Hybrid Future

As the age of oil wanes, what will take its place? A little bit of everything Newsweek International Sept. 6-13 issue - "Solutions wanted. No idea too weird." If a classified ad could sum up the world's energy problem, this would be it. Experts generally agree that our current reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable. Already oil is near $50 per barrel, and the great millions of Chinese and Indians destined to take to the road in the next decades have not yet gotten behind the wheel. If the clamor over global warming seems apocalyptic now, just wait until those two countries are as developed as the West. At the same time, even with higher oil prices, clean energy sources like wind and solar—not to mention hydrogen, an unproven technology barely off the drawing boards—don't yet make enough economic sense to replace oil. That's why many experts are starting to talk of building a hybrid economy. Rather than replacing hydrocarbons entirely, what we need to do is find ways to use less oil—and use it more efficiently. This means changing everything from the kinds of cars we drive, to the homes we live in, to the way we make and distribute electricity. It's a revolution in thought—and in the making. Have a look. This report is a collaboration with the World Economic Forum, which will hold a business summit on Sept. 12-13 in Beijing. © 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

Good day mr. Scott. I can understand that you dont want to read this all, but I did, on paper actually (I bought this issue of the paper) as this is something I am very interested in. Yeh, I agree with you that the noise pollution can be a factor but it is not impossible to overcome it. Specially as they are not talking about these large wind farms windmylls, but small, wind hen like, on your rooftop, wich would not take up any space you are currently using, it would probably not kill many birds as they would not temp to fly through a small bladed windmill they can easily see and I doupt that you would have very many on your buildings rooftop, maybe 2 to 5, depending on how big it is and what you want to invest much to lower your electrical bill.

Tell me, does the apartment building not have to pay a good sum for the electricity on the areas of the building that are not an individual property. Like the hallways, the lobby, the elevator and such? I doupt that the windmills and solar panels on your roof would be enough to cover all that, specially not during the night, but it could lover the monthly bill significally, specially if you could sell the abundant energy production during the windiest or sunniest part of the day into the electric grid, wich the local utility would use to sell others.

Then during the nights and still time, it would produce electricity the old fashioned way, wich is not going to stop anytime soon and sell it to you back. The electrical grid will work both ways, it will provide you with electricity from the coal, oil or nuclear plant or whatewer it is that produces your electricity, but it will also be able to accept energy from each house on the grid.

Solar panels on the parking lot? That is an interesting idea, although I am not sure it can work. Maybe when the nanotechnology can incorporate small solar cells into roof tiles, it can also incorporate it into concrete. I doupt though that will be the best use of it though. But now there are coming glass windows that can produce electricity from the sun that shines on them but also have most of the light go through the window. That could be a good solution for your apartment building, but specially for all the scyscrapers. Specially if they can also, like one innovation is able, to reduce the heat from the sun that passes through the window and thus reducing the need for ventilator system in such buildings.

The divorce rate will need to be much lower (one instead of two cars, heating sources, etc., per couple of parents).

People will need to be closer to their workplaces, requiring more workplaces to go get away from the cities so workers can be closer to them. More people will need to go rural again to locate closer to the new work locations away from the large cities.

We'll have to do more agriculture and other business within our own country--even in every community, due to heavy transportation (trucks, trains, aircraft, etc.) going away.

...defies the wishes of left/liberals, doesn't it.

Thank you for posting these articles - I have saved them for reference. All of us have to begin the transition to the new phase of our existence with much more expensive energy. The increases in consumption rates for petroleum only move the date of this transition ahead but it has always been inevitable.

Most people equate energy use with cars and heating houses but that is only a part - we also use energy to grow food, harvest food, transport, preserve and store food. We use energy to manufacture things and move them too - and the convenience, availability, and relative inexpensiveness of things will end with the drawdown of petroleum.

Our whole culture will change with the reduction of plane flight, cars, trucks, and train movement. This will force us back to urban centers with shorter distances to travel...and many, many more changes we will learn later.

"Alternative energies" are fine but relatively expensive. And some have effects that we are not smart enough to see the permutations of their use (wind generators influence the ecological balance by reducing part of the natural air flow, possibly changing the climate in areas where there are too many - geothermal energy use changes the rate of cooling of that area of the Earth's mantle; how much advance or disproportionate cooling will change the movement of the crust and cause movements we did not anticipate?).

We need to face the near future as soon as we can so that these changes cause as little upheaval as possible. But the changes are here.

Tell me, does the apartment building not have to pay a good sum for the electricity on the areas of the building that are not an individual property. Like the hallways, the lobby, the elevator and such?

Yes, and as an expense it is passed on to the tenets in the rent.

Solar panels on the parking lot? That is an interesting idea, although I am not sure it can work. Maybe when the nanotechnology can incorporate small solar cells into roof tiles, it can also incorporate it into concrete.

I was thinking of solar panels over the parking lots – cover them like a large carport. Good for the cars, and not much to block the sun.

Then I thought of around 660 windmills in a three block area.

Windmills don't work well in crowded areas because of the turbulence created by buildings and the like. You can even damage them if you don't keep them away from turbulent areas.

I believe on a cost basis, wind trumps solar, but this is only the case if you live in a windy area.

Wind has another disadvantage in that folks can see your setup from a long distance away.

Actually, technological advances could address the issue of future energy use within the next 10-20 years.

First, there is the issue of improving fuel efficiency of current motor vehicles. With the completion of lowering sulfur compound levels to well under 40 parts per million in gasoline and diesel fuel by September 2006, this makes it possible to have direct-injection gasoline engines with 15-20% better fuel efficiency than today's gasoline engines and the widespread use of diesel engines, which sport 35-45% better fuel efficiency than equivalent gasoline engines!

Second, we could build gigantic ponds to grow a special type of algae that could create enough biomass to be refined into diesel fuel and kerosene on an enormous scale. And because the fuel is derived from a biological source, it also burns much cleaner, too.

Third, improvements in fuel cell technology may allow the transition away from using gasoline and diesel fuel after 2010. That will mean by 2020 the average motor vehicle will have essentially water vapor as its exhaust emission!

Fourth, we may see the large-scale implementation of a new generation of vastly safer nuclear reactors using pebble-bed technology that are just about impossible to "melt down."

Finally, we could see amazingly exotic means to generate electricity come on the market. The idea of a zero-point energy power generator may not be so far-fetched after all, if Nick Cook's book The Hunt for Zero Point is correct in its assessments. If such a device does exist and could be produced economically, motor vehicles could essentially run the life of the car without having to be recharged or refuelled! Also, it means we could switch from a centralized power plant to a situation where every building and household becomes a power generator on a distributed basis.

"Also, it means we could switch from a centralized power plant to a situation where every building and household becomes a power generator on a distributed basis."

Yes, that technology is mostly all ready here, and it does not need, as I seem you are talking about a "eternity machine" (I am not sure this is the correct english word) a machine that produces more energy than she gets from her fuel. Such an engine has been a dream for ages for many, but it will newer succeed, it is physically unimaginable.

But every household can become power generator on distributed basis by using existing tecnology, wich is allways becoming better and better. Solar panels on the rooftops (or incorporated into the rooftiles as will probably be the not so far future), glass windows that can pass the light through, but can change the heat into electricity, thus both reducing the need for big, power hungry wentilation system in houses, and producing electricity for the system. And little by little we will incorporate into our dayly use other energy saving means, wich do not have to be so much a change from our current way of life. The next step is that hybrid technology will become standard in most cars, reducing our thirst for oil and gazoline greatly and oil will stop beeing used to produce electricity when solar panels on each house roof and other small scale means of producing electricity for the houselds, by the housholds will become commonplace, like f.e.:

"Renewable Devices Ltd. of Scotland is marketing rooftop windmills that look like large weathervanes but can generate 4,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year (the average family uses 10,000 to 15,000kwh)"

You can see a picture of one in the paper, it is nothing like the big wind mills that generate all the controversy in the world by beeing nosy, bird killing gigants ruining the landscape it dots. No, it is small but in enough numbers, specially in windy areas it can be a good power source, wich of course has to be backed up by traditional means when the other means are not enough. But big social changes are not neccasery going to follow though we little by little try to be more energy conscious on small scale. I just say good luck, as I know that it is becoming essential for most countries in the world to find a solution, we can not be upon the mercy of the middle east forewer.

The technologies that you mention have potential for alleviating some of what is coming - but we have squandered the vast oceans of petroleum that were the cheapest and most accessable form of stored energy. Petroleum has been the foundation of our Industrial Revolution because of its quantities and ease of application.

That's over, and there's "no free lunch": algae pools require feeding, movement of the feed to the pools, people to tend the pools, control of the effluents, etc. The pools occupy surface area that reduce farmable land (which will assume greater importance soon) and they take potable water that is also needed for other human and agricultural uses.

The world is at the edge of a new period, a less pleasant period.

I have news for you: ever heard of the Great Salt Lake in Utah and Salton Sea in California? They could easily partition off a 100 square mile area at these lakes to create the gigantic algae ponds necessary to create the amount of biomass I suggested. And it wouldn't interfere with farmland already in place.

Hi, Leifer,

Engineering type myself, been studying this stuff for about thirty years. You have not stumbled onto anything new here.

There are a variety of technical solutions available to "the end of the Petroleum Age", which is likely upon us. (There is a fellow named Peterson who predicted in the 1950's that US petroleum production would reach the maximum value for all time during the early 1970's. There was tremendous skepticism. Peterson was proved right. Peterson predicts now that world petroleum production will top within this decade. He was correct in his prediction about US oil production; is he correct about world production as well?)

Petroleum replacement solutions will be less convenient and less fun than the world we are used to, the low cost oil world we enjoy today, and so must have a lower total cost than petroleum solutions to be more than technical curiosities. In other words, petroleum will have to get much more expensive before you start seeing roofs covered with solar cells as the rule.

As far as the Prius goes, that car (I have studied it some) has many interesting features. The low internal resistance NiMH main battery charges and discharges at an amazing breakthrough rate. Nippon Electric must have spent a billion or two developing the technology. If the Japanese had to make back their costs on the Prius, like GM or Ford would have to, the machines could not be sold for the price required. Just a little car with a technocult "Modernismus" transmission.

As far as high fuel efficiency cars, BMW produced a car that averaged, city and highway, 50 miles per gallon in the 1950's. My old Rabbit Diesel got over 50 miles per gallon tank after tank. VW has put multi-thousand car test fleets out that average better than 70 miles per gallon. What the Prius is doing is not all that interesting except in HOW it is doing it, not in WHAT it is doing.

A big research operation here in the US showed American type cars could be made that averaged 70 to 80 miles per gallon. My own calculations indicate that much higher fuel economies are possible, though over a hundred miles per gallon current vehicle air conditioning technique consumes more horsepower than does driving the vehicle.

Housing energy use is easily curbed. Energy costs rising enough to pinch and then hurt will have salutary effects. The people will complain bitterly and want war waged against the villains responsible, unless, of course, the war is inconvenient for themselves, personally.

People aren't going to change wanting whatever it is that their cute little heart's desire, and until petroleum becomes more dear are not going to change their energy consumption habits.

"I have news for you: ever heard of the Great Salt Lake in Utah and Salton Sea in California? "

Now there's one of my favorite types of response: start off with an insult... Are you that sure of yourself and the superiority of your experience, your education?

Using the Salton Sea or the Great Salt Lake as a biomass pond assumes - incorrectly - that it would have no deleterious effect on the ecology of the lakes and the area, that there would be no effluents added to the atmosphere (it won't be just oxygen) and that the biomass will have a continuous source of food and won't require fairly cost-intensive manpower support. What effect will your plan have on the evaporation of the water for the lakes and the precipitation further doenrange of the lakes? Just how much useful energy will be produced in return for the loss of parts of those bodies of water?

See how much less friendly I get when someone uses that tone to respond to me?

I am pretty sure that you have to import most of the Uranium, the only countries able to become energy independent by nuclear power are Brazil and Russia I beliewe.

And ewen though you could have as much uran as you wanted, it would not give each area of the States, or each city or each household the energy independence they need. That is the beuty of this system, it is individualism but also social responsibility and conservatism, to conserve the energy and not vaste it. (hopefully I am using the english words correctly here, as it is a second language I am not good enough)

Yes, I know this is not anything new. If I remember correctly the original electric distribution system Edison promoted is built upon similar principp, that the energy user and energy provider are in close vicinity to each other. If Westinghouse´s idea had not become the one we use, of long distances between users and large scale power productions in plants, this system could have developed long time ago.

But the beuty of it is that it will be able to incorporate every awailable power source in our environment, nuclear, coal, oil, gas, wind, solar, tides and other that will hopefully come when the market will find solutions, by pushing for innovations, similarly as higher gasoline prices are pushing for the development of better technology to find new oil and better ways to extract it.

The oil is not going to be over anytime soon, but it is all a question of supply and demand. And each time the gasoline prices go up, it is economically sound to extract it from new and new places, from where it was not cost effective before, and each time it is cost effective to harness energy from new and new means, wich were not cost effective before.

And with the cost of solar panels coming down, and other solutions allways surfacing, it will become economically sound for more and more people to use it. But now we need to make our electrical grid able to incorporate all these different means of energy production wich I beliewe will become economically sound for more and more energy companies each day that is passing. They will make their buyers to be able to produce electricity into the grid themselves and get paid from it by f.e. downgrading their energy bills.

Most of such means of producing electricity will not be even, so during time of energy abundance for such households, like the high noon when the sun is shining or when there is enough wind the peak power will go into the grid, but the household will then most likely buy power again from the grid during the night when the sun does not shine or when the wind does not blow. There are still some technological hurdles, wich the companys are overcoming but I guess there are still some regulary hurldles in the beurocratie wich has to be overcome.

But the best about this system is it will not make the fossil fuels and the revenables enemies like some are allways putting it, but mutually compatible, as each will compensate for the pros and cons of the other. It is obvious that demand for energy is going to rise in the next decade, but I am pretty sure that technology, both of finding more fossil fuels and producing rewenable means will be enough to compensate, just if the market will be allowed to run its course freely. I am optimistic, but of course things can get ugly if stand in way of progress.

Yeh, free market indeed takes care of waste, so we have to break up the energy monopolies that are now. One company has the monopolie of selling one particular area energy, that is way to similar my countries socialistic approach to near ewerything. But it is capitalistic in big way if eweryone can compete to sell energy into the system, and or if the monopolie companies make agreements with their subjects to allow them to sell energy back into the systm during peak hours.

Power production on big scale with big wind farms and solar panel farms is not economical and in fact rather stupid thing, except maybe in deserst and such, though also there mostly, but if each household has one small windmill on their roofs, that are similar to just weathervanes like I mentioned here abowe and some solar panels, maybe incorporated into the tiles with microtechnologie like is probably standard in the future it can bring down the energy bill a lot.

But it has of course to be economically sound to buy such things, but that time is allready here for some and is coming ewer closer with better technology. But that is not socialism, I have lived and am still partly under that disease and that I wish no one else to have to try.

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