150 years ago, “conventional oil” was whale oil. Petroleum was known, butt was a minor alternative with no real market until Drake’s pioneering oil well in 1858. The impending Peak Whale Oil crisis and the demise of the world’s massive whaling industry was as plain as day to anyone who cared to see it (and who chose to ignore alternative sources)
BTW, if the US government had tried to equip the US with solar cells, it would have produced a dramatic upsurge in energy demand/consumption. Refinining silicon to the high purity required for a solar cells is an extremely energy intensive process. By the most optimistic projections and liberal assumptions, it would take 6-7 years of the solar cell’s output to “break even” on energy used to produce just te solar cell. In other words: if the US had gone on a massive solar cell spree after 9/11, it would only have used ~10-20 MWh per kWh of peak capacity produced, years ago, and we would not yet have gotten that energy back yet. The more significant a fraction of our energy needs we make from solar, the deeper a “hole” we’d have to dig ourselves into first.
In fact, to get ~10% of our energy from solar “instead of the Iraq War” would have meant more than doubling our energy consumption in the early 2000s. The solar cell may pay back the initial energy deficit of its own production in 7 years, under ideal conditions, but a solar cell is a minor fraction of the energy used in producing/distributing solar electricity.
I don’t seek to slam solar, but to highlight the disregarded, but very real, issues that have kept it from being appropriately exploited in my lifetime, so we may overcome them. IMHO, the flaws of a “fiscal” approach are one major reason that sensible alternative/green sources haven’t had much impact over 30+ years
First off, only limited regions of the US can make “ideal” use of solar panels to begin with – and those are mostly sparsely populated (with is both good and bad) To utilize those locations on a national scale, you need to build massive inverters (DC to AC converters), transformers (AC to AC converters for transmission), huge power transmission links … oh, and let’s not forget physical plants. This isn’t a science fair project: you can’t just lay panels on the ground. You have to build a facility that will stand for at least 30-50 years (anything less than 20 and you risk not even breaking even on total construction/infrastructure energy) and it has to be designed for monitoring, maintenance, replacement, etc. (a sewage treatment plant is simple in principle, but is a sizeable ongoing public work project)
Of course, we couldn’t have done it if we’d wanted to. It would have meant increasing the world’s production capacity for solar panels at least 100x – buiilding many many more semiconductor factories, building as much fossil fuel/nuclear/hydroelectric power capacity as currently exists to power the infrastructure to build the solar cell factories and then run them – concrete plants, steel rebar plants, petroleum-guzzling construction and delivery vehicles in dizzying arrays. The economic impact would be unfathomable. Producing solar cells in that quantity would vastly increase prices on every step in the process; not doing it to that extent would leave solar a minor source, not worth mentioning. Soon after you complete your Tier One production (to say ~10%) you’re over a decade down the road, with massive ongoing maintenance issues, and planning for replacement: the first solar cells of the massive plan are more than halfway through their rated life, and are already experiencing substantial decline in capacity – and you haven’t broken even on energy yet!
Don’t get me wrong. Solar is a good idea. However, the “If, instead of the war” dollar-based thinking presented in that hypothesis is also the cause of our current petroleum crisis: it treats the market as if money measured value and capability – it does neither, and was never meant to. The economic function of money is something much subtler, which lacks a name in common parlance. What is the “value” of your liver, your child, a good physician or “comfort girl”? Peace of mind, Freedom or Happiness (without which, little is worth much)
Stating that “market price = value” is one of the unjustified (and clearly wrong) simplifying assumptions that economics tends to make at the outset. I don’t blame them: its the best we can do, and they can squeeze some darn clever results out of them, but we’re just out of the stone age (I can, and frequently do, say the same about my field: medicine)
The sad part is: it really hard to find papers that state the “costs” of various forms of energy in objective units (like MWh of energy to produce 1kWh peak capacity). Almost all analyses, by proponent and opponent, government or private, are in terms of fiscal costs, which change according to a thousands factors, most unrelated to the question. It’s just “looking where the light is good”.
I wish I had time (in general, in life) to research this issue better (or even just edit this post down), but here’s on paper that may help people get started:
Corkish, Richard. “Can Solar Cells Ever Recapture the Energy Invested in their Manufacture?” Solar Progress (Australia and New Zealand Solar Energy Society) vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 16-17 (1997)