Some PV analysis

Convincing and compelling comments regarding what we will
have to come to terms with after the coming world peak in oil production.
The following post substantiates some ideas and policy points that
should be adopted by candidates for national office Mr. Lawrence's
"what if" may be the idea that spares civilization from the dieoff the
gloom&doomsters insist is the inevitable fate of mankind.

I would add that a healthy dose of resource conservation (increased
CAFE standards) would decrease energy consumption by a few million
bbls of oil a year too. Money saved by conservation could be turned
to pay the bills for renewable energy production as well as attenuating
many of the bad effects and expenditures regarding pollution mitigation.

(excerpt)
> Another ER'er made the salient point: what if we invested $87B in
> rooftop (photovoltaic) systems?  Or how about $400B?  I would add: what if we
> had taken a tiny fraction of the military budget since 1975 and
> invested it in foreign aid that actually made life better all over
> the world?  (The US gives less in foreign aid than any other
> industrialized country - and much of that goes to Israel and
> Georgia).  And what if we invested the rest in efficiency and
> renewable energy all over the world?  Maybe we wouldn't be perceived
> as a terrorist target any more than Canada, or Switzerland, or the
> Netherlands, or Finland.  Maybe the world would see the US as a
> country from which they could get grant money for supervised energy-
> efficiency projects, not the superpower cop to be hated and feared.
>
> Well just a naive Christmas holiday wish.  Happy New Year to all!
> Dick Lawrence
Warm regards,

Tim


At 8:14 PM +0000 12/22/2003, lawrence_01749 wrote:

> A fundamental point, and the reason for all the discussion on ERoEI,
> is that EVERY Watt-hour or BTU invested in a new plant to make solar
> cells, or wind turbines, or nuclear power construction, is a watt-
> hour diverted from our present "net energy" stream.  "OK" you
> say, "So what?"  Watt-hours invested in the various PV companies
> around the world don't make a noticeable dent in world energy
> supply, right?
>
> Right ... but the amount of incremental energy supply we get from
> each year's manufacture of PV cells doesn't make much of a
> contribution to world energy either - it's one drop in the ocean of
> fossil-fueled energy we burn each year.
>
> If anyone is going to seriously propose that life 30-40 years from
> now is going to bear any resemblance to US/European way of life now,
> they must propose SUFFICIENT incremental alternative sources of
> energy to offset the decline of energy available from fossil fuels. 
> Estimates of this decline (say, in 2020) are on the order of 2.5% to
> 3% per year; this might amount to 4 to 8 million barrels per day
> equivalent energy, replaced by alternative sources, per year.  Now
> that's a lot of KW-hours of power!  It is orders of magnitude larger
> than all combined alternative-energy sources added annually now.
>
> The important point is not simply that these industries will have to
> expand production by orders of magnitude; it's critical to
> understand that the energy investment for making a wind turbine, or
> a PV panel, is "front loaded"; that is, you make nearly all the
> investment (in energy) at the beginning, then you slowly recoup your
> energy investment over the lifetime of the product.  This energy
> investment is real, it's substantial, and there is no way around it -
>  you cannot fake this with smoke, mirrors, or military might.  All
> you can do is try to constantly improve your ERoEI and choose the
> technologies that give you the best (energy) return for your
> investment.
>
> Now the energy investment to manufacture a quantity of PV cells or
> wind turbines necessary to offset the decline in fossil fuels of 4M
> to 8M bpd oil-equivalent is huge, and that's where ERoEI comes in. 
> Say a PV panel has (estimated) lifetime of 25 years, and say it's
> got a 5:1 ERoEI.  You put one KW-hour into its manufacture and over
> its lifetime you get 5KW-hours back - but that's spread over 25
> years - so you're getting 0.2KW-hours from it each year.  Now you've
> got to multiply that 0.2KW-hour number by several gazillion (loosely
> speaking) to reach your goal of offsetting 4 to 8M bpd oil-
> equivalent of disappearing fossil fuel.  For each 0.2KW-hour of new
> energy source you create each year, you have to invest 1KW-hour of
> energy (from anywhere - fossil fuel, or PV cells on your roof,
> doesn't matter, pick the cheapest).
>
> So to offset the loss of 4 to 8M bpd oil-equivalent, you would have
> to invest FIVE TIMES THAT MUCH ENERGY to manufacture substitute
> ("renewable")sources, if those sources have 5:1 ERoEI.  Or put it
> another way: to offset 3% decline in fossil-fuel energy, you would
> need to DIVERT AND INVEST 15% of your total energy stream into
> manufacturing alternative energy devices and infrastructure.  If you
> did this, you have the situation where not only has your total
> energy declined by 3%, but you have diverted 15% of the remainder as
> an investment to try to offset that decline in the future. 
> I don't need to say that this is a huge amount of energy, and that
> the pressure this will put on a commodity that - by then (2020
> example) - will already be in decline, will cause the price of
> energy to go much higher.  In truth, I doubt we will have the
> societal will, the financial capital, or the sustained collective
> human attention span to actually do this - that is, to offset the
> decline of fossil fuels with other sources and to make that large an
> investment.  There will be a deep and prolonged drop in net energy
> available to humanity before - if ever - it begins to climb again,
> pulling itself up by its bootstraps.  But, what is certain is this:
> the sooner we begin making the investment, while fossil fuels are
> relatively abundant and cheap, the more chance we have of avoiding
> the dieoff scenario.
>
> I have posted in the Files section for this site a paper "The Case
> for World Energy Flow Modeling" which covers this in more detail. 
> See especially the graph on page 8.  Please read that first before
> asking questions or critiquing this.
>
> Another ER'er made the salient point: what if we invested $87B in
> rooftop PV systems?  Or how about $400B?  I would add: what if we
> had taken a tiny fraction of the military budget since 1975 and
> invested it in foreign aid that actually made life better all over
> the world?  (The US gives less in foreign aid than any other
> industrialized country - and much of that goes to Israel and
> Georgia).  And what if we invested the rest in efficiency and
> renewable energy all over the world?  Maybe we wouldn't be perceived
> as a terrorist target any more than Canada, or Switzerland, or the
> Netherlands, or Finland.  Maybe the world would see the US as a
> country from which they could get grant money for supervised energy-
> efficiency projects, not the superpower cop to be hated and feared.
>
> Well just a naive Christmas holiday wish.  Happy New Year to all!
Dick Lawrence
--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>