Ugo Bardi in an interesting post in his blog Cassandra's legacy.I guess my own take is rather similar to Bardi's, perhaps slighty more pessimistic. I write in Garden Earth:
Of principal, environmental and even
economic reasons, our future energy supply should be based on renewable energy.
A panicky dismantling of our fossil fuel dependency may cause serious problems
to society. It is nevertheless important, exactly because of that, that the
transformation starts as soon as possible. Fortunately, some impulses for
transformation came in the 1970s with the first oil crisis and more came with
the oil prices hikes in the 2000s as well as with increasing awareness of the
impact of climate change. There is no point in, not needed and also not
possible to determine how much of our future energy mix that has to come from
the sun, from wind, from hydroelectricity or from one or the other forms for
biomass. We know quite well the draw-backs of large dams for hydro-power, and
the use of water might also compete with the use for irrigation, which sets
quite some limitations. We have not really figured out too many drawbacks from
wind turbines, even if there are objections re impact on bird life, aesthetics
etc. The main issue around biomass is the competition for land with farming and
wild “nature”. For sure we need to expand the use of solar energy in all its
three forms, and possibly some other hitherto unknown forms. In the longer
term, it is likely that solar energy can provide us with most of the energy we
need. Perhaps future photovoltaic cells can reach an efficiency of around 25
percent, which is double the current rate, and the cost of self-production[1] could come down to between
one or two cents per kWh (IIIEE 2007), ten percent of current price. Nuclear power is not an interesting technology
from an energy-efficiency perspective or from a safety perspective. It is a
prime example of how something can be "profitable" because so many
costs are externalised. It builds of exploitation of nature, other people and
future generation and massive subsidies from society (in the form of
infrastructure, research, insurance etc.). In addition, the complexity in
technology and society that has to be there for operation of nuclear power is
hardly desirable and not possible to guarantee over time.
It was just natural for humans to have a
predisposition for sweet food; energy was always short in supply and our
predecessors were rarely in the risk zone for diabetes. In modern society,
where sugar is cheap and abundant, however, the craving for sweets needs to be
kept in check. The consequences of not doing it are fatal. It is the same for
our society at large when it comes to energy. Fossil fuel is like
we found an enormous bag of candy that someone left, and we just eat and eat. Too much cheap energy screws up the metabolism and we have to
voluntarily restrict our use. Energy scarcity is the only “natural” limitation
to a total human expansion and conquest of everything and we should be happy
that energy is not in unlimited supply. With our tendency for exaggeration we
most certainly will destroy the basis for our own survival with an unlimited
supply says Janken Myrdal (2008) and I agree with him. If we first adapt
ourselves to a non-expansionist way of living, then cheap and easily available
energy can be a boon. But we certainly need to ensure that the energy poor of
today can get more access to energy.
[1] The cost for solar
electricity that has been fed into the grid and then distributed will obviously
be higher.
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