Should Renewable Power Be Mandated?

Certainly, the statement "all the non-renewable sources are depleted" is ridiculous. And obviously, free markets have no motives. Therefore we must assume the writer means businessmen or women enjoy shortages. But without a supply a business is out of business.

One cannot assume that politicians have better motives (power is their god) or make better judgement than the free market, history has proven otherwise over and over again.

The answer to sustainability is educating the consumer so that the demand is ecosensitive. The solution is not found in strong arming businesses and confiscating private property. That is against the Constitution and everything we believe in.

i completly agree with techno. it has always been known that all it takes to switch to renewable resorces is the signature of a president.

the scenario would be approximatly.

1. presidential mandate: example; 10 years for every home in america to be energy independent. every car in america to be primarily electric driven, with charging occuring from alternative sources as much as possible, and from the utility grid for the balance.

2. instituting subsidies and tax breaks for renewable resorces.

3. removing subsidies and tax breaks for non-renewable resorces.

this would drop the demand for non-renewables so much that their price would plummet. this would mean that infrastructures that truly need non-renewables, their cost of operation would drop dramaticly.

result, win-win for everyone.

the alternative of not doing anything, and living with the status quo is total collapse for everyone. when we literaly hit the wall, total chaos is possible. what a legacy for mankind. by then it will be too late to retool. the only winners will have been those who profited from this. ie: big oil, big coal. what happens when oil hits $1,000 per barrel. answer big profits for big oil and big coal. utter devastation for everyone else.

of course this is just "my opinion". some see my answer as "polyanna". well, the opposite is "draconian". one has plenty for everyone. the other has peoples and governments fighting over dwindling resorces. which would you rather leave as a legacy. why does big oil have the right to destroy the world around it just for big profits? why should every thing we need for a comfortable life be valued in terms of big oil profits? when the cost of oil goes up, the cost of energy goes up, the cost of everything goes up. this is a good recipie for runaway inflation. the net result is that everything except oil drops in value. how much are you willing to debase everthing we value in life?

Yes, yes and yes.

However, it's similar to saying that all new cars should run on hydrogen. Who is going to licence against this? The powerful companies who produce non-hydrogen-based fuel.

Similarly, who benefits from the profusion of fossil-based power sources? Large companies and the dependent governments across the world.

It may take some time, but once the fossil-fuels are depleted (or very nearly so), both the large companies and the national governments will be pushing the new energies and there will be no need to mandate anything.

This is an interim period in the history of power supply. Perhaps another 50 or 75 years needs to pass, but it will, and then discussions like ours will be less than decisive in the machinations of the big players.

In the meantime I, like you, will do all we can to "do the right thing" during our short lives. Much as the believers in the concept of medicine rather than "the will of god" in health matters before the modern medical age.

Keep up the good fight.

Joe

oops ... When I spoke to a company that made fuel cells, their source of hydrogen was natural gas. Piped in natural gas ran through a 'cracker' that stripped the hydrogen from the methane molicules (the primary ingredient in natural gas) and sent the carbon dioxide, water, and whatever else into the air, then it re-combined the hydrogen with oxygen from the air to produce energy and water.

Not what we all had in mind.

Currently there is no good commercial source of hydrogen that doesn't release lots of carbon into the atmosphere.

Now if we had enough wind/solar to disassociate water and capture the hydrogen it would be great, but currently it takes to much power to do this compared to the current economic alternatves. ... Bummer.

If free markets were really free, that would be ideal. If it is mandated by government, there will be controls and restrictions that would benefit some, it seems like these days, it would benefit whoever is going to control the market of the new sources.

I think that since the idea of renewable energy implies "free" or as close to it as possible, there is no or little profit in it for the big players. So profit would have to be made in the manufacturing and/or managing of the renewable energy equipment. That is nowhere near the profits being made in oil. Although renewable energy is nice sounding, renewable income is what a company wants, as in fill up that car again pal, thank you very much.

Since there is nothing in it really for the large corporations, it will only really be accomplished by small players and individuals unless it can be owned and controlled by a big player and there is a guarantee of continued income. There are also restrictions imposed by our government that are holding up renewable energy applications. Getting UL approval, as an example, for Brown's Gas generators. They are not UL approved in America, but are being used in various countries in Europe and working well. There is just no profit in burning water for energy.

If you look up African Cat on Google, they have solar panels that are smaller and lighter that produce twice the energy that any panels I saw on display at the recent solar convention I went to. I have not seen them, they are in a different country, but I read about them. I just know they are not here and that the ones being sold here are not nearly as cost effective as they could be. It seems there are restrictions here that are to the benefit of large corporations who depend on oil revenue.

My brother went to Europe a while back and talked about Smart Cars getting outrageous gas mileage there. My other brother went to the recent auto show in Los Angeles - they get 30 something a gallon in America. Why bother? I owned a TR7 years ago that got 40 miles a gallon. That car is larger and heavier and faster than most cars made today that get half the mileage.

So I guess I am saying government mandates won't work unless you are talking about demanding a certain percentage of a power company come from some renewable source. Private individuals and companies will have to bear the expense and expect interference and restrictions only from the government. Ours anyway. In the meanwhile, America is a marketplace and is being treated that way.

Sounds bleak. It's early, maybe I should have some more coffee.

Please let me know when such a mandate for renewable energy occurs as I would like to buy stock in all the energy companies when their prices hit rock bottom and begin to rebound after the public realizes what a bill of goods they have been sold!!

On the eve of yet another government mandate, the digital HDTV mandate where all US television users are being FORCED to upgrade by either buying a new set or buying a converter, I for one am NEVER in favor of a mandate. Of course, there is the $40.00 credit in the form of my taxdollars going to those who "can't" afford the mandate.

So much for the off topic rant.

The consumer should always be in charge of when they want new products. If the market can nudge a few to adopt new technology earlier than the majority, that is all the better. If the cost of a product is so high that an average consumer can't afford it without help from a tax rebate then is it really viable?

Remember when Henry Ford gave his workers a "raise" so they would be able to buy his product? This is dishonest and nonproductive and leads to waste.

Mandates only benefit the giver.

In general, most people become educated about the environmental consequences of their actions only when those actions are so egregious that government must get involved (although viewers of networks like Fox remain uneducated even then). Despite many years of science indicating that we are contributing to global warming, it has been only recently that the guy on the street has begun to understand, for example, the connection between fuel efficiency and CO2 output.

In the US, people have continued to buy huge vehicles and are continuing to consume twice the energy per capita of the highly-developed European countries (not to mention 8 times the world average). The free market does nothing to discourage this, and in fact, does everything to encourage it. Basic safety standards, basic emission controls (which are not yet adequate, given the increasing levels of pollution in many cities) and basic fuel efficiency standards all had to be crammed down the throats of the auto companies: free market forces do not work when the free market is uneducated, unaware, and selfish.

Free market forces have supported slavery, subjugation of women, child porn, child labor, gunning down of workers by Ford, wars for oil, etc. There is little indication that "the free market" will do the right thing: what is most profitable is often at odds with what is right, good, and descent.

The DOE projects that renewables for generating power in the US will go from 9% now to 9% in 2030, and coal (with its large CO2 footprint) will become a more prevalent percentage of the total. Absent laws to the contrary, they are correct. There is no free market incentive to prevent that dismal scenario in which our energy creation process goes essentially downhill, with more of our (then much higher) energy needs being created with our dirtiest technology -- it's cheap and profitable.

The "free market" is anything but free in many senses, the most obvious being in the environmental costs of unregulated industry. One of our environmentally "better" companies, Alcoa, has paid millions in fines and, in 2000, generated over 9 million pounds of toxic chemicals. Imagine what the situation would be without regulations.

I have a strong sense that much of what corneliuscansant says is valid.

The history of laws and restrictions being mandated by governments is as dubious as the worst of the excesses of capitalism.

Perhaps the best thing that could happen in the current climate is that fossil-based fuels do run out and that global warming claims significant industrial and urban sections of the developed world.

Should this happen, the result will be seen historically as a positive development. Apart from the lamentable damage and suffering of individuals during the process, I feel confident that society will evolve towards the sort of sustainable power sources that both sides of the political fence currently espouse.

Can this be avoided by mandate or via the market-driven world economy? I doubt it very much. Humans thus far have rarely shown as much appreciation of future dangers as of present opportunities and needs.

Perhaps all this will change in many hundreds of thousands of years when humans have separated themselves from a hand-to-mouth dependence on unpredictable external factors. In the meantime, I suspect that the course of human evolution (both physical and social) will alternate between developments achieved through some form of mandate imposition and some form of less-rigorous market-led development.

We live in interesting times and I just wish we were able to live for several more generations to see how this one resolves itself.

As a rider, much of what we are now able to consider in science and medicine originated in some form or other from either mandated or free-market efforts to acquire land and power (space-race, technology created for purposes associated with war). Perhaps an historian in 1,000 years time will view this period of the transition from non-sustainable to sustainable power sources as being only possible because of the greed and ambitions of the multi-national companies. Who knows!

Joe

Certainly every tyranny can coerce its population with the stroke of a pen, plently of cops, guns and prison for those who disobey.

I assume you are referring to the trampling of the Constitution and civil rights by the Bush administration. While it may be true the he and his administration are tyrants, remember that almost of half the voting population voted for him. That's democracy in action.

Democracy also leads to laws against murder, child abuse, rape, theft, and polluting the environment we share.

Remember, when you give Washington the power you weaken the citizen, you bind his creativity, you ruin and crush innovation spurred by incentive some you despise and characterize as greed.

It sounds as if you advocate overthrowing the USPTO, so that any solar work you do that might otherwise be patented is available free to the public. That's very noble of you. In practice however, others are not as altruistic as you, and the monopoly granted by the government stimulates invention by appealing to greed.

I think Washington is neither good nor bad, but rather what we make it. If we fail to make of it what we want, then the fault is ours.

The right power source mix for each utility should be based on the natural resources available in the area (wind, sun, etc...), not on a "one size fits all" approach rammed down everyone's throat from Washington.

Government subsidy of alternative power should continue. This provides an incentive for (currently sub-economic) development of alternatives such as wind power and solar to continue and is an appropriate function of government.

However, unreasonable mandates add to consumer costs and make our country less competitive. Market forces will dictate that the "big companies" will get into the alternative energy market when the time is right.

Here, Here, A cogent reply sir Robin.

But I am afraid Mr Fry needs some edification. He seems to be one of the "Blame America first" crowd. Tell me please sir, without generalization, who do you know that Bush has "tyrannized"? Who, particularly, has had his rights removed. I submit sir you cannot name a one outside of war criminals living in GITMO. Do you defend their rights?

And since you slandered him, I will defend Bush. Who, thank God. does not cringe from the rantings and ad hominum of your ilk. He will be honored by history as the first to recognize that democracy is the only answer to nuclear proliferation.

"ABSOLUTELY,,,,," ABSOLUTELY . . !

Renewable are the way forward. It makes thermodynamic conservation sense and clean air is the result. We must stop burning anything. But that is quite a ways off.

The financial incentive is not yet there. But soon, even now in anticipation, rising prices of oil will motivate innovation. But without incentive, the result will be failure –we must learn from repeated bureaucratic (read government) failures and their unintended consequence.

The first thing we need to do is conserve . . . we are gluttons when it comes to unnecessary consumption of power. We leave lights on, refrigerators, and doors open. We condition the air of uninhabited places, orient buildings without regard to solar flux direction, fluctuation and strength. We have lost the common practices of natural convection, thermo siphon and the thermodynamic sciences of the pre combustion engine.

I can tell you that many entities are working in the engineering arts of renewable. Colleges and corporations are heavily involved . . . it has become in vogue. We don't need want, nor can we stand, the harm of politician involvement – even when you agree with the tact. (Given that it is composed of, almost exclusively, attorneys) government is the master of manipulation and coercion. But many of us who are working with the external combustion engines, (steam and Stirling) including those that will use heat from concentrated solar energy to make power that will not burn anything, are not on board with man caused climate change.

The fact that CO2 levels lag temperature change is the smoking gun that demonstrates - at least without rationalization - that man has little to do with global warming. The lag is evidence of fundamental physics cause and effect. The tail wagging the dog is a ridiculous concept for searchers of the truth.

But there seems to be no limit on hypothesizing with perverse logic. Changing solar warming (the real source of global warming) is not unlike changing the weather. Perhaps possible, but is it a good thing? All the dots are not yet connected. The attempt to reduce CO2 may perhaps be even dangerous because the rise of CO2 may actually reverse warming. That is an intuitive that may be wrong or right, but it sure makes sense – should we act on it?

Anyone who has tried, knows that it is very difficult to produce electricity without the power of combustion. The latest paradigm is creating individual homes of net zero energy consumption, eventually eliminating (or dramatically reducing) the need for a vulnerable grid.

Let not practitioners in the art, participate in the deception and pseudo science of man-caused global warming in an effort to continue personal access to government funding. Please realize that it introduces politicians with agendas into the mix - and it is ugly. Politician meddling in the sciences are bad for everyone.

We who practice must not allow leftists (socialists, progressives, liberals, and egalitarians etc) - whatever socialists are called at the moment - to seize this moment of conservation and turn it to their own purposes. They are extreme. Look at history, man of science; Look at history!

Don't just use inductive reasoning. One cannot rely on intuition and then rush to waste enormous resources on Rube Goldberg engineering. Scientists must accept only the evidence, reject illusion. Illusions are created by the rhetoric of socialism - by any other name.

Global warming . . . and cooling, is part the historical record. The objective observer must look at the charts. If one goes back far enough, it becomes evident warming and cooling cycles were there long before the internal combustion engine.

Those who make strained extrapolations should be ignored for what they are . . . in denial . . . or snake oil salesmen. Liars figure and figure lie, when numbers are cherry picked to prove an errant point and perpetrate fraud – even with innocent ignorance.

Leftists from the Green party (now in control of the Democratic Party) are using the concept of warming to generate fear (Use one sheet of TP and run for your life). It is a thinly veiled ruse, an attempt to seize the people's vote. It is an extreme point of view that does not make room for man in their vision of the ecosystem. Nature is more important? As though man is not natural???

It means government seizure of rights and property taxes, land and chattel for the extreme of pristine. It is not conservation at all. It excludes man and it is heresy at the deepest level. Reject it. Do not be led by clever manipulations, rhetoric and dialectics. It would be the worst thing we could do.

I have worked with the market of electric vehicles and hybrids, and using that market base, I noticed that it is not the mandates, which are set to fail.

Remember no one likes change or anything forced apon them.

It is the way they are implemented. Instead of forcing the issue, and not having the answers. Present the proposal that "THEY" are the goodguy looking out for the environment and their "Families" future. It is not their requirement, but in their hearts best interest to make the world a better place. And in doing so if they happen to same somey or bring better PR to their organization, all the better. Don't force a company or organization to do something without giving them options for doing so.

I would love to see more alternative eneregies. I teach photovoltaics and used to drive an EV1 until someone killed it.

If you are going to set limits, then offset them with incentives and rebates that you provide, administer and assist with. I know that the less paperwork that I do the better my life is.

Two thumbs up. I agree.

I was speaking to someone involved in a government project yesterday. He called the waste "obscene". But the people involved are making so much money off the waste (as in many millions) that nobody is going to say anything about it.

If you mandate, there will be abuses and waste. This whole carbon footprint thing is just another hidden tax with far, far reaching consequences and expense, ultimately for us, the consumer.

We need better energy sources, yes, but as soon as we get them, the price of oil is going to be dropped to make it financially unrealistic to use them. Especially since there is more oil sitting around in America not pumped than ever before. So if we are going to get off the oil addiction, we are going to have to do it so it makes sense financially for the consumer, make it user friendly, and do it out of responsibility to ourselves, not for some bogus oil shortage or some excuse for another tax -like the carbon footprint.

Anyway, I liked your post.

I appreciate that Ron.

Certainly, capitalist excess based in greed must be controlled by the law. And we have the Securities Exchange and laws against theft by deception. People are in jail this very moment for it. Ask Martha Stewart who did time, not for insider trading, but for lying about discussing it with a broker on the phone, when asked by an FBI agent. She wasn't in court at the time.

But the word is corporate excess – not all of capitalism. Capitalism, which was first described as a philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment; it works because it is based on the natural competitiveness of the human animal; it is a tremendous engine that employs and provides products for most of us. Where in the world can you find the incredible choices we have! Without the engine and efficiency of honest business capitalism we would not be nearly so blessed.

We need to appreciate that capitalism and our system of economic freedom is the golden goose, and that it is squashed by regulation and political correctness legislation. I would not call for them but realize that corporations have no civil rights (and the corporation may be you). Corps has no right to privacy. Corporate credit records are not protected like citizens are. Corporations cannot, like government, force anybody to do anything. They must persuade – and give value. Other than copyright or intellectual property they have no government protection. A rock star has more protection than General Motors.

But there is no valid reason for corporate phobia. One can only conclude the antagonism stems from an ideology, the ends of which trump every form of logic, fact or criticism that stands against it – the end justifies the means. The shouting is over and the war is lost. Forgive my digression. How sustainable research is affected by the left is astonishing. They stole the conservative movement from Teddy Roosevelt – republican extraordinaire and now they claim exclusive caretaker status for the earth and curse Republicans for wanting to poison children and pollute the air.

The left repeats and insists often that capitalism and those who support it are intrinsically greedy – and, by the way, racist warmongers. But every time they spit out this corpo-phobic rant; or deliver its sister, the evils of competition, roll your eyes because you know it is rationalization for the ridiculous . . . Wall Mart is a boon for low wage earners. Big box . . . What?

I used to think leftist were lying but, having so many liberal loved ones I respect, now I conclude they simply have so much faith in their enlightened conclusions, they deal with the negative by convoluted means, resorting to ad homonym, even manipulation, and certainly passion to get their way, when the facts or the reasoning does not work. They are so rabid, family and friends avoid the discussion of politics.

I find most astounding that so many smart men, like those we encounter on these pages, can be convinced. I can only conclude they don't have the time to research both sides of political issues. Many of these accomplished professionals, who herein answer incredibly complex questions with poignant simplicity, and simplistic ones with exquisite complexity, have bought the left wing proverbial farm - by not closely evaluating the words of the intelligentsia left . . . not doing the due diligence.

But who has the time? Unless one happens to be a current-events enthusiast, you may be grossly unaware of the cultural clash. We are tired and on the way home from work, just like to tune in to FM commercial-free, on-your-tax-dollar, left wing political correctness radio.

It is fitting that sustainable, renewable, green, or whatever the euphemism is, be examined closely before we rush to engineer the solution to the useless, the snake oil, and worse. I ask, no I plead with, engineers to please diversify your political intake. We must be very careful; first, do no harm. In case you haven't noticed; this world is in big trouble because of the actions of the physicist engineer/professors like Albert Einstein and A.Q. Khan. Because of them we entertain the Age of the Atom and the invention of proxy kamikaze warfare.

Both may have acted differently if they had pondered the world-changing, perhaps shattering immensity of their engineering. Khan, who admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea, is unrepentant. He is known as the father of the Islamic bomb and we shall encounter it in the near future unless we have the right engineer for foreign policy – democracy. We don't fear democracy, even when they have nukes. And that makes democracy our best bet to solve the nuclear nightmare.

IMHO, the answer is an emphatic NO.

There should be suggesting, arm twisting, propiganda to make it 'the right idea', but force... no.

Use a 'carrot and a stick' approach. Reward reduction of energy use, conservation, and generation using 'green energy'. And possibly use the old 'income redirection' taxes the US government is so fond of, as the stick. Adding 'bad energy use' tax to help the 'good energy generation methods' look more economically appealing.

Convince companies that it is the 'right thing to do' for them, their shareholders, their customers, their country, the earth, AND their bottom line.

Force no, but every other way, yes. ... The results are the same, you have reshaped the market and the demand curves, and wind up with what we all want, a better place for us and the next generations to live.