What's your recipe for a sustainable energy policy?

[Zenlitened]

Poll question: What's your recipe for a sustainable energy policy?

[HappyWeasel]

1. I tihnk it is time.

With oil becoming less and less feasible. It is time to not conserve but to gallup full speed towards Solar, Orbital, Elemental, Fission and Fusion power. We should cut subsidies to oil companies and redouble efforts to use fusion power. By 2030, not 2050, we should start building commercial fusion reactors and start shutting down refineries and drilling platforms.

[Zenlitened]

16. I have to admit, it didn't occur to me to put fusion on the list.

By "nuclear" I had in mind plain ol' nuclear fission.

Fusion seems a long ways off, even with a Manhattan Project, while wind and solar (in particular) seem readily-deployable right now.

They also have the advantage, IMO, of splitting up the grid a bit, at least in a sense. Rooftop solar arrays on commercial buildings that ease peak demand from more centralized sources. Turbines powering communities or small regions, again as a way of easing the burden on more centralized, heavy-duty stations.

That said, I'd be happy to hear more about fusion. It could be I'm biased, and reacting negatively to to the word because I associate it immediately with "cold fusion." Got any links? I'd like to learn more.

:hi:

[phantom power]

17. I think it's reasonable to exclude options that don't exist yet.

Fusion doesn't exist yet, as a viable power generation technology. It might someday, should we be so lucky to have a civilization capable of conducting fusion research 50 years from now. Or 10, for that matter.

[Zenlitened]

18. I agree, that's probably why it didn't spring to mind when I made the poll.

I really haven't followed it, so there could be some developments I'm not aware of.

Meantime... wind and solar are ready to deploy right now. In fact, are being deployed right now. :D

[TheWraith]

22. Check out this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

Bussard feels that the Polywell design can run at a net energy production even using proton/boron fuel, which is 2500 times less energy rich than, say, a deuterium/tritium reaction.

[Xipe Totec]

2. No major conservation efforts;

let the SUVs stall where they may.

Once the oil is gone we can confront the grim reality of the situation.

Of course, not everybody is gonna make it, but it will be fun figuring it all out...

:sarcasm:

[HappyWeasel]

3. That's basically the end of civilization if not humans as we know it...

[Xipe Totec]

4. What's you point?

:evilgrin:

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Not a policy, but a prediction

Sometime around 2020, the Great Die-Off begins. In the course of ten years, the population of the world is reduced from 7.5 billion down to 1.5 billion. Most of it is accomplished by a combination of famine, pandemic influenza, insect and vermin swarming (made possible by global warming), and warfare.

North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and a few cities (Singapore and Brasilia, but not Hong Kong and Rio) will be untouched. Well, there might be some "unavoidable losses" among the poor. But the Free Enterprise system will be secured.

We will all mourn the passing of our brothers and sisters, much as we mourn the victims of the Holocaust, or the American Indians. We will teach it in the schools and there will be hundreds of books, movies, computer games, and even TV sitcoms about it.

And we will have about a century of unimpeded growth. Energy will not be a concern, and we can make the switch to other methods of producing it at a leisurely pace. More than 80% of the world will be empty and ours to recolonize without the bother of subjugating the local populations.

It will be a Golden Age.

Except for those six billion ghosts.

--p!

[One_Life_To_Give]

15. Highly Probable Prediction

Tis sad but very true.

I must agree that I don't see how this will be avoided. My own estimates are close to $100 trillion dollars globally must be spent in the next few years to completely prevent this catastrophe.

[losthills]

6. The age of oil,

or "civilization as we know it," is coming to a close.

Things are not going to continue in the same way we have grown accustomed to.

Does that mean we are about to experience some great cataclysm or "die off?"

No. Far from it. We are about to experience a great period of opportunity, creativity, and renaissance. It's going to be great, and it's going to be exciting, and it's going to be something to write books about. We are all fortunate to be here to experience it and participate in it.

Jump in, or stand back and watch, you're going to get wet either way. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity...

[Massacure]

7. Conservation > Rewnewables > Nuclear > Fossil Fuels

Nuclear should replace coal while we figure out how to implement renewable energies in a way that can meet demand regardless of external conditions.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tom_paine]

9. OTHER: Renewables, conservation, solar, wave, and a Fusion Manhattan Project!

Because fusion is not fission.

Fusion produces, if I recall correctly, only the inert, noble gas helium (and very small amounts of it at that)as pollution. Which then, if the whole world can be shifted to fusion power, means basically no more pollution.

I don't know if this could be translated to "fusion cars" of the Back to the Future ilk, but even if it is only feasible to power large cities with it, would decerase CO2 and oyther emission DRASTICALLY.

Now, I am no physicist, so anyone with more detailed knowledge of the possible drawbacks of a fusion reactor (other than the seemingly insoluble problems that prevent us currently from having them, such as an iability to control the reaction, I believe, sufficiently to contain in any reactor vessel), I would be very interested to hear it.

[TheWraith]

20. We may not need a fusion Manhattan Project: it's already been designed.

A semi-legendary physicist named Robert Bussard has been running around trying to drum up support for a new kind of fusion reactor he and his team have designed, called a Polywell reactor. It creates inertially confined fusion, as opposed to trying to magnetically contain the plasma. Unlike previous inertially-confined reactors, it's supposed to be 100,000 times more efficient than typical Farnsworth-Hirsch designs.

The whole thing was developed and tested at lab scale under a small grant from the Navy, but now that's run out, and Bussard is trying to find investors to fork over $200 million to build a full-scale operational reactor. He feels confidant enough in the design that no intermediate-scale testing is needed, and that it would be workable to proceed directly to a complete plant.

[tom_paine]

21. Surprised that, with gas prices so high this isn't dicussed on MSM

:sarcasm:

[Kolesar]

10. Walkable neighborhoods so we dont need to commute. Produce farms near urban areas.Efficiency program

There is a business model for utilities to invest in insulation and efficient refits of homes, businesses and public facilities. The return on investment is better for buying pink insulation and efficient heating/cooling systems than it is for building billion dollar generating plants. There is no reason that the electric and gas utilities should not be doing this.

The huge cost of new generating plants of *any* techology is the big surprise in the electricity industry. Rising raw material costs have driven the costs way up.

[Nihil]

11. The poll asked for "my recipe" ...

... so I went for "Conservation plus shift to solar, wind, hydro, wave,
geothermal and nuclear" as I'd like to see that happen.

If the poll had asked "What do you think will actually happen?" then
my choice would definitely have been "Collapse" as the chances of humanity
worldwide growing sufficient braincells to do the right thing is zero.

:shrug:

[GliderGuider]

12. A truly sustainable energy policy involves no cumulative use of non-renewable substances at all

That means no new wind turbines, solar panels, hydro dams or geothermal plants, and any refurbishments or replacements must be made from the recycled parts/materials of old ones. All fossil and nuclear generation must of course be shut down immediately, because their fuel use is by definition unsustainable. We must go back to using mainly biomass - wood, dung and biomethane. Now, because the use of wood is unsustainable with such a large population (remember the Middle Ages deforestation of Europe and Britain) we will either need to ration the wood (to avoid another such Tragedy of the Commons) and/or reduce the world population drastically. Fortunately, that last remedy will shortly get underway.

Oh, you meant a "practical sustainable energy policy that people would accept and would more or less preserve Business As Usual"? Sorry, there isn't one.

[The2ndWheel]

13. Diversity, small scale

No more mass production. No more globalization. Each has to destroy diversity.

If we're able to concentrate enough energy though, we'll just end up right back to where we are today, with a handful of giant renewable energy corporations, and we'll protest them instead of Exxon. Then we'll have a concert.

[razzleberry]

14. don't ignore carbon offsets

crank up the printing presses

20 billion tons of carbon offsets would
seem to be enough

[TheWraith]

19. Other.

Conservation has a role, but we can only reduce our energy use so much, since more and more of our society depends on energy. Solar and geothermal power are impractical at the moment, and wave power is an emerging technology, yet to be determined how effective it will really be. So the bottom line is this: replace current fossil fuel burning plants with wind, hydro, and nuclear right now; as soon as Bussard's designs are finalized and built on a usable scale, we can start moving to fusion for our new plants. The important thing is to get off fossil fuels in a reasonable time period.