An Abundance of Anything Analogy

After reading a newspaper article by a (self-proclaimed?) independent energy advisor, I had a few thoughts I'd like to share or start developing, at least. (Article is called "K nam hodi veter spat" and is accessible here.)

This reading requires an open mind.

In the article, it's mentioned that wind turbines do not require fuel to operate - which is true, apart from maintenance trucks and energy, stored/invested in replacement materials, if needed. And also, apart from taking up some energy of course, with their manufacture, transport and installation. (I am guessing solar panels have higher energy inputs till installation, but am not sure. Google Scholar it.)

But the author goes on to state a few troublesome things. Among them, he casually states that cats are murderers of birds, not wind turbines. Well, common sense that. Yes, of a few thousand small birds mostly. But have you ever seen a cat picking on a Golden Eagle? If anything, cats are on its diet list, not the other way around. Which is more than can be said for wind turbines, which are notoriuosly dangerous for k-strategists, long-lived, big animals with few offspring. Such as birds of prey.


Anyhow, to go back to the initial huff and puff.
  You know how we, the 'developed' world, took from indigenous people wherever and whenever we could? (Sure, first it was justified by God, then by Darwin, then by neo-liberalism and whatnot.) Well, now, enter the era of too much.

We've (and I'm saying mainly ''we", the affluent ones) polluted and dirtied the world and emitted so much ... we recognise maybe ... just maybe it's time to stop. (Take, for example, annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Read partly what I mean - lots of words, no action - here, in NY Times post Let’s Change the World. Cheers! | Subtitled: At the World Economic Forum in Davos, ‘Sustainability,’ ‘Mindfulness’ and Cocktails. See also a bit more from Kumi Naidoo (Greenpeace).)

  And then we have the balls to say to developing world: "Hey, um. We should all stop polluting."
"..." [muffled voices from the crowd]
"What? Yes, well, we did take the resources, but now this should all stop."
"..." [muffled angry shouting from the crowd]
"Yes, well. It would appear that we benefited ourselves, the westerners, wouldn't it. Hah hah. But really, it's not like that. See, we didn't know back then that all this pollution is unsustainable and can't go on forever. Now we do know. So, err... you should stop polluting."
"..."
"What? Oh, yes, I meant we should stop polluting. Unless we have those really costly clean technologies. But definitely no dirty technology. God, no. Clean as a glove!"
"..."
"Haven't you been listening? Yes, we did use dirty technologies, but now we know we shouldn't. So don't use dirty tech."
[And is later seen signing a contract with an African tribesman, for his company to come with machines and dig the rare ore. And is a month later seen moving the whole production of a textile industry into Asia, because the environmental standards are lower and labour force is cheaper.]

In one line: Benefiting ourselves on the account of others (and their resources), then telling them that they cannot do it - that's dirty. Nasty. [Or better yet: showing them pictures (movies, ads) of the glorious life in the west... and telling them: nope, you can't have it. Sorry. Time to stop consuming.]


In much the same way, I fear, go the wind energy developments.
First, we all (well, not really, the environmentalists/conservationists are divided) say: "oooh, that's nice. Clean energy." And it's true. It is much, much cleaner than the conventional types of energy production.
  But what happens when we fight for the inches?
And the electricity consumption still rises? And the world population still rises (creating unseen pressure on the (limited) natural resources)?

Having a wind farm by wind farm by wind turbine by wind farm will then create an impregnable wall of blades, cutting every birds loony enough to even consider passing through. Radical, yes. Let's downscale it.

Today, the electricity produced from wind grows between 10 and 20 percent per year. ["annual market growth of almost 10%, and cumulative capacity growth of about 19%", GWEC, 2014, under "Global Wind Energy: Solid Growth in 2012"] Which means, exponentially, as they calculate it often from the year before. (I think.) Okay...
So now, the wind turbines are not yet competing with arable land. Only with marine life (offshore instalments) and birds of prey in land installations.

  But what happens when we reach a certain limit? When more than one study ends up showing sharp declines in raptors? Thing is: studies take time (2-5 years). Disproving them (in the interest of the investors, let's call them "Big Wind", just for fun) takes time (1-5 years). Disproving them in turn, again, takes time. All the while, huge developments are continuing and the birds will be dying.

And then ... Germany says: "Hey, um. We should all stop building wind farms."
"..." [muffled voices from the crowd]
"What? Yes, well, we did seize the schnitzel by the curve, as we say, ha ha, but khem. You zee, the land ... the birds .. this schould all ztop nau."

Who tells whom to stop? The ones with 95 % energy coming from renewable energy sources (RES)? Denmark, Germany, (by then independent) Scotland, Spain, Greece, Netherlands? And all the while, we still keep the restaints on the CO2 emissions and you know, tell the other countries they really need to stop emitting.

It's not fair. It won't be. Yet I hope that by the time I close my eyes on this world forevermore, that the world will be fairer.
And you know what? I think not long after, it will be. Because the only way is the sustainable way. Whatever you say, nature (God?) intended it so. Look, consider this one simple, true and colossal statement:

Nature does not produce waste.

The Huffington post debate: Renewables VS oil, coal and nuclear

This serves as continuation (or a collection) of the whole debate on the Huffington Post news item titled Robert Redford Calls Alberta Oil 'The Dirtiest Oil On The Planet' In New Anti-Keystone XL Video (link).

I post part of the reply here, as the comments box is too small and I really wanted to give a comprehensive reply (that also shows the limitations of what I know (or think I know)).

The reply is whole as was meant (previous comments will be added in reverse order below later).

I totally agree with your first paragraph. Totally. It does not make any sense to stop all damaging activity (at least not without a magic wand to simultaneously address several problems).

As to the attainability of renewables, I am not so sure. Again, I don’t work in the industry, don’t have the 100% overview on ALL that is happening, but what I can tell you is that a) costs are falling rapidly, b) efficiency is going up (to a certain limit, granted) and c) environmental impact varies from tech to tech, but is generally considered lower than that of fossil fuel industry, coal and nuclear power plants. I give examples and quotes in the next reply.

I don’t feel capable on commenting on the case you build for nuclear, as I did no research in that field. As I understood, we’re not near fusion yet and fission creates waste (that to me, again, in the long run, is not sustainable. Unless we haul it into space (unethical? boomerang?, space debris).

I fully agree that wind and PV have intermittency problems, however, as you partly point out, sun does not shine ON ALL SIDES of the planet at once. With a global network, ... well, with other sources added (wind can operate at night), we can go pretty high in terms of energy self (local)-reliability.

Thanks for explaining the “Long Beach oil” and the purity of it, energy needed to purify it. Makes it more clear now. Thanks!
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Costs
“Solar technology costs are falling rapidly. Chrystalline silicon PV module costs fell by 70 per cent 2008-January 2012 and are forecast to fall by another 30 per cent by 2015, without subsidies” (Assadourian et al., 2013: Loc 2067).

Energy demand estimates ... and meeting it with renewables
‘Estimates of energy required to meet the world’s continuously growing energy demand vary, and future energy use scenarios vary greatly in their outcomes. A medium scenario examined by European Union foresees doubling of current energy demand by 2050’ [“current” was 13.2 TW in 2011? and is 14 TW in 2012] (EC, 2006; Assadourian et al., 2013).
‘Instead of raising the number of nuclear power plants worldwide from 61 to 1200, based on the immense power that is radiated daily to Earth from the Sun (i.e., 5000 times the estimated requirements for 2050), if we could cover 1 % of the Earth’s land surface with solar panels operating at 10% efficiency, a rough estimate is photovoltaic power could generate around 25 TW’ (Peter, 2011).
  Problem is, as Peter (2011) points out, the availability of minerals. For example, cadmium (Cd) for the CdTe solar cells, to meet this demand, one would require amount of Cd for a factor of a 100 exceeding the identified world reserves (Peter, 2011; 3). But, new ways and new cells are underway (for more, see Peter, 2011).
  As to the environmental impact of Cadmium (from PV panels production) and other renewables, see Assadourian et al. (2013): they maintain (based on a number of sources) that renewables have lesser impact in total than fossil, though I would exclude biomass from it, as it appears to be the most unsustainable of the crowd.

And about meeting the energy demand in 2050, Assadourian et al. write: “Even with greatly limiting the areas for solar energy development /.../, the potential capacities are estimated at 340 terawatts (TW) for PV and 240 TW for CSP [concentrating solar power systems] – much more than projections for energy demand in 2050, even without any efficiency measures” (2013: Loc 2067).

Locally produced energy (which, granted, needs some more development and changes to the energy grids and distribution)

Another argument in favour of locally produced, renewable energy is (so I read) that of avoiding transmission and distribution costs. Renewable energy sources (e.g., wind, solar, small hydro, wave, and tidal energy), though having different impacts on the environment themselves (also in the book), “have the additional efficiency advantage of converting natural flows of mechanical energy or sunlight directly into electricity, unlike fossil fuel combustion and nuclear power, which require inherently inefficient thermal energy conversion processes.” (Assadourian et al., 2013: Loc 2053, link below).

From an abstract of a book titled Renewable revolution: low carbon energy by 2030 (Sawin & Moomaw, 2009):
Global energy scenarios offer wide-ranging estimates of how much energy renewable sources can contribute, and how quickly this can happen. Many scenarios show a gradual shift to renewables that still envisions a major role for fossil fuels for most of this century. This report examines the potential for renewable energy to provide needed energy services for all societies while lowering heattrapping emissions of greenhouse gases. It concludes that it is not only possible but also essential to effect a massive transformation of the global energy system from its current fossil fuel base between now and 2030 that continues for the rest of the century.

Carbon free?
Photovoltaic cells and panels have a CO2 release of one fifth of that of an average emission rate of conventional fossil fuel-generated electricity. This was calculated for DSCs, with a premise of an efficiency of 8 per cent and lifespan of 5 years, but the number grows even five times smaller for CdTe PV modules (Peter, 2011). Therefore, though not ‘carbon free’, the carbon of PV panels is small enough that a large scale implementation of PV can substantially provide for the world’s energy needs and at the same time addressing some of the problems of climate change (Elliston et al., 2013; Peter, 2011).


References

Assadourian, E., Prugh, T., Adamson, R., & Starke, L. (2013). State of the world 2013: is sustainability still possible?. Washington, DC [etc.]: Island Press.
(Assadourian et al., 2013: Loc 2053 : https://kindle.amazon.com/post/Sdj9B8pvQ-C70-q3GkZt0Q).

EC (2006). European Commission: World energy technology outlook 2050: WETO-H2. See
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/energy/docs/weto-h2_en.pdf.

Elliston, B., Macgill, I., & Diesendorf, M. (2013). Least cost 100% renewable electricity scenarios in the Australian National Electricity Market. Energy Policy [In press]. DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.03.038.

Peter, L. M. (2011). Towards sustainable photovoltaics: the search for new materials. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 369 (1942), 1840-1856.

Sawin, J. L., & Moomaw, W. R. (2009). Renewable revolution: low carbon energy by 2030. Worldwatch Institute.) Link: http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20103141191.html;jsessionid=623D63DEC4D6A3DFBDF201E7C4390340?freeview=true

Wind power: NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard) VS. WARYDU rhetoric (We Are Right; You Don't Understand)

Because it reads so nice, I am just going to copy-paste this paragraph from the "Acoustic Ecology Institute" (don't ask me what it is, I've never before heard of it) (Source: this here link):

 

From another page: link.

Modern wind turbines are massive structures, hundreds of feet tall, and often constructed in large wind farms that in effect industrialize rural landscapes, from the rolling grassy hills of California, to the vast rangeland of Texas, to ancient ridgelines in the Appalachians, to the commons in rural England. While the trade-offs may be worth it in some areas, the downsides have become more apparent. Resistance to wind farms is often belittled as NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard); but at the same time, proponents often slip into oversimplifeid WARYDU rhetoric (We Are Right; You Don't Understand). In most cases, industrial wind farms are complying with local noise limits; the issue has become whether these noise limits are sufficient to protect rural residents from irrevocable changes in the soundscapes of their homes and farms. If we are to forge a reliable energy future that is respectful of both the environment and the rights of neighbors, we'll need to move past knee-jerk reactions on both sides, and develop best practices that can ensure that the landscape and local residents don't become long-term casualties of today's "Klondike Wind Rush."

 

 

 
This caption is from the first site as well <link>:
How big are modern wind turbines? The ones on the left are 60m and 125m; the one on the right is 95m, with blades sweeping an area the size of a 747.