While many people will disagree with the President’s decision to open oil drilling off the VA coast, his administration does seem to have a cohesive plan to control damage while trying to relieve fuel woes and continuing the push for affordable, renewable energies.
I am really encouraged by some of the “out of the box” energy solutions currently being used on a small scale like Klamath Falls, OR where geothermal energy is being tapped to provide heat and hot water to the downtown area, including keeping the sidewalks warm and ice free.They are in an area where tapping hot water from the depths of the earth is feasible at a reasonable cost but research is ongoing to develop a system to use the same technology in other areas of the country.
And the nanotech industry continues to impress with a small, cost effective device that desalinates ocean water on a smaller scale, opening the way to fresh clean water for drinking and crop irrigation to third world countries and island nations around the world.
And the new generation of transportation is being unveiled with the introduction of the Chevy Volt, a hybrid gas/electric car and the Nissan Leaf all electric vehicle. Already in use at some major airports are hybrid shuttle buses. Future development is being done by Chevy and Mercedes on hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Organic solar cells in development will be made of a thin film with the ability to be applied to all sorts of surfaces taking solar power to a new level.
Of course, the use of many of these technologies on a mass scale are years away. But at least they are here, moving us toward a future of affordable, renewable energy sources.
Rocky,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the positive energy. One may hope the pace of these improvements picks up enough to move us away from fossil fuels. The drilling decision, I suppose, tends the other way, towards a locked-in approach to fossil fuels.
People, stop desecrating the burial grounds of my liquefied ancestors!
This is most interesting, Rocky (as is So-Be's post in our private quarters). I have nothing to say, other than the above, and much to learn, as my own knowledge and practice in this area is limited to (reluctant*, I'm embarrassed to admit) recycling, imposed upon me by my morally superior husband, and turning off the lights after my kids, who leave them on whenever they can, thinking that, yes, money does grow on trees somewhere in our (treeless) backyard.
ReplyDeleteI am eager to learn, though, so thanks for that.
*Because of my inherent laziness.
This is a small step toward removing the heavy anvil of Saudi Control and the ability to then progress in many different directions...eventually phasing out fossil fuels altogether. One step...ahead of many more steps toward energy independence, which also means more money to invest in cleaner alternatives. I think it could work...under President Obama.
ReplyDeleteDino, I'm thinking the drilling decision is more to placate the "Drill,baby drill!" crowd but Obaqma is doing it on his terms by limiting or banning it in more ecologically fragile areas.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping the drilling is merely being allowed as a stop gap measure. One can hope...
Elizabeth - I would no sooner believe that you are inherently lazy than I would that Yogi Bear doesn't like picnic baskets.
My own interest and knowledge comes largely from having a son who's a physicist. Can't help but have some of that scientific dander rub off on me. :)
I think all of the positive, new energy developments such as those mentioned here have made me feel more "hopey changey" than I've been in months.
ReplyDeleteMr. Beale and I were talking about all of this and while it's easy to get depressed about things like oil drilling off our coastlines (or Tennessee's refusal for the third year running to ban mountain mining), the truth is that the new energy revolution is happening and WILL happen -- not because there is money to be made in renewable energy (although there is) but because there's too much money being lost in the old technology.
Thanks for this dose of good news. It's out there ...
This is great news. I'm glad to see that these technologies are expanding and becoming more adaptable.
ReplyDeleteThe conservative talking point is that alternate/renewable energy sources can't possibly meet our needs, it's all just a big New Age pipe dream and we need to keep drilling and mining forever.
Even if these renewable sources aren't meeting our energy needs right now, we're making progress in that direction.
Open it up. Drill. Pump it out. Use it up driving ridiculous commuting distances, transporting the little darlings to soccer practice and dance lessons and running to the grocery store in an SUV for a pint of Ben N Jerry's.
ReplyDeleteFunny how every discussion about alternative forms of transportation and energy always returns to drilling for more petroleum and driving automobiles pretty much as we've done for the last fifty years.
We here in 'progressive' Seattle are preparing to remove a waterfront viaduct and replace it with a tunnel for automobile and truck traffic at the pre-construction price of roughly $5B.
The American fixation on the automobile and the 'freedom' it provides is definitely non-partisan. 'Don't Tread on Me"? 'Stop Socialism"? "Save the Planet"?
Nope. Here's an American motto for everyone.
"You'll take my automobile when you pry the keys from my cold dead fingers."
And so a step closer to Star Trek technology and life, one can only hope, lol!
ReplyDeleteGreat post!
I am such a sucker for new technology! It is wonderful to see the development of energy generation that will NOT involve using up a resource or being beholdin' to another country.
ReplyDeleteArthurstone - I share your concern about the amount of energy we waste. One development I find exciting and hope catches on is the light rail.
Denver, Atlanta and Charlotte have it and I've had the chance to use it and I think it's great. We should restore our rail system and extend into the suburbs. It's a great way to travel to work or see a show, have a few drinks and not have to worry about driving.
Maybe we're beginning to see a trend away from the excessive.
Thank you, Leticia.
Thanks Ms Rocky - a very interesting piece and really very exciting news. I'm probably not as good at recycling as I should be but I do try my best and I'm very environmentally concious. That we have become a disposable society is quite worrisome.
ReplyDeleteIf only the Democrats can remain in "power" for a bunch of years, we should see some real advancement in renewable energies. If the Republicans come back, we can expect to only go backwards.
The Quiet Magpie has an interesting little tidbit on a two seater that is being developed. In Australia, I assume because that's where he lives.
http://quietmagpie.blogspot.com/2010/03/cmon-jump-in-my-car.html
I was concerned at hearing this news Rocky, as a matter of fact I was thoroughly disappointed, but after reading your most enlightening piece I am, well, enlightened. Thanks :-)
ReplyDeleteVery positive post, and I am sure President Obama knows all this too, he also knows it's not going to happen overnight, so until it does . . .
ReplyDeleteThere is an environmental newsletter that arrives regularly in my email box. Here are two news bits that caught my attention:
ReplyDeleteDisputed island 'vanishes'
A tiny island claimed for years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say. The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis. The irony is that the island was the subject of territorial dispute, involving the deployment of naval vessels at times.
"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Professor Sugata Hazra of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in Calcutta.
NASA study concludes: No cooling evident in past decade
A comprehensive analysis of global air and sea temperatures by NASA climatologists shows that the planet has not experienced a cooling trend in the past decade and is continuing to warm at a rate of about .3 degrees F per decade. The NASA scientists, affiliated with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the warming trend has continued despite the sun's irradiative power being at one of its lowest points in a century.
In my humble cephalopod opinion, we are not making progress fast enough!
The conservative talking point is that alternate/renewable energy sources can't possibly meet our needs, it's all just a big New Age pipe dream and we need to keep drilling and mining forever.
ReplyDeleteEven if these renewable sources aren't meeting our energy needs right now, we're making progress in that direction.
That is a stereotype.
conservatives are all for renewable energy that can stand on its own in the marketplace.
Artificially inflating the price of fossil fuels through invented scarcity by trading credits in a stock market run by rent-seekers is not the answer. Taking taxpayer money and refunding it to peopel to subsidize increased heating bills doesn't make it any better.
This is a great post, and this is how technology advances. Small scale before going large-scale.
In order for electric cars to really be energy savers, we must power them with renewable energy. Otherwise, you're simply driving a coal powered car that you plug in at night.
SG - Artificially inflating the price of fossil fuels through invented scarcity by trading credits in a stock market run by rent-seekers is not the answer. Taking taxpayer money and refunding it to peopel [sic] to subsidize increased heating bills doesn't make it any better.
ReplyDeleteActually this comment is wrong on several points. Scarcity is no longer invented; it is real from two perspectives. With respect to domestic production, the supply-demand curves crossed in 1968-70, and Asian countries were not significant energy consumers until this decade. In truth, the worldwide demand for energy supplies is increasing exponentially while supplies are dwindling, retracing the domestic supply-demand graphs of 1968-70 but this time on a global scale. The refrain “drill, baby, drill’ is not the answer because polemicists are chanting slogans in total ignorance of the facts.
The cost of coal, measured in cents/kilowatt hour, is the cost benchmark against which all alternative energies are measured. To be cost competitive, such alternative energy sources as wind, geothermal, and photovoltaic, as examples, must compete in the open marketplace against this benchmark. The problem is simple: If coal costs 5 cents per kilowatt and wind power costs 11 cents, then the transition from coal to wind will not take place until rough cost parity is reached. The purpose of a carbon tax, or the concept known as cap and trade, is to level the playing field between fossil fuel versus renewable energy sources in terms of cost competitiveness. Otherwise nothing will happen … or the transition will take forever … and WE DON’T HAVE FOREVER!
The logic behind these transition strategies is based on the fundamentals of energy economics.
Nevertheless I do agree with you, strenuously in fact, on the need to get away from combustible (i.e. anything that discharges CO2) energy technologies.
I would suggest that the government's role here is to make it worth somebody's while to give us the damn technology we need -- ones that don't pollute either directly or indirectly, as has been said by previous commenters.
ReplyDeleteMy sense is that President Obama's modified "drill, baby, drill" policy is offered in the hope that by the time we would really need to be tapping new fossil-fuel reserves, we will have "thunk" our way beyond the need. If you're still using fossil fuels more than a few decades from now, I think you human types will have proven yourselves hopelessly unworthy as -- ahem -- successors (?) to the dinosaurs, whom we all know were excellent stewards of the planet, and true environmentalists.
My hope is that the drilling will be a menas of lowering our fuel costs while giving us time to develop new energy sources into affordable, large scale use.
ReplyDeleteI believe we have the bright minds and technological ability to get there.
Probably the government's most crucial role would be to ensure adequate funding to those researchers who are ready to break out. We are going to have to throw money out there but there needs to be a very logical, informed plan for this. The payoff will be decades of cheaper, cleaner energy.
And I agree with Octo - we don't have forever. We have already wasted too many years. Time to get serious; time to get busy!
Rocky - My hope is that the drilling will be a means of lowering our fuel costs while giving us time to develop new energy sources into affordable, large scale use.
ReplyDeleteI believe there is an unspoken narrative beneath Obama’s compromise on ‘drill, baby, drill.’ Recently, there have been troubling increases in futures trading on light crude, which means speculators are returning to the market and driving up prices, thus signaling a return to the same conditions that drove pump prices above $4/gallon.
The effect of new oil and gas exploration is more psychological than real. Exploration requires a decade or more to bring new supplies to market. Currently, drilling rig leases are overbooked, which means the lead-time to market will be even longer. Global recession has depressed the commodity pricing of energy stocks, but once the recession is over, very strong upward price pressure will return.
How strong is the psychological effect of restarting exploration? Weak is the answer, and futures pricing will depend on the strength of the demand curve. Right now, all bets are on strong upward pressure.
It's precisely the strong upward pressure on energy costs that will spur development of other resources, some of these resources are a mixed blessing since they'll always be much more expensive than mining and burning coal. Certain kinds of consumption will be curtailed int the future -- I might consider sail if my boat costs a thousand or fifteen hundred for a two hundred mile round trip, for instance.
ReplyDeleteHere in Florida, my local water company already uses reverse osmosis to desalinate a brackish aquifer and it works, but you don't water your lawn with city water. Perrier might be cheaper. They're building a solar power plant in the outback, but locals are upset because it will raise, not lower energy costs. FPL wanted to build wind turbines on the always windy coast here, but the public shut it down because the meg-wealthy didn't want the ocean views "spoiled."
Sometimes however, waiting for something to be profitable enough for investors to raise unholy amounts of capital to exploit it means it may never happen, or perhaps be far too late and once again standing on conservative economic principle or dogma will have one backing a worse solution.
Huge projects like the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant would not have happened if we'd waited for it to happen all by itself, especially during a recession. We might have 300 mph trains already, like the more pragmatic Chinese, Japanese and even the French if we weren't so damned dogmatic - what my mother used to call cutting off your nose to spite your face.
But why should I care, the country's doomed to become third rate, squandering our future while bickering about "principle" just like the Soviets.
As long as petroleum is cheap, and it is, we'll pump it out of the ground and burn it. Hell, we'll go to war to keep what's 'ours'. Even if it's seven thousand miles yonder buried under someone else's ground.
ReplyDeleteBuck a gallon federal tax on gasoline right now to pay for the war effort and to invest in alternative energy sources, public transit and infrastructure.
Buck a gallon? Sure, but not for boats please -- that would of course be Communism.
ReplyDeleteI do not disagree with any of the assessments here that there are those who will be pushing hard for drilling or that it is an uphill battle to get the incentives and enthusiasm needed to really push some of the "green" energy technologies, but I do believe that these bright sparks are lighting the way and these new energies will be developed in spite of all the mass fossil consumerism.
ReplyDeleteChange is never easy.
I'm an ardent environmentalist but I realize that we need a transition fuel, and if that fuel must be a fossil fuel then why not switch to natural gas instead of oil? It's the cleanest of the fossil fuels and we have a lot of pockets of it.
ReplyDeleteAgain, the brunt of our investments and resources should be put toward green energy but I think natural gas can be a good bridge fuel.
I think you're right. It's far cleaner to burn than coal or fuel oil and if you spill it, it won't pollute anything.
ReplyDeleteT. Boon Pickens agrees and with a name like that, he's got to be good.
Capt:
ReplyDeleteYeah, I got the idea from Pickens. It makes sense.
I remember vividly the 1973 oil crisis. Long lines at the gas station. Even and odd days. Spike in prices. Etc. Etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd 37 years later what is our response to the continued crisis in petroleum supplies?
Reverse a moratorium on drilling in the continental shelf and parts of Alaska and pump, pump, pump away. In ten or fifteen years we'll have some more capacity. What should one do with a declining resource but use it up as rapidly as possible anyhoo?
And the other stroke of genius is getting government back into the nuclear industry.
Eventually we'll figure out how to deal with the waste.
Right?