Here.
He starts with a point that has always puzzled me: "Many conservatives appear to have an unshakable, bedrock belief that solar power will never be cost-effective. Talk about solar, and conservatives often won't even look at the numbers - they'll just laugh at you."
Maybe this is just the conversations I've stumbled into, but it always seems like people have trouble applying Julian Simon's logic to anything other than fossil fuels, when it seems fairly obvious to me that it (along with some of Arrow's learning by doing) applies to any energy source or any resource, period.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
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Ideology. People who like solar power are all environmentalists, which is to say Left-Wingers.
ReplyDeletePeople who support nuclear power are all fascist ICBM-building warmongers, which is to say Right-Wingers.
See? Figure out which political group you feel comfortable with and your notions of acceptable future power systems are already made. No time and effort and thought wasted on gaining information and evaluating it -- following your ideology is clearly the efficient course economists recommend.
Hmmm. Since I grew up among conservatives who were also conservationists, I always find it peculiar to think of environmentalists as lefties.
DeleteThorium reactors, anyone? ;)
Solar, like anything, has to demonstrate its capability to deliver the goods. In fact, given the long history of non-adopted and failed technologies that were going to be the next big thing your best bet is to be agnostic on solar (or any other technology - particularly if there is a lot of boosterism associated with it).
ReplyDeleteDid you read Noah's post?
DeleteThe whole point is it is delivering the goods and the sort of self-styled wise contrarians like your comment here seem to be making snap judgments without even realizing it. My point here is that if you are of the Julian Simon contrarian variety you should have no inherent bias towards fossil fuels and against solar - the economic insights apply equally well to both.
I'm not making a snap judgment.
DeleteIt remains the case that solar power has (a) storage issues (there are some interesting developments re: the use of salt related containment facilities, but they remain the sort of small-scale things that don't allow for judgments re: scalability) and (b) is still more much expensive in its production of electricity in comparison to say natural gas. Furthermore, because fracking is so effective at driving down the price of natural gas solar or any other technology are going to continue to have a hard time competing against natural gas.
Wherein is this "snap judgment" that you are now accusing me of making? Oh, no fucking where.
And yes, I read his post, including this part:
Delete"And now, after decades of research and subsidies, we may be on the verge of waking up into a whole new world."
And this.
"Sooner or later - and recent trends suggest 'sooner' rather than 'later' - one of these claims is going to be right."
Anyone remotely familiar with the history of technological development knows why this sort of claim is really, really problematic and rather silly.
Preediction:
DeleteOne hundred years from now the bulk of energy production will continue to be via fossil fuels, most of them coming from developments in fracking and allied technologies as well as the exploitation of new areas of exploration (particularly in the arctic - Greenland, the Canadian coastline, Siberia, etc.). In fact, expect to see Greenland and other arctic locales become the subject of all manner of extractive industries (well, more so than they are today - they already are to a significant extent, but there is much more potentially available) - be it oil, natural gas, various minerals (including much of what makes up modern electronics as well as more traditional minerals), etc.
"your best bet is to be agnostic on solar"
DeleteI do not think that "agnostic" means what you think it means.
It isn't a perfect fit for what I am getting at, that is correct.
DeleteYou are a lot closer to being an atheist than being an agnostic on solar power. Investing in solar power research makes sense from a diversification / hedging our bets way.
DeleteNo, fossil fuels are proven technologies; they deliver the goods. I'm not agnostic with regards to them because we have over a century of experience with them.
DeleteI suppose so, but then again, that sort of standard would lead to all manner of investments in all sorts of crackpot schemes (and blatantly harmful ones at that - ethanol being case study number one).
Two concepts: It's all solar and inevitability.
ReplyDeleteIt's all solar. The food we eat, the light coming in the window, rain, the oxygen/CO2 cycle, everything. Even fossil fuels are stored ancient solar, which brings us to inevitability.
The earth hasn't made any fossil fuels for the past 11 million years, and we are using them at a rate about a million times faster than they were created. We know the end game. Geology tells us: fossil fuels will become more and more scarce and expensive and energy intensive to obtain. Eventually, inevitably, they will become too scarce to support our present economy and the amount of energy required to extract them will approach the amount of energy in them.
Or, to express it briefly: Non renewable means there is less of it every day. Renewable means there is always more of it. We know the end game.
Fossil fuels are the sprinter in an ultra-marathon. They look really good for the first few hundred yards (years).
The whole question of *whether* solar can deliver the goods is the wrong question. Solar will have to deliver the goods because in the not so distant future that is what we will have to work with. Intermittency is a problem we will either solve or endure.
Not necessarily. If fusion power comes to fruition then solar may be obsoleted.
DeleteSolar (and other alternative energy) has had to deal with the burden of competing with a heavily subsidized energy source: nuclear. If nuclear power had not been so heavily subsidized, wouldn't the economic incentives have been better to attract private investment into alternative energy?
ReplyDelete"After 50 Years, Nuclear Power is Still Not Viable without Subsidies"
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/nuclear-power-subsidies-report-0504.html
Nuclear power has taken up a large share of energy production in many countries. Isn't this a case of crowding out of alternative energy techs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
Nuclear power provides a nice base load for electricity production in the U.S. However, no country on the planet provides for nuclear power production without heavy amounts of direct or indirect subsidies. Part of this is related to the perception of risk associated with nuclear power; it is a hard industry to private insure in other words (one could argue that the risks are much more manageable than what people often argue, but no private insurer is probably going to want to be on the hook for a significant accident and all that entails). Part of it is because the capital expenditures are just so high for nuclear power plants (again, because safety is so important there is a lot of redundancy involved).
Delete"no private insurer is probably going to want to be on the hook for a significant accident and all that entails"
DeleteIf the risks are so high that it requires govt subsidization, then wouldn't it be better *not* to have nuclear power at all?
I tend to agree. If the industry can't get by without this sort of thing (and we're going on what, fifty or sixty years now?), then we probably ought to abandon our support for it.
DeleteConsider that solar isn't very useful as an example to demonstrate the market process's ability to profuce innovation.
ReplyDeleteWhy would private industry invest in solar if it's being outcompeted by heavily subsidized nuclear power?
DeleteOne problem I have with the "x is subsidized" argument is that most energy industries are subsidized. For example, I was in a debate once on nuclear versus fossil fuels, and the other person kept repeating that nuclear investment is heavily subsidized. Well, so is the fossil fuel industry! I don't know how much solar power is subsidized in the U.S., but it's heavily subsidized elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised to read about some sort of subsidization for solar technology in the U.S.
DeleteSolar power is subsidized in significant ways in the U.S. For example, the federal government provides a tax credit. DoE does some direct investment. The federal government also has a fair number of programs in place for residential solar. States (and even counties and municipalities) also have various programs (too numerous to go into here).
Delete"so is the fossil fuel industry!"
DeleteJon, do you have any good links on this? I keep hearing that oil and gas subsidies are standard tax deductions, not outright subsidies--it's all quite confusing and I'd appreciate any info you might have.
At any rate, my larger point is: wouldn't the energy market function more efficiently w/o subsidies of any type? Let the energy market chips fall where they may and allow the profit incentive to direct investment funds to their (most likely) best usage. Is this too simplistic?
I have to read Noah's post, which I will, but that something is cost effective doesn't mean it's worthwhile to pursue. It's true that solar power can produce more than what it consumes, but the question is whether it'd be more beneficial to still pursue "conventional" fuel sources (i.e. fossil fuels), because the opportunity cost is lower. Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't discount the possibility that the opportunity cost of solar will fall. At the same time, there is a lot of truth to that statement by Noah. It's probably the fact that solar is commonly tied to "green" initiatives that scares conservatives. To this extent, it's true that the rejection of solar is much more exaggerated than it needs to be, and even that the rejection of solar is made for the wrong reasons.
ReplyDeleteYou're just as better off reading the commentary critical of Noah's post as the post itself.
DeleteThere isn't really anything "conventional" about fossil fuels these days.
Noah's just as guilty of what he's criticizing. This is classic singular fascination with a liberal fad.
ReplyDeleteAny legitimate critic of solar power will tell you that you can apply "learning by doing" to practically anything. It all comes down to the counterfactual. There's no theoretical reason to believe that we wouldn't develop alternative energy sources - or utilize existing methods better - that would provide the benefits of solar yet still out-match it.
Well, more to the point, there is no reason to expect that the boosterism of today is actually going to be the technology of the future. Case in point - fracking. While fracking is a fairly old technology, its current use in the natural gas industry came out of the left field for most people. There is no reason to expect that proven reserves of cubic feet will not increase and increase as fracking becomes more widely used and more refined. The fact that fracking provides a very low carbon source for electricity generation (basically by mounting a jet engine to the ground) is just one of those serendipitous side benefits. And as far as I know, the fracking industry is not clamoring for subsidies - it pays for itself quite generously (while also driving down the cost of it).
Delete"There's no theoretical reason to believe that we wouldn't develop alternative energy sources - or utilize existing methods better"
DeletePhysics and chemistry pretty well limit what can be done. We might squeeze some more efficiency out of light bulbs and electric motors but there will be a limit. Combined cycle gas burning power plants approach the theoretical limits on efficiency.
The real opportunity for development (making it cheaper and safer) is probably nuclear. There is not going to be some magical new power source that no one has ever thought of.
While lots of people do knock fusion power (for no particular reason IMO) it is currently the best candidate to be the major source of electricity generation by say 2200. It is basically pollution free, has a very cheap fuel source, the fuel mass per unit of energy is quite low*, etc. The point (at least in how I imagine it) is to make natural gas a bridge fuel to fusion.
Delete*Unlike solar, wind, etc., fusion power is not dependent on incident sources - that is sources which are both diffuse and of a low density.
I note with some amusement that you have provoked a comment string which basically confirms Smith's observation.
ReplyDeleteThe adequacy or growth of solar power simply isn't the kind of issue Julian Simon dealt with. We aren't asking "Will there be enough ruthenium to meet our future needs, enough polonioua, enough osmium?" No one but specialists views those as vital issues. Providing electrical power on a day-to-day basis affects virtually all of us; the impact of power generation on the environment excites large numbers of people; the issue of whether investors should buy stocks in coal mines or silicon refiners is crucial to many others.
These are complex issues, even for people educated in their subtleties, and those people are subject to error in their judgements. So non-specialists who have to make decisions do so by asking "Who do I trust?" and "Which of those experts has my concerns at heart?" and "What are the explanations that I can give to my friends and family?"
I.e., our judgements on many issues inevitably become political or ideological rather than purely logical, and there's no real cure. As I said earlier, ideological arguments are "economical" in a sense -- they eliminate the costs of making decisions in uncertain circumstances.
Must be a paper here ...
The problem with Solar is what happens when the sun isn't shining?
ReplyDeleteIt's best to think of solar (and wind) as a way of making fossil fuel power more efficient and environmental. At night (for example) fossil fuel power must be used. In the day time it can be replaced by solar or wind. The big problem though is that it isn't efficient to change the output of fossil fuel power stations. It consumes a lot of energy to do that. So, the energy saving from using solar or wind is less than it appears to be. The design of fossil fuel power stations is improving in this regard, but there are many old ones in operation. It's been found that for wind at least that in a large geographical area there is always some wind blowing somewhere. That means that some wind generation can be considered baseload, so 100% backup by fossil fuel power isn't needed. The same is true of solar if the consumption of electricity can be guaranteed to be lower at night.
Electricity grids are also not designed to deal with large variations in the geographical distribution of where power is being generated. It will be expensive to change that, several countries (such as Germany) are quite far along with that.
There are two ways to get away from these problems. One is energy storage. Chemical energy storage remains expensive and quite experimental. Pumped storage requires a lot of capital expenditure and needs to be located in very specific rare places in mountains. The other strategy is intelligent appliances that respond to the cost of electricity and change their behaviour, bringing the load-levelling all the way to the consumer. The EU is mandating "smart metering" to encourage this option to be taken up.