This blog will take an integrated approach to understand renewable energy, covering three main topics: science, business, and policy. The goal is quality over quantity: each post will be a smart and well-researched introduction to a new topic or insightful analysis into a topic important to renewable energy.
Renewable sources of energy play an important role in our society, a role that will only increase in the future. 10-20 years ago this may have been a risky sentence to start a blog with. Today, it is unequivocal, in fact, it’s already happening (in the last 5 years the capacity of solar and wind generation has increased by about 9 and 4 times, respectively; and all renewables make up about 20% of the world’s electricity generation). I believe there are two main factors (among many) that will lead to their increased use: (1) the rising costs of non-renewable sources of energy versus the falling costs of renewables and (2) the realization that non-renewables have indirect costs as a result of their use (pollution, global warming, political and military support, safety concerns, etc.)
Understanding exactly the type of role renewable energy will play, distinguishing between the roles of different technologies, and knowing how best to push forward is a difficult task. Renewable energy technologies and how they will integrate in the world requires an understanding of a wide variety of fields, and unfortunately, knowledge of just one field won’t give the entire picture. What is required can probably safely fall in one of these three incredibly broad categories: science, business, and policy.
(a) Science: The science behind each renewable technology is what sets the stage for everything else that is done. Science is especially important for renewables versus non-renewables because of the cutting edge and advanced technology needed for the applications to work. Most non-renewables, with the exception of nuclear, are not overly complicated technologies. For the most part, they involve burning a fossil fuel, boiling water, and creating steam to be pushed through a turbine to create electricity. Similarly in transportation, the engine of a car requires the burning of a fuel which instead of pushing a turbine, pushes the pistons in a car. It is for this reason that there are not many improvements left on the horizon for these sources of energy. On the other hand, most renewables are a newer technology requiring more than just burning something. This makes it important to understand the science so one can judge how each technology can be used, the limitations, and the potential future. And since renewables often live on the most cutting edge, you can expect expect several game-changing discoveries along with epic, hyped up but flops. Navigating through these will at least a partial fundamental understanding of the science. Science is not only important for the renewables themselves, but important to many of the problems renewables hope to solve.
(b) Business: The business and economics of renewables is what will drive long term societal change. To quote Ludacris: if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense. Because of the scale and size of the projects that are needed to make any significant impact, the size of the investment and resources needed are huge. For example, if one wanted to power the world with solar panels (this is a pretty ludicrous example for many reasons, I’m doing this just to give you an idea) it would cost on order, 250 trillion dollars. There isn’t any amount of government support, donations, or even a Bono telethon that could bring in this amount of money. If renewables aren’t economically viable and able to produce returns investors are happy with, it will be impossible to make a big impact. Even the softer points of business like marketing is needed when it comes to smaller scale projects like rooftop solar, to understand how this and other customer-sited renewables will be adopted by the public. Understanding the economics of renewables, especially the cost and competitive landscape versus non-renewables, to insure we have can understand how fast each renewable technology will be adopted.
(c) Policy: Government and policy is important for understanding renewable energy for many reasons. This first, obvious reason is the role in which governments currently subsidize renewables. In the blog we’ll describe in more detail how these subsidizes have played a vital role in the success of both the science and economics for renewables. However, in the not so distant future, many renewable technologies will reach grid-parity, that is the price where it costs the same as the mainly non-renewable energy sources now. Even when this does happen, understanding the role of government will be important, since the government has a hand in many utility scale projects, and in general the government historically plays a big role in energy (huge amounts of money are spent on subsidies for oil and coal). Governments play such a big role for understandable reasons, energy is such a fundamental resource that drives the economy, while at the same time requires special resources, and needs to be done safely. Governments also play an increasingly bigger role in funding fundamental R&D, which is essential for the development of future technologies. For these, any many other reasons, we will explore how governments and the policies they enact, will impact the future of renewables.
Each blog post will be taged with at least one of these three labels to serve as a guide.
When it comes to decisions about energy, while it often becomes a political decision, it shouldn’t be. We must look beyond what people think we should do and instead pick the best solution for society, one that is based on numbers and logical reasoning. Unlike some of the other decisions that governments, organizations, or individuals need to make, the decision about how we should use energy, and how we can get it, should nearly come down to a logical one.
For example, you’ve seen the campaigns to unplug your cell phone chargers. But modern cell phone chargers when left plugged in use half a watt (or 0.01 kWh a day). That’s the same as driving one second less in your day or over the year it’s the equivalent of taking one less bath. (A stereo amplifier on the other hand may be worth unplugging, it uses 6W when turned off but plugged in.)
As we will explore in this blog, with nearly complete certainty we have an idea about how much energy we need, how much we can get from each type of source of energy, and the impact of each source on the environment and people. With slightly less certainty, we can answer questions like how much energy we will need in the future, the cost of each energy type in the future, how technology will impact and change the role of different energy sources, and the magnitude and type of challenges society will have to face (like climate change, international conflicts, economic instability, etc.). But I hope regardless of the topic, you find this blog takes as much of a rigorous, scientific, and insightful approach as possible.
Thank you for your interest in the blog. Please feel free to leave comments, especially constructive criticisms, I will always strive to be as accurate as possible and will fix any mistakes.
Thomas A. Baker, Ph.D.
San Francisco, CA
July 2011
www.thomasabaker.info
