The numbers show that there is more than enough solar and wind power available for all energy needs.
No need for such doom and gloom
Indian Economics thread.
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The numbers show that there is more than enough solar and wind power available for all energy needs.
No need for such doom and gloom
Everyday the total sun energy on earth is more than all the oil underground... each second the sun as a whole produces more energy than humans have ever used up to this point. Doesnt mean we can build a dyson sphere to collect it all.
Likewise there arent enough rare earths in the world to create enough solar panels, wind turbines, to power global modern civilization
Its also important to consider not just energy but its density, gasoline is more energy dense than even TNT when burned correctly...
Modern civilization prereq is high EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) if it takes more solar energy to build new solar panels than you can get out of the process, then 2nd law of thermodynamics says your are entropically screwed regardless of funny money subsidises the gov gives...just like using petro to create fertilizer to grow corn to then convert back to ethanol is a scam and net energy sink, right now most of the renewables are still predicated upon a petroluem based energy society...
I see a 2030 estimate of 496,600 km2 of land required, if all human energy needs were powered by solar.
There is a magnitude more sunny desert available in the world
Plus there are other solar energies which don't require rare earths.
Then add in wind, hydroelectric, nuclear etc.
That is why I disagree that there is a global energy resource crunch.
Simple thought experiment, imagine you lived on an infinite 2D plane. (geometrically like an infinite flat earth in all directions) and there was only peanuts as food and you could survive on just peanuts alone. Now imagine, there are infinite peanuts in this 2D universe but they were spaced/spread exactly x unit distances apart from each other in all four directions, forever. If x was large enough, say a mile, then no matter what you would expend more energy in going to the next peanut food source than you could ever extract from eating the peanut, so even though there is infinite energy source everywhere, its so low density that you will still starve to death.
The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In a similar sense, an oil based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse.
Human body is like 70% water by weight. Yet you don't have to lose to the last drop before you die, this isn't a gas tank where you can get to almost empty and still not have effect on the car performance. By the time you have lost 10% water you are severely dehydrated and at around 20% water loss, death occurs.
Modern civilization is predicated upon a high level of EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) and just like the human body if that high threshold isn't met it will collapse upon itself. remember that most alternative systems of energy — including solar panels/solar-nanotechnology, windmills, hydrogen fuel cells, biodiesel production facilities, nuclear power plants, etc. all rely on sophisticated technology and mettalurgy.
In fact, all electrical devices make use of silver, copper, and/or platinum, each of which is discovered, extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil powered machinery. To produce a ton of copper requires 112 million BTU's or the equivalent of 17.8 barrels of oil. The energy cost component of aluminum is twenty times higher. Nuclear energy requires uranium, which is also discovered, extracted, and transported using oil powered machinery. Most of the feedstock (soybeans, corn) for biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol are grown using the high-tech, oil-powered industrial methods of agriculture and the so called "alternatives" to oil are actually "derivatives" of oil. Without an abundant and reliable supply of oil, we have no way of scaling these alternatives to the degree necessary to power the modern world.
The only saving grace is that China still has enough coal to last it about 100 years but then so goes the world in terms of climate change, at that rate, Houston will be well underwater in 20 years much to some member's dismays. Even Uranium is peaking and we have about 20 years left of that for all intents and purposes. Fusion, which could save us all, is perpetually 40 years away, and all of modern economy and finance is predicated upon the assumption of perpetual infinite growth and things like quantitative easings, fractional reserve banking, interests rates, all depend on borrowing from the future growth as collateral to pay off todays debts and this whole pyramid scheme depends on continously growth, that the pie is every larger so that we can spend outselves out of debt in each generation... As you know from math class and biology petridish bacteria experiments, in any finite environment (earth) exponential growth is always impossible, and human population if mapped is like a virus that has grown exponentially in the blink of an eye and we have reached late stage popullation overshoot soon to be popullation decline as resources run out. Just look at the people of Easter Island and what happened to them, the same fate awaits us if we cannot find enough stop gap measures to buy us enough time to figure out a true new energy source like fusion and not some low energy solar or hydro that will never scale to replace the cheap abundant high EROEI hydrocarbons that we have had access to...
That isn't true. You can typically payback the cost of a solar panel in 2 years.
Different solar cells also have different energy costs to produce. For example crystalline silicon solar cells are energy intensive because you need to melt silicon to make ingots. But CIGS thin film solar cells are basically coated plastic thin films.
It isn't as profitable as traditional oil exploration but it's not that inefficient.
With regards to uranium reserves, you can't think of it like that either. One thing is just because we currently have 20 years of reserves, or whatever, it doesn't mean there isn't more uranium which couldn't be profitably extracted. Plus if you use fast reactors instead of traditional reactors you can burn more U-238 which means you'll have thousands of years of fuel even with existing reserves even if you powered everything with nuclear power.
Different solar cells also have different energy costs to produce. For example crystalline silicon solar cells are energy intensive because you need to melt silicon to make ingots. But CIGS thin film solar cells are basically coated plastic thin films.
It isn't as profitable as traditional oil exploration but it's not that inefficient.
With regards to uranium reserves, you can't think of it like that either. One thing is just because we currently have 20 years of reserves, or whatever, it doesn't mean there isn't more uranium which couldn't be profitably extracted. Plus if you use fast reactors instead of traditional reactors you can burn more U-238 which means you'll have thousands of years of fuel even with existing reserves even if you powered everything with nuclear power.
A 2minute search comes up with a paper that estimates solar panels have an energy payback period of typically 2 years.
Yes, solar panels do take a lot of energy to make.
But in 2 years, they've already created enough energy to offset this.
Then there are another 23 years of electricity generation.
That is part of the reason why I don't think there is a global energy shortage.
@quantumlight yes that's one kind of fast nuclear reactor. The Russians have the BN-800 reactor which can generate 800 MWe. France and Japan also had sodium cooled fast reactor programs. There are also other kinds of fast nuclear reactors. For example the Russians have the lead cooled fast reactor BREST-300 under construction which uses a similar technology to what they used in the Alfa class nuclear submarines.
The reason fast reactors presently exist in such low numbers today is that uranium fuel is still so cheap it's much easier to simply burn up the fuel in light water reactors. Which are proven safe. In theory some of the fast reactor designs like the BREST-300 should also be pretty safe but the sodium cooled reactor designs made so far have had their fair amount of issues.
The reason fast reactors presently exist in such low numbers today is that uranium fuel is still so cheap it's much easier to simply burn up the fuel in light water reactors. Which are proven safe. In theory some of the fast reactor designs like the BREST-300 should also be pretty safe but the sodium cooled reactor designs made so far have had their fair amount of issues.
The only reason we are using Uranium instead of Thorium today is because America wanted to make nuclear weapons. Even cheaper.
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