Exactly!
Holy shit, I almost missed this. Is it for real? Can we can another cite on it?
I have 6700 watts worth of Photovoltaics panels on my roof. Very expensive the state paid for 70% of it.
Time for an exhaustive Google Search.
Jim
Its for real as far as I know. I read about it a month or so ago. I think they are still working out some of the bugs in manufacturing or such, IIRC, but it looks pretty promissing. If I have time later I’ll see if I can dig up the article I was reading (might have been in Wired)…unless someone else finds it first.
-XT
I used Google, Wired & Wiki. This is the closest I came to confirmation.
http://www.carbonfree.co.uk/cf/news/wk08-0005.htm
Looks like another wait and see.
Jim
That was exactly my reaction! 
I’m actually looking to put solar panels on my house this year (and here you all thought I was a hard hearted, environmental hating conservative or something 
)…I wish they were available in the US now. Like I said…they sound pretty promissing.
-XT
I have spent 16 years now working towards alternete energy resources and put part of my savings behind by words by making the Social Investment of put a Solar Panel system on my house.
I hope this is for real, but the article left me a lot of questions and the article I found leaves me doubtful.
I still await the day that Roofers will need to know how to apply Solar collecting Plastic sheets instead of shingles and metal. I don’t think this was that break through. (please let me be wrong)
Jim
There is definitely a convergence of technologies happening that could lead to some kind of tipping point in the near future. For example, one of the limitations of solar and wind has always been that they are unreliable for providing on-demand power. In other words, you can’t light your home when it’s dark, which is kind of necessary. So you needed batteries. Well, battery technology is currently undergoing a bit of a revolution, as is the ability to build capacitors with very high charge densities for peak loads.
If we can increase the capacity of batteries by a factor of two or three, and provide capacitors for high-rate discharge, suddenly plug-in hybrids that get good performance and can run 100 miles on a charge will be here (meaning that for most commuting, the gas engine will never even start). Couple that with flex-fuel engines that can burn bio-diesel or Ethanol along with gas, and we may have the solution to our power needs. If we can power our cars from our homes, we can always power our homes with nuclear if we have to.
That’s why I worry so much about the government being involved in the picking and choosing the right technologies - they’re usually wrong, and resources get spent wastefully in areas that turn out to be non-competitive. The history of government funding of technology is replete with such examples.
What the government ought to be doing, of course, is adjusting the incentives, so that markets will be stimulated to produce the right technologies by more efficient spontaneous competition. As in: higher taxes on gasoline and fuel-inefficient vehicles, tougher regulations for fuel efficiency and emissions controls, and so forth. These are the sorts of pressures that spur markets to invent and select effective alternatives on their own.
But if our current administration can’t summon up the testicular fortitude to adjust market incentives in a productive way to promote market development of new technologies, I suppose it’s better than nothing that they should at least throw some money at a particular new technology that they think sounds cool. (Sawgrass, huh? I have to confess that that was the first I’d ever heard of sawgrass.)
I agree. In my opinion, government regulation works much better when it specifies a result/limit ( like, no more than 100 parts per million of pollutant X may be emitted ), instead of means ( like requiring that a specific pollution control gadget must be used, which just happens to be made by a company belonging to a Senator’s brother ).
I love the idea of Fuel Taxes on vehicles that get under 20 MPG to give tax breaks to vehicles that get over 40 MPG. Exceptions for commercial and Farm of course.
I love the idea of a tax on incandescent light bulbs to be spent on lets say rebates for installing Solar Panel and encourage the greater use of compact Fluorescents.
A tax on non energy star appliances to give rebates on energy star compliant appliances.
Use the tax code to direct the country in a positive more efficient direction.
I give Bush credit for looking to sawgrass, it doesn’t have a large embedded interest group behind it and it is a very good source of Bio Fuel for most of America. More efficient than corn.
Jim
And in yet another possibility for a new energy source, how about bioengineered algae?
They’ve still got a ways to go before it’s commercial viable, but the potential is there.
I have heard of this also. I believe Sci-Am had a quick news article on it.
It would be great, but like so many early reports, I will wait for real results.
Jim
Don’t want to hijack the thread, just to ask …
Cite?
w.
Based on earlier columns of his, I believe Kunstler is using the projections of a group of petroleum geologists called the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASPO; http://www.peakoil.net/. Essentially, ASPO is applying the concept of the Hubbert’s peak theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak) to the global oil supply. (Hubbert, in 1956, predicted oil production in the U.S. would reach its all-time peak some time between 1965 and 1970. In the event, it peaked in 1971.)
Of course, the “Hubbert curve” of global oil production/depletion might follow a different path if some way is found to drastically reduce aggregate oil consumption.
But I’m not optimistic.
See also:
Out of Gas, by David Goodstein – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393058573/sr=8-2/qid=1141660460/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-3423664-2313525?_encoding=UTF8
The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618562117/ref=pd_sim_b_1/104-3423664-2313525?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
And Kunstler’s own latest book, The Long Emergency – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871138883/qid=1141660590/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-3423664-2313525?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Absolutely, provided he let’s someone else plan and manage the program.
I’d feel a lot more optimistic if Bush were talking in terms of things that might actually reduce America’s aggregate fossil fuel consumption, such as mass transit and high-speed rail. http://www.newtrains.org/pages/354049/index.htm
Of course, to power them we would either have to burn a lot more coal or build a lot more nuclear power plants. I favor nuclear power plants, simply because the supply of uranium will last longer. There are dangers but we have the technology to ameliorate them. [hunts for sweaty, nervous-grin smiley]
What evidence do you have, though, that more mass transit would significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption? In many areas that have mass transit today, it’s under-utilized.
If you look at where fossil fuel goes in America, about 74% of it is used in transportation (26% of total energy use). That includes fuel used in trucks, airplanes, trains, work vehicles, etc. Mass transit won’t change any of that. Of the remainder, passenger cars and trucks, many are driven in locations where mass transit makes no sense. Rural areas, bedroom communities, suburbs.
Studies like this one from the Surface Transportation Project spin the benefits of mass transit as best they can:
What’s not to like? Well, let’s consider this statement. First, they’re assuming we can increase mass transit usage by a factor of four. Hey, Europe does it, why not us? Because Europe is densely packed, that’s why. Plus, the road infrastructure isn’t as good. It’s a much bigger pain to drive in Europe as it is in the U.S., and not nearly as necessary. There’s no way in hell we’ll ever see 10% of all trips in the U.S. made by mass transit. I’d be shocked if it could be doubled from where it is today.
But let’s say 10%. Reducing foreign oil dependency by 40% sure sounds good, huh? But what does this really mean? Imported oil makes up about 50% of overal oil use, meaning that oil use would only be cut by 20% if we increased mass transit by a factor of four.
Incidentally, that number sounds really high to me. Since only 74% of oil use is made up in the transportation sector, they’re really saying that increasing mass transit to 10% of trips would decrease transportation oil usage by over 25%. I find that pretty hard to believe. And anyway, it will never happen unless you force people into mass transit at gunpoint or pass laws that make car driving so expensive and inconvenient that you force people into mass transit. And that will never happen, because any politician that proposes it will be thrown out on his ear.
And besides, quadrupling the amount of mass transit would be extremely expensive.
I think we really need to find a paradigm-shifting solution. Something that cuts oil usage by 80%, not 20%. The only answer to that is technology. We don’t even need breakthroughs. Just a few more incremental improvements in enabling technologies like batteries, fuel cells, etc.
I do agree with you that we’re going to need more nuclear plants. We simply don’t have anything else that can provide the kind of high-intensity peak power at industrial levels that we need. Luckily, new plant designs are much safer than they used to be. I suspect the decade will see a major revitalization of the nuclear industry.
I agree…and its something that MUST happen. Hopefully the old school anti-nuke crazies will die off or become so marginalized that this will happen. The new school Environmentalists seem to be on board with wider use of nuclear power at least. And your point about the new designs being a lot safer (and cheaper) is good too.
If we are ever going to get to the point where something like hydrogen powered vehicles (or several other alternatives) are a reality we need cheap and abundant electricity…and nuclear is the ONLY thing that will give it to us.
-XT