Entropy Always Wins
Via Sullivan… Here’s a handy flow chart showing how various energy sources were used here in the U.S. in 2005…
The contribution of the alternative fuels is vastly smaller then even I had imagined. Even hydro-electric sources are way too little to be of any reasonable help replacing petroleum, natural gas and coal. Take away petroleum and you have not only eliminated motor vehicles for all practical purposes…you’ve killed off the airplane. Without petroleum and natural gas we just about have no industry left.
But all that wasn’t the first thing that caught my eye here. Look…just look…at how much goes to waste. That’s the gray band on the graph.
Think just of your automobile. Unless yours is an all electric model, it’s the heat from gasoline combustion that makes it move. That heat is almost entirely lost to entropy, in the form of waste heat. Very little of it actually moves the car. Most of it goes out the tailpipe. Some leaves via the radiator and some just radiates off the motor, drive train and exhaust pipes. And when you apply the brakes, the energy of your car’s motion is reduced to brake pad and disk heat and radiates into the air. Some electric and hybrid vehicles recapture some of that energy via “dynamic braking” (that is, you load the traction wheels with an electric generator which charges batteries). But even there, most of the momentum of the car is simply lost to heat, to entropy.
Think you’re getting a better deal from an electric automobile? Just look at the lost energy in the electric grid. That’s what really shocks me here…how much energy is lost in electric power transmission. Every time you put a current down a wire you create a magnetic field. That field radiates out into space, and takes energy away from the current you are throwing down the wire. A/C transmission recaptures some of that, by switching polarity so that the magetic field repeatedly collapses back into the wire and gives it a little extra jolt. I thought it was more efficient then this. But…jeeze…look at it. I suppose a lot of that is also heat loss in transformers and switches too.
Entropy. You really have to admire its relentlessness. It’s like a tax on everything you do, every muscle you move, every breath you take practically.
I have no idea what a post oil world is going to look like. I am not simply an optimist. I think I’m a little bit more of a realist then the doomsayers. Necessity as they say, is the mother of invention, and I am certain human ingenuity, curiosity, ambition, greed and just plain laziness will find a way to keep our factories and our vehicles in motion. Eventually. But that future is going to look very, Very different from anything being imagined now.
A larger version of the graph is Here.
June 18th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
The amount of renewable electricity generated by the USA is tiny compared to the potential amounts that could be generated. The UK should give you a fair idea of what I mean.
The UK is already the world’s largest producer of electricity from offshore wind farms, and is set to retain the title for at least the next few decades simply because of the sheer scale of the offshore wind farms that are being built &/or have been proposed. The largest of which I am aware, Dogger Bank, would have a capacity of 9GW, over 7.5 times the size of Sizewell B, the UK’s largest nuclear power station. The total capacity of these wind farms will be somewhat more than 40GW, almost two-thirds the UK’s maximum demand (63GW). And that’s just what’s proposed or being built, nor does it include onshore wind, hydro, solar, geothermal or tidal.
The US is roughly forty times the size of the UK, and the EEZ (area where offshore wind farms can be built) of the continental USA is roughly ten times that of the UK (without the overseas territories) so the USA’s potential for renewable electricity generation is correspondingly more massive. However, Bush encouraged the use of oil while Europe was busy investing in renewables (mainly France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway and the UK) so, while Europe’s potential for renewable energy generation is far smaller, a much larger proportion has been put to use.
Also, Europe doesn’t have to deal with as strong a NIMBY factor as the USA, partly because of the more advanced technologies and stricter safety regulations here. Denmark has been at near-saturation for waste-to-energy for some time, and other EU states are already on course to reach that point over the next few decades, in part because the public knows these technologies are proven and reliable. Without laws as stringent as those of the EU to protect them, Americans are understandably more cagey about having waste-to-energy plants built near where they live. The problem of the NIMBY factor remains true for offshore wind farms and other reneweables, in addition to waste-to-energy. Cape Wind is a good example – the original application was made in 2001, and construction still hasn’t started, whereas Dogger Bank (which is 20 times the size) was only proposed a few months ago, and construction is slated to begin within 4 years.
The net result is that Europe’s renewable energy business is a major player, while its American counterpart is a bit-player, leaving America at a disadvantage. Since there is far more investment in renewable in Europe, there is far more research here as well, hence many of the most valuable patents are owned by European corporations and, as in any high tech industry, patents mean profits. Bush’s oil addiction and the GOP’s decision to avoid the stringent pollution requirements imposed by the EU have actually held the US back, rather than the other way round.
June 18th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I drive a semi.
I get 8.25 mpg, which is very good.
When I was in training they told us to expect 5 MPG.
Also consider, California and Washington State.
They have a moratorium on generating facilities, to keep everything nice and green. So the build the plants in Montana and lose 2/3 of the electricity in transmission to the coast.
June 28th, 2010 at 1:00 am
Germany and some other places, including here, are exploring building so that less energy is used, and some is generated or captured on-site. This way, it doesn’t have to travel over miles of line. I think distributed power is the wave of the future, not giant plants.