its CO₂ will be permitted to remain in operation.  Will that be a small exception or a large one?  At this point in time, no one can know.

It is important to bring business fully on board.  Every industry that’s likely to play a major role in this transition ought to be asked to prepare its own clean energy transition plan.  Tell the nation, by 2015, how you will approach this.  Describe the issues you expect to face.  Suggest ways in which public policy can take away major obstacles and help you move forward.

Each of the major conversion challenges described above will require a guiding policy framework. Imagine a National Energy Efficiency Act, or perhaps a series of State Energy Efficiency Acts.  Imagine a Clean Energy Buildings Act.  Imagine a Clean Energy Vehicles Act.  Imagine a Clean Energy Factories Act. Imagine a Clean Energy Foreign Trade Act.

Imagine a Clean Energy Electricity Act.  Imagine a Clean Energy National Grid Act.  Imagine a Clean Energy Liquid Fuels Act.  Imagine a Clean Energy Heat Act.  Imagine a Clean Energy Siting Act. 

Should we also imagine a Clean Energy Carbon Tax?  We should. Three design concepts ought to be incorporated in the shaping of a Clean Energy Carbon Tax. 

1) Carbon taxes should be market specific.  In some markets, it won’t take much of a carbon tax to tip the market away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy.  In other markets, a somewhat higher carbon tax will be needed to move matters toward clean energy.  We don’t want carbon taxes to be pegged any higher than necessary; a market-specific approach will moderate the overall impact.

2) Carbon taxes in all markets should start low and then rise slowly but steadily over time.  The prospect of higher taxes in the future is often sufficient; one need not impose high tax rates on Day One.

3) The proceeds from Clean Energy Carbon Taxes should be split three ways.  Some of the proceeds should fund Clean Energy R&D.  Some of the proceeds should fund conversion costs and retirement program costs for communities whose economies depend heavily on coal or oil.  And some of the proceeds should be returned to the American people on a per household basis. 

American business needs to know what the rules of the game are to be so that planning can be done.  It is a gross injustice to say to business that emission reduction is the name of the game.  That soundbite has always pointed us in the wrong direction.  We are in the clean energy transition business, not the emission reduction business, and the capital budget implications for business are significantly different.  Business needs to be given a responsible set of signals and then helped to move forward toward responsibly-defined goals.

Growing Our Competence

By taking this on properly, we can learn together what it means to be more competent as a people. 

Core Principles.  By insisting that integrity at scale become the operating standard for the energy sector, we learn to flex our own civic muscle as champions of integrity. There is only one global atmosphere; we are all in this together.

Descriptive Worldview.  We learn what it means for Earth to maintain temperature equilibrium.  Infrared Energy Out has to balance Solar Energy In.  We learn the logic chain that ties technology to consumption, consumption to emissions, emissions to overall stocks, overall stocks to rising temperatures, and rising temperatures to the crossing of climate thresholds.  We learn as well to understand the consequences for the world’s oceans

Directional Worldview.  We learn to understand the steep rise in carbon dioxide now taking place.  We grow smarter about irreversibility, climate risk, and Uncompensability.  We begin to visualize the clean energy future we need.

Success Standard.  We set aside the false success standard of emission reduction.  We affirm clean energy as the success standard that halts climate change and blocks the advance of ocean acidification.

Solution Strategies.  One names the goal.  One defines the deadline.  And then all the players come together in skull sessions.  In football, players need to run the proper routes.  In civic life, something similar is just as important.

One-time CEO Jack Welch is known for saying, “Face reality, communicate honestly, control your destiny.”  Live by this principle and we will make America a far stronger and more capable nation.

Steven Howard Johnson, 9.4 Version 2011-06-27