Continuing the Review of “Apollo’s Fire”

John Rawlins has a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. He retired in 1995 from the Westinghouse Hanford Co. at the Hanford site in Eastern Washington. Currently, he teaches physics and astronomy at Whatcom Community College.

Part 3

The strategy pursued in this section is twofold: introduction of new renewable energy technology, and reduction of carbon emissions from the usual energy sources (fossil fuel burning electrical generation). I do agree with this strategy, again pursuant to a requirement that new renewable energy technologies be sustainable, do not displace food crops and have decent energy return on energy invested (EroEI).

I am, however, skeptical about carbon sequestration from fossil fuel plants after reading several highly negative articles about the status and prospects of that technology.

The first detailed proposal in this section is to establish an aggressive goal for renewable energy production — and the authors use 25 percent of all energy to come from renewable sources by 2025.

Rather than set a percentage figure, I would argue for an absolute number instead, for the following reason: given that natural gas is now in decline, that oil consumption is expected to decline from now on, and that coal may also continue to decline in energy produced from coal, these fossil fuel sources combined could decline by 20-40 percent by 2025. Since we will need all the total energy possible by then, it makes more sense to set quantitative goals — such as perhaps 25 percent of today’s total energy use.

The second proposal is to extend the production tax credit and other incentives for deploying renewables. I agree totally with this and advocate that the time-frame be set irrevocably at 30 years instead of the two-year intervals Congress does currently.

The third proposal is to offer additional incentives for “distributed generation” as a growing share of total electrical capacity. Distributed generation refers to rooftop solar panels and individual wind generators.

I agree totally with this very good idea (common in Germany, for example), and also support incentives to develop neighborhood off-grid systems — as usual subject to the condition of sustainability. Rural neighborhoods in particular may find it advantageous to manage their own electricity generation as it becomes more and more difficult to maintain today’s electrical grid during economic hard times.

The next item is to expand research into electrical energy storage technology to accompany the use of solar PhotoVoltaics (PV) and wind and other renewable generation — most of which generate electricity intermittently. I totally agree with this proposal.

The fifth idea is to build a much smarter electrical grid, capable of monitoring and managing energy flow in real-time. The general idea of doing this is to flatten electrical loads in time during a 24-hour day. This would reduce the need for peaking power (natural gas plants) to the lowest possible level — which will become more and more important as natural gas continues to decline.

The sixth idea is something I’ve not encountered before: create a “clean energy” investment agency (modeled on the Small Business Administration programs) to provide training programs, as well as provide financial assistance to people wanting to deploy “clean” energy.

While this seems like a good idea, again diligence must be exercised to delineate clearly what “clean” means. Requirements like zero waste, renewable and sustainable might be appropriate. It’s not clear whether this would become part of the administrative bureaucracy or be a more independent panel, or where its funding would come from.

The seventh proposal is to expand greatly the funding for research, development and deployment of renewable energy technologies. This is long overdue, and should be set up in such a way that no future incoming administration could reduce the funding level without Congressional consent — and possibly not even then.

The first idea to reduce carbon emissions from electrical generators is to invest in research, development and deployment of advanced coal plants capable of sequestering carbon dioxide emissions. Given the size of the coal industry, an alternative would be simply to require that all future coal plants use this technology and develop it using a portion of current profits.

From a climate change perspective, we should also mandate a schedule for phasing out existing coal plants completely by the 2030-2040 timeframe. If carbon capture and sequestration should prove not feasible in some locations we might be forced at some future time to revisit this entire idea.

The second carbon reduction idea is to establish an emissions performance standard for all new coal-fired power plants. I don’t understand why the authors don’t simply require that all new fossil fuel (coal, natural gas and oil) electrical generation plants employ carbon capture and sequestration, with no exceptions. That is what avoiding and minimizing dangerous anthropogenic global climate change is all about. The long description of this idea in the book rather sounds like waffling to me.

The third idea in this subsection is to set a date, beyond which no new power plants could be grandfathered into a future carbon emissions agreement. Why not set that date as right now, and avoid a rush of proposals to build new coal plants in the near future without carbon capture and sequestration (as already is happening)?

The final idea, unrelated to fossil fuel plants, concerns nuclear energy. Democrats have been rather cool to nuclear energy for several decades (since the Carter administration), and the authors unfortunately inherit that same ideology. They propose only research into critical issues facing the nuclear power industry, many of which I view as red herrings: safety, waste disposal, proliferation and security.

Anti-nuclear advocates have used this collection of issues to construct a labyrinth through which the nuclear industry can never navigate, with the result that today’s nuclear industry is a faint shadow of what it would take to begin designing and building new plants.

Given the high cost of construction of new nuclear plants, their day may have come and gone as oil prices continue to escalate — nuclear plant construction is very oil-intensive and therefore presents potential investors with perhaps unacceptably high economic risks. I have no problem supporting this particular proposal but seriously doubt it will ever make any real difference to our energy future.

Overall grade for this section: A (but only if the authors exclude biofuels from food crops, as noted)

I was pleasantly surprised to find this section among the various proposals, because it is one of the centerpieces of how peak-oil-aware folks believe we need to be adapting to energy descent — live in such a way that we don’t need significant liquid transport fuels. This topic is part of the relocalization mantra in the peak oil movement.

I agree completely with the various specific ideas in this section, so will simply list them.

First, promote efficient metropolitan growth via the tax code, zoning rules and investment incentives to develop walkable communities that use little energy.

Second, in new developments, require on-site renewable energy generation using federal, state and local incentives.

Third, use federal transportation dollars to require smart-growth planning at the local level. Instead of building roads, engage in strategic energy planning such as proposed recently to the Bellingham City Council and Whatcom County Council (see sidebar on page 8).

This is so long overdue that planning initiated now will be entirely adaptive in nature, as opposed to mitigating oil depletion (or climate change). Of special note is the proposal for the federal government to support mass transit and robust rail networks to link big population concentrations, and to apply a strategy of “fix it first” rather than new construction.

Fourth, use public procurement to develop high-quality renewable energy-related jobs. To expand the job corps, use apprenticeship and job training programs. Also, (a long-time Democrat Party agenda) uphold the right of union organization.

Fifth, create a clean-energy job corps using our public educational systems, and encourage college students to work in this area as part of a national service debt upon graduation.

Finally, promote global warming preparedness that enables citizens to anticipate and prepare for climate change surprises. An emerging buzzword in this regard is to develop more “resilient” communities.

Needless to say, it seems equally important (if not far more so in the next few decades) to promote energy descent awareness and preparedness. One final, but most important, note: there is absolutely no mention in this section specifically about food production.

Since oil and natural gas will be leaving us rather than the other way around, we all desperately need to focus big-time on learning how to grow food at the most local level, in sustainable ways. This, in my mind, is a major omission; if we forget it, then we would likely witness (or not!) what so many peak-oil-aware people talk about — a die-off scenario.

Overall grade for this section: A+

This section, like section 2, seems not so important from an energy descent perspective as from the viewpoint of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Energy descent will not only assure we cap carbon emissions, but will ensure those emissions will decrease to a pretty small fraction of today’s emissions by the end of the century. So today’s political debate about taxing carbon or setting up a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions does not really interest me or most other people aware of our most likely energy future.

However, if we want to promote an oil depletion protocol (decrease oil consumption to a level just under the production levels) then a carbon tax might well be warranted — in the form of a much larger gasoline/diesel tax. Today’s level of around 20 cents per gallon is pathetically small, and Europe has found that by imposing a several dollar equivalent tax that liquid fuel use is much lower than in the U.S.

Instead of our presidential candidate wannabes debating a “summer tax holiday” to stimulate more driving, they should be talking about whether to increase the gasoline/diesel tax to $3 or $4 per gallon, with a provision to increase the tax until behavior change happens.

A final tongue-in-cheek idea (but not really) occurred to me recently:

If Whatcom County were able to enact and collect such a tax (from Canadians as well) and use it to build transportation alternatives, the tax could also serve another vital purpose — limit in-migration to our area from, say, other regions with higher housing prices and less desirable living conditions. Our new motto could be: “Welcome to Whatcom County, Now Get on Your Bicycle and Ride Our Transit.”

Overall grade for this section: C

If an Apollo-like program ever does see the light of day in Congress, I would propose establishment of an independent technical review panel under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review proposals and technical progress for various program areas.

The NAS panel should establish criteria for funding based on whether or not a particular technology would have a decent energy return on energy invested (ERoEI), and on whether or not implementation over the long term (centuries) would be sustainable without outside inputs in the form of fossil fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. The stipulation of panel “independence” means independent of political influence, which an administration bureaucracy such as the U.S. Department of Energy is not.

By the time the authors are able to get serious Congressional consideration of their Apollo Program (2009 or later?), it is fairly likely that peak oil awareness will have dawned on them as well as all their colleagues inside the Washington Beltway. They could use the time between now and then to rework their proposed program to accommodate energy descent realities and avoid delay later on.

Submitting the “Apollo’s Fire” program as it is now not only will be unlikely to work, but could open the door for dismantling by the fossil fuel special interests on the basis that energy descent is what we need to be worried about, not climate change. The reality is that energy descent is upon us now and will cap/reduce carbon emissions whether we like it or not, while climate change will complicate adapting to energy problems at unpredictable times, in unpredictable ways. §