Split from 2020 Elections: Energy Technology

[dismalist]

The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

[polly_mer]

Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now.

Research alone doesn't fix the problem if the problem is actually chemistry, physics, or some other limitation that is outside the control of humans. 

Above a certain level, additional research effort does not correlate with additional research progress.  More resources invested works great if the problem is epistemic (i.e., we just don't know yet).  More resources invested is much less effective if the problem is physical reality doesn't work like that, no matter how much wishing, hoping, and pleading one does because it'd be more convenient for the humans.

Nothing I've seen anywhere reputable (i.e., actual science outlets run by and for scientists and engineers) indicate the problem is Big Oil or some other group keeping the scientists down.  The current problems appear to be related to known physics, chemistry, material limitations, and geographic limitations.

In contrast, nuclear energy advancements do seem to be much more limited by human-imposed restrictions on the research than by Mother Nature.

[dismalist]

Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now.

Research alone doesn't fix the problem if the problem is actually chemistry, physics, or some other limitation that is outside the control of humans. 

Above a certain level, additional research effort does not correlate with additional research progress.  More resources invested works great if the problem is epistemic (i.e., we just don't know yet).  More resources invested is much less effective if the problem is physical reality doesn't work like that, no matter how much wishing, hoping, and pleading one does because it'd be more convenient for the humans.

Nothing I've seen anywhere reputable (i.e., actual science outlets run by and for scientists and engineers) indicate the problem is Big Oil or some other group keeping the scientists down.  The current problems appear to be related to known physics, chemistry, material limitations, and geographic limitations.

In contrast, nuclear energy advancements do seem to be much more limited by human-imposed restrictions on the research than by Mother Nature.

No, it's not about the laws of nature, it's about incentives! :-)

[dismalist]

The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

OK, it's due course time. So I found the IMF document. From the abstract:

This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

That's a not bad definition of subsidy if their estimate of "efficient prices" is correct, though I don't understand "revenue considerations". We should call this an "implicit" subsidy. So, they get a constructed number which may be well or not well estimated. Note that the estimated cost of the global warming is in the subsidy.

Now, put on a carbon tax, which one could do if one convinced a sufficiently large portion of the population, and that implicit subsidy declines.

I am not against this, but my point stands: Because there is no general carbon tax, this shows no one cares about global warming very much to pay any actual money. Just religion.

Anyway, next time somebody else do the woik.

[polly_mer]

I don't see much chance of big changes from individuals lowering their thermostats in the winter or eating organic vegetables in the summer. Public policy needs to be designed to make old habits more costly and incentivize the development of new habits.

That faith in public policy runs immediately into the Sam Vimes Theory of Boots.

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned

When you raise cost enough to change behavior for the privileged folks to feel it, the poor people have been run over.

Years ago, I saw a pretty good talk about how long various changes to the transportation sector would take to trickle through for better energy efficiency.  Those numbers will be outdated, but a quick check now brings up:

• About a quarter of the personal vehicles on the road are 16+ years old
• The average age of personal vehicle is 12 years old

If someone can get a car to last 300k miles or 16+ years, then they are not going to buy a new one, especially if money is tight and so the best option is continuing to operate with something that is paid off.  Money isn't tight in my house, but I'm going to keep driving my 2004 until paying one fixed, known amount every month for a reliable car is more convenient than the random amount as the 2004 needs fixing almost every month.

What that means is any fuel efficiencies that have come about in the past 15 years take quite a while to trickle down to everyone.  I have paid $4/gallon and kept driving because it was more convenient than my other options.  With fuel in town currently at $1/gallon, there's no way I'm trading my 15-minute commute with under five minutes of walking at any time I choose for a schedule-constrained, no-additional-cost bus ride that takes the better part of an hour with more than 15 minutes out in the weather and that's if I time it exactly right. 

Yep, the bus stops 50 feet from my front door and the buses are the nicest city buses I've ever seen with (pre-covid) plenty of seating on this route, but that's not good enough to make up for having to keep an eye on the clock to get the timing right to have only a 2h commute every day instead of about half an hour.

You'd have to get up to the point where the gasoline cost (or some taxes on personal car use/ownership) approach what my time is worth per hour.  That's going to hurt many people in this region and cause huge resentment before folks like me give up their personal vehicles.

Even more years ago, I took a course in energy taught out of the materials department.  The professor kept using $50/barrel of oil as a pain point for US society.  It's pretty clear that he was optimistic and even $100/barrel wasn't enough for a true pain point.

[dismalist]

Even more years ago, I took a course in energy taught out of the materials department.  The professor kept using $50/barrel of oil as a pain point for US society.  It's pretty clear that he was optimistic and even $100/barrel wasn't enough for a true pain point.

We don't want pain! We want to have less driving on account a CO₂. One can give some money fro carbon tax proceeds to the poor who will spend it less on energy and more on other things than if there were no tax.

None of this and such discussion in the public arena. Why not? No one cares is my tentative answer.

[marshwiggle]

Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now.

Research alone doesn't fix the problem if the problem is actually chemistry, physics, or some other limitation that is outside the control of humans. 

This relates very much to the issue of energy storage, which has come up earlier. Energy density is one of the biggest challenges, especially for things like transportation. Gasoline is very useful becuase the wmount of weight and volume required is small in relation to how far a vehicle can travel on a tank. (The time taken to refuel is also an issue, but that's for another time.)

Simple rule about energy density:
Nuclear power has extremely high energy density.
Chemical storage (such as fossil fuels) has reasonable energy density.
Physical storage (such as dams, flywheels, etc.) has low energy density.

The differences between these are orders of magnitude, so the options are finite.

I have mentioned my off-grid cabin. I use essentially car batteries for storage. Overnight the amount of energy used is typically about 10% of my battery capacity. If I were to replace that amount of energy by physical storage, it would require something like a refrigerator raised several hundred metres in the air to store that 10% of my battery capacity.
(The reason hydrolectric dams are practical is that they are at a huge scale.)

One of the big chemistry issues with batteries is that they require a reversible chemical process. (And one that preferably can occur over the desired range of temperatures that the system is going to encounter, so energy doesn't have to be used to control the battery temperature.)

Any energy storage system is limited by the laws of physics, and so any improvements will be incremental as a result. There is no silver bullet around the corner which will revolutionize everything.

[jimbogumbo]

The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

OK, it's due course time. So I found the IMF document. From the abstract:

This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

That's a not bad definition of subsidy if their estimate of "efficient prices" is correct, though I don't understand "revenue considerations". We should call this an "implicit" subsidy. So, they get a constructed number which may be well or not well estimated. Note that the estimated cost of the global warming is in the subsidy.

Now, put on a carbon tax, which one could do if one convinced a sufficiently large portion of the population, and that implicit subsidy declines.

I am not against this, but my point stands: Because there is no general carbon tax, this shows no one cares about global warming very much to pay any actual money. Just religion.

Anyway, next time somebody else do the woik.

How does the fact that a carbon tax does not exist show that no cares? I'm in favor of all kinds of stuff that won't get enacted because I don't belong to a group with enough political capital to accomplish the goal.

[polly_mer]

Even more years ago, I took a course in energy taught out of the materials department.  The professor kept using $50/barrel of oil as a pain point for US society.  It's pretty clear that he was optimistic and even $100/barrel wasn't enough for a true pain point.

We don't want pain! We want to have less driving on account a CO₂. One can give some money fro carbon tax proceeds to the poor who will spend it less on energy and more on other things than if there were no tax.

None of this and such discussion in the public arena. Why not? No one cares is my tentative answer.

A carbon tax is one political way to influence human activities that will generally fail because (a) the people who can't opt out are the ones who don't really matter enough to make a difference and (b) adding an additional operator's fee generally doesn't do much to change the behavior for the solidly established players who can afford that fee.  The focus on a one-off (at best) that can be gamed instead of addressing any of the reasons why people consume a lot of energy and without good large-scale alternatives in place so people can continue to live modern lives is like insisting that the adjunct problem can be solved by merely paying those folks better and combining some of the part-time jobs into full-time jobs.

The tendency of the general public and even officials running for office to focusing on one political tool without looking at all the consequences and keeping in mind the limitations imposed by physical reality (science and technology) is the biggest reason I don't engage with these topics in public.  This is exactly an example of trying to argue from a 3 on the science knowledge scale of 1 to 10 where a solid 8 is the needed level.

[Kron3007]

The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

I assumed you knew how to use google.  It is not obscure information.

 

[Kron3007]

The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

OK, it's due course time. So I found the IMF document. From the abstract:

This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

That's a not bad definition of subsidy if their estimate of "efficient prices" is correct, though I don't understand "revenue considerations". We should call this an "implicit" subsidy. So, they get a constructed number which may be well or not well estimated. Note that the estimated cost of the global warming is in the subsidy.

Now, put on a carbon tax, which one could do if one convinced a sufficiently large portion of the population, and that implicit subsidy declines.

I am not against this, but my point stands: Because there is no general carbon tax, this shows no one cares about global warming very much to pay any actual money. Just religion.

Anyway, next time somebody else do the woik.

Even if their definition of subsidy is off and the total value is debatable, I think it is pretty clear that governments around the world subsidize the industry.  They get tax breaks, and all sorts of incentives.  I have heard that one justification is that prospecting for oil is high risk, so they get incentives to lower the risk.  This just seems crazy and directly competes with emerging technologies. 

I am in Canada, and while we do have a carbon tax our government always jumps in to prop up the oil sector.  They just recently announced $320 000 000 to support the off shore oil industry in Newfoundland, not to mention bailouts for the Alberta oil sector.  These are companies that bring in billions, yet any time there is a (very predictable) drop in oil prices they need bailouts.  So, while I agree with a carbon tax, I think it needs to be done along with other actions.

I know Poly is arguing that the problem is chemistry and not investment, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between.  If you subsidize the oil industry you are making wind and solar relatively more expensive.  One of the main issues with alternative energy (at least in the beginning) is economy of scale.  If the market is not large enough, the cost of implementation is too high.  If there is a large enough market, the price drops and it becomes more feasible, regardless of technology.  By artificially making oil cheaper it is hard to achieve critical mass.

[pgher]

My research is in solar energy, and I'm generally an advocate for renewable energy. I won't belabor points that have already been made. Also, for those who are unfamiliar with our existing energy portfolio, I recommend the EIA web site, starting here.

The main difference between renewable energy and conventional sources is controllability. That's what energy storage provides. Currently, if you have an on-grid solar power system, you are using the utility's generation plants as "storage." That is, even if you provide all of your own energy needs, the instantaneous power you need is assured by the utility's coal, nuclear, hydro, and (especially) natural gas generation assets.

That has a real cost to it, as do all of the power lines, substations, etc. Where I live, the cost of the energy is about $0.02/kWh, but the retail cost of electricity is about $0.08/kWh. Why? Primarily, debt service on the capital investments the utility has made in the infrastructure that ensures availability. Secondarily, labor costs of maintaining the infrastructure. The reality is that the way power distribution companies incur cost does not scale (much) with load. We allocate cost on an energy basis as a matter of fairness: the people who use the most energy should pay the most for the infrastructure that delivers that energy.

Utilities push back against customer-owned generation because of the difference between energy cost and the cost of providing the service. I live in a net-metering state. If I had an appropriately-sized solar array, I could drive my electric bill nearly to zero. But without a battery bank, I would be exchanging power with the utility virtually all of the time. So I would be gaining a benefit from the infrastructure without paying for it. In Sun Belt states, enough people are doing this that utilities are in real trouble.

There is also a social justice aspect to it. Installing an appropriately-sized solar array might cost me $10,000. I could probably afford that, and might make it back in net-metering savings. As a result, the cost of providing the infrastructure would be borne disproportionately by those who cannot afford to install a solar array, those who rent, etc. (In a similar way, rich people who buy a Tesla don't pay gas taxes that support transportation infrastructure, while those who cannot afford to replace their 15-year-old gas guzzler do.)

Please don't misunderstand me. I think solar and wind are important components of our future energy portfolio. However, they have the potential to disrupt society in unpredictable ways.

[polly_mer]

I know Poly is arguing that the problem is chemistry and not investment, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between.  If you subsidize the oil industry you are making wind and solar relatively more expensive.  One of the main issues with alternative energy (at least in the beginning) is economy of scale.  If the market is not large enough, the cost of implementation is too high.  If there is a large enough market, the price drops and it becomes more feasible, regardless of technology.  By artificially making oil cheaper it is hard to achieve critical mass.

pgher makes a good case on distribution of electricity.

I will expand on Marshwiggle's post: focusing on how to generate electricity neglects the facts that we can't address all (or even the majority) of societal energy needs by electricity generation.  The storage mechanisms really, really matter, even for stationary outposts, and nothing is anywhere near as good as fossil fuels for many applications.  Converting something to electricity involves losses.  Transmitting the electricity involves losses.  Transforming the electricity back to something useful involves losses.  Reducing the cost of solar panels or wind turbines doesn't matter if all the losses for the uses we care about outweigh other considerations.

In addition, the price of a technology usually drops if automation works and the materials costs don't go up rapidly as demand goes up.  For example, when the whole town has to rebuild after a natural disaster, while demand goes up and some economies of scale kick in (the lumber yard can order in huge bulk), prices for materials and skilled labor skyrocket.  Demand alone is not enough to drive prices down if the main sticking point was needing to change from each unit being a special order one-off to an assembly line.  If we can't convert to an assembly line, but need to remain high-touch, special order, then the economies of scale are much less and throughput hardly increases at all.  No matter how convenient it would be 9 women cannot make a baby in one month.  Indeed, our economist friends would point out that when demand skyrockets and supply can't increase nearly at the same rate, then cost per unit will increase.

Yes, money put into subsidizing oil is money that wasn't spent on something else.  However, subsidizing convenient energy to the point that the lower middle-class folks can still participate in the modern society is often a social good that pays back much more than continuing to double down on the notion that something should work when the physical reality that we currently know replies back, nope.  Disenfranchising large numbers of people who have nothing left to lose because a decision maker just "knows better" is generally a way to foment uprisings by desperate people.

One really fun fact related to physical critical mass: if you hit critical mass in the wrong way, then you get a very exciting bomb instead of a controlled, sustained reaction that will produce power.  Focusing solely on level required for critical mass instead of how to get the desired sustained reaction doesn't work out in nuclear plants or, often, in social areas.  How you get to the critical mass and then pause at the right point matters much more than the general public thinks.

[dismalist]

Good luck with the batteries! :-)

[Kron3007]

I know Poly is arguing that the problem is chemistry and not investment, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between.  If you subsidize the oil industry you are making wind and solar relatively more expensive.  One of the main issues with alternative energy (at least in the beginning) is economy of scale.  If the market is not large enough, the cost of implementation is too high.  If there is a large enough market, the price drops and it becomes more feasible, regardless of technology.  By artificially making oil cheaper it is hard to achieve critical mass.

pgher makes a good case on distribution of electricity.

I will expand on Marshwiggle's post: focusing on how to generate electricity neglects the facts that we can't address all (or even the majority) of societal energy needs by electricity generation.  The storage mechanisms really, really matter, even for stationary outposts, and nothing is anywhere near as good as fossil fuels for many applications.  Converting something to electricity involves losses.  Transmitting the electricity involves losses.  Transforming the electricity back to something useful involves losses.  Reducing the cost of solar panels or wind turbines doesn't matter if all the losses for the uses we care about outweigh other considerations.

In addition, the price of a technology usually drops if automation works and the materials costs don't go up rapidly as demand goes up.  For example, when the whole town has to rebuild after a natural disaster, while demand goes up and some economies of scale kick in (the lumber yard can order in huge bulk), prices for materials and skilled labor skyrocket.  Demand alone is not enough to drive prices down if the main sticking point was needing to change from each unit being a special order one-off to an assembly line.  If we can't convert to an assembly line, but need to remain high-touch, special order, then the economies of scale are much less and throughput hardly increases at all.  No matter how convenient it would be 9 women cannot make a baby in one month.  Indeed, our economist friends would point out that when demand skyrockets and supply can't increase nearly at the same rate, then cost per unit will increase.

Yes, money put into subsidizing oil is money that wasn't spent on something else.  However, subsidizing convenient energy to the point that the lower middle-class folks can still participate in the modern society is often a social good that pays back much more than continuing to double down on the notion that something should work when the physical reality that we currently know replies back, nope.  Disenfranchising large numbers of people who have nothing left to lose because a decision maker just "knows better" is generally a way to foment uprisings by desperate people.

One really fun fact related to physical critical mass: if you hit critical mass in the wrong way, then you get a very exciting bomb instead of a controlled, sustained reaction that will produce power.  Focusing solely on level required for critical mass instead of how to get the desired sustained reaction doesn't work out in nuclear plants or, often, in social areas.  How you get to the critical mass and then pause at the right point matters much more than the general public thinks.

Sure, but your examples are of rapid increases in demand that outstrip supply.  My point is that oil subsidies have artificially given us access to cheap power for decades and stifled the natural growth of the alternative energy sector.  If oil based energy was a little more expensive all of these years, other approaches would have been more competitive and would have naturally developed the infrastructure so that supply may have developed as demand grew.  Wind and solar are now about on par with oil from what I have read, but this may have come much earlier if we were not subsidizing oil.

The storage issue is very real, and a good reason we cannot simply drop oil (along with many other reasons).  However, that dosn't mean that we couldn't have a higher proportion of our energy come from renewable sources and use oil during off times without major issues.  Solar and wind can also be integrated into the grid and do not necessarily mean micro-generation as pgher describes.

The cheap energy we have grown accustom to may increase our standard of living, but also encourages waste.  I think we all recognize that it is often cheaper in the long run to spend more on your shoes so they dont wear out as fast (for example).  Likewise, higher quality windows pay for themselves over time.  Perhaps instead of subsidizing oil, we should have been subsidizing windows...