Written by William F. Pickard   

Sizzle from our President’s Eminent Energy Advisors


Sizzle from our President’s Eminent Energy Advisors: I hear the sound, I smell the aroma, but I can’t find the beef. And that’s why I was disappointed by the White House’s recent paper “Middle Class Economics: Building a Clean Energy Economy, Improving Energy Security, and Taking Action on Climate Change”. Yes, it was a nice introduction of the President’s proposed budget for fiscal 2016. But, NO, it did NOT confront the Elephant Class issues that come with the quest for Clean Energy and Energy Security.

If you’re going to talk the talk about Clean Energy and Energy Security, you’d better walk the walk. And walking that walk means telling it to the Public like it is. Fossil fuel is running out: most extrapolations point towards being past peak extraction of fossil fuel and well into exhaustion before this century’s end!! If you don’t believe it, do the math! The Developed Economies make up roughly one-sixth of the World’s population; but they soak up half of the World’s electric energy. The Developing Economies therefore have only one-fifth of our per capita electricity use, and their Human Development Indices are the worse for it. Burning fossil fuel to generate enough electricity to bridge this electric power gap will run through the Planet’s projected resources of fossil fuel by 2100. Modern civilization ends in our grandchildren’s lifetimes  unless we jump to renewables!

There are four buzz-words you’d expect to see in any serious document talking about “energy economy” and “energy security”: INTERMITTENCY, NUCLEAR, STORAGE, and WASTE. How did the White House document perform ???
INTERMITTENCY: This word did not appear. Tsk!
NUCLEAR: This word appeared twice, both in the context of a proposed expenditure of $900 million for advancing nuclear technology. No mention was made of how we’re going to dispose of the spent fuel that already exists. Tsk!
STORAGE: This word appeared four times, thrice in the context of carbon capture and storage, and once in the context of energy conversion and storage. Massive electricity storage to meet the Intermittency Challenge was overlooked. Tsk!
WASTE: This word appeared thrice, each time in the context of energy not efficiently used. But what about radioactive fission waste or the ash ponds near coal fired power stations. Tsk!

The omission of any discussion involving “INTERMITTANCY” is hard to understand. For example, on page 3 of the White House document, there begins a section on “ensuring America’s energy security”. The latter topic is hugely apt because: (i) we’re burning through the planet’s fossil fuel resources at a great rate; and (ii) worrywart scientists hold that peak extraction of fossil fuel is imminent, while severe supply shortages will be occurring in only 60 ± 30 years
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< http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6816000 >].
Because switching fuel sources takes such a long time, Prudence most assuredly dictates a massive proactive buildout of non-polluting energy-harvesting facilities and infrastructure. In the USA, maybe an eighth of our annual budget for primary energy would be a good start: it might even suffice! Meanwhile, making minimalist responses whilst waiting to see how matters look in 2030 (only four presidents away) is a very attractive option: but if the prophets of doom are right, we will by then be a long way up the creek and short of paddles!
Naturally the obvious renewables, solar and wind, are episodic and pose what is known as the Intermittency Challenge. If we are out of fossil fuel, then we can not match electricity supply to demand by firing up fossil fuelled power plants. Hence, the “infrastructure” mentioned above had better include a lot activity figuring how best to store renewable electricity to match supply to demand ― either that or how to manifest zen-like placidity in the face of disturbing and dangerous brownouts and blackouts.

The $900 million earmarked by the White House for “NUCLEAR” is a plausible number, except that it is was not clearly stated to include appropriate “nuclear waste” remediation and storage. Moreover, the proposed FY2016 budget is bruited to cut funding for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and also for the Hanford cleanup
[
].
The United States is now seventy years into the Atomic Age. And its progress towards developing reliable permanent storage facilities for high level nuclear waste is deplorable. On top of that, the Administration has, in essence: (i) mothballed the Yucca Mountain storage facility being constructed in Nevada
[];
and (ii), following an accident, suspended operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant until at least 2016 []. The nuclear option requires a LOT of additional planning if the public is ever to be comfortable with it.

The “STORAGE” referred to in the context of “energy conversion and storage” is presumably intended to buffer the mismatch between demand and generation and suppress the volatility that otherwise would result from intermittent generation. However, such mention occurred in a context that seemed unlikely to stir up much anxiety in the electorate. So let’s look at it carefully. Suppose that in 2050 the USA has an average electricity draw of 500 GW (1 gigawatt equals a billion watts). If we’ve pretty well run out of fossil fuel to fire up outmoded heat-driven generators, we’d better have at least 500 gigawatt-days of electricity storage to tide us over periods of cloudy weather and still winds. That’s upwards of a hundred-fold what we have now! Moreover, we’ve never adequately done the Research, Development, and Demonstration to assure that appropriate storage can be created in time. IF it could be done, then Smart Money would be thinking in terms of building (give or take a factor of two) five trillion dollars worth of massive electricity storage between now and 2050 [Zakeri & Syri. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 42, 569-596 (2015)]; but how often do you hear of a government megaproject coming in on budget?

“WASTE” has already been discussed above.

In this critical situation, transparency of our government’s stance on the scientific issues involved is of paramount importance. So I hope that Administration Spokespersons will deign to show how the following questions are, with urgency, being addressed.

Q1. What major programs has the Administration undertaken to awaken the Congress (and the Public) to the rapidly approaching end of the Age of Fossil Fuels? What major policy addresses has the President devoted to this end?

Q2. What major programs (greater than one billion dollars per year of new money) has the Congress enacted specifically to devise robust solutions to the Intermittency Challenge?

Q3. The civilian nuclear power industry is continuously producing high level waste that must safely and permanently be stored for at least ten thousand years. With Yucca Mountain (in effect) mothballed, why is the Administration not making a credible (greater than one billion dollars per year of new money) initiative to break forthwith this waste storage logjam? Given the lackadaisical handling of nuclear waste issues over the past seventy years, many voters would put no faith at all in government’s new and suspiciously distant target of 2048.

Q4. The arguments given above imply that resolving the Intermittency Challenge will require the construction of around 15 gigawatt-days of massive electricity storage each year, from now through at least the middle of this century. How is the Administration moving to make this urgently needed accomplishment a concrete reality?