'Bombshell'? Really?

RPJr.'s latest achievement in getting huge news coverage for saying very little

Posted by David Roberts at 12:59 PM on 03 Apr 2008

I don't want to get too far into the kerfuffle over the Nature commentary from Pielke Jr. et al. Just a few quick and I guess fairly cynical thoughts:

• The trend toward "spontaneous" technology development and efficiency has been going on for centuries, only to pause during the last few years thanks to a burst of new dirty coal plants in the developing world. The whole commentary is premised on the idea that this is the new norm -- that "spontaneous" movement toward carbon efficiency is now a thing of the past. That strikes me as wildly speculative at best, at worst ... silly. Nonetheless, that highly contentious premise has been lost in the press coverage, which has spun it as, "global warming way harder to solve than you thought!"

• I argued here that RPJr. gets press attention for seeming to say something more controversial than he's actually saying. For instance, L.A. Times featured him as someone who says we should adapt to global warming instead of attempting to mitigate it. Of course, he's not actually saying that -- he's saying we should do both, like everyone else.

This strikes me as another example of the same thing: if RPJr. et. al are saying we should fund long-term technology development instead of aggressively deploying existing tech in the short-term, well, that's controversial (and dumb). But if he's saying we should do both, well, again, that's what everyone says. Who disagrees with that? How is that press-worthy?

• RPJr. really does seem a perfect fit for the Breakthrough Institute. Those guys are masters of getting boatloads of attention from the press by seeming to say something interesting and controversial that, upon closer inspection, isn't actually that controversial or interesting at all. It's like an institutional specialty. To wit: On their website they are characterizing this commentary as a "bombshell," since it "shattered the notion that we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change," a notion that, um, nobody actually believed. Such a bombshell!

For story: 'Bombshell'? Really?
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umm I actually do think we have the tech we need

I don't think we have the tech to deal with it optimally. But we could deal with it with the tech we have now if we wanted. The question is deploying it. We could even do it at a reasonable price though again with R&D we could make the price much better.

CSP can produce electricity at around 12 cents per kWH. With $40/per kWh for thermal storage and only 1% loss per day with thermal storage that could be pretty reliable.
Wind can produce electricity for 6 cents per kWh, but storage of electricity is cheaper than heat.

There are many other means that can supply small amounts without breakthrough, and quite big amounts with modest breakthroughs. But overall todays technology can supply reliable electricity, at a multiple of current electricity prices. Efficiency improvements at low costs with existing technology can then produce more GDP per unit of electricity - thus keeping the overall cost of electricity within the economy (as opposed to per kWh) the same. And CSP and wind can supply many times current world consumption.

The same thing applies to solar and ground source heat pumps for low temperature heat, except that the price difference between them and conventional sources is much lower, and in many cases favorable to the solar and ground source heat pumps. We will need to replace most liquid fuel with electricity. Depending on whether mass production alone could bring batter costs down we might do that at essentially a cost paid for by fuel savings, or we might have a real additional expense that is worthwhile compared to the environmental damage averted.

There is the usual list of where breakthroughs would be worthwhile - lower battery cost per cycle is one. Lowering solar thermal storage cost to $10 or $15 per kWh equivalent is another. Most experts think this pretty simple either immediately or int he very short run.) What would be very nice indeed would be flying energy generators or really cheap solar cells. There are a lots of storage methods that are cheap in capital expenditure but expensive in electricity losses that would become quite economical if we had extremely cheap electricity. For example, compressed air without using natural gas to reheat it can give back 40% of the electricity input. That is impractical with any current electricity source, but quite practical if we could get generation costs low enough which I think flying energy generators might. If they really can provide 2 cents per kWh variable electricity, then a compressed air system would let them provide 6 cents per kWh fully dispatchabe system - suitable for base, load following and peak. But as neat as this specuation is we have some good second best choices now. That means we could start now with the parts that are most mature and inexpensive, knowing that we can probably make breakthroughs happen, but also knowing that if the breakthroughs don't happen we have acceptable alternative we can deploy.

by Gar Lipow at 1:42 PM on 03 Apr 2008

All the Technology we Need

A large portion of the environmental movement does seem to believe that we have all the technology we need to deal with climate change. Al Gore has repeatedly said just that, and he continues to do so on his newly launched We Campaign:

"The technological and policy solutions for the climate crisis already exist."

"This is the clean energy economy we can adopt with today's technologies, resources, know-how..."

Nearly everyone has adopted the rhetoric of praising clean energy, but few environmental leaders have the policy agenda to back it up. The Breakthrough Institute is calling for at least $30 billion a year in technology R&D -- not because we want to delay action on climate change, but because nothing less than this will address the monumental scale of the problem.

The Piekle et al peice was indeed a "bombshell" because it revealed the huge technology gap we still have to cross.

by lmeisel at 2:08 PM on 03 Apr 2008

lmeisel --

I showed how you could shut down all coal plants by having buildings heat and cool themselves. This doesn't require any breakthroughs (although certainly cost reductions would help).

by Jon Rynn at 4:57 PM on 03 Apr 2008

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