On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 08:50:23PM +0530, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: > On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Eugen Leitl <[email protected]> wrote: > > I wonder solar is still called 'alternative' energy. > > It should be called alternativeless energy. There is really > > no other way to keep this civilisation running. > > India is betting on the entire spectrum - imported coal, wind energy,
Peak coal is 2030, if not earlier due to recent shift to coal due to loss of liquids. > fast-breed thorium reactors and even solar panels in space. It doesn't Nobody has built a working alternative fuelcycle MSR breeder yet, not for lack of trying. SPS only makes sense much after 2050, after we've exhausted terrestrial solar, and it has to be built using extraterrestrial material due to http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/tag/eroei/ > yet have to worry about evening out utilization factors against demand Do you have data for peak demand in India? It's pretty much exactly around noon in Germany, which seems somewhat anomalous. > since any power generated is soaked up by the power hungry nation, but > renewables are worryingly backed already by conventional power in most > of Europe for ensuring stability of supply. The German energy grid already is at 21.9% renewable, 135 TWh total. Wind was 45 TWh, biomass 41 TWh, photovoltaics 28.5 TWh and hydro 20.5 TWh. In fact, the gas turbine peak plants will be probably subsidized, since they have to run so rarely they're not cost effective. > When global spending on consumables has grown 250 fold in less than 60 > years, it does appear too much to hope for sustainable economics to > become rightfully popular. Some resources are less scarce than others, so there might be some growth possible, even just here down on Earth http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3086 > All the same, I view a global culture that lusts after consumables as > an aberration since it destroys in its wake many social practices and > ecosystems nurtured over centuries and millennia. I agree, but humanity is burning through this planet, and won't stop unless the environment pushes back. We're actually at the peak of the overshoot, so things are bound to get very interesting by 2030 latest.
