What is the cheapest renewable energy source?
February 24th, 2008Energy savings.
A lot of governments worldwide are promoting a gradual switch to renewables. It has long been lip service, but now it will have to be a reality, as even the big petroleum companies are revising their peak-oil estimates - latest is Shell, with 2015. In fact, some are even claiming that we have been on an oil plateau since 2006.
After a peak comes a downhill. After a plateau comes a cliff. Whatever way, the changes that we will have to make to adapt to scarcer oil will be enormous. Even with a 20% yearly growth, renewables will not be able to make a real dent in the total until it is much too late. Even nuclear energy is very very far from allowing such fast ramp-ups.
Let us just take the catastrophic example of bioethanol. Just to reach the 10% bioethanol ratio in US gas tanks, an enormous proportion of corn production has been diverted to be burnt instead of eaten. By an interesting cascade effect, this has sent the price of food skyrocketing worldwide.
A 10% saving in fuel burn can be achieved by simply driving 120 kph instead of 130 kph, therefore losing five minutes for every hour of the trip. Have you never started your trip five minutes late or lingered five minutes along the way sipping a coffee? Why are you in such a hurry anyway? I’d rather take five more minutes for every trip I make than see famin riots all around the world because my pathetic 10% bioethanol has tripled the price of wheat…
Agrofuels are not the way. Nuclear power is not the way. Coal-to-liquids is not the way. Even wind power is not the way.
What then?
As I have said: power savings. Like it is much easier to save a dollar than ask it from one’s boss, likewise is it much much simpler to save energy than to make more. Even a 10% reduction can have great relieving consequences (see above). But I prefer the big cuts. The ones that save 50% or 75%. Let us list some of the things people can do:
- quit flying. One round-trip across the Atlantic costs you your yearly Kyoto quota. Unless you are prepared to quit driving or live in an unheated house to compensate for the trip, you’d better find nice places and people to visit nearer to you (I am sure they exist — keep looking).
- quit driving. As I have written before, driving is not faster than riding anyway. At least, carpool. Drive shorter trips. The longest trip I now drive is the one to the train station (10 km). And most times, I ride there anyway.
- drastically cut on home heating. Stack up your warm quilts and allow the temperature to drop to 15°C/59F in your bedroom. Reef you heated real estate in winter: have the kids sleep in the same bedroom, work in the living room, and stop heating two or three rooms. Consider setting aside one dollar for insulation improvements for every five dollars spent on the heating bill.
- telecommute. Office buildings and factories are very bad in terms of energy efficiency. And you’ll be able to sell your car.
- eat better, eat local, eat less meat, eat less. The ‘less meat’ factor along with the ‘eat local’ factor allow to considerably reduce the energy bill and the environmental footprint in general. Better food may mean ‘more expensive’ (although that is not always the case when you can eat local if you can avoid the distribution network), but because you will eat less meat and less food in general, the overall budget will be reduced.
Look at the list above: none of the items require any money. Power savings are the cheapest renewable energy source. And believe me, the psychological comfort cost is much lower than people anticipate. At least if you can do these things for moral reasons before being forced into doing them by financial reasons. And if anyone tells you that these things can’t be done, just know that they will be done in the near future, that much is absolutely certain.
Now I must go to my boss with these arguments and ask him when on earth he intends to arrange things for me to telecommute.
Good luck with your boss!
We don’t want to own a car because we live in the city and public transportation + occasional holiday rental are very convenient, but now that we’ll soon have a baby, everybody keeps telling us how much better it would be with a car (while complaining in the same breath how traffic jams and petrol costs are killing them)… it’s so annoying!
We have managed vacations with only a small car or even without one. Our trick was to carry none of the paraphernalia young parents generally consider compulsory: no stroller (baby sling instead); no foldable bed (co-sleeping or popup cloth bed instead); no bottle sterilizing and heating apparatus (breastfeeding instead); no high chair (sitting baby on our lap instead). And when baby was older and the popup bed had become too small, we made sure our hosts could get a baby bed so that we never had to carry one.
Stay tuned for April (Earth Day month) when I plan to start my Eco Justice Challenge blog. Many of the things you’ve posted here will show up there. I’m convinced we can make a difference.
Unfortunately, I do have to fly for my job to get to places like Salt Lake City, UT, but I’m driving so rarely these days, I’m hoping that makes up for it?
I too hate to “have to” fly for business. I generally try to decline, but most times, colleagues fly in my stead, which is far from ideal. I try to tell them that we do not need to touch the customer, and that even if telecons are less efficient than real-life meetings, we should count the time spent in taxis, airports and planes, and we should spend the same money on telecon systems as on tickets and hotel bills if we are to make a fair comparison.
Each time someone says (including me) that something pertaining to energy expenses, transportation, or comfort can’t be otherwise, I feel sad for the next generation, who will have to do otherwise in any case.
I am agreement with your perspective on biofuels, and don’t think that they are sustainable. I feel good about the fact that I don’t drive much anymore because I take the public transport. I’ve thought of saving energy by tolerating a slightly lower temperature, but this seems harder than I thought. I’m such a tropical person that it takes very little for a Boston winter to chill me to the bone. It is easier to tolerate the cold when one is moving than when one is sitting still at home.
It is quite true that using less is the way to begin conserving, not to keep on using up stuff while searching for exotic alternatives. Still, I’m quite optimistic about the uses of solar power.
Maybe you can’t save on heating in winter. But then you can save on air conditioning in summer
I too place great hopes in solar energy, wind power, biomass (e.g. wood stoves, and maybe biodiesel from algae), but all this will come later, much later, once we’ve been weaned from plentiful oil for good.