Energy Efficiency

                                                                                       written 20 October, 2024

                                                                                   published 27 October, 2024

   

            The current US energy reality is that 79 percent comes from coal, oil, or natural gas, 13 percent comes from real renewables (solar, wind and hydro), and 7 percent comes from nuclear.  Electricity from nuclear is the most expensive power on the grid, twice grid scale solar.  Today, a typical 1,100MW reactor costs about $30B, in part because they are custom made, increasing the cost.  Their size means power production is centralized, needing extensive grid connections.  Only two new reactors have come online in the US since the 1979 Three Mile Island event,

            While there is a resurgence of big money interest in small modular reactors, with projected capacity of 1MW-300MW, this is still at the concept stage, despite a few holes in the ground for new development facilities.  The expectation is that mass produced smaller reactors will be cheaper.  However, these won't be in production any sooner than 2030, with no idea of final cost.  Consequently, there is no actual market for these reactors right now.  

            As the climate crisis grows, the need to eliminate further fossil fuel combustion is imperative.  But even some people not employed by a fossil fuel company believe there is no practical way to eliminate fossil fuels.  Is there any hope?  Perhaps.

            A Sankey Flowchart is a graphic representation of our total energy system in one visual diagram.  The chart breaks energy down into four levels.  Primary energy in the original material, such as coal, oil, or natural gas.  This is converted into Secondary energy, which is a form that can be transported, such as electricity, gasoline, or diesel.  Final energy has been distributed to the end customer, and is applied as Useful energy for the individual need.  Every step is inefficient, with some percentage going to "waste", often rejected as heat.  The result is that Useful energy is only about 1/3 of the original Primary energy.

            For example, when coal (primary) is burned to produce steam, to turn a turbine, which generates electricity (secondary), 65 percent of the energy is already lost.  Burning natural gas, the other major source of electrical production, the loss is still 55 percent.  Coal and gas plants are large and expensive, lasting about 30 years, getting less efficient as they age.  Shutdowns due to regular maintenance, or emergencies, waste energy in the long cool down and heat up phases.  As grid load peaks, older, less efficient plants come online. Even though they are used at less than their full capacity, the plants need to be kept hot, and staffed, even if only needed for an hour a day.  

            Other fossil fuel usage is also inefficient.  Natural gas stoves put only 40 percent of the heat into your food, the rest is lost heating the kitchen.  In an automobile, as little as 20 percent goes into moving the car, the rest is lost moving various parts, operating accessory items, and most heats the atmosphere.  Much of that useful 20 percent is thrown away when you brake the car to a stop.

            Real renewables skip the combustion/heat phase entirely, going straight to electricity.  Losses from grid transmission, distribution, and battery storage are much less, increasing the percentage of useful energy available. 

            An induction heated stove uses much less energy to cook the same food.  An electric car uses 90% of the electrical energy, providing 3-4 times more milage per unit of energy.  In addition, regenerative breaking recaptures some of the energy used to get the car moving, and stores it back into the battery to be used again.  Heat pumps heat a building 3-4 times more efficiently, because they simply move the ambient heat in the air, rather than creating it through combustion.

            A completely electrified economy would need 40% less total energy than our current economy, and renewables would produce that energy 3 times more efficiently.  Completely switching to electricity gives much more bang for the energy buck. 

            But this requires transforming our entire energy economy.  Millions of jobs will be affected, some lost from the old energy technology, and many more added to construct, and install the new systems.  Global estimates range up $45T, which is a lot.  However, we already pay about $7T per year for fossil fuels.  If unaddressed, the climate crisis will cost $180T, and risks putting an end to humanity.  The only question is: do we have the wisdom and will to make it happen?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Sane Society

                                                                                       written 13 October, 2024

                                                                                   published 20 October, 2024

   

            In 1956, philosopher/psychologist Erich Fromm wrote "The Sane Society", exploring how a sane person can living within an insane society, which demands some definition of the term "sane".  A brief web search finds definitions such as: "proceeding from a rational mind", "able to anticipate effect of one's actions", "healthy", "balanced between mind and emotions", and "consensual validation".  However, Fromm argued that just because a person is in accord with their culture, that doesn't mean the culture itself is sane.  A simple example, with local roots, was Peoples Temple, which resulted in the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana, using poisoned Kool-Aid, when relatively normal folks believed their charismatic paranoid leader.  Clearly, true sanity can't be just consensual agreement.

            In my opinion, sanity is awareness and experience in harmony with the larger reality, including not only the outer, cultural reality, but equally important, clear experience of our own inner reality.  It is well known that our entire experience is shaped by our internal perception.  We see what we believe, and then mistakenly assume what we see is absolutely true, rather than only relatively true, at best.  Consequently, examining, and understanding, our internal story is essential to experiencing a more harmonious life.

            A slogan which inspires me reads: "When one's spiritual needs are met by an untroubled inner life, happiness comes when work and words are of benefit to yourself and others".

            Without an internal enquiry, we are at the mercy of subconscious patterns that shape and disrupt our life, many of which were laid down long before we were even conscious of ourselves as individual beings.  These include everything from the culture and economy we were raised in, our native language, and the wisdom and compassion (or lack thereof) of our parents.  

            Integrity comes from having a good sense of our inner experience, combined with the courage to live our truth in the face of conflicting opinions.  This can be dangerous, generating strong pressure in response, even to the point of physical violence and death.  A common tool of all authoritarian systems is to demand allegiance, enforced by violence.

            Our society is under stress, as people with different beliefs accept different "facts", eroding our cultural agreement.  These social fissures are long standing, but Trump has amplifying them for his personal gain.  He is the product of his upbringing, with an authoritarian father, an emotionally unavailable mother, and enough family money to dominate everyone he ever encountered.  Many psychological professionals, including his niece, have described him as a malignant narcissist, unable to experience anything other than his own world view, taking credit for everything, and responsibility for nothing.  

            He is documented to lie about anything, if he thinks it will be to his advantage in the moment.  But Trump is very charismatic, believing everything he says, at the time he says it, even if he said something completely different just a moment before, so people believe him, even if it is to their own disadvantage.

            My particular focus is the climate crisis, which Trump claims is a hoax.  But despite his claims, climate change is real.  Recently, hurricanes Helene and Milton have created such devastation in traditionally red areas of the country, that people are beginning to see that what is happening in their own life conflicts with the lies Trump and his enablers continue to spout.  Trump lied that FEMA wasn't helping, even after the governors of Georgia, and both Carolinas publicly applauded FEMA assistance.  In Florida, people know that officially banning the term "climate change" didn't save their communities.   

            When reality conflicts with preconceived ideas, a person can go one of two ways.  The diehard believers double down, taking refuge in conspiracy theories like "they can control the weather", and usually blame "someone else", often from a dogmatic religious framework.  Either God is punishing the wicked (those that don't agree with the believer), or Evil is driving the situation, demanding the righteous take action.  This can engender intense passion, and complete certainty.  However, from an inclusive unity perspective, these are followers of a little god, despite their passionate conviction.

            The alternative path is to change our mind, realizing we have been led astray by people with ulterior motives, not aligned with our interests.  At some point, everyone will experience we are all in this together.  The only real questions are: how long will it take? and will we still be able to respond effectively?

 

             

 

Our Foolish Energy System

                                                                                         written 6 October, 2024

                                                                                   published 13 October, 2024

  

            Recently, Helene came ashore as a category 4 hurricane, 600 miles in diameter.  A tropical depression just a few days earlier, the very hot water in the Gulf of Mexico rapidly amplified the storm, and increased the amount of water it carried. 

            Helene made landfall in the Big Bend section of Florida, the third, and strongest, hurricane to hit there in just 13 months, producing a 15 foot storm surge, the largest ever recorded in that area.  Moving quickly inland, Helene dropping torrents of rain, before dissipating hundreds of miles north.  The hardest hit parts of North Carolina had already experienced days of rain before Helene arrived, and some areas received as much as 24 inches, causing epic flooding and destruction.

            Another tropical depression has formed in the Gulf of Mexico, and will reach Florida before this article is printed, possibly as a category 3 hurricane.

            The Project 2025 authoritarian plan for the United States claimed in the climate section that "climate change is overstated, and will be mild and manageable."  The reality now being dealt with in the southeast is neither mild, nor manageable.  Insured costs and infrastructure repair expenses are estimated at over $150B, and will take years to accomplish.  This doesn't include uninsured losses, or business income lost during recovery.  When your home and place of work have been destroyed, getting back to "normal" can take time.  Some of the people in Florida haven't recovered from the previous two hurricanes, and may not ever rebuild there.  Home insurance in Florida is already four times more expensive than California, and the industry may not survive the current impacts. 

            The climate we experience today is the result of more than a century of changing atmospheric chemistry, resulting from human energy production, trapping more heat, which is then distributed in more extreme weather events.  Storms are becoming more numerous, stronger, larger, and carry more rain.  No place on Earth is immune.

            For those willing to actually look at the issue, the challenge is stark: stop adding to the problem (economic decarbonization), and begin removing what has already been done (carbon sequestration).  For those addicted to the money of the status quo, and willing to ignore the reality of the ongoing impact, this is intolerable.  We saw that at the Vice-Presidential debate, a few days after the Helene devastation.  When asked about the climate crisis, Vance faithfully parroted the party line.  Republicans are committed to "clean air and water" (without mentioning greenhouse gases), and the solution is "Drill Baby Drill".

            Without even considering the climate crisis, our current energy solution is foolish, leading to economic bankruptcy and societal collapse.  Classic fiscal advice is to conserve your savings, and live on the income.  The cautionary tale is the person who rapidly spends their inheritance, and then dies broke.  Humanity inherited a vast supply of stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuels, laid down over tens of millions of years.  In just two centuries, we have burned through about half of that inheritance.  These have been the most accessible reserves, which produced the cheapest power.  As we continue to deplete our finite energy savings, all future fossil fuels will become increasingly more expensive.  This same limitation is inherent in nuclear fission, which also consumes rare, finite material.

            The alternative is learning to live within our income.  We can now efficiently harvest our daily energy income, collecting it as solar, wind, or hydro power (collectively called renewables), and efficiently store this energy until needed.  Unlike all energy produced by combustion, this energy is free, needing only the hardware to collect it, which is a fixed cost.  Furthermore, the collection/storage hardware can be produced in a range of sizes, from vast systems to those scaled for a single dwelling.  This helps free us from the constraint of centralization, which requires huge capital investments and massive distribution systems.  Such energy systems are useful all over the planet, and the increasing scale of manufacturing keeps reducing the costs every year.

            Tapping another free energy source, the emerging technology of closed loop geothermal power collects the internal heat of the planet.  It can be located almost anywhere, with a modest physical footprint.

            Learning to live within our energy income is sustainable well into the future.  The existing energy system is getting more expensive, and produces unintended consequences that are killing our society.  Are we wise enough to change?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             

 

Gambling On Nuclear

                                                                                   written 29 September, 2024

                                                                                     published 6 October, 2024

    

            PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, located on the coast near San Luis Obispo, is the last operating nuclear facility in California.  The two 1,100MW reactors came online in 1985 and 1986, designed to operate for 40 years.  In 2016, PG&E announced plans to close both reactors by 2025, rather than incur costly upgrades.

            Nuclear power is baseload power, meaning it operates 24 hours a day, but output can't easily be adjusted to meet variable grid loads.  These days, it is the most expensive form of utility scale electricity.  As with all combustion power sources, uranium is a finite fuel, and most deposits easy to access have been depleted, driving up fuel costs.  Each reactor holds tens of tons of enriched uranium fuel, but the nuclear decay by-products degrade the energy efficiency of the fuel rods, requiring refueling after just 5 percent of the uranium has been consumed, contributing to the high operating costs.  After 70 years of commercial nuclear power, there is still no adequate storage for the highly radioactive used fuel rods. 

            While it is accurate that a normally functioning nuclear reactor does not emit any greenhouse gases, there is great concern about what happens when a reactor fails.  Greenhouse gases last for ten centuries, but radioactive contamination lasts for a thousand centuries.  There have been three major reactor malfunctions that made the news (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima), so we know such failures are possible. 

            The Diablo Canyon reactors are at the end of their design life, without any upgrades, and it is known that prolonged, intense radiation embrittles metal, weakening it, increasing risk of failure.  There are three active seismic faults within three miles of the Diablo Canyon plant, each capable of a magnitude 7 event, including one running right through the site.  PG&E tested for embrittlement in 2006, but refused to make the results public, claiming "proprietary information", and has postponed any further testing.  A structural failure of a weakened reactor cooling system due to an earthquake could cause wide spread radiation contamination.

            Fukushima failed when the tsunami flooded the emergency backup generators, causing several reactors to overheat and melt down, with resulting hydrogen explosions.  This was a direct result of original cost cutting decisions about how high to build protective sea walls, and sea level placement of the generators.  Safety is always sacrificed when decisions prioritize maximum profit.

            The reactors at Fukushima broke thirteen years ago, and real clean-up has yet to begin because the site is still too lethal for even robots to operate.  Cleanup costs are estimated at over a trillion dollar, and will take 4 decades, considered optimistic, as clean up on this scale has never been accomplished before.  

            PG&E is not liable for any radiation contamination damages, or cleanup costs, by long standing federal legislation.  No insurance policy in the country has ever covered such losses, because the price is indeterminant and the risk is completely unknown.  

            In 2021, the California Energy Commission became concerned about summer blackouts resulting from increasing air conditioning loads due to growing planetary heating, and recommended Diablo Canyon continue operating until 2035.  Recently, all electric utilities were told they must share the cost of keeping the plant open, even if they aren't in PG&E territory.

            Despite plans to operate past the original design life of the system, PG&E has not been required to make any major plant upgrades, which would be expensive and time consuming.  In addition, PG&E has not been required to make public the embrittlement testing done 18 years ago, or make any new tests on the current state of the system.  We are supposed to just "trust them", and hope for the best.

            This is the nuclear gamble: operate an aging nuclear plant, in an unknown operating condition, sitting on known fault systems, hoping for no seismic events for the next decade.  On the one hand, it has worked so far, and PG&E continues to get massive profits from the most expensive power on the grid.  However, should a low probability seismic event occur, and the reactors break, contaminating the center of California, PG&E is fiscally responsible for nothing.  However, we all get to deal with, and pay for, the result.  

            This is typical corporate financial reasoning: capitalize the profits and socialize the losses.  Sweet deal for the company, which has already demonstrated its complete disregard for customer welfare over the last few decades.