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For today however and unless there are dramatic developments we go back to our focus on energy usage and the environment:
http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1494-kicking-the-fossil-fuel-habit
Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit
![[Article Image]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/the_mark/wide_photos/1494/original.jpg?1273693702)
If we don’t choose to wean ourselves off oil, coal, and gas, nature will force us to quit cold turkey.
First published May 17 2010
We’ll eventually kick our fossil fuel habit. We have no choice. If peak oil doesn’t dictate the terms and timing, then climate change will force our hand. And recent events in the Gulf of Mexico reveal more immediate dangers.
Yet our response to these threats remains tepid, insufficient by any measure. Serious action is aggressively opposed by those who hold out an irrational hope that business-as-usual might continue. We seem content to let nature decide the terms and conditions on which we kick the habit. Why?
I believe there is an assumption, often implicit, that underpins the North American energy debate: clean, renewable energy is just not up to the job. For the lights to stay on, and factories to hum, we need coal and oil. This assumption is why Stephen Harper talks up the tar sands as Canada’s contribution to North American energy security. This assumption is why Canada plays possum on climate change.
But this assumption is flat-out wrong.
Clean energy – mainly solar, geothermal, hydro, wind, and unconventional biofuels – is perfectly capable of powering our economy. It can be made reliable, large-scale, and cost-effective. But that’s true only if we commit to build clean energy infrastructure on a scale comparable to the fossil-fuel apparatus built over the past century. That scale is enormous.
The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates we need to invest more than $45 trillion in our energy infrastructure over the next 40 years to meet future demand. That’s the kind of money we invest in fossil fuels. It’s only fair then to ask how clean energy might perform with similar levels of capital. What do you get for a trillion dollars?
That’s just the question I’ll ask in a series of 10 articles on The Mark about clean energy over the coming weeks. The answers may surprise you. Some clean technologies scale up, bringing costs down. Others hit supply constraints and can’t substantially displace fossil fuels. But make no mistake – clean energy performs if given a fair shake.
At that scale of investment, giant solar plants produce energy well after the sun goes down, at a lower cost than melting tar. Unconventional bio-fuels grown in the desert replace half the world’s oil supply. By drilling for heat instead of oil, we use enhanced geothermal energy to replace North America’s entire coal infrastructure. Our aging grid is replaced by a new continent-wide energy internet, which connects multiple, distributed energy sources.
We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can escape peak oil or move the needle on carbon emissions for anything less than trillions. Spending that much may sound absurd. But what’s the cost of the war in Iraq? According to economist Joseph Stiglitz, it’s about $3 trillion. The liquidity injected to save North American banks was more than three times that much.
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Eliyahu Gurfinkel | The Ann Arbor NewsDarryl Snabes, left, and Jeff Means are responsible for the installation of a wind turbine on the roof of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System building. Snabes is the local project manager and Means the regional energy manager at the VA.
The production of domestic hot water is one of the most beneficial and cost effective uses of thermal solar collectors. Many people would be surprised to learn how much energy and environmental impact is required for this use. Water has a “polar” molecular structure and for that reason it requires an unusual amount of energy to change its temperature. In fact, the “heat capacity” of water is about 4 times that of concrete or cast iron. It is a “year around” function that rounds out other seasonal or intermittent solar applications and improves the cost benefit or investment value of the solar heating system. In many places, solar domestic water heaters are eligible for tax credits. We include the domestic hot water heating element in nearly everything we do because it addresses important mechanical issues such as summertime heat control and heat dumping.
Using energy from the sun to heat water is one of the oldest uses of solar energy! Today, millions of homes and businesses around the globe use solar water heating systems because they are so cost effective!
