War and Energy

Putin and the EU: Two half-crippled, hyper-bureaucratized empires at it again, the corrupt and backward vs the stagnant and surrender-prone:
http://www.xenosystems.net/quote-note-147/


A look at oil price and oil investment trends:
http://www.xenosystems.net/oil-pulse/
Extrapolating low-medium oil prices ($50-$80/bbl) for 10-15 years seems reasonable to me: see Spandrell in the comments. The main novel risk of a price rise comes from the possibility that the shale investments may not continue producing for very long compared to the conventional investments in the past.


This should mean significantly cheaper, more versatile car batteries within 5-10 years:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201406719/abstract

Distributed Wind Energy

This is an idea that's been around for decades, but the tech has improved gradually, especially the control electronics and advanced materials. Google ownership means deep pockets and corporate/government connections. And the company founder is still in charge, so that crucial motive force, the entrepreneurial spirit and sense of ownership, ought to be operative.
http://www.google.com/makani/

Self-Propelled?

Two solar power plants are being built in Spain without any government subsidies:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/german-developers-plan-solar-parks-in-spain-without-subsidies.html

http://www.solariaenergia.com/EN-noticia-ampliada-95/solaria-develops-a-60-mw-plant-in-the-province-of-toledo-in-spain.html

A number of other locations are not far behind in achieving grid-parity: California, Italy, Japan. This means solar is transitioning from a politically-driven industry to an economically-driven industry, the latter being a much more reliable basis of growth. If N. Africa ever stabilizes they could export gigantic amounts of solar generated power to Europe in the near future, just as our southwest will be supplying the midwest and eastern states within 10-20 years.

Wind and Weather

At a sufficiently large scale, wind turbines may well impact the atmosphere in significant ways. I think the study here is preliminary to more accurate and detailed modeling in future.  Notice, though, that the study suggests the overall climate impact of extremely large scale wind farms approaches nil. This is because, according to this report, wind farms increase temperature in their immediate vicinity when situated on land, but decrease temperature when situated at sea. The long term trend is likely to involve ever more sea-based wind farms. Also, the study indicates that even such large scale wind harvesting does not slow atmospheric wind speeds so much as to make wind farms uneconomic. In other words, I consider the article's headline entirely misleading as to the actual findings of the study.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/mit-researchers-say-using-wind-turbines.html

On Electrification

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/24657/ ETA on cost-effective electric vehicles: 6-8 years.

A $700 Million Bet on Electric Cars

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/business/energy-environment/25electric.html?em There is real money from real companies invested in this concept. This has major banks behind it, Israeli investors, the Israeli government (which has a defense-based incentive to do this), and the Danish government (whose country gets 20% of its electricity from wind power, giving it an environmental incentive to do this). Also, Renault, a $50 billion automaker, says it will have conventionally priced electric cars available by next year. The key concept here, which I think it's extremely important for the other automakers to recognize and adopt, is the interchangeability of batteries between vehicles. This will allow for quick changes of batteries at gas stations and extend the range of electric vehicles at low cost.

The Vanguard

http://www.dailytech.com/Toyota+Prius+Was+TopSelling+Vehicle+in+Japan+for+2009/article17360.htm It's interesting that each environmental advance seems to be led by a different country: Denmark leads in wind power with 20% of electricity generation, Japan leads in hybrid car adoption, China leads on building new nuclear power plants (50 in the next 10 years compared to 15 for the rest of the world), America leads on new wind turbine installations and solar thermal installations and all forms of innovation, Israel and Denmark compete for the lead on electric car adoption.

Solar's Future

It seems that Washington state (otherwise known as the cloudiest state) has decided to subsidize some large solar installations within its borders. Unfortunately, because solar power initiatives are still the province of state government subsidies, the efficiencies that could be gleaned from the operation of competitive advantages among the states are being wasted. If there were federal subsidies instead, Washington state would not be building solar power installations at current prices: it would focus on its strengths, hydro and wind. The solar power build-out would commence in the most cost-effective locations first (the Southwest), and then gradually radiate out across the country as solar prices fell. If prices stopped falling before the nation was thus blanketed, the electical grid could be expanded utilizing DC current to provide low loss, long distance transmission from cheap producers of renewable energy of all kinds to areas that cannot produce such energy cheaply.

 

Another interesting fact is that PV solar has consistently fallen in price by about 5% per year since it was invented in the 50s. At this rate, in SoCal, with low cost financing (like an unsubsidized home equity loan) and without subsidies, PV solar should become market competitive around 2020.

 

An article on solar's future from an economic perspective (second article on the page): http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

The key is the third graph.

Kiting

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy.html

 

I thought this was an interesting presentation. Several groups around the world are working on energy kites of various types. Two inherent advantages are that high altitude winds are less intermittent and stronger. There's also a company selling kite-sails to reduce fuel consumption in the blue-water shipping industry. Of course, as with virtually all the blue-sky ideas I've seen, it's difficult to estimate this early in the game what the cost-effectiveness will be. These are the types of ideas that should receive the stimulus funding that the Energy Department is dispensing.