Our Solar Future

The future of energy is solar. At least that’s what we’re being told from a number of sides: Apart from atomic energy, there’s the most energy to be had, it’s spread out over most regions in the world (and can be had by all) and will last over the next 7 billion years. And, of course, it doesn’t have the risks that is assosciated with nuclear.

Drawbacks: Night, clouds and winter. And that the best production areas are far away from the metropoles of the West. Collection in the desert would be easiest, but who wants to build their houses und want to use their energy there? No, the desert is not necessarily there where people need it.

My guess is that we’ll continue to fight these issues with various models like the one from desertec and its conglomerate of backing from big industry. In comparison, rooftop production will always be second choice. It’s simply too messy, not concentrated enough and too expensive in comparison to almost anything else out there. At least at the moment. It's simply not mass production - of energy, that is. Wind is at least much more concentrated in certain areas than solar can be.

No, these drawbacks will not stop us from looking for ways to make our rooftops productive and profitable – for man is a quite restless creature – until, of course, we finally get it right. Yet here’s where the actual problem is – getting it right. But let’s just imagine for a moment that we make the surface above our heads productive. At the moment we still view the space there as being free, just like we once viewed the land under our feet free for those willing to till it. As long, of course, as the neighbor’s tree doesn’t throw shadows on my solar instalation. Which mine does, by the way. I only have a thermal system, so at least I don’t have to worry about keeping up the voltage tension and the shadowlessness needed by a photovoltaic system.

I already can see this mounting of conflicting interests every day outside my window at work. On the one side of the street there are some old barracks that have been modernized, and solar panels have been put on top of them. On the other side – to the south – a new high rise went up, meaning that there is a shadow thrown on some part of the array much of the day. Every day. With more or less effect, depending on the time of year.

The first time I saw an array of panels in the open field I was quite aware of this contradiction. The first conflict in arable regions (almost everywhere here) is that with vegatation. For the German forests, which had exploited this solar space until quite recently, had to make way to agriculture so that we could feed ourselves. Besides, the land was "free" back then, wasn’t it? With the panels there, I admit that some grazing remains possible, for a lot of indirect light still makes it to the ground. But nothing higher is allowed to be there, blocking the ever-precious light.

Now let’s take our thoughts to the next step.

For solar to work well in many parts of the world, cloud cover would have to be minimized. Now, I don’t know how to get rid of clouds, but I do know that clean cities have much less fog and clouds than the wooded or even agricultural countryside. For the sun can burn off the excess moisture over pavement and roofs much more easily and faster. If solar is collected on already developed areas, this won’t change cloud cover and fog patters much.

If, on the other hand, vast stretches of countryside are used for collection, both forest and agriculture, the other two great solar consumers, will be displaced. Evaporation patterns will likewise change, so that fog and cloud cover will be effected.

If we begin using solar in such amounts that it really does make a difference in our energy budget, this will only be the beginning of the discussion. For today there is already the suggestion that we collect solar power in space – “up there”, closer to the source. Although I doubt we’ll be collecting solar in space anytime soon, I most certainly expect another development: the collection of solar in our atmosphere above the clouds. And of course above the winds, so that maintenance and complication of the instalation can be kept at a minimum.

Up there (over 20,000 meters), clouds and wind are practically non-existent. At ca. 35 km, at the top of the ozone layer, we can even collect high-powered microwave light. More than 12 hours a day. And the fog doesn’t have to be burned off in the morning to make the light accessible. And, of course, there are thousands of other possible layers and concepts which fit between the surface and 35,000 meters, which brings us back to the original conflict with sunlight reaching the planet’s surface.

In the forest, trees grow as high as they can (the technical limit is about 130 meters, almost reached btw by the redwoods) to reach the life-giving light. By doing so, they block out the possiblility for other plantlife to benefit from it. With our hope of powering our civilization with solar, it is exactly this process that we will be embracing. We will be like a small patch of forest taking root in some unlikely corner of the prairie. And just like trees will grow into the slightly wetter environment, displacing other plant life, so too will our solar collectors “grow” into our new energy environment – like a sunflower growing up toward the sun.

It might take decades and centuries to really notice that our solar industry is not only interested in baren ground in the desert and rooftops. Slowly, a quilt will be stitched together, covering over significant portions of our habitated planet. How this will look in 200 years may not be the question here. Right now it’s more interesting ot ask how we’ll get there. Which systems and/or interests will be striving to the light, spreading like grass in the the plain, only to be crowded out by higher growing shrubs which will themselves give way to veritable forests? Will the fate of grass and shrubs in nature be the same fate as for agriculture and forests?

Now, these questions only matter, of course, if solar really is our future.

Peak Oil Nonsense II

"In the end, it is likely that human ingenuity will prevail."

Now, I’m not afraid of an apocalypse any more than the fellow who wrote the next load of Bollocks over at the guardian.uk. For whether a plague, economic collapse, ecological collapse or war, apocalypses happen. So why worry? Besides, apocalyse (which can be defined according to whoever’s talking about it) can always happen, so why worry too much this time around?

At the same time, I studied enough history to know that partial collapses are quite common – if not being the usual way of things. But like other authors who dismiss "difficult times ahead", Garry White's historical horizons reach back to a whopping 200 years as Malthus made his poorly-timed analysis. Besides, Malthus’s real failure was failing to explain exactly why the birthrate in GB was making an historical jump while the death rate fell dramatically.

Of course it was human ingenuity helping cause this. And systems pressure. And the (not very free) markets, but markets nonetheless. But mostly it was human ingenuity in figuring out how to use the enormouly dense energy of fossil fuels (coal) and our enormously rich "fossil" oxygen atmosphere. Chemistry was evolving quite nicely out of the established branch of alchemy.

The expansion was just getting started, while the reservoires of hydrocarbons were (and still are) enormous.

Now, isn’t it ironic that Malthus’s falty prophecism would be used to argue away peak oil’s threat? That the one element missing in his discussion over 200 years ago will be missed by today’s pundits just the same - so that just like he was blind to the actual causes, we stay blind to the actual threat?

Yes, threat.

For, most people who argue about peak oil are not worried about the flow of oil - which is, btw peak oil’s definition. No, they’re busy about arguing peak oil’s threat. The risk of using less oil today than we did yesterday. Apocalypse or Singularity. 100% threat or 100% utopia.

So when discussing peak oil I try to keep my arguments either with the validity of production peaking – which it has been doing since 2005 – or what the risks are. I try to stay out of a mixed debate. Which usually kills all conversation.

No, I don’t wave off the risks of peak oil, for they are very real. Peak oil is here, and anyone who’s filled up at the pumps recently knows that there are definitely consequenses.

And I’ll tell you why the risks are very real. Not because of a lack of human ingenuity, nor because of foul politics on either side of the fence. Neither the Saudis nor the Russians nor hydrofracking (or rather horizontal drilling) can change this reason. Peak oil is a threat because:

Our industrialized society has never made the transition from a more concentrated form of energy to a less concentrated form of energy.

It’s that simple. It's a new experiment that's never been made before.

And since oil supplies 35-40% of humanity’s primary energy (depending on whose stats you believe), it’s not a bad idea to pay attention to what’s going on in the patch.

Of course there’s the atomic option. But we shouldn’t open up a third discussion here, now, should we?

So, before drawing any other conclusions; especially before we say "yes, we can", let’s just say, "yes, there’s a risk".

Now, is that all so horridly hard to say?