[kublikhan]

I am splitting this discussion off from the solar subsidies thread.

Is it possible that renewables can supply 100% of our energy needs? One study that looked at this question was here:
A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables

This study proposes a mix of wind and solar for 100% of our energy. It mentions we would need to make 200k wind turbines each and every year to get wind power to provide 50% of our energy by 2030. That's about 10x more wind turbines installed per year than we are doing currently. Is that even possible? The article thinks so. Looking at raw materials first:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')nough concrete and steel exist for the millions of wind turbines, and both those commodities are fully recyclable. The most problematic materials may be rare-earth metals such as neodymium used in turbine gearboxes. Although the metals are not in short supply, the low-cost sources are concentrated in China, so countries such as the U.S. could be trading dependence on Middle Eastern oil for dependence on Far Eastern metals. Manufacturers are moving toward gearless turbines, however, so that limitation may become moot.

Photovoltaic cells rely on amorphous or crystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, or copper indium selenide and sulfide. Limited supplies of tellurium and indium could reduce the prospects for some types of thin-film solar cells, though not for all; the other types might be able to take up the slack. Large-scale production could be restricted by the silver that cells require, but finding ways to reduce the silver content could tackle that hurdle. Recycling parts from old cells could ameliorate material difficulties as well.

Three components could pose challenges for building millions of electric vehicles: rare-earth metals for electric motors, lithium for lithium-ion batteries and platinum for fuel cells. More than half the world’s lithium reserves lie in Bolivia and Chile. That concentration, combined with rapidly growing demand, could raise prices significantly. More problematic is the claim by Meridian International Research that not enough economically recoverable lithium exists to build anywhere near the number of batteries needed in a global electric-vehicle economy. Recycling could change the equation, but the economics of recycling depend in part on whether batteries are made with easy recyclability in mind, an issue the industry is aware of. The long-term use of platinum also depends on recycling; current available reserves would sustain annual production of 20 million fuel-cell vehicles, along with existing industrial uses, for fewer than 100 years.

[Pops]

Great post Kub.
There was a post I think at TOD about transitioning sooner rather than later. The point was to expend the energy and capitol now while there is some slight excess rather than later when we a re already short both and getting worse.

[Graeme]

K, Thanks for starting this thread. I'm sure there is a vast literature on this subject but I was particularly drawn to this review by IPCC. The issue of raw materials is addressed in Box 9.1, p727.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')istorically, economic development has been strongly correlated with increasing energy use and growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Renewable energy (RE) can help decouple that correlation, contributing to sustainable development (SD). In addition, RE offers the opportunity to improve access to modern energy services for the poorest members of society, which is crucial for the achievement of any single of the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Theoretical concepts of SD can provide useful frameworks to assess the interactions between SD and RE. SD addresses concerns about relationships between human society and nature. Traditionally, SD has been framed in
the three-pillar model—Economy, Ecology, and Society—allowing a schematic categorization of development goals, with the three pillars being interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Within another conceptual framework, SD can be oriented along a continuum between the two paradigms of weak sustainability and strong sustainability. The two paradigms differ in assumptions about the substitutability of natural and human-made capital. RE can contribute to the development goals of the three-pillar model and can be assessed in terms of both weak and strong SD, since RE utilization is defi ned as sustaining natural capital as long as its resource use does not reduce the potential for future harvest.

The relationship between RE and SD can be viewed as a hierarchy of goals and constraints that involve both global and regional or local considerations. Though the exact contribution of RE to SD has to be evaluated in a country specifi c context, RE offers the opportunity to contribute to a number of important SD goals: (1) social and economic development; (2) energy access; (3) energy security; (4) climate change mitigation and the reduction of environmental and health impacts. The mitigation of dangerous anthropogenic climate change is seen as one strong driving force behind the increased use of RE worldwide. The chapter provides an overview of the scientifi c literature on the relationship between these four SD goals and RE and, at times, fossil and nuclear energy technologies. The assessments are based on different methodological tools, including bottom-up indicators derived from attributional lifecycle assessments (LCA) or energy statistics, dynamic integrated modelling approaches, and qualitative analyses.

[radon]

Very interesting subject. I have been in and out reading this forum from early 2005 perhaps. Since I was out for protracted periods sometimes, I could have missed some extensive and detailed discussions on various subjects. And whenever you raise an issue on this forum these days, you always run into risk of being dismissed outright: "oh, we have discussed this zillion times already".

What I think I have never seen is a reference to comprehensive full-cycle analysis of the viability of renewables or other non-oil resources ("alternatives") as self-reproductive energy sources, and sustainable population levels that they can support. There have been guesses in the order of the 0.5-1 billion of sustainable population levels that the planet can support, but those related to a primitive subsistence society rather than to an advanced alternative-technology based one.

Lots of hysteria dismissing alternatives outright has a lot to do, apparently, with people psyching over their personal petty inconveniences. "Oh, gas is going to 4$, we will all die!". I am not sure, but I suspect that it may have a lot to do with the American (and overall western, to some extent) political culture. This culture is based on bargaining (or whining as a cynic would say) whereby you need to blow your trumpet presenting your case looking as bad as possible in order to ensure that you bargain out a piece of pie as big as possible. The absolutely great advantage of this arrangement is that it is peaceful and prevents violence; its disadvantage - is that it clouds the picture with emotions and hinders a rational discussion. Since the majority of the participants here are US residents, this, if true, may have tangible impact on the discussions here.

Simple examples of a self-reproductive non-oil-based cycles may look like this:
1) A wind farm produces electricity + hydrogen/methane. Hydrogen/methane are then used to power movable vehicles that are used to build further wind farms.
2) A hydro-dam generates electricity that is used to synthesize fuels (ethanol/hydrogen/methane etc.) to power vehicles used to build further hydro-dams.

What is important is the distinction between the energy that keeps the lights on (electricity) and fuels that power movable vehicles. These fuels tend to be liquids for the following reasons:
1) They occupy the entire storage space unlike solid fuels (coal etc.)
2) They are non-escapist unlike gaseous substances (hydrogen/methane).
Therefore they normally ensure the greatest energy density per unit volume of storage which is crucial for vehicles, especially manned ones.
But there is nothing to suggest that it is absolutely paramount that the liquid fuels have to be manufactured at a huge positive ERoEI. They can be manufactured at a negative ERoEI, as long as the entire energy system is ERoEI positive, and as long as ICE or other liquid-fuel (or indeed non-liquid-fuel) vehicles are more efficient than horses. When people claim that oil inevitably has to be the primary energy source they totally overlook this fact. The key advantage of oil and other liquid fuels is not that they have to be the primary energy sources, but rather that they are particularly suitable to serve as transportation fuels.

The viability of an alternative-energy based system would require a comprehensive life-cycle analysis of its ERoEI. There have been references to such an analysis for some very specific alternative solutions, think this was solar courtesy of cephalotus, but don't think we have come across a comprehensive system-wide analysis. The OP link article attempts to initiate such an analysis. It makes important steps of identifying the energy needs and resource constraints, but stops short of addressing the life-cycle ERoEI.

Obviously, the alternatives may fail to ensure that the party can go on in the way it has so far. But then, the question of whether the party can go on is absolutely different from the question whether the alternatives may comprise a self-sustainable energy cycle with a good chunk of surplus energy. Some will also affirm that the oil happens to be, even if by accidence, the most energy-dense form of fuel - this may well be true, but for the response to that argument see the previous sentence.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'T')he final point I wanted to address was that renewables are not really renewable. The materials to build them were mined by fossil fueled mining equipment. They factories that build them were powered by coal power plants. The vehicles that transported them were powered by diesel. Again, I don't see this as an issue. Our current infrastructure in place uses fossil fuels everywhere. Of course everything we do is powered by fossil fuels. But our fossil fueled infrastructure did not spring up from nothing. It was created by an earlier infrastructure. Everything from biomass to old fashioned muscle power. Pointing out that renewable energy is being built by fossil fueled powered infrastructure is no more relevant than pointing out that the fossil fueled infrastructure was built by muscle, biomass, etc.

[sunweb]

kublikhan - Supposition and wishful thinking submitted as sure to happen possibilities is rampant your presentation.

Recycling - fossil fuel dependent. Making all those cars or 200k wind generators each year to cover only 50% of the needed energy by 2030 - underwritten by fossil fuels.

You are not using Replicators? I was sure that was how all the wind generators and solar panels were materializing.

"It has also been argued that renewables provide only energy. They do not provide us with food, raw materials, etc. I think that goes without saying."
Fossil fuel also provides energy which is used for shoes, food, raw materials. This was my early point so your reply is simply glib. (Fossil fuels also provide medicines, plastics, etc.)

Yes, I have to agree that horses cause pollution - what? We can use that to grow crops. So the pollution created using fossil fuels for solar and wind devices is okay because it is like being just a little bit pregnant?

What to me is the real lack of understanding of the situation is the claiming that previous energy transitions were dependent on the previous energy source to make that transition.
Gathering and hunting - solar energy via photosynthesis and processed photosynthesis through other animals and ourselves.
Horticulture and non-fossil fuel agriculture - solar energy via photosynthesis, processed photosynthesis through other animals and ourselves and some mechanical wind and water energy.
Industrial agriculture - all of the above plus the concentrated energy of time, photosynthesis and earth pressure for fossil fuels. All are solar as in sun dependent.

What I understand your dream to be is that when there are no fossil fuels that a portion of humanity will use incoming solar energy to produce the devices needed to capture the energy of that incoming energy. That they will then when necessary have generated enough energy (stored?)to reproduce themselves as an oak tree or horse. And along with gathering enough energy to reproduce themselves, they will also provide energy for mining, processing, manufacturing, installing, transporting and repairing whatever items are wanted including the distribution systems.

And what about the few billion people who will be the trickle down recipients of this bonanza of self creating energy? What about the resources we will take from them as we do now?

"We will do anything and everything to maintain our present personal level of energy use and the comfort it affords us. We will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people and even to ourselves to continue on this path. And if we don’t have the energy level we see others have, we will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people and even to ourselves to attain that level. The proof of this assertion is simple; we are doing it."
From: The Curmudgeon Report
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/02/cu ... eport.html

"Burning through the incredible energy bonanza of fossil fuels in a few centuries seems incredibly wasteful to me. However using this energy to power a transition to a more sustainable energy future seems like a very wise move."

I agree. What does your sustainable future look like? And for what are you using this energy that you need to do this balancing trick of robbing Peter to pay Paul as long as the overall ERoEI is positive (by how much)? You will you make hoes or I Pods? Tractors, snow blowers, jet skis, four wheelers? Trinkets or shoes? How much energy do you really need?

The middle ages had several problems. People making people unrestrained - still a problem. Weather variability - still a problem. Natural disasters - still a problem. Us against them - still a problem. Inequality - still a problem. I submit the real problems facing humanity are not energy, there is enough incoming energy from the sun being converted via photosynthesis and through other animals and ourselves to live a joyful life.

If each of you believe in this, then do it. Get a grant, take up a collection do whatever you can to show that 200k wind generators and the other devices proposed in the http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... gy-by-2030 article can produce themselves, reproduce themselves, create the infrastructure for other materials and produce those materials.

Again, I believe we live in different worlds, with a different belief in humanities fit into the web of life - so we must agree to disagree.

[kublikhan]

"Recycling - fossil fuel dependent. Making all those cars or 200k wind generators each year to cover only 50% of the needed energy by 2030 - underwritten by fossil fuels."
And this is a problem because.....? I am not seeing the problem of using fossil fuels to power the mining, processing, manufacturing, installing, transporting, etc. of creating the infrastructure of renewable energy. Once that renewable infrastructure is in place, fossil fuels would no longer be needed to provide power for all of the above mentioned activities. The energy would come from renewable sources such as wind, PV, hydro, etc.

"Fossil fuel also provides energy which is used for shoes, food, raw materials. This was my early point so your reply is simply glib." And the scientific american article linked to above examines the energy needs for all purposes. It was not limited to only our electrical needs. If it was, the renewable energy infrastructure examined in the scenario would be much smaller.

"So the pollution created using fossil fuels for solar and wind devices is okay because it is like being just a little bit pregnant?"
See my first point above. Once the renewable energy infrastructure is in place, we would no longer need to burn fossil fuels anymore.

"What to me is the real lack of understanding of the situation is the claiming that previous energy transitions were dependent on the previous energy source to make that transition....All are solar as in sun dependent."
And with the exception of tidal and geothermal, so are most of the renewable energy sources(hydro, wind, PV, etc). They are solar powered. IMHO, you have failed to make your case for why using fossil fuels to power the transition to next generation solar sources is either impossible or undesirable.

"We will do anything and everything to maintain our present personal level of energy use and the comfort it affords us. We will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people and even to ourselves to continue on this path. And if we don’t have the energy level we see others have, we will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people and even to ourselves to attain that level. The proof of this assertion is simple; we are doing it."
I see a powered up society that runs on clean renewable energy better than a powered down society that runs on dirty fossil fuels.

"What does your sustainable future look like? And for what are you using this energy that you need to do this balancing trick of robbing Peter to pay Paul as long as the overall ERoEI is positive (by how much)? You will you make hoes or I Pods? Tractors, snow blowers, jet skis, four wheelers? Trinkets or shoes? How much energy do you really need?"
Industry would have to more closely mimic nature with a closed loop industry. Wastes can no longer be dumped into the environment and need to be recycled back into the industrial process. See this article for more details:
The Cradle to Cradle Alternative

"I am developing an orchard/garden for sell and/or trade. I have reconditioned an old home and built a huge root cellar. I have designed a greenhouse using glass that should be almost self-heating here in northern Minnesota. Put the walls up last week. Am anxious to experiment with growing and drying. Steep learning curve. a happy man who has studied energy for four decades. Who lived off the grid for many years, the first ten without electricity. And who is not afraid of hard work or living more simply.
...
Again, I believe we live in different worlds, with a different belief in humanities fit into the web of life - so we must agree to disagree."
And if we did live in a high tech world powered by a large amount of sustainable energy production, would you find this world objectionable? It sounds as if you think the Amish lifestyle is the best way forward for humanity. I admit, I don't envision humanity taking this path in the future. But I don't see that as a bad thing either. I don't want to see humanity continue to trash the ecosphere, but I don't have a problem with technology and high levels of sustainable energy production either.

"If each of you believe in this, then do it. Get a grant, take up a collection do whatever you can to show that 200k wind generators and the other devices proposed in the http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... gy-by-2030 article can produce themselves, reproduce themselves, create the infrastructure for other materials and produce those materials."
I propose that the wind turbines envisioned in the mentioned article can easily provide the energy needed to both reproduce themselves and power society. I do not see humanity having a problem providing the raw materials needed for their initial construction. And at the end of their life, most of the raw materials used in their construction can be recycled into the next generation of power plants, or used for another productive human enterprise.

[ralfy]

Related:

"The Energy Trap"

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... ergy-trap/

[Graeme]

The answer is yes but preferably in a society where economic and population growth is zero.

[radon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'T')he answer is yes but preferably in a society where economic and population growth is zero.

[Pops]

Here is a related post at TOD
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5965

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ere you can see the boundaries of the Renewables Gap—the optimistic assumptions on top, pessimistic on the bottom. The lines represent, under each scenario, the net energy supplied by oil, minus the energy invested that year in building renewable energy production, plus the energy produced that year by the renewables brought on-line to date:

[kublikhan]

Nice posts guys. The energy trap and Oil drum articles make a similar point. Aside from the dismal results the energy numbers give us, there is still the problem of political will for implementing the new energy infrastructure. I think Hirsch was right that we are looking at an energy problem that will take decades to fix, and things will get worse before they get better. Hubbert called it a spiral of adversity we would first have to go through. Bleh, this information has depressed me. I'm going to go look at something meant to entertain and pacify the masses, in my gas guzzling car and fossil fuel powered home.

[radon]

I thought that the things were much worse, the linked stories inspire some optimism actually.

The first good news is that you only need to re-invest 10% of the energy for the renewables' replacement, as per Graeme's report. Even if they are off by a factor of 2, and we have to re-invest only 20% of the energy (this, incidentally, brings us roughly to EROI of 5 that is close to EROI of 4 - pessimistic TOD's scenario), - even then it leaves us with 80% energy surplus. This is really a lot. I thought that the renewables' depreciation rate would be 70-80%+, possibly even over a 100%, rather than 10-20%. Not only is it self-sustainable - it generates hefty surplus. This means that we probably do not need a command economy and rationing in order to base ourselves on renewables, and can go on with good old markets.

This also means that we can really feed expansion of the energy network withdrawing only marginal energy amounts from consumption: if 10% are needed for replacement, than 10%+5% will presumably replace+grow the generation capacity by around 5%. The additional 5% withdrawn from consumption is 5%/(100%-10%)= 5.6% withdrawn from consumption. This is very good, - it is so good that I have difficulty believing it. In case of 80% depreciation that would be the whole 5%/(100%-80%)=25% of consumption.

The transition is the toughest part. The Renewables Trap/Gap links are very informative on this, along with the discussions in comments to them. It looks like that the TOD article's main objective is to illustrate that the challenges to employing renewables are formidable (this is clear anyway). To these ends, it focuses on its pessimistic scenario. This pessimistic scenario is built in such way that it is highly unlikely that the things can be any worse than this scenario. It also makes a number of assumptions.

TOD's article is trying to calculate how much green energy would be required to substitute present date oil production. After some deliberation, the author takes the ratio 1:1 for conversion of oil energy to green energy. This is actually quite an arbitrary assumption making the whole model a bit abstract. For example, oil is used both as transport fuel and electricity generator. TOD's focuses on total energy output, but assumes that there are no losses in the process (1:1 conversion ratio), while in fact the losses attributed to electricity generation can be anywhere in-between 30 to 60%. Meaning that the green energy required to substitute oil as per TOD's model can be overstated by as much as a factor of 3. This makes this model very conservative, to say the least.

Another thing is that the boundary condition that the output energy has to be equal to the present day output energy, whether expressed in TWs or in oil barrels extracted, is a bit artificial. Nothing conditions that the total output cannot slide down before re-surging to the current levels and above. Arguably, this situation can be summarized as "the things have to get worse before they get better". Familiar cure, called austerity, isn't it - Greeks are through it, why others should be spared, it's not lethal, sometimes milder sometimes not. But in fact, the austerity can be mitigated or altogether avoided. The energy transition subsidy can be drawn from non-oil sources, including fossil (coal, gas) and other. Is there a better use for the shale gas glut, for example.

Another thing: the Chinese have increased their energy consumption nearly two-fold over the last decade. Their population grew modestly over the same period. Now they are half of the US consumption. Meaning that their last decade growth is around 5-6% of the world's total consumption. The Chinese, at broadly the same population levels, did not suffer from widespread hunger 10 years ago despite being at half their present energy consumption. Meaning that all these 5-6% are mostly discretionary energy use in pursuit of lifestyles rather than basic survival. Fear to say what kind of untapped resource is the US, Western Europe (and Russian/Saudi Arabian etc) consumption in this sense. When reviewing the links I came across the numbers that state that 49% of the US energy consumption is spent on housing use, while only 22% on industrial use. This is sobering.

Greame's report for some reason overlooks the Trap-Gap problem altogether, it states that the investment requirement can be evenly spread over the course of 40 years rather than heavily-weighed upfront. Would be interesting if TOD's and Greame's article criticize each others assumptions and came up with an agreed model (always tiring to sort out others people messy numbers ). Greame's model is more purist in the sense that it employs differential equations rather than excel tables.

From the Trap-Gap perspective, it does not really matter if the resource that you are trying to exploit is called "oil" or "renewables", as long as the upfront capital expenditure is the same. It is difficult to imagine that the upfront expenditure required for building an offshore oil platform is substantially smaller than that required for offshore wind farm. And oil development entails exploration costs, dry holes etc., "misunderestimated" resources, while wind farming is spared from those. Therefore this Trap-Gap logic applies equally to oil resources. It might make sense to let the markets to sort out the way it should go. It may well be the case that at equal Trap-Gap characteristics oil development still takes precedence as it leads to cheaper production of the liquid transportation fuels.

Looks like the markets may at the end point the way forward through the energy pricing mechanisms. Maybe this is what the elusive "TBTP" are trying to achieve, not totally unreasonably.

One other optimistic thing about the fact that the renewables appear to be self-sustainable and generate substantial surplus even at current levels of technological development: tackling the energy problem may not require a revolutionary technological breakthrough. Evolutionary development like a kind of Moore's law in the renewables efficiency may mitigate the transition. And civilization crush and feudalism can be avoided.

[Beery1]

Because oil is so cheap, we waste an incredible amount of energy. I'd say we waste at least half the energy we consume - and I think that's a conservative estimate. I'm sure that we could power our lives using 100% renewable energy, but while oil is still cheap (and let's face it, it will still be cheap at $1000/bbl), there's little point in conserving. People enjoy wasting energy, and that won't change until energy really gets expensive.

When the price of oil makes us really want to power down our lives to a reasonable minimum, then we can talk about switching to renewables. But right now, there's no point even discussing it, because oil is so cheap and we waste so much of it that we don't even know what our basic need for energy is.

[cephalotus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon', '.').. After some deliberation, the author takes the ratio 1:1 for conversion of oil energy to green energy. This is actually quite an arbitrary assumption making the whole model a bit abstract. For example, oil is used both as transport fuel and electricity generator. TOD's focuses on total energy output, but assumes that there are no losses in the process (1:1 conversion ratio), while in fact the losses attributed to electricity generation can be anywhere in-between 30 to 60%. Meaning that the green energy required to substitute oil as per TOD's model can be overstated by as much as a factor of 3. This makes this model very conservative, to say the least.

[radon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cephalotus', '
')The conversation rate to make methane out of electricity, water and CO2 is roughly 60%, so you have the factor 1,7, not 3.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon', 'A')nother thing is that the boundary condition that the output energy has to be equal to the present day output energy, whether expressed in TWs or in oil barrels extracted, is a bit artificial. Nothing conditions that the total output cannot slide down before re-surging to the current levels and above. Arguably, this situation can be summarized as "the things have to get worse before they get better". Familiar cure, called austerity, isn't it - Greeks are through it, why others should be spared, it's not lethal, sometimes milder sometimes not. But in fact, the austerity can be mitigated or altogether avoided. The energy transition subsidy can be drawn from non-oil sources, including fossil (coal, gas) and other. Is there a better use for the shale gas glut, for example.

[radon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', ' ')Look at how much cheaper(monetarily and energy wise) just solar and wind have gotten in the last 30 years. Now imagine someone crunching the numbers for a renewable energy transition 30 years ago. It must have looked even uglier back then. Makes me wonder if it was not such a bad idea after all that we didn't implement a crash renewable program 30 years ago. What we have now is so much better than what we had back then.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon', 'C')omputers are bought with the a horizon of 3-5 years in mind. This kind of time horizon works OK with Moore's law. But solar/wind purchases/investments can be made with time horizons of 30-40 years. With Moore's law in place, you may be disincentivised to spend on solar today if you know that in two years time you will buy twice as much energy generation capacity for the same price. This may seriously impede investments in the sector development. The economics are tricky here. Not sure whether the markets would work better here or government intervention is needed really.

[radon]

Another issue is the lack of reselience of the renewables-based systems to catastrophes and destruction.

With abundant oil, we can re-build an oil-based infrastructure from scratch relatively easily. However, with oil gone, we will have difficulty re-building renewables-based infrastructure in the event the latter is destroyed by war or a major catastrophe. Even 20% or more going off-line all at once would present a major problem. As one of the recent articles on the front page stated, 4 barrels of oil provide energy equivalent of a 1 lifetime manpower input. How much would it take to build one wind rig relaying solely on manpower? And for how long would the energy have to be completely diverted from consumption into capital investment in renewables before the capacity is totally rebuilt? Probably, quite a protracted period.

In these circumstances quite a lot of energy would have to be saved in sorts of strategic reserves in the form of hydrogen, methane, or other synthesized energy-rich chemicals, in order to provide for rebuilding of the renewables infrastructure in case of a major disruption.

[radon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon', '.').. The Chinese, at broadly the same population levels, did not suffer from widespread hunger 10 years ago despite being at half their present energy consumption. Meaning that all these 5-6% are mostly discretionary energy use in pursuit of lifestyles rather than basic survival. Fear to say what kind of untapped resource is the US, Western Europe (and Russian/Saudi Arabian etc) consumption in this sense. ...