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Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society
It is widely assumed that our consumer society can move from using fossil fuels to using renewable energy sources while maintaining the high levels of energy use to which we have become accustomed. This book details the reasons why this almost unquestioned assumption is seriously mistaken. It challenges fundamental assumptions and stimulates the discussion about our common future in a way that will be of interest to professionals and lay-readers alike.
- GenresEconomicsSustainability
206 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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April 26, 2015
We live in a fantasy world. We have blind faith that we’ll be able to sustainably feed nine or ten billion people in 2050, a wish-based belief. We have blind faith that technology will vaporize all challenges that appear in our path over the coming centuries. Economic growth will continue forever. We’ll celebrate a glorious victory over climate change by switching to safe, clean renewable energy, in a smooth and painless manner. Our high standard of living will keep getting better and better as we zoom toward utopia. The best is yet to come!
Australian professor Ted Trainer is not entranced by blind faith, and he explained his heresy in Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society. Attempting to transition to a future powered only by renewable energy, while maintaining our current mode of high waste living, would be the opposite of smooth and painless. Indeed, it’s impossible, he says. Renewables simply can’t produce as much energy as we currently get from burning enormous amounts of sequestered carbon (fossil fuel).
Today, about eighty percent of the energy we use is liquid fuels, and the rest is electricity. In modern societies, electric power is highly reliable for both households and industries. Power companies generate electricity, feed it into their distribution grid, and send it to consumers. Excess electricity cannot be stored, and insufficient electricity leads to brownouts. So, utilities must be very careful to generate electricity at levels that closely match the swings in demand. Today’s centralized power systems are designed to do a good job of this, but they are not designed to reliably distribute electricity generated by decentralized sources, like wind farms or solar facilities.
Coal-powered plants can run at full capacity all the time, and they can be built anywhere. Solar and wind facilities can run at full capacity only during ideal conditions. For example, a solar thermal plant can run at peak on a hot summer day, but its average annual production is just twenty-five percent of peak. The capacity of solar and wind facilities is highly dependent on location. They cannot be built anywhere, and the ideal locations are chosen first. The potential for future expansion is limited.
Photovoltaic panels convert sunlight directly into electricity. They produce little or no energy at dawn, dusk, night, or during cloudy periods. For large-scale generation, solar thermal is better, because it generates heat, which can be stored for use during off-peak periods. Ideal locations for solar thermal are deserts, like the Sahara, or the U.S. southwest. The drawback is that ideal locations are typically distant from population centers, and significant energy is lost when power is sent thousands of kilometers away. Even in ideal locations, output during summer is five times higher than winter.
Wind power is even less consistent. Wind velocity varies from year to year, from season to season, and from minute to minute. For 54 days in 2002, a wind farm in Denmark had zero production. A farm in Australia was nearly windless for five straight days. Winds can suddenly go calm over a wide region. Ideal locations are on hills and ridges.
This hard-to-predict variability is a serious obstacle to a renewable energy future. Neither wind nor solar can produce electricity sufficient to meet current demand, in a dependable manner. To provide dependable power, backup capacity is needed. One mode of backup is to use the surplus power, generated during peak hours, to pump water uphill into reservoirs, where it can later be used to generate hydroelectric power. For most regions, this is not an option.
Surplus electricity can also be used to generate hydrogen, to be stored for later use. Storing energy in hydrogen is highly inefficient, expensive, and problematic. Putting one unit of hydrogen energy into a fuel cell requires at least four units of wind or solar energy. Hydrogen atoms are tiny, which makes them especially prone to leakage. A big tanker truck can only carry 288 kilograms (634 pounds) of hydrogen. Hydrogen does not make economic sense.
Backup electricity can also be generated by burning sequestered carbon, but this would result in undesirable greenhouse gas emissions. In a renewable energy future, for each megawatt of wind or solar capacity, systems would also need almost a megawatt of backup. The backup systems would be expensive, and they would be idle much of the time. They cannot be quickly cranked up to respond to demand surges, or to supply shortfalls due to clouds or calms.
A number of well-paid respectable-looking nutjobs are preaching that the cure for climate change is nuclear energy. But eighty percent of the energy used today is not electricity. Trainer concluded, “If all electricity was generated by nuclear reactors, carbon dioxide emissions might be reduced by thirty percent.” Uranium is nonrenewable, the supply is finite, and the top quality ores are gone. All facets of the nuclear industry are designed and operated by accident-prone tropical primates. Meanwhile, spent fuel remains intensely toxic for more than a million years, and we have yet to discover how to safely store it. A more mature option would be to focus intense attention on how we live and think.
The variability of wind and solar generation is a huge challenge to a renewable energy future. A far greater challenge — the death blow — is the issue of liquid fuels, which comprise eighty percent of our energy consumption. Liquid fuels are used to power cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships, wars, and our food system. Under perfect conditions, renewable energy might be able to generate ten percent of the energy currently produced by petroleum. Options include ethanol, methanol, and hydrogen fuel cells. Trainer discusses the serious drawbacks.
Clearly, a smooth and painless transition to a renewable energy future that allows us to continue living like crazy is an intoxicating fantasy. In addition to being impossible, it’s also unsustainable. The “clean,” high-tech wonderland will continue extracting non-renewable resources for wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, roads, tractors, fuel cells, air conditioners, cell phones, and so on. It will do nothing to wean us from soil mining, water mining, forest mining, and fish mining — or shift population growth into reverse.
The consumer way of life is a dead end path. While reading, I kept thinking about my four grandparents, all of whom were born into non-electric, car-free households. They lived good lives. Food is a genuine need, but unsustainable energy is a devastating addiction — lots of fun at first, but deadly in the long run.
Trainer thought along the same lines. The big problem is that the dominant culture programs us to be competitive, acquisitive, individualists. He presented a dreamy vision called The Simpler Way, a joyful utopia of voluntary frugality, stress-free lifestyles, lovely gardens, and small cooperative communities — and we don’t even have to give up modern technology! Really?
Instead of struggling to continue living like crazy, for as long as possible, by any means necessary, the intelligent option would be to slow down — to really slow down! That’s the message here.
In 2012, Trainer wrote an updated 22-page summary of his analysis of renewable energy, Can Renewable Energy Sustain Consumer Societies. In 2011, he helped write a 48-page description of his vision for a happy green future, The Simpler Way Report.
Australian professor Ted Trainer is not entranced by blind faith, and he explained his heresy in Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society. Attempting to transition to a future powered only by renewable energy, while maintaining our current mode of high waste living, would be the opposite of smooth and painless. Indeed, it’s impossible, he says. Renewables simply can’t produce as much energy as we currently get from burning enormous amounts of sequestered carbon (fossil fuel).
Today, about eighty percent of the energy we use is liquid fuels, and the rest is electricity. In modern societies, electric power is highly reliable for both households and industries. Power companies generate electricity, feed it into their distribution grid, and send it to consumers. Excess electricity cannot be stored, and insufficient electricity leads to brownouts. So, utilities must be very careful to generate electricity at levels that closely match the swings in demand. Today’s centralized power systems are designed to do a good job of this, but they are not designed to reliably distribute electricity generated by decentralized sources, like wind farms or solar facilities.
Coal-powered plants can run at full capacity all the time, and they can be built anywhere. Solar and wind facilities can run at full capacity only during ideal conditions. For example, a solar thermal plant can run at peak on a hot summer day, but its average annual production is just twenty-five percent of peak. The capacity of solar and wind facilities is highly dependent on location. They cannot be built anywhere, and the ideal locations are chosen first. The potential for future expansion is limited.
Photovoltaic panels convert sunlight directly into electricity. They produce little or no energy at dawn, dusk, night, or during cloudy periods. For large-scale generation, solar thermal is better, because it generates heat, which can be stored for use during off-peak periods. Ideal locations for solar thermal are deserts, like the Sahara, or the U.S. southwest. The drawback is that ideal locations are typically distant from population centers, and significant energy is lost when power is sent thousands of kilometers away. Even in ideal locations, output during summer is five times higher than winter.
Wind power is even less consistent. Wind velocity varies from year to year, from season to season, and from minute to minute. For 54 days in 2002, a wind farm in Denmark had zero production. A farm in Australia was nearly windless for five straight days. Winds can suddenly go calm over a wide region. Ideal locations are on hills and ridges.
This hard-to-predict variability is a serious obstacle to a renewable energy future. Neither wind nor solar can produce electricity sufficient to meet current demand, in a dependable manner. To provide dependable power, backup capacity is needed. One mode of backup is to use the surplus power, generated during peak hours, to pump water uphill into reservoirs, where it can later be used to generate hydroelectric power. For most regions, this is not an option.
Surplus electricity can also be used to generate hydrogen, to be stored for later use. Storing energy in hydrogen is highly inefficient, expensive, and problematic. Putting one unit of hydrogen energy into a fuel cell requires at least four units of wind or solar energy. Hydrogen atoms are tiny, which makes them especially prone to leakage. A big tanker truck can only carry 288 kilograms (634 pounds) of hydrogen. Hydrogen does not make economic sense.
Backup electricity can also be generated by burning sequestered carbon, but this would result in undesirable greenhouse gas emissions. In a renewable energy future, for each megawatt of wind or solar capacity, systems would also need almost a megawatt of backup. The backup systems would be expensive, and they would be idle much of the time. They cannot be quickly cranked up to respond to demand surges, or to supply shortfalls due to clouds or calms.
A number of well-paid respectable-looking nutjobs are preaching that the cure for climate change is nuclear energy. But eighty percent of the energy used today is not electricity. Trainer concluded, “If all electricity was generated by nuclear reactors, carbon dioxide emissions might be reduced by thirty percent.” Uranium is nonrenewable, the supply is finite, and the top quality ores are gone. All facets of the nuclear industry are designed and operated by accident-prone tropical primates. Meanwhile, spent fuel remains intensely toxic for more than a million years, and we have yet to discover how to safely store it. A more mature option would be to focus intense attention on how we live and think.
The variability of wind and solar generation is a huge challenge to a renewable energy future. A far greater challenge — the death blow — is the issue of liquid fuels, which comprise eighty percent of our energy consumption. Liquid fuels are used to power cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships, wars, and our food system. Under perfect conditions, renewable energy might be able to generate ten percent of the energy currently produced by petroleum. Options include ethanol, methanol, and hydrogen fuel cells. Trainer discusses the serious drawbacks.
Clearly, a smooth and painless transition to a renewable energy future that allows us to continue living like crazy is an intoxicating fantasy. In addition to being impossible, it’s also unsustainable. The “clean,” high-tech wonderland will continue extracting non-renewable resources for wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, roads, tractors, fuel cells, air conditioners, cell phones, and so on. It will do nothing to wean us from soil mining, water mining, forest mining, and fish mining — or shift population growth into reverse.
The consumer way of life is a dead end path. While reading, I kept thinking about my four grandparents, all of whom were born into non-electric, car-free households. They lived good lives. Food is a genuine need, but unsustainable energy is a devastating addiction — lots of fun at first, but deadly in the long run.
Trainer thought along the same lines. The big problem is that the dominant culture programs us to be competitive, acquisitive, individualists. He presented a dreamy vision called The Simpler Way, a joyful utopia of voluntary frugality, stress-free lifestyles, lovely gardens, and small cooperative communities — and we don’t even have to give up modern technology! Really?
Instead of struggling to continue living like crazy, for as long as possible, by any means necessary, the intelligent option would be to slow down — to really slow down! That’s the message here.
In 2012, Trainer wrote an updated 22-page summary of his analysis of renewable energy, Can Renewable Energy Sustain Consumer Societies. In 2011, he helped write a 48-page description of his vision for a happy green future, The Simpler Way Report.
October 16, 2016
The thesis of this book is sensible and can be summed up by the title. Essentially, Trainer's argument is that renewable energy can play a role in our energy system, replacing a proportion of conventional, fossil fuel based methods of production; however, they are not capable of providing all of our energy, given our current level of consumption. And thus, we should cut our consumption. All of this is quite sensible, and the bulk of the book is spent clearly outlining the challenges of each major renewable energy type, and estimating the likely proportion it could provide in various parts of the world (but particularly Australia).
There are 3 main problems with the book. 1) It was written in 2007, and renewable technology is a fairly fast-moving area of research and practice. I am not sure this topic lends itself to a book for that reason. 2) Although Trainer is very transparent and logical in his calculations and tries to be moderate in his assumptions, he does tend toward the pessimistic side of the spectrum. When I checked some of his assumptions, which provide the foundation for the conclusions, I found several where the data I could find did not corroborate his claims, and in fact was much more optimistic. I do not know if this is because I was looking at more up to date information, or whether this is because it's difficult to find unbiased information on renewables (probably a bit of both). 3) His final chapter on living the simple life is the summary of his ideas on how we can reform society in such a way to be less materialistic and use less energy. It is inspired by his own personal lifestyle, so though this means he has direct experience of it, it also means that this is more his personal philosophy than a realistic vision for reform. Frankly, the society he describes is one that you see at the end of so many science fiction books and films, with a collectivist, agrarian, and directly democratic design. It all sounds very idyllic, certainly, but it feels like a cop out, given it is the picture painted by so many others for so many years...that has never come to fruition. I would question whether this is even the lifestyle that most people want to live, which would be the first hurdle to overcome.
Ultimately, the book is an interesting read with a solid argument, but I feel an update and a lot more depth on such tricky issues as institutional reform (which would have to happen if we were to transform the way society works and how we live) is required.
There are 3 main problems with the book. 1) It was written in 2007, and renewable technology is a fairly fast-moving area of research and practice. I am not sure this topic lends itself to a book for that reason. 2) Although Trainer is very transparent and logical in his calculations and tries to be moderate in his assumptions, he does tend toward the pessimistic side of the spectrum. When I checked some of his assumptions, which provide the foundation for the conclusions, I found several where the data I could find did not corroborate his claims, and in fact was much more optimistic. I do not know if this is because I was looking at more up to date information, or whether this is because it's difficult to find unbiased information on renewables (probably a bit of both). 3) His final chapter on living the simple life is the summary of his ideas on how we can reform society in such a way to be less materialistic and use less energy. It is inspired by his own personal lifestyle, so though this means he has direct experience of it, it also means that this is more his personal philosophy than a realistic vision for reform. Frankly, the society he describes is one that you see at the end of so many science fiction books and films, with a collectivist, agrarian, and directly democratic design. It all sounds very idyllic, certainly, but it feels like a cop out, given it is the picture painted by so many others for so many years...that has never come to fruition. I would question whether this is even the lifestyle that most people want to live, which would be the first hurdle to overcome.
Ultimately, the book is an interesting read with a solid argument, but I feel an update and a lot more depth on such tricky issues as institutional reform (which would have to happen if we were to transform the way society works and how we live) is required.
July 10, 2008
Ted Trainer is one of the most entertaining writers out there today. The only trouble is, that is not his intent.This is yet another reading in my collection thanks to Policy Debate. I have to give him 2 stars not because this is good, but because he makes some of the best debate cards out there with his crazy theories.
While condemning us all for being consumers and a part of the "system", he hangs out in his house of tires down under publishing books that only attempt to feed consumerism itself - and his wallet.
While condemning us all for being consumers and a part of the "system", he hangs out in his house of tires down under publishing books that only attempt to feed consumerism itself - and his wallet.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews