TUESDAY, NOV 19, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
Electrifying the World
Maybe 50 wH/person/day; maybe more; maybe less
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: ELECTRIC FOR ALL, FROM THE WIRES, MAYBE A 5-15 W SOLAR PANEL FOR ALL
Abstract: We must de-carbonize the economy. We need a Green New Deal. We'll transition to an electrically empowered world. Wind, and solar, and hot rock geo, and fusion, and more sources than we can imagine will power techno-industrial society. Or not. A global grid will distribute the power that will eventually be too cheap to meter. Maybe. Or in 'the 21st century, the world...faces a triple uncertainty: in the timing and severity of climate change, in the future supply of fossil fuels, and...in future RE [renewable energy] availability. Fossil fuel use may have to be reduced to near zero in the coming decades, and future RE output could be far below present energy use'. Perhaps emergy yield ratios matter.
COOS BAY (A-P) — Read the World Energy Outlook 2019, but don't believe anything, question everything.
Nearly a billion humans, such as the traditional Hopi and Kogi (and some people living houseless or in some slums), don't have access to electricity. Industrialized humans think this is a bad thing and that we must grow the economy more and faster, sustainably of course, so all can have access to the short-term benefits of being electrified (some think the 'rich' need to share more or even degrow their consumption, maybe give up private jets). There is a growing gap between the eudaimonic world we all want to live in (the world promised by Growth's Mandate enthusiasts) and reality. Or perhaps it is the increasing awareness of the error, ignorance, and illusion we live in and the gap between our image of the world and the what-is that is growing.
Global energy demand/use increased by 2.3 percent in 2018 (70/2.3=30 years to double demand), so subjectively the SYSTEM seems to be working and while you actually can argue with claims of 'success', you shouldn't expect anyone (the 99+%) to listen until the belief in Growth's Mandate falters due to unplanned chaotic degrowth/collapse and the belief in recovery is no longer credible, which will occur post-peak.
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'Shale output from the United States stays higher for longer, reshaping global markets, trade flows and security. Annual US production growth slows from the breakneck pace seen in recent years.' (Subjectively) growth is always good. The SYSTEM seems to be working, and will until it isn't. The current SYSTEM does not select for foresight intelligence, merely for rat-shrewd short-termism.
'Over the past 20 years, Asia has accounted for 90% of all coal-fired capacity built worldwide, and these plants have potentially long operational lifetimes ahead of them.' These plants will not be decommissioned, so the smart money is investing in air conditioning businesses. Smarter people, however, don't believe in counterfeit money.
Electricity is best thought of as a carrier of energy, not as a source (even though wall plugs seem to be a source of energy). Hydrogen is a carrier, as are gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and 'natural' gas (which is unnatural) as refined from the fossil fuel gas as extracted (which is the proximal source, the sun being the distal source) with oxygen being 'too cheap to meter' and ignored or assumed to exist for the taking. Most chemical carriers are refined from fossil fuels and other sources of complex carbohydrates, which can be biological in origin as non-fossil fuels produced by the sun as source and stored short term as biomass. If fossil fuel derived industrial inputs into the growing, transport, and processing of biofuels, such as ethanol, turpentine (19th century source), and biodiesel, equals the energy contained in them, then biofuel is not a net source of energy, but merely a transformation of fossil fuels into a different form. But some biofuels (some small fraction of the energy provided by fossil fuels), like alcohol, turpentine, tallow, whale oil, and wood, can be produced sustainably.
Electricity from all sources (coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, geo, wind, solar) supplied just 19 percent of the world's final energy demand in 2018 and may increase to 23 percent by 2040, with most coming from fossil fuels. Although electricity is a major part of any transition to a low-carbon economy, and 50 percent of new power generation capacity in 2019 will be supplied by wind and solar PV as the source of the electricity, the global economy will remain overwhelmingly reliant on coal for decades to come, particularly in China (using half of global coal burned), India and other emerging economies.
Reality check: Wind/PV systems are made mostly of coal as is 90 percent of the food we eat if you count oil and gas (direct and indirect) inputs. Coal-fired generating capacity has grown by almost 70 percent since 2001 and will continue to grow (to make more wind generators and solar PV and everything else for sale in Walmart and elsewhere). There is no 'transition' as the energy produced by 'alternative' sources will not keep up with the increasing demand for more energy. We must GROW! the energy supply, especially electric, especially in Africa. If you don't agree, then you're a racist who wants to kill black babies. Expect the Current Policies Scenario to keep on keeping on, until it can't.
Of the increased demand for electric, electric vehicles may account for just 7 percent of the increase. Expect the growing demand for air conditioning to exceed the demand for transportation. Neither electric cars nor AC units will save the world, however. Global temperatures reached an historic high in 2018. Greenhouse gas emissions reached an historic high in 2018. Changing the pattern cannot be done by any collective choice as short-termism (the contingencies of reinforcement) rules. The current SYSTEM selects for short-term self interest (e.g. Trump) and, like a carcinogenic growth, cannot stop. Like a rat in a Skinner box, we will not choose to stop pushing the lever, but we will stop. The 'rules of the game' select for a fatal outcome.
During descent the rules can be changed. If new rules are prepared, adopted, and a new SYSTEM self-organizes, then descent/collapse could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. Those living through the descent won't have time to prepare. We do. A prosperous (as possible) descent is possible. We are playing a high-stakes endgame. Why not play it well?
Renewables are NOT about to eliminate coal, oil, and natural gas. They will add to their use. Electricity is produced from a variety of sources (the usual suspects: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, geo, solar, biomass and wind). The renewable element is growing, led by solar; solar and wind together provided 7 percent of power in 2018 and are projected to supply much of the growth in demand over the next 20 years. But coal remains dominant and use will increase as oil/gas resources decline before coal does.
The old pattern of centralized power sources is transitioning. The production and distribution of electricity is no longer limited in geographic terms because of transmission losses. Electric supply is no longer dependent on centralized plants pumping out power to consumers. Advances in technology, particularly in China, are leading to plans to trade electricity through long-distance grids. For the first time it is becoming a buyer’s market that will benefit consumers who will increase their consumption. A super-grid is planned for the USA and eventually the world, so when the sun is shining in America, electricity can power AC units at night in Africa. Even if everything seemed to be powered by electricity, from home heating/cooling and cars to airplanes, trucks, and ships, electrifying the world will not save us from climate change or unintended degrowth. It's a BAU world, until it isn't. Growth is good, until it isn't.
click to enlarge
As some catastrophists imagine, the gold/brown areas will be 'uninhabitable' apparently at any elevation. The above image was originally published in 2009 in New Scientist Magazine, but since removed, perhaps for egregious mis-information, though the image is still shared on social media (William Rees linked to it too though he knows enough to question all sources, so alas vet all sources). In Coos Bay Oregon, shown in the sub-green/gold area, the summer average high temperature will be 26°C (79°F) in the +4°C world to come, and 36°C (97°F) in the +10°C world that may come. Parts of the planet will still be too cold to support agriculture. Polynesians, if any, will live on barges anchored over what was once land (where the fishing will be great) that they may still claim ownership of. Maybe the ferro-cement barges will be huge, covered in coconut trees, and life will be more eudaimonic than those living in the 21st century could imagine (for a time). Or not.
A better image (2010 also from New Scientist) is this one, but it still needs to be interpreted, however.
In parts of coastal Oregon, palm trees are native. Their range may spread at the expense of pine trees that will grow further north. Redwoods, whose range barely intrudes into Oregon, may migrate further north as the centuries pass (or not). Parts of Arizona may be uninhabitable in the summer months, but merely warm enough twenty miles away at a higher elevation. So 'less habitable' to existing species is likely, but a politicized narrative of 'uninhabitable' is as imagined.
Any image you have of the future is an image. The future has yet to be, but it is coming, so guess well (science is the endeavor to guess well). A more rapid than usual rate of change is a good guess. That all humans will be extinct in the near future due solely to climate change is not. Near-future human extinction by multiple system failures, however, even if climate change were stopped and 20th century norms fully reestablished within five years, is thinkable. Keep your eyes on the ball.
Perhaps some humans will yet 'vote with their feet', form watershed management units, and embrace 17 'Sustainable Descent Goals for a Prosperous Way Down' and have up to 50 wH/person/day of electricity for personal use. Some call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. But such a 'possible' vision will not be the future. Climax and descent is predictable and all predictions can be wrong. I could hold a rock out in front of me, quickly withdraw my hand, and it could go up. Never has before, but alien technology that seems like magic to me could make it go up given the energy to make it, so will the rock fall? I don't know (with certainty).
Guess well. 'The experts say....', but 'science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says "science teaches such and such", he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience [Nature] teaches it' [Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, p.187] or 'Nature has all the answers' [H.T. Odum], or 'Listen to Nature.' [Taironan Máma]
Any future we imagine is untrue. The near future (next 50 years) will be unpredictable in terms of how it actually unfolds. Every biophysically possible future world is possible, and we don't get a vote. There is only one, in the present moment, possible biophysical world to love and understand, so embrace it. Only Nature 'decides' what works. We can guess then test to iterate towards a better grasp of reality. Any image of the future, however eudaimonic or doomeric, is a conceptual hallucination. Believe nothing as nothing real, including real solutions, is a matter of belief. We may come to prosper as enlightened beings or go extinct. The 'future' will come. Count on it. We may not be part of it. We are playing a global endgame. Guess well then test well.
The mind clings to its image of the world, to its narratives of it.
We call it real only because of our ignorance of the One Mind.
Do not seek after the truth, merely cease to cherish your opinions.
—Jianzhi Sengcan (aka Seng-Ts'an, ?-606 CE, Zhen translation)
Is technology an existential threat to humanity and the biosphere? Technology defines techno-industrial humans of NIMH. It was used by our hominid ancestors who were forced to live within limits and so did not define them. It eventually allowed for megafauna extinctions on five continents. Since technology enabled agriculture, humans (the last hominid standing) with more technology conquer those with less, with few exceptions ('friendly' Hopi who live in reservation housing with propane heating, drive pickups, have cell phones, and whose children play video games have not conquered the traditionalists who don't, and who are yet living in six villages as the only remnant population in North America to have not been assimilated).
If the Anthropocene enthusiasts are right, more technology will soon lead to our building a Dyson sphere to capture all energy produced by Sol, put there so humans could use it and all matter, out to and including the Oort cloud, to go forth and build Dyson spheres around other stars. At a mere two percent rate of steady growth, we will turn the Milky Way into an infrared emitter as seen from all other galaxies in 16 thousand years. A Dyson Sphere is Constructed
We look out upon the universe. We see no galaxies whose stars have been turned into Dyson spheres. The absence of evidence for the sustainable development of technology in any of some two trillion galaxies is evidence of absence. Techno-optimism is defined by the assumption, the deeply held belief, that humans will be the first entity in the universe to keep growing and blink out their galaxy. Doing so is easy to envision by any species not much more advanced than 21st century humans. Maybe billions of years have passed, pointlessly, while the Cosmos awaits for the coming of Lord Man.
Or maybe not. Maybe we'll learn to tell better stories. Maybe we'll learn to understand the planet and to live with it properly in a sustainable ecological civilisation. Or maybe not. We are playing a global high-stakes endgame. Wake up hu-mans.
A curious take on the human predicament: There are two narratives as told by Borlaugian Wizards and Vogtian Prophets, and by 2050 will it be 'Wizard or Prophet? The choice will be less about what this generation thinks is feasible than what it thinks is good.'
No, sorry, not even wrong. Nature determines what is feasible, what works. Humans don't get a vote. We don't get a choice. The intelligentsia are facepalmingly inecolate, products of a failed educational system.
Understanding the Human Condition
Consider this perplexing question: If human beings are so smart, why have we not solved the many social and physical problems that have plagued humanity throughout history? Are poverty, war, and genocide (to name a few) really going to be with us always? Moreover, why are we facing nearly imponderable problems that have developed due to our own inept actions, e.g. climate change? —George Mobus, A Theory of Sapience, 2019.
