Positive Energy
It was interesting to see two articles on alternative energy sources today, outside of a “series” on such things. One on the approval of the new tidal power generators at Kaipara Harbour and one, a bit more “blue sky” on the realistic possibility of the first practicable fusion generators. Both of these may be realised within a decade, which is good news. Even the most pessimistic “peak oil” proponent thinks the black gold should last twice that long, giving us a reasonable amount of time to roll out those new technologies. As an added bonus, the technologies are both carbon friendly, though I’m not convinced we will be too concerned with that in a decade.
The identifying feature of most “crises” that have been proposed over the past 50 years (and probably longer) is the propensity for linear thinking. Basically the line (literally) goes “the trend goes like this and if we continue it to here – we’re all gonna die“. But given the sheer pace of technological change, it seems strange that we continue to insist that trend lines play out inexorably.
I am aware that this sounds a bit like I am proposing that we ignore those dangerous-looking trends, in the hope that some sort of deus ex machina will pop out of the box and save us. But this is not the case. What I am saying is that we all need a little more long-term perspective on our so-called crises. Instead of running around stirring panic and proposing draconian solutions that threaten to cause more problems than they will solve, we should be prepared to step back and look at the range of technological solutions available to us. All too often in the past, the so-called crises have either not materialised or been overcome by technological advance. There are plenty of potential game-changing technologies like the two at the start of this post, yet the funding for research such as this is a tiny fraction of the sort of money we tend to spend on our very linear solutions to our linear trend problems.
What we probably need is not merely more lateral thinking, but more lateral funding.
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Jan 12 10 11:55 pm
“What we probably need is not merely more lateral thinking, but more lateral funding.”
Just as important is to keep track of the funding of those “linear” thinkers as well. Linear thinking can be very profitable.
JC
Jan 13 10 10:11 am
Interesting. Some points:
1. If our objections to fusion are meltdowns, long half life radioactive by products, and weapons proliferation, then the thorium cycle fission reactor would be a much easier fix. It can’t go critical, it produces very little radioactive by product, it doesn’t create plutonium. Better still, it is similar to existing reactors (no retooling or proof of concept), it can burn existing radioactive waste mixed in with the thorium, and thorium is very plentiful in peaceful locations like the Rocky mountains. Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
2. Concentrating solar in the desert regions is economic today, and a relatively small land area in the African desert would be enough to power all of Europe at today’s energy level. Similarly the US could be powered from Texas desert, and Australia could power themselves. There is no real need to wait for fusion, the main blocker to concentrating solar today is that there is no high voltage power grid running to the kinds of places you’d put these plants. That doesn’t seem to be a large barrier, once you start thinking about it.
Refer: http://www.desertec-australia.org/content/cspdesalination.html or http://www.solarfeeds.com/nen/2537-report-big-action-in-concentrating-solar.html
Jan 13 10 1:20 pm
I would really want to be sure that tidal generators in the Kaipara don’t affect snapper populations, as something like 98% of all snapper on the west Coast spawn there now. Also, the generators are said to be no more than 6 m below the surface, that sounds incredibly shallow, the sea gets rough around the Kaipara quite often, and I would have thought that 6 m was way too close to avoid surface turbulence and thus be damaged or affected.
Jan 13 10 6:44 pm
PaulL:
Solar is a good, clean form of energy , if somewhat expensive to set up. Unfortunately it suffers from the same limitations as wind power in that it is reliant on the elements. Excessive cloud cover rapidly reduces it’s utility.
Thorium is indeed a better, safer form of fission than U235. If New Zealand ever decided to go down the fission route, this would certainly be the way to go.
Jan 13 10 7:34 pm
Solar is good in places with lots of sun. In desert areas (north Africa, Australia, Arizona) there are relatively short periods of cloudiness. These can be overcome if the concentrating solar generator is using molten salt as the store of heat – it can tide overnight, and over cloudy days.
For NZ, solar is basically not a go. But then, we have lots of hydro – we need to work with what we have (as do the Aussies).
Jan 16 10 4:55 pm
An OPEC oil minister was once quoted as saying “The Stone Age did not end due to the lack of stone, the Oil Age will not end due to a lack of oil.”.
As technology advances humans will find better ways of generating power.
This above all is the reason why most of humanity is not running around waering furs and living in mud huts.
Jan 16 10 9:25 pm
Up until now for this civilisation new technology has meant greater wealth, this time around we’re betting on new technology to save our bacon.