Schadenfreude over Energiewende

Sacrificed Landscapes – How the Energiewende Is Destroying our Landscapes.  Book (in German, initially) soon to be published:  author is Georg Etscheit.

In the book’s promotion video, a number of Germany’s leading environmental experts are seen denouncing Germany’s Energiewende, as they are aghast at what is going on.

Prof. Dr. Niko Paech, sustainability scientist, says:

"What’s awful about the destruction of the landscapes and the government is that all of it has a legitimization.”

and

"The German Energiewende has become a justification for destroying our last remaining natural landscapes.”

and

"Science is legitimizing a rampage against nature. We destroy the landscape while we claim it is serving the ecology. It’s a cannibalism by the measures. Climate protection is the aim that justifies the means to destroy all other remaining environmental media.”

Dr. Gerhard Gronauer, pastor:

Climate protection that uses technical means against nature is a contradiction in itself.”

“Greatest fraud project”

Jörg Rehmann, journalist and author:

"If we want to survive on this planet, we need an Energiewende. But what the policymakers have made of it is not an Energiewende, rather it is the greatest fraud project since the end of the second world war.”

and

"Serious science has long proven that the Energiewende cannot in any way reach its targets. Society has to bear billions in costs, already energy prices are exploding, and policymakers are driving us further into a nuthouse in the clouds.”

Hmmmm.......

Roads, Cars, Tiwai and EV's: a Singularity approaches?

I'm always amused by the antics of the anti-roads brigade.  My initial reaction is simple:  don't these clowns realise that public transport (buses, taxis, and rentals) plus essential freight (food, exports, FMCG to yer local supermarket) all need - Roads?  I mean, whadda they expect - a Light Rail branch to every shopping mall?  Pallets of food (organic, naturally) carried hither and yon, on Cargo Bikes?   Bikes and rails chuffing up hills like wot they have in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland?    Gaah....

So it is with Great Glee that I stumble across an article trumpeting yet another breakthrough in EV's which leads straight on to thoughts about an Impending Singularity here in Godzone.

Just the facts, ma'am.

1. Tiwai Point smelter (Rio Tinto owned) is marginally economic:  it's COGS is around $USD16-1800 per unit, while the world price for the stuff hovers around $USD1900.  Once transport is factored in, it's hard to make a buck where SALES = COGS, no matter how much volume ya pump through. 
2. Tiwai is a way of exporting electricity, as the NBR article notes.  It is around 1/7th (that's 14.28% for youse metric types) of total NZ generation capacity.
3. Now, let's assume that Tiwai (disclosure, I carted  fabricated steel stuff there in ma Tonka Toy phase during TP's construction, so I have an interest in the show, plus I'm a Meridian shareholder) closes sometime between 2017 and 2022.  That releases a lotta electrons from potline slavery.  Hmmm.  What to use 'em for?
4. EV's, of course.  My guess is that, over that same planning horizon, the likes of Zytek, the hundreds of Chinese makers of everything from forklifts to trucks to cars to scooters, the Japanese, not to mention Ford, Toyota, GM and Tesla etc - will have such volumes and width of product lines available, that EV's will be the Cars and Trucks of the new era.
5. So we have ourselves a Potential Singularity here:  the EV cavalry (vehicles, power supplies, roads) ride into town at just the point where dino juice starts its inevitable price climb/volume degrade.
6. Hmmm.  I'd been hankering after a small hybrid (Prius C or similar).  Mebbe I'll just wait and see:  run the existing fleet into the ground....and go pure EV, to heck with hybrids.

Innovation in EV's - a Cambrian Explosion

Motoczysz has won the Isle of Man TT, just short of the magic 100mph lap speed, on an all-electric motorbike.

Wheee! As the Mogambo Guru likes to say.

Oil, Gaia's abiotic fruit, yer days are numbered.

Especially as the alternatives to batteries themselves are under development, as this little piece of good news shows.

Just as the early iron ships, steel bridges, internal combustion engines, and other technonological innovations went through a necessary stage of a 'Cambrian Explosion' - types, technologies, shapes etc. A Darwinian process then followed, winnowing the variety into a much, much smaller number of types, which we take for granted.

This motorcycle is part of EV's Cambrian Explosion.

Peak Oil?

A leetle rant about those who insist that PO is here! In NZ! I told yer so!

Variations on 'I told you so' are a good substitute for thinking?

NZ is nowhere near PO: the CSG prospecting undertaken by L&M, the Southland lignite fields, and the highly prospective offshore oiliferous zones are all local mitigators. The undoubted impact in a wider sense is of the toxic combination of locally selective PO (e.g. Europe), and BHO's latest excursion into the international version of Chicago Machine Politics which won't end well.

What is needed is a cool, realistic view of how best to use our certain and extensive resources well: so as to make a transition which:

- preserves living standards for working people at or somewhere near current levels. (The rich always have multiple options, ignore them, and it might be as well to state out loud what Won't be possible, in terms of aforesaid living standards' contents). And condemning folk to live in the late 17th century won't cut it, either.

- does not involve more than a reasonable extension of current technological trends. F'rinstance, positing mass use of personal EV's is perfectly OK. Proposing maglev rail everywhere isn't. No unicorn milk and pixie dust, please.

- takes into account the dark view exemplified by fiction such as Danny Suarez' 'Daemon', informed though such as John Robb's Global Guerillas (much mischief for very little input because of systempunkts spread liberally through our infrastuctures), and the genetic fact that we're highly evolved monkeys with an immense capacity for self-delusion and mayhem.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Maybe.

Could be termed 'sustainability' but that phrase is soooo devalued.

New renewable energy source

In a discussion about the EPA's approval to 'regulate' carbon doixide (that gas we all breathe out all the time), I came upon this priceless comment...

..harnessing the rotational energy of Grave-Spinning-Founding-Fathers.

Mind you, this can only last the term of the current Prez.

Power, power everywhere

This little gem from the ever-watchful Torygraph, shows just how much power is literally under our noses. I've always known that, given the right incentives (which generally means a crisis of some sort), that is to say, a large dose of Necessity, humans can pull yet another wabbit out of Gaia's capacious hat. Oops, I mean, exploit more sustainably our Ecological Niche.

Whether it be current-generated power (and the original clue was thunk up, oh, 500 years ago by one L. da Vinci), thin-film solar (leading contender here), bacteria engineered to produce whatever takes your fancy (hydrocarbon chains, plastics precursors, or just plain ol' hydrogen), the answer is very clear.

Absent a major cataclysm, (and the current financial storm in a tea cup doesn't even rate on this score: it's simply returning Fings to their Natural Order: P/E ratios in the low teens, yields in the centuries old 6-8% range, house prices to 2.8-3.2 times household earnings), the histories are going to record that, just as the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of rocks, and the Steam age didn't end because we ran out of water and coal, the Oil age didn't end because we ran out of Oil.

As anyone who's actually read Matt Simmonds knows, the Original Oil in Place can only be tapped to the tune of 10-30%. Geology and economics interesect on any given site to set that upper limit.

The forerunners of the new bio-solar age are just starting to ramp up commercially now. By the time the world really does see major disruptions in oil supply chains (think oil nationalism, piracy, pricing as well as field depletion), the alternatives will be there. Just in Time, natcherally.

Oh, and let's not forget conservation of energy. Just last week, I ordered a bunch of LED lights as replacements for those godawful pigtail (and mercury-laden) CFL's that the eco-agencies are pushing us all into. Well, a CFL to get a decent light output will draw 20-23 watts. The equivalent LED will draw 3-4 watts. From here.

Yup, folks, that power consumption is less than 20% of that of the State-Selected Winner. Another triumph of central planning.

And they are standard fittings too: E27 for the downlights, GU-10 for the fancy lights. Who needs State dinosaur selectors when little, nimble, furry competitors abound?

And, clever inventors....another step towards the Resilient Community.

Heat pumps (Shock, Horror) use Electricity!

This just has to be a No Shit, Sherlock moment for the hapless central planners of our funny little economy.

For the otherwise unenlightened, the backstory is that, due to Clean Air fixations, wherein chimneys emitting smoke are deemed to be a Bad Thang, there is a movement afoot to replace open fires and old wood fires, with 'clean' heat sources. And to encourage the masses, there are Gummint Subsidies to make a switch. (Bad puns, I've told you before. Sorry, Ed)

Heat pumps are a huge beneficiary of this move.

Oh dear, they cause a switch from sustainable, carbon based fuels (trees, unnerstan?) to electricity. Where peak load is generated from gas and coal. Nasty, dirty stuff, accordin' to some.

Which (spare generating capacity) NZ is rather short of at the minute. Double oh dear.

And heat pumps, particularly those of the reverse cycle persuasion, can also Cool. Cool pumps use power too! Damn, that wasn't in the Planners Plans! Folks were just meant to Heat with the things...And they Cool things in Summer, when electricity generation raw materials were traditionally stockpiled for Winter. Triple oh dear.

Funny, whodathunkit, them Central Planners never saw any o'this a'comin'.....

And you'd have to prise the remote controls for all them Heat Pumps from consumers' cold dead hands.....

Earth Hour = Soft fascism

Couldn't agree more with This (ht Tim Blair). While I'm wholly in favour of reducing consumption (and am well ahead of the curve, in that I have LED lights drawing 1-3 watts each as downlight replacements), I abhor the collectivist pressure inherent in EH.

And there's a less-well-publicised aspect to dimly lit precincts and premises that you won't hear about anytime soon from the promoters: they are, quite simply, crime magnets.

Earth Hour = A'robbin' we will go!

Overwhelmed by a Gust from Gaia

ht: smalldeadanimals

Solar is subject to Moore's Law

This piece (ht: Instapundit) is a useful reminder that the good ol' entrepreneurial business is the way forward. Earnest Gummint committess won't cut it. Bit like the UN in Darfur - no skin in the game, so no real incentive to step in and help.

Moore's law: explanation here - capability rises/price halves roughly every 18-24 months. Works for me.

The money quote:

"You may not like their politics, or their attitude, or their style. But if we really do have an energy revolution in this country and free ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels, it will be because of hard-charging, take-no-prisoners entrepreneurs like T.J. Rodgers — not UN committees, environmental groups, or government officials."

I plan to fully solarise my house in 2-5 years time. Like, net grid-producer, not consumer. Bye-bye to power bills, and much more resilience. There is a host of up-and-coming firms making thin-film solar, and the grid-tie plus feed-in-tarriff contractual stuff is starting to get worked on by the more aware power companies.

I thus don't fret too much about the lakes, the need for more power stations burning whatever - plutonium, coal, natural gas - or the State of Fear pronouncements about pylons, wind power or draining Gaia of all her internal heat via geothermal take.

The Sun will do it for me. Oh wait. It seems to be cooling. Toyota!

Woo-Hoo. No Really. Solar panels at $USD0.30/watt

This is just the best news. Big award, for a deserving company.

With current solar at around$USD3-5/watt, buying say 2 or 3 kw of panels is economic madness, particularly when you do the conversion to the Kiwi Peso. Best price I've seen for silicon is around $NZD9/watt. Times that by, what the hell, 3000, and that's a lot of pesos.

No more.

Nanosolar (hmm, I seem to have figured this out early this year) is just, according to the money quote from the PopSci award linked above, "putting down factories instead of blathering to the press and doing endless experiments. These guys are getting on with it, and that is impressive."

And at say $NZD 50c/watt (once supply gets here, say 2009 - Nanosolar have a lot of pre-committed sales), why, that 2-3kw of solid generation you need, looks suddenly quite affordable. $NZD 1,500 for thin-film, versus $NZD 27,000 for silicon - well, I think dat's what dey call a no-brainer.

To be sure, there will be conversion efficiency differences, and other factors which will make the thin-film look less rosy. But there's a lot of wiggle room in that price diferential, to soak up these factors. Even if the thing ends up just being one-quarter of the silicon price, instead of well under one-tenth, the outlay is not too much of a stretch for households.

And that's the secret. really. Widespread adoption. Bring it on.

Abiotic Oil - Gaia's fruit after all?

This is the latest (and, to my mind, clearest) statement about the origin of Oil - it ain't a 'fossil' fuel at all, according to those contararian Ruskies. It's a natural product, created deep within the Earth and slow-erupted up into the crust. Where it can be found by following geological signs, but just not the ones the Western scientific world tends to use.

All this rather does blow a big hole in Peak Oil theories, and indeed in any theory which treats oil as a finite resource. According to the Asia Times article (and I guess, to the book behind it) by F. William Engdahl, the Russians have followed an abiotic-origin theory since Wegener's time - the 1930's. They find oil where Western geological wisdom says there shouldn't be any.

So cars, SUV's and other devil-spawn are going to have four energy sources in future:

1 - oil, the natural, Gaia-created product of the deep
2 - hydrogen - and note the recent breakthrough in making this directly from plant starch
3 - electricity - I'll have a Wrightspeed, please
4 - Liquid fuels with similar energy density to petrol, from biomass

Who says that science isn't fun? Or that it can't save us (yet again - remember that hysterical old ninny Paul Erlich, anyone? "The edge of the crisis - we describe our first encounters with the age of scarcity and outline the greatest threat in the immediate future: the food crunch" - chapter One heading from "The End of Affluence", 1974).

I'll take Science over State of Fear, any day.

Climate Change runs out of gas

This piece of actual science shows the value of actually doing the sums. Essentially, there jest ain't enough recoverable hydrocarbons in the entire world, to support assumptions made in the IPCC's climate model. Like, IPCC assume 11-15 trillion barrel-of-oil-equivalent (TBoe) is going to go up in smoke.

Bzzt...wrong. There's only 2.7-3.5 TBoe left in the whole freakin' world, according to this. That's (counts on fingers) only 38% (3.5/11 - the best case) of the IPCC assumption.

It's really embarrassing, if you are of the Chicken Little persuasion, or (needless to say) a UN bureaucrat or activist scientist on the Gerbil Worming Gravy Train, to trip over such a basic misapprehension about our world.

But wait, there's more.....

And, of course, the real story is well away from the neg-heads, over here. Solar (particluarly thin-film solar) is going to power us in a generation or so.

Solar independence

Th is is good news. There are several companies very active in the CIGS field now (Nanosolar, Miasole, Konarka, Heliovolt) and there is a very useful directory here.

The premise is simple: thin film solar generates DC current in useful amounts, and the films themselves are produced via a printing process akin to newspapaer printing. That is: by the hectare. The films can be molded in any shape, stuck to existing e.g. roofs, and costs are predicted to ba around $USD0.50/watt within 5 years.

So instead of building centralised power stations, this holds out the prospect of completely self-powered houses. Nice thought, huh?

Updated:

Another good directory here. Once this stuff gets commercialised with distributors, franchisees, integrators and tradespeople on tap, it will be gangbusters. Or even, Dambusters. Just think of what evacuated-tube solar hot water is doing right now. The same, squared, will apply to residential solar. And the nicest aspect (no URL, found the info while wwilf'ing) is that the power is clean: no more spikes or ripples caused by neighbours welding, nearby industries, or incompetent power suppliers.