The 10 big energy myths - my take

Late last night I came across this article from the Guardian Newspaper in the UK.  It being late at night, I didn't read it all the way through, but, I liked what I did read.  But ... there are some issues.

So, I'll look at each of the ten things in turn.

Myth 1.  Solar power is too expensive to be of much use

Absolutely true.  Solar energy is developing a critical mass in application and use.  On the other hand, people misunderstand how to use solar energy.  Elsewhere in the Guardian's environment section I came across the comment along the lines of "how am I expected to power my immersion heater from a few solar panels on the roof".  This is utterly wrong.  The reason that flat bed, and the more efficient evacuated tube solar water heaters are successful is that they use heat from the sun (in the form of infra red light rays) to heat water in an insulated tank.

On the other hand photovoltaics, use high-tech materials with  high levels of embedded energy to generate a flow of electrons in copper wire, which for water heating would in turn drive an immersion heater.  This is clearly much more complex.  It has has more stages than the simple heat harvesting panel, and therefore more room for inefficiency.  The moral of the story is, to think what you need the energy for first, and then use the technology best suited for the purpose.  Remember, fossil fuel technologies generally sacrifice efficiency for convenience, which is what has got us into this mess in the first place.

Myth 2: wind power is too unreliable

The author is on the money here too.  So long as there are many points where wind energy is being collected and fed into the grid, it's very unlikely that it's going to be calm in all of these places at once.    I think that this kind of myth has been encouraged by the design decisions favoured by the fossil fuel industry, which tend to only look at facility design issues without placing them in an environmental context.  Again a case of simplicity and convienence at the expense of efficiency.

Myth 3: marine energy is a dead-end

Again, on the money.  Here's an outfit local to me doing some good work in the area.

Myth 4: nuclear power is cheaper than other low-carbon sources of electricity

Spot on.  Nuclear energy is only cheaper if you don't cost externalities (i.e. environmental and social costs).  Here's yet another example of the widespread use of fossil fuel encouraging lazy design and convenience over efficiency and environmental sensitivity.  When will they wake up that it's not the economy or the environment, it's the economy because of the environment?

Myth 5: electric cars are slow and ugly

This area is looking increasingly interesting.  Now we need to make sure that the energy used to power them doesn't come from coal.

Myth 6: biofuels are always destructive to the environment

Here's where I start to disagree.  If you're using crop residues to generate biofuels, this means that there are a bunch of nutrients that aren't being returned to the soil.  This will result in soil degredation, partly caused by this, and partly caused by a lack of protective vegitation on top of the soil.  On the other hand, algae derived biofuels look promising, so I won't write this area off completely, but it's no panacea.

Myth 7: climate change means we need more organic agriculture

Well, here we have wrong headed thinking.  Factory farming requires very high inputs from fossil fuels which makes this farming method's sustanability  pathetic.  Add to this long transportation distances between farmer and consumer, along with the pretty poor soil conservation record of industrial agriculture, and there's a real problem.  I was thinking the other day that a good way of measuring the sustainability of a population would be to look at the education level of the population and the proportion of the population involved in food production.  So my guess is that a highly educated population (60%-80% of the population finishing high school, and 30%-50% of the population with university degrees) plus around a third of the population generating at least some of their income from food production might be a good indicator of a sustainable society.

The Cuban experience is definately interesting here.  Here's a good video I found about this:

Myth 8: zero carbon homes are the best way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from buildings

We're back to sensible commentary here.  In Australia there are huge cultural barriers to achieving increased efficiency in old and new houses.  This is an area where governments need to prioritise.  There are some noises in Australia going in the right direction with insulation rebates, solar power rebates and feed in tarifs, but this is at the early stages, and much much more effort needs to go into this.

Myth 9: the most efficient power stations are big

Again I'm back in agreement. The Melbourne Council building CH2  is a great example of this.

Myth 10: all proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech

Absolutely.  The best solutions are low tech and simple.  Catch the low hanging fruit with this and then think about the technology to fix the harder stuff.  A lot of government policy like carbon capture and storage seems to be the wrong way round.