Peak Oil is You
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Page added on August 7, 2012
Total Available Renewable Resource
Several commenters questioned Friday’s post on the grounds that the total amount of solar and wind power potentially available is insufficient to power modern civilization
This is incorrect.
Total available wind power available on land and near shore has been estimated at 72TW. This is close to five times current total primary energy consumption, and still more than twice as large as energy consumption in 2040 (extrapolating at the 2.7% growth rate of the last decade).
Of course, not all technically and economically feasible wind sites are politically feasible. Thus it’s important that total incoming solar radiation is also very large. Top of the atmosphere incoming solar radiation is 174000TW. If we just look at the world’s desert areas, they represent about a third of the global land area, itself about 30% of the total surface. Allowing 30% losses in the atmosphere over deserts, and throwing out something for Antarctica (a desert, but not a very useful one for solar power), we end up with something in the ballpark of 7000TW of available solar energy from deserts alone. This is hundreds of times larger than current civilizational energy consumption.
Therefore, constraints on our ability to utilize renewables are political and economic, not ultimate physical ones; there is plenty of renewable energy out there.
11 Comments on "Total Available Renewable Resource"
John Monro on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 2:44 am
There is certainly abundant natural resources. However utilising them is the issue. Wind-power for instance, do we have enough iron/steel/aluminium and petroleum resources to construct them. Concentrating solar power, the same. Solar panels/photovoltaics? It may not be just a matter of politics/economics but of some physical resource constraints. Has anyone done the maths?
BillT on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 2:54 am
“…constraints on our ability to utilize renewables are political and economic,…” Failure to mention that the energy resource NECESSARY to make these ‘renewables’ possible is OIL. Huge quantities of OIL. All renewables start in the mines deep underground. The steps to get to an installed PV panel or wind generator is many barrels of oil down the road. When oil stops, soon all renewables will also. End of story.
But, I suspect that the impending death of the global financial system is going to happen long before we are out of oil. Also end of story.
Politics only affect energy in the area of economic regulation, which seems to be running wild and is also nearing the end of the story. Nuff said…
Arthur on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 5:44 am
Bill, the amount of fossil fuel used to build renewable energy systems currently is nearly zero. There is more than enough fossil fuel to build hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and hundreds of millions solar panels. But we must change priorities now and actually start building these devices begore it is too late.
DC on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 10:50 am
Thats not quite true Arthur. Every manufactured item on earth has oil in it. Some more, some less, but its almost always there. Renewable are no exception. Now Ill give you the amount of oil going into the renewable sector is likely atm, not very large, but thats most because the industry itself is pretty small overall compared to everything else. Myself, I dont see oil as being necessarily the Achilles heel of renewables, rather its the fact that everyone else will want to keep using oil for what they do now. Jet vacations, driving gas-burning crap boxes from GM, to wall-mart, suburbia, the US war-machine. None of these other competing sectors have any desire to reduce there share of the shrinking oil pie. This leaves less, a lot less for newcomers, be it regular citizens, or shiny new industries like wind or solar.
Now if we were to dismantle the US war-machine, wall-mart, and the global auto-industry, suburbia etc, wed have enough oil to manufacture solar panels and get them where there needed for a good long while. But thats not likely to happen. Those sectors will fight to last barrel of oil to keep there fatally flawed systems operating. Thus, everyone else will get squeezed out, not matter how necessary or virtuous there products may be.
Put another way. Right now the calculus being preform looks something like this.
Cars or Solar Panels?
The correct answer of course, is Solar Panels. But the TPTB math reads more like this.
More Cars( a lot more), and a (few) Solar Panels.
I dont think he realized he shot down his own argument at the end. He says the problems are ultimately ‘economic’. Of course they are! We cant afford to cover the planet with mega-scale solar farms, any more then we can afford to give everyone in India and China a new Mercedes Benz and a 2 week vacation in Hawaii. Its the old story, if we had started 40 years ago, and had 4 or 5 billion fewer mouths to feed, sure. At the scale were talking now, no longer possible.
Kenz300 on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 12:06 pm
Quote — ” The price of all major renewable energy technologies continued to fall in 2011 — to the point where they are challenging fossil-fuel sources, even before climate, health and other benefits are factored in.”
————–
“At least 118 countries — more than half of them in the developing world — have now established renewable energy targets.”
——————-
The transition to safe, clean alternative energy sources continues to grow.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120611092347.htm
BillT on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 12:06 pm
Arthur, millions of panels and wind generators is a drop in the bucket energy wise. Not going to happen. And oil IS definitely necessary for all of these ideas.
Consider…it takes a barrel of oil to make a cubic yard of concrete and put it in place. YES, it is 1 to 1.
And have many barrels does it take to make a highway?
A base for wind towers?
A base for solar farms?
A factory to make them in?
A facility to make the concrete itself? To mine the minerals for the concrete? Transport?
The condo tower going up beside mine requires hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil supplied energy to happen.
Many more thousands of barrels of oil energy over the tower’s lifetime for maintenance and repair, pumping water to the roof tank, running 3 elevators, lighting, etc. There are 500 apartments in my building. One of thousands of similar towers in Manila and one of millions of similar towers all over the world. That energy can ONLY be supplied by hydrocarbons. Think about your ‘renewables’ considering reality, not hype or hope. Renewables will help, but when oil is gone they too will fade away.
sunweb on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 12:12 pm
So renewables are going to mine the copper, aluminum, rare earths and all the other components of the various renewables. Then they will process these ores both physically and chemically (with machines and chemicals also created by renewables). Then fabricate them into workable materials and manufacture them into parts and transport them wherever and support the men and women doing all this work. And then they will do it again to reproduce themselves.
And after all this they will create the products necessary (and unnecessary for an industrial/modern world).
Wow. I think this is a fantasy.
And of course the earth needs another onslaught and continuation of the present abuse.
See:
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/machines-making-machines-making.html
and
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-make-light-bulb.html
Arthur on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 2:01 pm
DC, we have no difference of opinion.
Bill, my point is that we are halfway with oil and less than halfway with gas. In other words, there is more than enough left for a new (but more modest) energy base if we change priorities. If it is going to happen is indeed a different question altogether. It is obvious that Bill and DC are more sceptical than I am. Not that I am an optimist… But at least there is Germany as the best example yet.
BillT on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 3:15 pm
Arthur, Are we ‘half way’ or are we just scraping under the barrel? That last 50% may have an EROEI of 4:1 or even 2:1, instead of 100:1 like the easy half. Just because it is there does NOT mean it will be recoverable, ever.
The oceans of the world contain more gold than has ever been mined, but…it is still there and will always be there, even if gold goes to $10,000 per ounce. Ditto oil and natural gas. Without the CHEAP, plentiful energy sources that built this system, we cannot rebuild another equal one. Best we can do is downsize to a sustainable level … somewhere around that of the mid 1800s ans with a world population also similar to that time … or about 1 billion people.
You forget that those wells cost millions and some almost a billion dollars to drill and much much more to connect to a system for resource recovery. THAT too only happens in a growing economy and, unless you are blind to current events, those days are over too. The world economy is contracting. The days of fiat money and ‘for profit’ Capitalism are about over. Adjust…
Arthur on Tue, 7th Aug 2012 3:45 pm
Nobody suggests we will have an equal energy base. Before 1950 hardly anyone in Europa had a car, let alone flew in planes, yet survival was not an issue. Car and planes are going to be the first ‘victims’ of energy depletion. This will give the necessary demand destruction.
BillT on Wed, 8th Aug 2012 2:45 am
Arthur, you are correct there, but can you see how those two changes will take down the rest of the system? The US is a car nation. Unless you live out of the country where public transport takes you everywhere you need to go, you cannot see how dependent the US is on cars.
I live in the Philippines where I can go most everywhere by public transit. I am going back to the States in a few weeks to visit family. I have no car there. I literally cannot visit my family and friends without a car picking me up and taking me to their home. The airport is 10 miles outside of the city. I could take a taxi or bus into the city, but then I have to go to another town by the same route, which is very time consuming and expensive.
But, my family is scattered over the countryside. 20 miles from town then another 12 miles to another home then another 18 miles to another home. NONE connected by public transit other than maybe by very expensive taxi rides. I am fortunate. My sister is loaning me her car and I have a US driver’s license I keep renewed for my visits.
My situation is typical, not the exception. That is why the change will be drastic and not gradual. And will NOT stop at the mid 1900s level.