Energy Policy Thoughts

I have been thinking and reading a lot about energy policy for a couple of years now. Recently, I started to write an extremely comprehensive post on the topic, but it evolved into a small novel so I have ruled against posting it in full. Instead, I'm going to do an ongoing series of posts on energy policy. This post will establish the basis of the remainder of the posts by simply stating the problems and a high level view of what I think is the right path to take. As a note, this is written from a US-centric viewpoint, but the arguments should apply to all people.

My overall conclusion is that the public discussion on the energy issue is not even talking about the right problem. Energy is the lifeblood of industrial society. The public discussion seems to be focused heavily on making our energy usage more efficient, which essentially translates to less energy consumption per person. Although we definitely should improve energy efficiency when it is easy (such as eventually switching to LED lighting and using "smart grid" technology), this is not a real energy policy.

Before going on, we must actually define the real problem. The core problem in energy policy is that fossil fuels, which are the core of our current energy production, need to be phased out. There are three very good reasons for this (ordered in terms of importance):

1. Climate change
2. Oil imports are bad from a political and economic standpoint
3. Fossil fuels are non-renewable

I'm not going to waste my time dealing with climate deniers, so please go to Real Climate or NASA to see why climate change is real and why you should take it seriously. As for the oil imports that drive the US transportation system, we are giving away an enormous amount of money every year to people that don't like us very much. This is an insanely bad idea in the long run and will have the net effect of transferring wealth and power out of the United States. The third reason is commonly referred to as peak oil. Peak oil has a lot of people worried, but I don't view it as an overly serious problem in the short term (although it absolutely is a problem in the medium and long terms).

So, given the problems, the solutions offered by the main political parties in the United States are either to deny the problem exists (the Republicans, the libertarians, and some conservative Democrats) or attempt to address the problem by putting a price on carbon emissions, switching to renewable energy such as wind and solar, and increasing energy efficiency (most of the Democrats, the Greens, etc.). Obviously, only one side even takes the issue seriously, so I am going to focus only on the mainstream liberal solution that is offered and ignore the ridiculous and insane non-solution the Republicans offer.

My big issue with the mainstream liberal approach is that it is not enough. I am not going to cite hard numbers in this post (I may dig up the data for a future post), but I will argue from a qualitative point of view why renewable energy sources and decreased per-capita energy usage will not solve the problem. The third leg of the solution, putting a price on carbon, is absolutely necessary though. The costs of carbon emissions are currently externalized, and putting a price on these emissions fixes that problem and reduces the incentive to externalize these costs.

Renewable energy typically refers to solar and wind. There are many other possible sources (geothermal, tidal, etc.), but they are not as easy to do as wind and solar with current technology. I personally like both wind and solar a lot. Once built, they provide us with what is essentially "free" energy because we do not have to provide fuel to run the generators. The fuel comes from the wind and the sun. Unfortunately, that fuel is not always there. Sometimes it is dark and calm. This is why solar and wind power are referred to as intermittent power sources. Therefore, wind and solar cannot be used to provide the base power for our electric gird because they cannot be guaranteed to be working at a given level all the time.

Unfortunately, energy in the electric grid cannot be easily stored. It has to be used shortly after it is generated or the energy is simply lost as dissipated heat. One technology that would solve this problem is grid energy storage, which is essentially large capacity, long lasting, and high current batteries. This would allow us to build an overcapacity of renewable sources to collect extra energy when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining and then store it for later. Unfortunately, grid energy story technology is not ready to go yet. Hopefully, grid energy storage will mature quickly, but we cannot be 100% certain about the time frame.

The other issue is energy efficiency. Although better insulating houses, creating a smart grid to reduce the average load, and other techniques would save lots of energy, people still need a lot of energy to live a high quality life. Making hot water, for example, takes a lot of energy because the specific heat of water is very high. This is basic physics and we can't avoid that under any circumstances. Although I am kind of waving my hands a bit on this right now (I'll grab some numbers later or you can just Google for them), my opinion is strongly leaning towards thinking that energy efficiency is not going to do enough. Additionally, new technologies keep coming out with every higher energy demands and more people on the planet are enjoying a higher standard of living. Therefore, any gains in efficiency will quickly be eaten up by new consumption. Finally, when push comes to shove, people are not willingly going to significantly reduce their standard of living, even if it means saving the planet. Humans are too short-sided and greedy by their very nature to do this.

My overall point is that the combined problems of renewables and efficiency demonstrate that the standard liberal solution to the climate crisis is not actually going to solve the energy problem. While I do think we should do both, we need more to really solve the energy problems.

My answer to this is to use a technology that has become a sort of third rail in modern American energy politics: nuclear power! I'll cover this in a lot more detail later, but I believe that if we go all out with building nuclear fission reactors to replace our coal plants in the next 10-15 years, then we can get our carbon emissions way down and not be forced to make painful cuts in our energy consumption. Of course, nuclear has its problems (complexity, upfront investment, perceived danger of meltdowns, proliferation issues, nuclear waste), but I believe that these problems are minor compared to the worst scenarios of climate change.

Traditionally, environmentalists such as the Sierra Club have been strongly against nuclear power. Although I understand their arguments, I think anyone serious about climate change has to be willing to accept the trade off that nuclear power is the least evil approach to the climate crisis that will actually solve the climate crisis. Reducing our carbon emissions is the most important goal right now. Also, most people do not realize this, but modern nuclear reactor research is significantly more advanced than the reactors currently deployed in the United States. Keep in mind that the United States has not built any new reactors in about 30 years (we stopped after Three Mile Island happened). Third generation reactors are ready to go and already deployed in Japan and fourth generation reactors are being researched and should be ready relatively soon. These newer designs significantly increase the power output of the same amount of fuel, while also significantly increasing safety and reducing nuclear waste issues (such as the Generation IV techniques that can reuse waste as fuel and transform the half-life of dangerous waste from thousands of years to tens of years). Overall, fission provides a carbon-free bridge until better solutions come along.

Finally, I think the United States needs to vastly increase its research expenditures on nuclear fusion power research. Although, even with full Manhattan/Apollo project-style spending, fusion will probably not be available commercially for 20 years, the benefits so vastly outweigh the costs that it is simply insane not to invest in this technology. Like fission, fusion does not emit any carbon. Secondly, fusion does not have the meltdown dangers or nuclear waste side effects of fission reactors. And best of all, fusion can produce vast amounts of energy from deuterium extracted from water. Wikipedia says that there is enough deuterium on Earth to provide us with energy for 150 billion years at our current consumption rates. This is longer than the universe has existed and lasts well beyond the time when the sun burns out. This also means that if we build significantly more fusion reactors than we need, we could get the marginal cost of energy down to almost zero. Basically, once we achieve mature fusion power, we can generate and waste as much energy as we want. We could even do ridiculous things like pump water out of the ocean, desalinate it, and use it to turn the Sahara desert into farmland, solving both the water and food crisis in the third world in one fell swoop. The possibilities are staggering.

Fusion does have its naysayers. The biggest argument I have seen against it is that some people think that it will never be cheap enough to compete with other technologies (in particular a highly efficient solar panel) because of the large capital costs of building the reactors. I think this argument is flawed because we don't know what the capital costs will be until we develop the technology further. This argument is like someone in 1960 saying that building an IPhone is impossible because the cost would be astronomical. Well, things change. Materials get cheaper, modeling and manufacturing gets better, and so on.

For further background on fusion, I strongly encourage you to read the following Wikipedia articles: fusion power, ITER, Polywell, and National Ignition Facility. I am very excited about the long-term prospects of fusion and hope that it happens before I am too old to enjoy it.

Well, this post also turned out to be extremely long. But trust me, it is much shorter than the original tedious post I had typed up. I hope I was able to transfer the basis of my thinking on energy policy to you. I will expand upon these ideas in future posts.