The Economic and Efficiency Landscape of Energy Production

--- "Paul D. Fernhout"
pdfernhout@... ha scritto:
paul
i fully agree with your analysis
but I want to remark that in many countries
in italy for sure, if you build your roof with
photovoltaic cells the government will subsidy the
major parts of the costs and the utility company would
even pay you for the excess energy that you may
generate and that they may use.
Why such approach which seems to me very forward
thinking can't be improved and applied in most
countries with high energy costs.
At the end economies of scale will highly reduce the
solar collector costs and they will be technologically
improved to increase their efficiency.
If solar power remains a marginal player it will not
benefit from advances in technology nor it cost
reductions and remain impractical despite its
undoubtless advantages
> We've been doing [energy production]
> it the way we've been doing it for decades not
because evil men are in
> charge, or because the ignorant masses have yet to
be persuaded of the
> bountiful advantages of decentralization. We've
been doing it this way
> because it's what works economically.

Let's look at some numbers (admittedly collected
mostly by
"environmental" organizations):

Canada:

http://www.cnp.ca/media/nuclear-subsidies-02-97.html
"Total subsidies to AECL [Canadian nuclear industry]
from 1952 to March
31, 1997 have been $15.2 billion. ... The "opportunity
cost" of the
$15.2 billion subsidy is $161.2 billion. Opportunity
cost is what the
subsidies would have been worth if the government had
instead invested
them in more cost-competitive ventures."
More details at:
http://www.ccnr.org/sunset_table.html

The USA:
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/features/details?item_id=530269&campaign_id=515835
"In the energy industry, the market is not "free."
Fossil fuel and
nuclear energy have been sustained with billions of
U.S. taxpayer
dollars through unfair, uneven subsidies and tax
breaks for years. If
these industries had to compete on a more level
playing field with
renewables and efficiency, there would be a very
different story to tell
about U.S. National Energy Policy. Consider these
facts:
* According to the Green Scissors Campaign,
between 1948 and 1998,
the federal government spent $111.5 billion on energy
research and
development programs. Of this amount, 60 percent, or
$66 billion was
dedicated to civilian nuclear energy research, and 23
percent, or $26
billion, was directed to fossil fuel energy research.
* As of the year 2000, the U.S. provides
subsidies to the fossil
fuel industries to the tune of an estimated $20
billion a year. The
government favors mature, conventional, supply-side
energy resources --
fossil fuels, fission-nuclear and hydroelectric -- by
more than eight to
one ($32.3 billion to $3.8 billion) over clean,
emerging energy
resources with more global marketplace potential such
as solar or wind
technologies.
* Since 1947, according to the Renewable Energy
Policy Project,
cumulative $150 billion in federal subsidies have gone
to nuclear, solar
and wind power -- 96.3 percent of that total went to
nuclear."

And if we use similar logic to the Canadian analysis,
the "opportunity
cost" of those US subsidies is in the trillions of
dollars total since WWII.

Note those totals do not consider the three biggest
subsidies:
* federal government accepting the liability for the
nuclear industry if
an accident should happen (and people protested
decades ago before they
were built that terrorists could attack them and that
was a good reason
not to build them),
* the US military involvement around the globe to
secure oil supplies,
and,
* the external costs of pollution from acid rain, oil
slicks, CO2, and
so on.
Those subsidies are potentially worth additional tens
to hundreds of
billions of dollars per year. Or total "opportunity"
costs in the tens
to perhaps hundreds of trillions of dollars as
subsidies for today's
"free market" energy system.

The EU:
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www.antenna.nl/wise/474/4699.html
"In the period 1990-1995 alone hundreds of billions of
dollars were
spent by the European Union and the EU member
countries in direct
subsidies to nuclear and fossil fuel industries. The
public money for
fossil fuels is almost seven times as high as for
renewables, and for
nuclear energy more than three times as much. Each
year an average of
US$14.9 billion was given to fossil and nuclear
energy, which is more
than three times higher than the US$4.7 billion
renewables and energy
conservation received together. ... There is an
enormous amount of
(partly secret) hidden subsidies. Some examples of
these hidden or
implicit subsidies:
* Obligation to use domestic coal;
* Reduced electricity prices for large
(industrial) users;
* Government guarantees for investments and other
types of "soft
credits";
* Exemption from risks or liabilities for
producers, such as
cleaning of contaminated soils, compensation for
damages and for
decommissioning of nuclear power plants;
* Tax exemptions, such as for airplane fuels; and
* Transport subsidies, such as for coal in the
US.
Even after superficial analysis of a few key examples,
hidden or
indirect subsidies are far greater than that of direct
subsidies. Two
examples illustrate this. In the UK the privatization
and restructuring
of the electricity industry made the lack of
profitability visible. To
keep the nuclear industry alive, several tens of
billion dollars were
spent by the government. The OECD's estimate for
energy subsidies in
Italy was $10 billion, against a total of $354 million
direct subsidies
in the Greenpeace report. This shows that the largest
part of the
subsidy iceberg is still below the surface, and the
total subsidies are
far greater than the direct subsidies alone."

I don't care to do the same for China, Japan, Russia,
India, Australia,
African countries, or so on, but I would expect to
find subsidies there too.

So, our current energy infrastructure sounds to me
like the results of
the work of evil and/or greedy and/or ignorant men
(and/or women) who
have tilted the economic and legal playing field in
their favor for
decades. :-)

And not just a minor tilt -- we are talking literally
tens of trillions
of dollars of tilt total over the past few decades.
Now granted, all
that money may not have gone directly into the
corrupter's pocket. It is
the nature of corruption to get a government to waste
$100 in taxes of
the People somehow so the corrupt person can get $1 in
their own pocket.
Even one percent of a trillion dollars is a lot of
money. That's one of
the economic forces driving war as well:
"Major General Smedley Darlington Butler: War is a
racket"

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

People keep saying things like "centralization of
energy supply is more
efficient". More efficient in what way? For whom? Who
benefits? Who pays
the costs? What hidden subsidies or external costs are
part of the
equation? Who gets to choose? What alternatives are
made impossible or
difficult by the choice? How much risk is involved?
Who ultimately is
most at risk by the decision?

Even if I was 100% wrong with the above analysis (and
I doubt that), if
I suggest walking to work or taking light rail in
well-planned
communities is probably a more desirable way to live
for most people and
might also help reduce the annual slaughter of about
35,000 people a
year on the road in the USA (offset somewhat by more
people falling off
of roofs of course), some people are all over me
saying personally owned
automobiles are somehow more "efficient" given a
personal desire for
mobility in our current social layout. I'm not saying
they are wrong
from one perspective (minimizing fuel consumption
given sprawl and long
commutes and a desire for apparent individual autonomy
for shopping
etc.). But them, why not accept personally owned local
ground-based
renewable power systems might be more "efficient" in
the same way
personally owned automobiles are supposedly "more
efficient" over light
rail or walking to work, given a desire by many people
for personal
energy security or autonomy in our current social
layout? Isn't it
potentially inconsistent to argue for individually
owned transport on
the one hand, but centrally owned power production on
the other?

Efficiency is in some sense relative to your goals and
beliefs and
culture, because you typically tradeoff one type of
efficiency for
another when making decisions. The only time you don't
have to make such
tradeoffs is if you have a breakthrough product --
like perhaps someday
if someone invents plastic PV solar cells as efficient
and easy to make
as self-replicating Willow trees. See for example:

http://www.esf.edu/PUBPROG/BROCHURE/WILLOW/WILLOW.HTM
"... Willow biomass products reduce the need for
fossil fuels and
petroleum products. Willow can be converted into a
variety of
sustainable environmentally-friendly resources,
including: Heat and
electricity by direct combustion, co-firing with coal,
and gasification;
Biodegradable plastics and other polymers; Biofuels
... "

I am all for space habitats. I'm all for tens or
hundreds of billions of
dollars a year of my (and others') taxes to go into
realizing them. I'd
happily tack on trillions of dollars to the US federal
deficit to make
Space Settlement happen even one day sooner (assuming
nothing better was
possible). I think sustainable communities in space
(and on Earth)
should be the top priority across the board in
academia, government, and
industry. I've been putting my own time and money into
realizing space
habitats etc. on-and-off for many years (maybe without
too much results,
but I tried). But Solar Space power satellite
construction isn't the
best approach to realizing space settlements any
longer; that part of
O'Neill's plan no longer makes sense, IMHO.

We need other approaches to fostering space settlement
-- and I think
the self-replicating seed factory idea like this 1980
NASA summer
conference envisioned here:
"Advanced Automation for Space Missions"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
is perhaps the best chance given the changing energy
and cultural
landscape. Or to go to an older (1929) original
source (JD Bernal) for
some continuing inspiration:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in
diameter, made of the
lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose
the new molecular
materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the
absence of gravitation
its construction would not be an engineering feat of
any magnitude. The
source of the material out of which this would be made
would only be in
small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of
the structure
would be made out of the substance of one or more
smaller asteroids,
rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The
initial stages of
construction are the most difficult to imagine. They
will probably
consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred years
or so diameter to
a space vessel [or automated seed factory in the NASA
scenario],
hollowing it out and using the removed material to
build the first
protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be
re-worked, bit by bit,
using elaborated and more suitable substances and at
the same time
increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The
globe would fulfil
all the functions by which our earth manages to
support life. In default
of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its
atmosphere and
the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its
nourishment comes
in the form of energy through its outer surface it
would be forced to
resemble on the whole an enormously complicated
single-celled plant."

--Paul Fernhout