On Jan 11, 2008, at 1:37 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
On Jan 11, 2008 10:01 AM, Shane Mage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Jan 11, 2008, at 12:19 PM, Doyle Saylor wrote:
Greetings Economists,
Scientific American online has this article here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
That suggests a plan for 480 billion (in increments from now to
2050)
to completely go over to solar energy in the U.S. economy. Any
thoughts from renewable economics perspective on this idea?
Secondly,
they suggest in this article that it would not lower the current
standard of living to adapt this regime. Which seems to indicate a
means for other countries to follow and develop upon.
If it projects $480b over 43 years there's nothing "grand" about it.
If the US
can afford an Iraq occupation costing over $100b a year it could
just as
easily afford $4,800b over that period. A serious plan to convert the
whole
US economy to solar (including both its radiative and aeolian forms)
could
be accomplished in a much shorter time even with present technology
(and
the technology is improving rapidly). Start with enormous wind farms
in the
northern plains, dedicated to production of hydrogen by electrolysis,
while
constructing dedicated pipelines to supply every present filling
station with
the hydrogen for fuel-cell cars. Add solar farms in the southwestern
deserts connected to centers of use by DC transmission lines.
Require
all
new construction to be roofed with solar panels.
This, of course, requires a huge dose of government enterprise and
economic planning. Which is why US (and British) monopoly capitalism
cannot even think of such a project. Its solution (embraced, alas by
some despairing radicals) is to invest more and ever more resources
in
the
construction of dangerous and technologically dead-end (but
privately
owned, of course) nuclear power plants.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to
be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
I'm with Shane on the money. 480 billion sounds more like an annual
budget than a multi-decades budget. However don't count on hydrogen as
a storage or transmission media. Really efficient Plugin hybrids with
a 100+ mile electric range could reduce emissions by as much or more
than a hydrogen car. Pure electric cars with a ~200 mile range could
meet all the needs of a great many people. And in terms of future
technology, we are a lot closer to massive improvement in battery
technology than we are to economical hydrogen. (Bear in mind also,
that most hydrogen advocates support deriving hydrogen from natural
gas or coal during the "transition.")
A hydrogen-powered vehicle (car, bus, truck, dirigible, bike, ship or
boat) is
totally infrared-blocking-emission free when the hydrogen is produced
by electrolysis driven by electricity from a wind farm. Both fuel
cells and
batteries are dynamic technologies and both will be much more economical
than now as soon as the economies of mass production are combined with
the improved technology. But the starting point has to be the
investment
in wind farms, solar farms, pipelines and DC transmission lines.
Producing
hydrogen from coal or natural gas is even worse than relying on nukes.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to
be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
