Sustainable Energy and the challenge of connecting technical findings to the policymaking literature

I went to the webpage of physicist / computer scientist David MacKay and found that he had written a book on energy policy for general audiences. It’s basically a physics book where he computes the energy costs of different aspects of our lifestyles and then estimates the potential for getting power from various non-carbon-emitting sources. It’s a fun read and I recommend taking a look. I don’t know enough to offer any serious endorsement or criticism of his claims, but he presents his reasoning very clearly, which I like. He has lots of graphs, and I view his book as being somewhat in the spirit of Red State, Blue State, as organizing a bunch of information so that the reader is in a better position to make his or her own judgments. (Again, I’m in no position to endorse or criticize MacKay’s specific recommendations.)

My main suggestion is that MacKay follow up on one of his suggestions and connect his work to that of advocates on different sides of the issue. He begins his book as follows:

I [MacKay] recently read two books, one by a physicist, and one by an economist. In Out of Gas, Caltech physicist David Goodstein describes an impending energy crisis brought on by The End of the Age of Oil. . . .

In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg paints a completely different picture. “Everything is fine.” Indeed, “everything is getting better.” Furthermore, “we are not headed for a major energy crisis,” and “there is plenty of energy.” How could two smart people come to such different conclusions? I had to get to the bottom of this.

This sounded good, and I was looking forward to the resolution. But in all the rest of the book, MacKay never mentioned Goodstein or Lomborg again (except once in a brief aside to say that their books are “full of interesting numbers and back-of-envelope calculations,” and once to cite Lomborg’s estimate of bird deaths caused by wind turbines)!

This was a letdown. I think MacKay’s argument would be stronger if he could loop back and address the arguments of Goodstein, Lomborg, and others.

Some other comments . . . . as I already noted, MacKay has lots of beautiful graphs in his book–he did a great job presenting lots of information in an accessible way, and I particularly like his repeated use of a two-column graph to show the energy balance (or lack thereof) between consumption and production). Other aspects of MacKay’s style seemed a little silly to me. For example, on page 9 he has a picture of a commemorative coin showing the steam engine and the face of James Watt. Huh? And then there’s this graph on page 12:

mackay.png

This is a nice graph–it’s clear, clean and does the job–but it looks like he’s placing Mexico in Central rather than North America! What’s the deal, dude? I guess it all looks the same from across the ocean. . . .

Finally, in case you’re curious, here are MacKay’s summary recommendations (from pages 116-117 of his book):

First, we electrify transport. Electrification both gets transport off fossil fuels, and makes transport more energy-efficient. (Of course, electrification increases our demand for green electricity.)

Second, to supplement solar-thermal heating, we electrify most heating of air and water in buildings using heat pumps, which are four times more efficient than ordinary electrical heaters. This electrification of heating further increases the amount of green electricity required.

Third, we get all the green electricity from a mix of four sources: from our own renewables; perhaps from “clean coal;” perhaps from nuclear; and finally, and with great politeness, from other countries’ renewables.

Among other countries’ renewables, solar power in deserts is the most plentiful option. As long as we can build peaceful international collaborations, solar power in other people’s deserts certainly has the technical potential to provide us, them, and everyone with 125 kWh per day per person.

You can read his (free) book for details and then feel free to draw your own conclusions.

14 thoughts on “Sustainable Energy and the challenge of connecting technical findings to the policymaking literature

  1. If you check the notes at the end of the chapter (p21), the source for the data used for the graph on p12 is given as :

    Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT) Version 4.0. (Washington, DC:World Resources Institute, 2007).

    I guess it all looks the same from Washington. . . .

  2. Mexico… "What's the deal, dude?" – the answer is that I used the regional definitions of the World Resources Institute, from whom I got all this data. http://cait.wri.org/
    In their CAIT tool, they define the 'region' "Central America and Caribbean" to include Mexico. If this is one of your main complaints about my book, I'm delighted! Happy reading!
    David
    PS – I thought that anyone who reads the book would deduce what the resolution of the Goodstein-contrasted-with-Lomborg enigma is. I apologise for not spelling it out :-) And finally, if you are reader who might get irritated by the fact that when discussing James Watt, I included a photo of a portrait of James Watt, then crikey, you'd better get your medication ready as you read, because there are plenty more flippant photographs in the book! If James Watt makes you say "Huh?", you're going to be saying "Huh? Huh? Huh?" when you encounter the photo of the sheep, the portrait of Darth Vader compared with a phone charger, and the graffiti artworks by Banksy!

  3. I'm curious why so many people focus on per capita C02 production. The atmosphere doesn't care how many people contribute to a certain amount of C02 emissions.

  4. David,

    Yes, by mentioning the Mexico thing as the worst mistake I could find, I was indeed intending this as a compliment! Regarding the classification of Mexico's continent, I've always seen Mexico as included in North America (as in NAFTA), and when Central American countries are listed, I've never seen Mexico. I hadn't realized there were different definitions, but of course this doesn't matter, it's just something that struck me when I was flipping through the book.

    Regarding Goodstein vs. Lomborg, yes, it looked to me that you were agreeing with Goodstein. But I'd like to see that spelled out a bit more. I'm not saying that you should have a point-by-point rebuttal, but it would be helpful I think for you to return at the end to the debate and explain how your work fits into this.

    Finally, I wasn't irritated about James Watt, I just thought it was a little silly for the purpose of your argument to have a picture of a commemorative coin. I assume that if James Watt's parents had never met, that we'd still have had the industrial revolution etc. But this is just a stylistic issue, and I respect your choice.

  5. Not sure if its connected, but the <a>United Nations Statistics Division also lists Mexico as being part of Central America rather than North America.

    See <a>Wikipedia:United Nations geoscheme for a map illustrating these regions.

  6. For avoidance of doubt, here's DJCM's line on Goodstein and Lomborg: (1) Goodstein says Uranium would run scarce within decades if we switched entirely from fossil fuel guzzling to uranium guzzling. Goodstein is certainly right if we go on the official resource stats on mineable uranium. Some say that as uranium ran scarce we would explore more, and find 10 or 100 times more. I am unable to know whether they are right. It sounds plausible, since uranium has only run scarce once. (2) Lomborg says we have plenty of energy (Especially sunshine in deserts). He is definitely right. But we must not kid ourselves about the scale of the building project required if we want to get substantial power from deserts. To supply everyone in Europe and North Africa [1 bn people] with a European standard of living (125 kWh per day per person on average) entirely from deserts would require concentrating solar power stations with the area of Germany. So I think both Goodstein and Lomborg are right. I think Lomborg's cheerful spin is a bit too optimistic. It's not going to be easy to build country-sized solar power stations. And I think Goodstein's gloomy spin on the facts may be a bit too pessimistic. Maybe nuclear power could keep us going for 1000 years or so while we get our act together and build the solar power stations. Thanks for your interest! David

  7. "First, we electrify transport. Electrification both gets transport off fossil fuels, and makes transport more energy-efficient."

    I guess I need to read the book, but I don't see how we can electrify transport without a breakthrough in battery technology. Our best batteries have only about 1/20 the energy density of gasoline or diesel fuel. This imposes an extreme limitation on the range of passenger cars. I don't see how batteries can power trucks. Using hydrogen as storage medium would be prohibitively costly.

    " … heat pumps, which are four times more efficient than ordinary electrical heaters."

    I don't understand this statement either. Electrical heaters convert 100% of the electrical energy into heat.

    "Goodstein says Uranium would run scarce within decades if we switched entirely from fossil fuel guzzling to uranium guzzling."

    We can generate fissile uranium from breeder reactors. If it ever worked, heavy ion fusion with a uranium blanket to create a hybrid would produce fissile material from uranium and thorium. Thorium is plentiful.

    I don't think we are running out of energy feedstock. It all comes down to price and the cost of capital. For example I calculate that the Canadian Tar Sands alone would run our automobile fleet for 47 years at current rates of consumption.

    I will look at the book.

  8. Ok I read the section heat pumps in David MacKay's book. I encourage the readers to go to the Wikipedia entry on heat pumps. It says in pertinent part:

    Sometimes this [coefficient of performance] is inappropriately expressed as an efficiency value greater than 100%, as in the statement, "XYZ brand heat pumps operate at up to 400% efficiency!"

    There's a good reason for using a different word– efficiency has a precise thermodynamic meaning.

    The problem with using heat pumps for residential space heating lies in the outside-inside temperature difference. The pumps don't work very well when it's cold outside. They are impractical when the external temperature gets into the 20s F. I rented a townhouse in Virginia that had a heat pump and the comfort was terrible even in the low 30s. Heat pumps are ok for (say) Alabama and marginal for VA and completely impractical for the northern part of the US.

    A final word on COP. Wikipedia gives

    COP(heating)= 1/(Carnot cycle efficiency)

    But one should remember that the Carnot cycle efficiency only applies in the infinitesimal limit. One should use the Chambadal-Novikov-Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency that applies to the more realistic endoreversible heat engine. See the Wikipedia entry on "Heat Engines" or the book referenced therein by Callen.

    This apparantly misleading treatment of the heat pump leads me to be skeptical of this book, but I will read further.

  9. D Winsemius:

    The builder of that VA townhouse was so stingy I didn't even have overhead lights in any room? Yet those crappy townhouses were selling for over $500k in 2005! The builder put in a heat pump because it was cheaper for him than a furnace. Heat pumps that rely on ground water are too expensive and developers won't put them in because they are out to save every nickel. Perhaps we will see them in custom homes.

  10. @KMC:

    My sense is that people feel that emissions/capita charts convey two significant socio-environmental points:

    1) The disproportionate amount of energy usage that Americans and Canadians currently enjoy… which hopefully will be cause for reflection in terms of public transport, house/lawn size, appliances, etc.
    2) The "Benchmark" for human consumption of carbon in a wealthy nation… because as the world gets richer, the potential outcomes include:]

    a) Russians, Brazilians, et al consuming at American levels (and if Americans have for years… isn't that only fair?)
    b) Americans attempting to force double standards on developing nations because the consequences of our collective actions are more immediate and tangible (somewhat paralleling the poo-poohing that goes on about Botswana's Elephant herd management. How many wild herds of Bison roam the American prairie? How many packs of wolves wander freely through central Europe? Exactly.)

  11. It is worth mentioning that this extraordinary book is also available in old-fashioned paper format, for those of us who still prefer it that way! I own a copy of it and it is very pleasing on the eye and really good quality paper/binding etc. I wouldn't have read so much of it had I only had the pdf to look at.

    You can get it from amazon or direct from the publishers ( http://tinyurl.com/aqxumk ) and there are rumors that eBook formats are on their way.

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