For-Profit Utility See Renewable Energy as Their Ruin

[seemslikeadream]

For-Profit Utility Companies See Residential Renewable Energy as Their Ruin

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

atransm12 30There's one overhwelming dirigible-size reason for-profit (and often monopolistic) utility companies -- that transmit and sell most of America's energy -- generally discourage, if not crush, residential solar (and other renewable) energy: fear of large scale loss of profit.

Last Friday, I wrote a commentary on a Hawaii for-profit electrical utility company that was taking new measures to dampen the selling (called "net metering" in the industry) of excessive solar energy back for distribution to other utility customers. The commentary was entitled, "Booming Solar Energy Halted by Hawaii Utility Because Sun Produces Too Much Power!"

The BuzzFlash at Truthout column was based on information provided in a Scientific American (no bastion of leftist bias) article entitled, "A Solar Boom So Successful, It's Been Halted: Photovoltaics proved so successful in Hawaii that the local utility, HECO, has instituted policies to block further expansion." Thus far, the BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary has received 11,000 Facebook likes and a lot of shocked readers.

However, there was a small number of alleged electrical engineers (and they may have very well been, instead of paid company shills which has become a common and legal practice in comments sections) who objected to both the Scientific American article and the BF/TO account of it. They argued that "liberals" and "eco-types" don't know about how complicated and aged the electrical grids in the US generally are (although this was conceded in both the BF and Scientific American accounts). That was the claim of the Hawaiian utility in question, HECO, which asserts on their website that they are avid supporters of renewable energy, just like Chevron or Shell does.

That's all very interesting, but -- on the whole -- for-profit utility companies were dragged kicking and screaming into the concept of allowing renewable households and industries to sell their excess energy back via transmission lines (known as hooking up to the grid). Why might you ask would a for-profit utility company be against households or industries becoming so successful in renewable energy that they are generating excess power?

Simply put, for every household or industry that becomes self-sustainable with renewable energy, the for-profit utility loses a customer, which is the same as saying losing profit. For every renewable house or industry that uses net-metering to send excess energy over the transmission grid of the utility, the utility is losing both a customer and weakening its energy monopoly.

The primary and ossified model of electric utilities is centralized monopolization of energy transmission (which again only relatively recently has been challenged through both consumer and "electrical energy buyer" lobbies -- which is another issue largely unrelated to renewables). Furthermore, as "Solartopia" author Harvey Wasserman notes, the utilities are members of the same industrial fraternity as the fossil fuel and nuclear plant generators -- sometimes doubling up as in the case of utility-owned nuclear power plants.

The goal of utility companies, on the whole, is to work to ensure that a new model of decentralized renewable energy distribution does not emerge. If it did, the for-profit utility companies that get their way in so many state legislatures, not to mention favors from the federal government, would become extinct.

Their only hope to survive in the longterm is to monopolize the power grid long enough to build renewable energy sources that they own and distribute -- and only, for the most part, when they run out of fossil fuel (if the earth is still around) -- and that do not come from external sources such as solar-equipped businesses and homes. Only a few utilities have begun to understand this and start weaning themselves off of fossil fuel, but in the meantime they need to keep homes and businesses from independently establishing renewable electrical cooperatives -- and the way to do that -- they think -- is to stop current customers from converting to independent renewable energy.

That's the story, whatever shills for the industry or technocrat electrical engineers might say. It's an issue of the private good versus the public good: profit vs. what benefits the public commons and life on earth.

As evidence of this theory, there is a utility in Vermont that is breaking from the pack. According to the Burlington Free Press, "Solar Electric Power Association names Vermont's Green Mountain Power 'Utility of the Year'.":

Throughout its territory, GMP [Green Mountain Power] credits customers (at the retail rate, plus 6 cents per kilowatt hour) for their contributions to its grid — a process known as net-metering.

Unlike GMP, several other Vermont utilities have limited net metering, citing an increased shift of maintenance costs to customers without solar arrays.

Mary Powell, GMP’s president and CEO, touts her utility’s approach as a sound, long-term investment: as a hedge against increased transmission costs; and as insurance against costly spot-market purchases during summer spikes in demand.

“"While many utilities see solar generation as a threat to their business, we see solar as an opportunity to cost effectively fulfill customer wants and needs and support new jobs and businesses in our communities,” Powell wrote in a prepared statement. “Rather than fear solar, as many utilities appear to do, we embrace it.” (Italics inserted by BuzzFlash.)

Unfortunately, Green Mountain Power is by far an exception to the rule of electrical companies that monopolize power through the use of fossil fuel -- and will continue to do so as long as it yields a solid profit at consumer fees that are frequently raised by obliging state legislatures.

[slimmouse]

Thanks for this slad. More flesh on the bones....

I think anyone who believes that powerful corporations, run by very disturbed people, would not attempt, (as they have thus far successfully acheived) to stop any progress when it comes to "free" energy, really isnt thinking either rigorously or intuitiviely enough.

And you can run that thinking across the board, when it comes to things such as our medicines, our food, our striving and desire for peace, et cetera et cetera.

[Rory]

Thanks for this slad. More flesh on the bones....

I think anyone who believes that powerful corporations, run by very disturbed people, would not attempt, (as they have thus far successfully acheived) to stop any progress when it comes to "free" energy, really isnt thinking either rigorously or intuitiviely enough.

And you can run that thinking across the board, when it comes to things such as our medicines, our food, our striving and desire for peace, et cetera et cetera.

Flesh on the bones of what, slimmouse?

What is this free-energy you speak of? What is it's fuel (if it has any)? How is it obtained/utilized? Is that what you use to power your home/car/water supply?

Who is preventing 'free', and how are they stopping it from being?

Happy new year

[Nordic]

One this is abundantly clear: there is no energy "crisis". There is abundant energy, more than the system can handle. The fact that we're still digging up and burning coal to generate electricity is a massive crime.

[slimmouse]

One this is abundantly clear: there is no energy "crisis". There is abundant energy, more than the system can handle. The fact that we're still digging up and burning coal to generate electricity is a massive crime.

Thanks for that Nordic. It gets so tiresome.

Rory, a quck couple of questions, based on the OP.

If power companies are getting fed up of people with modern solar panels, because they are net contributors to the grid as opposed to extractors, how would it be if everyone had them?

Meanwhile, when people are being denied this technology, what happens to its progress? The R+D? etc.

For example

The electric car has been with us for at the very least 40 years now, and if youve ever looked into that area, you would find that theres been massive Oil industry pressure on such manufacturers. Lies spouting from just about every orifice about how its not what people want, or its too expensive ( well it will be if you cant get the product to market in sufficient volume, wont it), etc.

You dont have to go all extradimensional and exotic on people when it comes to energy technology, to see how we are raping the earth quite needlessly.

And a happy new year to you too .

[seemslikeadream]

Future solar cells may be made of wood
Jan 23, 2014 by Lisa Zyga feature


(a) A schematic of the hierarchical structure of a tree in which each structure is broken down to the level of the elementary fibrils. (b) Regular paper with microfibers has a microporous structure that causes light scattering. (c) The new …more
(Phys.org) —A new kind of paper that is made of wood fibers yet is 96% transparent could be a revolutionary material for next-generation solar cells. Coming from plants, the paper is inexpensive and more environmentally friendly than the plastic substrates often used in solar cells. However, its most important advantage is that it overcomes the tradeoff between optical transparency and optical haze that burdens most materials.


A team of researchers from the University of Maryland, the South China University of Technology, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, have published a paper on the new material in a recent issue of Nano Letters.
As the researchers explain, solar cell performance benefits when materials possess both a high optical transparency (to allow for good light transmission) and a high optical haze (to increase the scattering and therefore the absorption of the transmitted light within the material). But so far, materials with high transparency values (of about 90%) have very low optical haze values (of less than 20%).
The new wood-based paper has an ultrahigh transparency of 96% and ultrahigh optical haze of 60%, which is the highest optical haze value reported among transparent substrates.
The main reason for this good performance in both areas is that the paper has a nanoporous rather than microporous structure. Regular paper is made of wood fibers and has low optical transparency due to the microcavities that exist within the porous structure that cause light scattering. In the new paper, these micropores are eliminated in order to improve the optical transparency. To do this, the researchers used a treatment called TEMPO to weaken the hydrogen bonds between the microfibers that make up the wood fibers, which causes the wood fibers to swell up and collapse into a dense, tightly packed structure containing nanopores rather than micropores.
Future solar cells may be made of wood
Optical transmission haze versus transmittance for different substrates at 550 nm. Glass and PET are in the green area, which are suitable for displays due to their low haze and high transparency; the transparent paper developed in this work …more
"The papers are made of ribbon-like materials that can stack well without microsize cavities for high transmittance, but with nanopores for high optical haze," coauthor Liangbing Hu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland, told Phys.org.
To test the paper for solar cell applications, the researchers coated the wood fiber paper onto the surface of a silicon slab. Experiments showed that the light-harvesting device can collect light with a 10% increase in efficiency. Due to the simplicity of this laminating process, solar cells that have already been installed and are in use could benefit similarly from the additional paper layer.


Although there are other papers made of nanofibers, this paper demonstrates a much higher optical transmittance while using much less energy and time for processing. With these advantages, the highly transparent, high-haze paper could offer an inexpensive way to enhance the efficiency of solar panels, solar roofs, and solar windows.
"We would like to work with solar cell and display companies to evaluate the applications," Hu said. "We are also interested in the manufacturing of such paper."

[NeonLX]

Ha! For once, I can actually contribute to a thread!

Electric cars:

...In 1897, the first commercial EV application was established as a fleet of New York City taxis built by the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company of Philadelphia.

By the turn of the century, America was prosperous and cars, now available in steam, electric, or gasoline versions, were becoming more popular. The years 1899 and 1900 were the high point of electric cars in America, as they outsold all other types of cars. One example was the 1902 Phaeton built by the Woods Motor Vehicle Company of Chicago, which had a range of 18 miles, a top speed of 14 mph and cost $2,000. Later in 1916, Woods invented a hybrid car that had both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor.
Electric vehicles had many advantages over their competitors in the early 1900s. They did not have the vibration, smell, and noise associated with gasoline cars. Changing gears on gasoline cars was the most difficult part of driving, while electric vehicles did not require gear changes. While steam-powered cars also had no gear shifting, they suffered from long start-up times of up to 45 minutes on cold mornings. The steam cars had less range before needing water than an electric's range on a single charge. The only good roads of the period were in town, causing most travel to be local commuting, a perfect situation for electric vehicles, since their range was limited. The electric vehicle was the preferred choice of many because it did not require the manual effort to start, as with the hand crank on gasoline vehicles, and there was no wrestling with a gear shifter.

http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinv ... hicles.htm

SHAZZAM!


Of course, the electricity had to be generated...but still.

[slimmouse]

OK Rory, Ive taken a sharp intake of breath, and managed to see a little more clearly where your coming from.

Are we still going to require oil in the very near future. Absolutely. To be fair to me, Im on the record as having indicated that in any number of recent threads. Of course in the meanwhile the Robber Barons will continue to extract unchecked the estimated 100 trillion dollars worth of Oil thats left in the ground.

If we're all still here when that process is about to come to an end, then I miraculously expect any one of the thousand of ideas for safe clean energy supply to come along and "save us".

Its interesting that Neon has just posted the fact that electric cars have been around for almost a century now ( something I was previously unaware of)
I do know that Rudolph Diesels first engines were designed to run on Biofuel, as were the bodies of Henry Fords first vehicles ( I think it was him, Im too lazy to go look it up again just now) created from a hemp based material. That doesnt rust.

I am also aware that about the same time, Tesla had somehow managed to convert the Schumann resonance frequency of the Earth into electricity in the form of "Wi Fi".

That would also of course need looking more closely at since their are clear health risks from the background radiation. .But assuming it could be made safe I just wonder how many of all those billions of barrels of Oil would still be in Mother Earth, had we been allowed to get on with it back then.?

I fully appreciate that in order to make the neccesary changes however we will still need Oil for (fill in the lead time)

But this is what pisses me off about stuff. I also seriously share your concerns about how the earth is responding through her natural ecosystems to this situation in a very real and localised way, though I stll strongly suspect that ultimately its more about the Sun than it is about C02 emmissions. Not to mention the taxation.

Peace.

[Rory]

Thanks for that - genuinely. I will reply to you in detail later, but I do appreciate the on point reply.

Thank you

[seemslikeadream]

Elon Musk’s five insights into solar energy
BY DOMINIC BASULTO
January 16 at 9:11 am
FILE - In this file photo taken March 23, 2010, installers Arin Gharibian, left, Hayk Mkrtchayan, and team leader Edward Boghosian, right, all employees of California Green Design, assemble solar electrical panels on the roof of a home in Glendale, Calif. Homeowners on the hunt for sparkling solar panels are lured by ads filled with images of pristine landscapes and bright sunshine, and words about the technology’s benefits for the environment - and the wallet. What customers may not know is that there’s a dirtier side. While solar is a far less polluting energy source than coal, many panel makers are nevertheless grappling with a hazardous waste problem. Fueled partly by billions in government incentives, the industry is creating millions of solar panels each year and, in the process, millions of pounds of polluted sludge and contaminated water. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, file)
Solar panels are installed on a roof in California. (Reed Saxon/AP)

It’s hard to argue against Elon Musk being one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our era, responsible for bringing to market such innovative companies as PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors. But it’s his role as chairman and primary shareholder in SolarCity — a solar energy company run by his cousins – that’s getting a lot of attention these days. SolarCity went public in 2012 at $8 a share and now trades at close to $70. That’s nearly a 10x investment in just two years. (Just look at that beautiful chart)
So what does Elon Musk know about solar that the rest of us don’t?
1. Solar energy is inherently an exponential technology.
If there’s one thing Wall Street loves, it’s a good growth story, and that’s something that SolarCity has been careful to cultivate. The company already has 80,000 paying customers and expects to sign up 1 million customers within the next four years. That means the company will need to literally double in size every few months. Think about that for a minute: 1 million customers over four years means 250,000 new customers in 2014, or approximately 20,000 new customers each month. So the company will have doubled in size — from 80,000 to 160,000 customers — by Memorial Day weekend.
Elon Musk, billionaire, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Motors Inc., poses for a photograph inside the Tesla store at Westfield Stratford City retail complex in London, U.K., on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. Tesla, the electric-car maker led by Musk, had its first quarterly profits this year with a boost from selling California pollution credits. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Elon Musk
Elon Musk gets solar. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)

And then the company will double again, from 160,000 to 320,000; and then from 320,000 to 640,000; all the way to 4 million. That requires exponential growth to make possible in such a short time frame, so it’s no wonder that the godfather of exponential technological growth, Ray Kurzweil, has been quick to point out the remarkable growth that’s possible with solar technology. Just as computers benefit from the ability to cram a growing number of transistors on a chip (Moore’s Law), solar panels also benefit from being able to cram an ever-growing number of photovoltaic cells on them. According to Kurzweil’s calculations, we can expect to be energy independent within the next 20 years.
2. Solar is a brand, not a utility.
Elon Musk thinks about solar energy the same way he thinks about electric cars — it’s easier to sell if it’s backed by a highly-recognizable brand such as Tesla. As a result, SolarCity feels more like a traditional consumer brand, less like a faceless utility. Think about it — there are Yelp reviews for SolarCity. The company has 30,000 fans on Facebook. That doesn’t sound like a utility. This is perhaps the most innovative part of what SolarCity is doing – it’s transforming a sleepy old utility business run by legacy companies into a new kind of energy start-up that has attracted the support of companies such as Google.
And once the customer begins to think of your company as a brand, it makes it easier to grab and maintain market share. While SolarCity may control nearly 25 percent of the U.S. solar energy market, that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of competitors. Going forward, dealing with competitors such as Sungevity or SunPower will be difficult, so having customers view you as the premier solar energy brand matters. That means continuing to innovate and bringing new products to market.
3. Solar is the rare business that can profit from cheap Chinese imports.
Most companies are running scared of China these days, thanks to the ability of the Chinese to out-compete on price on just about everything. The demise of any company usually contains a nightmare scenario of cheap Chinese imports or cheap Chinese labor. So Elon Musk figured out a way to make the Chinese threat work for him, not against him. He got SolarCity out of the business of just selling and installing solar panels, and into the business of selling long-term lease contracts.
Think about the role played by the cost of solar panels. If you’re just manufacturing, selling and installing panels, then the Chinese will be able to offer cheaper panels, and you lose money. However, if you’re offering the panels free to customers up-front, then you’ve just turned the business model upside down. The cheaper the panels are, in fact, the more attractive it will be for customers to consider solar energy as an option, and the more money SolarCity eventually makes. That’s what separates Elon Musk’s SolarCity from a company like Solyndra, which went belly-up once the Chinese started flooding the market with cheap solar panels.
4. Solar energy companies can tap into the power of the crowd.
Perhaps the single greatest change in the solar business that can really propel the business ahead is its ability to tap into the power of the crowd. Shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy requires a massive change in preferences, habits and attitudes, and this is where the power of the crowd matters. That’s why you’re starting to see innovations like Mosaic’s unique crowdfunding initiative for solar energy projects.
SolarCity was already the first to market with bonds backed by the revenue from rooftop solar projects, making it possible for institutional investors to invest in the success of future solar projects. (It’s essentially the same logic that makes it possible for investors to buy mortgage-backed securities, thereby creating a robust housing market) SolarCity’s latest move, announced this week, is the ability for individual investors also to participate in this market. SolarCity is essentially creating a new Web-based platform to enable the crowd to make money off other people installing solar panels.
5. You won’t hear about “peak sun” for another 5 billion years.
Unlike a conventional fossil fuel utility, SolarCity doesn’t have to worry about running out of resources. We’ll never hear about “peak sun” the way we hear about “peak oil” because the sun isn’t scheduled to burn out for another five billion years. As long as the sun shines, customers can use solar panels to capture sunlight and transform it into electricity. Any excess electricity can then be transferred back to the grid for other customers. Theoretically, this excess electricity could be exchanged globally.
That’s perhaps why solar energy has such a loyal following in tech circles. In his 2012 book Abundance — which has been endorsed by the likes of Richard Branson, Kurzweil and Arianna Huffington — entrepreneur Peter Diamandis makes the most eloquent case for why the sun is such an important player in any future scenarios of energy self-sufficiency. Diamandis states that Africa has enough solar potential to supply the present world’s energy needs 40 times over.
***
Maybe the growth projections for SolarCity are too rosy. Maybe the cost savings for solar customers aren’t as high as SolarCity claims. Maybe we’re experiencing a Solar Energy Mania on par with the Tulip Mania hundreds of years ago. Maybe one day we all wake up and realize that Solarcity, with all of its talk of being a new kind of utility with fancy financing schemes, is the next Enron. All valid points.
But then again, would you really be willing to bet against Elon Musk?

[Rory]

Ok, Slimmouse - I'm going to give you a partial answer here.

I don't promise to fill in all the blanks and I know as much about unknown techs as you do.

That being said - I'm going to do a bit of a link dump - there is plenty of food for thought here.

The key understanding to make right now is that all our renewables are made by finite, largely fossil fuels. There is no production of wind farms, solar panels and hydro plants by anything except oil/gas/uranium (with negligible contribution from 'other' sources).

Also, currently, wind and solar require mucho rare materials and components. Unsustainable and finite. Now, while someone might have some bright spark tech that makes everyone get excited, (like thorium) this stuff has not been road tested and is as theoretical as infinite, zero point source morphic field free energy contraptions.

Part of the problem is that the approach to this is inherently based in the mindset of growth based, kick the can down the road insanity. Also, people are chasing the first beautiful hit that oil gave us: 150:1 ratio EROEI That was a one off, and unless there is some magic trick up someone's sleeve, we may never see the like of it again, at least not in our lifetimes.

So, the next question is one of efficiency, and this is crucial - we have to do more with less, particularly us westerners. At least while things are profitable, the can will be kicked in increasingly shorter hops until we pass it by and then the world as we know if will come crashing down. The good news is that we have 100 years plus of this kind of eaking out our fossil fuels. bad news is shit will get ugly.

Part of the problem with Solar, for all its benefits, is that the grid isn't set up for variable, decentralized power sources and that the OP is right to some degree - Power bills do not cover all of the costs. An economic solution is for tiered power rates where what you need for survival/basic needs is cheep, and then increasingly more expensive the more you use, so that high end users pay appropriately, relative to their above normal use.

I'm not saying that penalizing PV home users is a good thing but that they do have a financial argument for doing so. The trick is to get the big corporations and richer people to pay their way instead of getting off the hook through tax evasion and tax breaks...

Anyhow, without further ado,

Solar

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/busin ... .html?_r=0 Related to the OP, but in AZ

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/po ... nergy.html GOP chases the sun for energy

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... ure-trove/ Blog on positive qualities of Solar

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... lar-setup/ Same guy's home PV project

Renewables - bit more pessimistic

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... bite-back/

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2 ... -your.html Grim forcast

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2 ... ns-of.html Reading the tea leaves

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/renewa ... ality-416/ Blunt appraisal of potential

Misc.

http://paulkingsnorth.net/journalism/dark-ecology/ Dark and sad view of things but sometimes we need to hear why things are fucked up

[Rory]

Re SolarCity - they are behaving in some very suspicious, unethical and scamming business practices. There are a shit load of customer complaints about the way they generate business.

[slimmouse]

Hi Rory,

Sorry for the slight delay in response. I spent a while considering it in order to compose a reply that makes sense, though there is no guarantee that this will work !

I think that, in simple terms, I see the renewable energy idea as a glass half full, whereas yours is half empty. The one thing we clearly have in common is that neither of us want to see the glass smashed.

This seem a nice moment to introduce a thought that has occurred to me recently, courtesy of one of our newer members. Way back when the rabbit hole became the reality that it now represents to me, having been exposed to more and more of the lies and deceptions of mainstream thinking, it is becoming increasingly clear to me how I myself fell for many a deception in my over-reaction and anger to this.

"If they can lie about 9/11 for example, or the true causes of almost any War ( which is usually prevaricated by a false flag), then all bets are off." was my line.

There was an excellent thread around here a while back talking about Craddock, Bearden and Greer, and its the guy in the middle I want to focus on. Looking around the internet as I did back then, moving in "alternative" circles, I inevitably stumbled upon the "Zero point energy" crowd, of which Bearden was a key figure ( indeed Jeff wrote about him once over).

This left me spending quite some time convinced of the nature of such things, which was of course the trap. Mine and doubtless many others focus on this as opposed to focusing on the very real nuts and bolts solutions ( with the exception of Tesla who suggests that mainstream science will never get very far unless it starts thinking in terms of frequency),

I was off on the Woo trail.

What Im trying to say is that there I was for quite some time thinking on Beardens exotic pie in the sky, whilst all around us the solutions have indeed been offered in some very solid and Robust ways. As time progresses this becomes even more clear.

I do see Tesla however as a different hill of beans.

When I was researching Tesla for example ( I wrote about him briefly in my lil book) I came across the original JP Morgan quote, which is somewhat removed from the paraphrased version were all familiar with. I also found out that it was Tesla, not Marconi who invented the radio, and Tesla rather than Edison who was the main man behind Electricity. This all suggests to me that Tesla was very much the real deal.

Furthermore, wireless electricity with no meter would have been bad enough in and of itself, without the fact that cable electricity requires copper, and guess who had huge interests in that too? JP Morgan. So in the electric chair of truth ( cabled ) Im wholly confident that Tesla had it right.

And of course these days we also have the option of Solar. albeit currently produced by Oil.

Unfortunately as you as you also point out, indeed even as Solar City indicates its all about the money. Not the mini entrepeneurial money but the Global Marxist Elite money of Wall street, etc which has now rendered any kind of real genuinely competetive "capitalism" where renewable technologies would be free to compete, completely obsolete.

So this is where I believe we are today, which in turn I guess means were both indeed right to the extent that you suggest it probably doesnt exist, and I say it probably does.

[Rory]

I will reply to this once I have time - just a bit busy irl

[Rory]

I will reply to this once I have time - just a bit busy irl

Ok - got a few minutes to write more than a couple of lines.

I'm not going to write a rebuttal, rather I want to go back to one of the links I posted. I don't contest anything you said other than I reject the notion that I am 'glass half full', as if this is just a matter of perspective outlook. Energy production, unlike social sciences, is currently tethered to thermodynamics, physics and mechanics. I have read Shelldrake and I am not mired in dogmatic adherence to the status quo and would love someone to redefine the mainstream paradigms in a constructive, beneficial way (unlike someone like Hitler (or George Walker Bush), who redefined paradigms in a rather more unpleasant manner). We can have a speculative discussion but unless we establish boundaries, then we are on to hypothetical magic energy beans and there isn't much left after that.

Did you read the links, btw? Some are more optimistic than others but I want to draw attention to one in particular.

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/renewa ... ality-416/

Technologically harnessable renewable energy is largely a myth. While the sun will continue to shine and the wind will continue to blow, the components of the infrastructure necessary for converting these forms of energy into usable electricity, and distributing that electricity to where it is needed, are not renewable. Affordable fossil fuels are required to extract the raw materials, produce the components, and to build and maintain the infrastructure. In other words, renewables do not replace fossil fuels, nor remove the need for them. They may not even reduce that need by much, and they create additional dependencies on rare materials.

Renewable energy sounds so much more natural and believable than a perpetual-motion machine, but there's one big problem: Unless you're planning to live without electricity and motorized transportation, you need more than just wind, water, sunlight, and plants for energy. You need raw materials, real estate, and other things that will run out one day. You need stuff that has to be mined, drilled, transported, and bulldozed — not simply harvested or farmed. You need non-renewable resources:

• Solar power. While sunlight is renewable — for at least another four billion years — photovoltaic panels are not. Nor is desert groundwater, used in steam turbines at some solar-thermal installations. Even after being redesigned to use air-cooled condensers that will reduce its water consumption by 90 percent, California's Blythe Solar Power Project, which will be the world's largest when it opens in 2013, will require an estimated 600 acre-feet of groundwater annually for washing mirrors, replenishing feedwater, and cooling auxiliary equipment.

• Geothermal power. These projects also depend on groundwater — replenished by rain, yes, but not as quickly as it boils off in turbines. At the world's largest geothermal power plant, the Geysers in California, for example, production peaked in the late 1980s and then the project literally began running out of steam.

• Wind power. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the 5,700 turbines installed in the United States in 2009 required approximately 36,000 miles of steel rebar and 1.7 million cubic yards of concrete (enough to pave a four-foot-wide, 7,630-mile-long sidewalk). The gearbox of a two-megawatt wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium — rare earth metals that are rare because they're found in scattered deposits, rather than in concentrated ores, and are difficult to extract.

• Biomass. In developed countries, biomass is envisioned as a win-win way to produce energy while thinning wildfire-prone forests or anchoring soil with perennial switchgrass plantings. But expanding energy crops will mean less land for food production, recreation, and wildlife habitat. In many parts of the world where biomass is already used extensively to heat homes and cook meals, this renewable energy is responsible for severe deforestation and air pollution.

• Hydropower. Using currents, waves, and tidal energy to produce electricity is still experimental, but hydroelectric power from dams is a proved technology. It already supplies about 16 percent of the world's electricity, far more than all other renewable sources combined….The amount of concrete and steel in a wind-tower foundation is nothing compared with Grand Coulee or Three Gorges, and dams have an unfortunate habit of hoarding sediment and making fish, well, non-renewable.

All of these technologies also require electricity transmission from rural areas to population centers…. And while proponents would have you believe that a renewable energy project churns out free electricity forever, the life expectancy of a solar panel or wind turbine is actually shorter than that of a conventional power plant. Even dams are typically designed to last only about 50 years. So what, exactly, makes renewable energy different from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power?

Renewable technologies are often less damaging to the climate and create fewer toxic wastes than conventional energy sources. But meeting the world's total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today's largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. That's a heckuva lot of neodymium.

In addition, renewables generally have a much lower energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), or energy profit ratio, than we have become accustomed to in the hydrocarbon era. Since the achievable, and maintainable, level of socioeconomic complexity is very closely tied to available energy supply, moving from high EROEI energy source to much lower ones will have significant implications for the level of complexity we can sustain. Exploiting low EROEI energy sources (whether renewables or the unconventional fossil fuels left to us on the downslope of Hubbert's curve) is often a highly complex, energy-intensive activity.

We are left at the juncture that we need new, hitherto undeveloped technology and without this we will go into a period of energy production decline. With that being said, we need a diet anyway, and I don't know if this is a bad thing for the species on the whole - we currently, analogously are the obese, over consuming couch potato slob currently. We need a consumption-diet; a fair bit of focus on proper nutrition, healthy exercise and activity; and we need to stop wasting time with manufactured trivia and get back into productive pursuits such as research and study of consciousness, social awareness and political structures that minimize the inherent tenancy to corruption and atrophy. A healthy and non dogmatic approach to science research would be a boon also.

if you were to get down to health fundamentals, the three things we need are clean fresh air, pathogen/chemical free water, and nutritious food. Our current species technological habits are poisoning the soil, air and water: This is setting a course for degeneration and ultimately destruction. Argue all you like about the rights of wrongs of climate science, or whether carbon taxes are worst thing - the fact remains that the people who stand to benefit from discrediting climate science are the very people who make money poisoning us. Even if climate science is fake, we are left with runaway build up of toxins and irreversible soil and air quality decline.

Everything (most things) has some give and take and energy production has this characteristic: What we gain through a short term benefit (sometimes huge), we have this offset by externalities which may override any gains longterm. Unconventional Oil/gas extraction is a classic example: We get fuel that props up a declining system but receive degraded water, soil and air as a consequence. It's like a crack addict scraping out the pipe for another it, but inhaling all the residual toxins in the process.
Nuclear is another key example - Nuclear waste's radioactivity is infinite (as far as human history goes, it might as well be) and the potential for harm will outlive us all. All the benefits (stable, reliable longterm electricity supply) are offset against the currently insoluble problem of the waste and the extreme dangers associated with 'accidents' or negligent stewardship).

Our main problem is that very little of value is being produced off the back of this harmful energy production - we are making inane, consumer tat and for what? Increased childhood cancers? Respiratory illnesses? Resource wars and or toxic wastelands? Do we need new energy production or do we need to do things differently? We have enough energy - and we always have, but the economic structures demand profit and that can (often) be most quickly generated off the back of high rates of return such as through fossil fuel extraction and power generation. If that means flipping rainforest into McDonalds patties, then that is what the market demands. If that means powering widescreen TVs via burning (literally) mountains of coal and in return we get rising sea levels and the associated devastation that implies, then that is what the economists suggest is the best path.

So, where do we go from here. I'm not sure we have enough awareness of the problem and even if that changes, we have too many vested interests.

{edit - tidied up some grammar and spellings}