Some wonderful news amidst the clamour and flailing from the dinosaurs clutching to the old world.

And my girlfriend’s home has just had solar panels fitted too, BLISS!

I find it hard to believe that fossil fuels are being phased out when the gov’ts continually authorise overseas and local greedy people to open more mines etc. Also more coal fired powered power stations appear to be getting approvals from the powers that be. The testing for oil all around our coastline is another thing that is unconvincing. CSG and uranium mines seem to be the current trend that is expanding its network of destruction along with the mines for various metals. While these trends continue, I for one, will need a whole lot more convincing.

Coal consumption is at an all time record with strong growth in recent years.

Gas consumption is at a record too, also with significant growth.

Oil consumption is also at a record, albeit with minimal growth since 2005 (THAT is peak oil here and now…).

The notion that fossil fuels are actually being phased out is nonsense. Simple as that. The only thing actually declining is conventional crude, but that’s being more than offset by the sum total of coal, gas and unconventional oil.

I don’t deny that fossil fuels are absolutely unsustainable. But we’re not actually phasing out use at this point in time.

I’m all for renewables, but the worst mistake that industrial civilisation can make at this juncture in its history is to try to make dilute energy sources do what dense energy sources are now doing. Providing energy to feed an ever-growing consumer society.

Firstly, it is not possible. Secondly, if we try to do that then the environmental cost would be stupendous.

Switching energy sources to less harmful ones represents maybe 10 percent of our problem. How we deal with the other 90 percent of the problem is what really matters.

Renewable energy applied in the wrong manner ends up serving as a ‘fossil fuel extender’. That is, it simply helps to extend for a little while a society that can’t keep on going like it is.

Harries has identified the problem that without adequate pressure to phase out fossil fuels, reduce enegy use and sequester C together we are in for a difficult period as the natural systems that support us warp and fracture beyond all belief. Doomsaying you call. Well you only have to look at the Grand Banks fishery to see what too much does.

Anyone heard of thorium?

Great stuff… have it on toast for breakfast every morning.

Seriously, it’s one of those possible technologies that may help to augment electricity supply some time down the track. Maybe. And in time.

Decades would be needed to switch over all our industrial infrastructure. If we had decades to act and were unconcerned about other limits then, yes, thorium reactors could be considered a sort of magic panacea.

Just don’t look to it as a fix all.

(Russell, not so long ago you were hotly opposed to nuclear power. If you believe in Thorium reactors then it’s also worth checking out Integrated Fast Reactors being proposed by Australia’s Barry Brook http://bravenewclimate.com/ Worth keeping an eye on but don’t hold your breath. Cheers, Chris H)

Re #7
No, Chris, if you go back and have a proper read of my posts since and including the thread covering the Fukushima disaster you will see that I have been much more an advocate for thorium reactors, NOT uranium reactors. Unlike some commentators (not pointing my finger at you Chris), I am open-minded and capable of learning and changing my mind when the facts are presented.

Thorium reactors are also NOT some idea way off into the future either. All the research has been done. I haev previously posted all the weblinks needed for you and others to have a read of. Google thorium and there’s plenty of information out there.

The only reason we don’t have thorium reactors is because the projects were canned in favour of uranium reactors when they were found not to produce nuclear weapons for the likes of the USA, UK, France, Russia, China, India, etc.

Thorium reactors can be shut down almost instantly (they don’t have the continual run-away factor uranium reactors do), they produce only 3% radioactive waste (as opposed to 97%) and the stuff is safe after only 300 years instead of thousands. This is switchable base-load power.

It is highly unlikely that anyone alive today will see the end of coal-fired energy: it may be those same will see a huge increase in solar, wind and other alternative energy systems.
All this because the demand for energy-heat, light,whatever,-will just keep on increasing and every possible means of meeting that demand will be utilised.

post 9 illustrates the gaping chasm of understanding that needs to be crossed before humanity has a snowballs chance in hell of avoiding a very nasty learning experience.

Why will demand endlessly increase? Isn’t that the issue that needs to addressed ahead of all others?

Well, yes, TGC (#9) that’s the real dilemma.

Quite amazing energy savings have been made via new technologies. A case in point, the development of washing detergents that work in cold water alone has reduced the energy consumption of Australian households by a huge amount. Then take more efficient fridges and so on, and so on.

The problem is that whilst those innovations were taking place we were being sold a whole new range of energy gobbling devices that more than made up for any savings. So power consumption just kept growing. The consumer market is sacrosanct and they can sell us virtually anything. And they will.

60 percent of Australians kept their old fridge and put it in the garage and filled it with grog and pet food and so those households now have an efficient 500 litre fridge upstairs as well as an old less efficient 200 litre fridge in the basement.

Thanks to billions of dollars in investment car engine efficiencies improved by 30 percent between 1960 and 2000. Yet fuel consumption increased during that period because it coincided with the 4WD craze. The energy efficiency of Australia’s vehicle fleet is now roughly back to where it was way back in 1970. Two steps forward three steps back.

That’s just citing just a couple of examples.

When we talk romantically of developing alternative energy… like wave and tidal power and thorium rectors and so forth… we need to keep in mind what we are doing it all for. We aren’t doing it to replace coal. We are going to all that effort so that we can keep buying wall sized televisions and ever larger fridges and electric patio heaters and so forth…. and then also to accommodate the next range of consumer items that we will all soon be lusting after. 

So long as the net result of innovation is to help to feed an escalation of the great human predicament then we get absolutely nowhere.

20,000 thorium powered nuclear reactors could get built and be sited all around the world, and thus reduce coal power by approximately 20 percent. What would that solve? Well, there’s that nagging other 90 percent of the problem – the hard bit – that needed our attention.

#10 - The answer is twofold.

Firstly it is the fiat money system and its’ requirement for constant GDP growth so as to avoid outright collapse.

If you keep doing more and more “stuff” (economic output) each year then you end up using more energy and resources in order to do it.

We often hear about the “post industrial economy” without realising that for longer than any of us have been alive, we have also been in the “post agricultural economy”.

But we still eat and we’re still smelting more and more aluminium, steel, zinc etc as time goes by just as the world is growing more food than ever before.

“Post” doesn’t mean that these things are actually declining, it just means that they are growing more slowly.

Enter the “service economy” which exists in addition to agriculture and manufacturing, not instead of them. We still eat and someone has to manufacture the iPhone, aircraft and all the rest.

20 years ago if you wanted to mow the lawn then you got the Victa out of the shed, put about 1 litre of petrol in it, then mowed the lawn. 

Now you use your iPhone, itself replaced every 12 months, to call a contractor (an American term increasingly used in Australia) who comes and mows the lawn.

So it now takes perhaps 4 litres of fuel to drive to and from your house, plus a litre of fuel to run the mower. We’ve thus seen a 400% increase in the amount of petrol used to mow a suburban lawn - that’s the service economy for you.

Now suppose that you want to wash the dog. 20 years ago you used the hose and gave the dog a bit of a scrub before rinsing off. If you were kind, perhaps you used warm water in the bathtub.

But now you call the “mobile dog wash” instead. Someone drives to your house, washes the dog in nice warm soapy water (heated by fossil fuels) and you pay for the service. That’s the “service economy” again.

So it used to take a bit of hot water to wash the dog. It now also takes the use of a vehicle and several litres of petrol to do the same thing.

It’s pretty much the same with everything. Compare practically anything in 2012 with its equivalent 20 or 30 years ago and you’ll find that it now involves resources than it used to.

Not many people ate at restaurants 3 times a week in 1980 whereas now it is commonplace. And, of course, that means the weekly trip to Coles to buy food has now been replaced with 3 trips a week to the restaurant as well as still shopping in supermarkets.

The other big one is Jevon’s Paradox. In short, if something becomes more efficient then consumption goes up rather than down. Some examples.

1. Instant gas water heaters are commonly touted as an energy saving device. True in a technical sense, but surveys by the gas companies have found that homes with these systems use 45% more hot water than those with conventional storage water heaters. The reason is simple - it’s cheap to run so people see no reason to economise on usage. That plus they never run out of hot water either.

No doubt a similar logic would apply to solar and heat pump systems. Nobody’s likely to spend $3000 for a water heater on the basis of it being cheap to run and then put an egg timer in the shower.

2. LCD TV’s are more energy efficient than their predecessors that is true. But then we make them twice the size. Then somebody decided to use TV’s in place of conventional signage at shopping centers, airports and even in office buildings. 

The 30% energy saving of the technology has thus been more than wiped out by the vast increase in usage. Take a look around - LCD TV’s are in all sorts of places where nobody thought of placing a TV before.

3. LED’s are another energy saving example, with promises of huge energy savings.

But have you noticed what the major uses of LED’s are? Advertising signs, lighting on the actual shelves of supermarkets where there was never lighting before, road signs etc. A whole range of entirely new uses which will no doubt wipe out any saving made through replacing a few light bulbs in the living room.

4. Residential heat pumps should reduce electricity use by 70% compared to other electric heating.

But how many people routinely left a bar radiator running 24 hours a day right through winter? Someone probably did, but it certainly wasn’t “normal”.

But with the advent of heat pumps, anyone who doesn’t heat *the whole house* all night is increasingly considered a cheapskate, and many leave them going all day (when out or at work) as well.

There might still be an energy saving but it will be nowhere near 70.

Now repeat that across every “energy saving” invention thus far.

I used to believe absolutely in energy efficiency. Then I came to understand the issue with fiat money and GDP growth. That’s when I gave up on technology solutions and realised that only monetary reform offers any real hope.

Constant growth just isn’t sustainable, no matter how we generate the power or what technologies we use it with.

Thanks again Shaun, spot on.

We’ve been trying to educate Tasmanian owners on the heat pump front. At the point of installation the installers always tell the new owner that the best way to run them is on all the time, including during the night. So people do it. There’s no need.

In a well insulated home the heat pump sits there whirring away all night but doing virtually nothing. In a poorly insulated home it sits there all night and the heat it produces escapes from the home and costs a lot of money.

Nearly all heat pumps come with a timer and can be set to come on half an hour before you get up if you don’t like a cold room.

The other Jevon’s aspect of heat pumps is that, yes, they are more efficient than any other electric heater… BUT on a hot day they can used to cool your house, so you can end up using more, not less, power. Though we don’t get too many very hot days here, the more you cool your home the less you bother about sensible shading and venting, and that’s what happens. Homes are even built without eaves.

Air conditioners are like cane toads, slowly spreading across the Australian landscape. Commercial TV advertises them in Tasmania now in the summer time, the other markets being fairly saturated. Owing to their demand on peak load it is estimated that the installation of each air conditioner costs the energy generators $4,500 for the supply of peaking infrastructure.

In support of your thesis, Shaun, it all comes back to growth and the values we pursue. The idea we just switch over energy sources and all is dandy is a very limited, masculine way of thinking. It mainly serves to exacerbate the grand problem by making matters worse.

Ninety percent of our predicament is sociological and energy supply has nothing to do with that part.

#11 I went to a house with a basement once and that was in another country.

#12. Twe mobile dog wash has been expanded to an add on to the carwash, perhaps saving in only 1 trip to wash both but I saw the dogs lined up with their pedestrian owners.

Once most dogs weren’t washed and food was not refrigrated. We may never return to that low energy past.

A different world will emerge but without changes to energy use it will not be the desired result.

Another one that springs immediately to mind is water.

30 years ago you turned on the tap and filled a glass. And tourists took photos of supermarkets in Adelaide, amazed that stores there actually sold drinking water in bottles and large square plastic containers.

In 2012 it seems to be considered unusual to drink plain tap water. At the very least it is normally filtered and chilled but more commonly water now comes in a bottle which is also kept refrigerated.

And, of course, we’ve even found a way to make refrigeration itself less efficient with those open fronted drinks fridges now placed right at the checkout in supermarkets. Why bother with a door when it’s so easy to just use heaps of electricity instead?

The increase in energy and other resource use just to supply drinking water is incredible and for minimal real benefit. Sadly, the same goes for practically everything.

Whilst all this is true, I would caution against taking Jevon’s paradox too far. In recent times it has become popular for energy supply devotees in America to perversely argue along the lines: “Ha! So energy conservation doesn’t work, that’s why we have to press a head with building new power plants”.

Jevon’s paradox originated in Manchester, England, where it was noted that the most efficient woollen mills beat the pants off less efficient mills and so they became the most successful ones and so ended up using more resources than ever.

A problem arises if this paradox is viewed as an immutable law rather than a tendency.

We know the Prius owners tend to justify to themselves to drive longer distances and people who have solar hot water justify to themselves to take longer showers… and so forth. So not all of the supposed energy gains are actually realized. But it does not mean that improvements in energy efficiency always lead to increased consumption.

Nothing is as powerful as price signals to encourage people to use less. Not too many people know that per capita car ownership in Australia peaked in 2004 and has been trending down ever since. Similarly, the distances that people choose to drive in a year is also trending downwards. Some of that trend comes from conscience, but mostly it is to do with the growing price of fuel.

I believe when energy prices really go through the roof some of our most irrational uses of energy will disappear very quickly. One of the first ones to go will be those stupid machines that council workers use to blow autumn leaves down the street!

We will stop taking those whimsical international flights very quickly and reserve our energy budgets for real needs. We will think twice before hopping into a car to go to the corner store. We will baulk at buying overseas grown food that costs too much because freight costs have blown out.

And so it goes when the sunshines in.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/environment+(News+/+US+/+Environment)

In sum on a weekend day PV produced 50% of Germanys power.