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Problems of Transition 05: The problem of pace and size

October 23, 2019

Follows on from: Energy Return on Energy Input

The Path to Transition

Full transition, with replication of all social activities and produce, may not be possible. We may not have enough non-ecologically destructive energy to make the equipment needed for the energy transformation because of EREI and the decline in safe fossil fuel consumption. The Transformation, particularly, may not be possible in a situation in which less developed countries are demanding the right to ‘develop’ living standards for their people which are equivalent to the living standards in the developed ‘West’ which are currently produced with huge levels of ecological destruction. Stopping this ‘catch up’ from happening is probably impossible without war or major catastrophe, even without coal power companies and government institutions, still trying to sell the developing world coal based energy, because they would rather destroy the world than wind down their businesses.

The situation is made worse because of the small amounts of truly renewable energy installations actually present in the world. By ‘truly renewable’, I mean energy which once burnt is not gone. (Yes, I am aware renenwable energy machinery is not renewable at the moment, only the sources such as wind, sun, hydro, geothermal heat, tidal action and so on; that is part of the problem and part of the reason the machines are needed). This means that we have an extraordinarily large scale transition to engage with; one that has only jut begun, even while expansion of fossil fuel usage, with its emissions and destruction, has increased.

The most recent figures from the IEA (2018 Key World Energy Statistics) suggest that the world’s primary energy supply is distributed by:

  • Oil 31.9%,
  • Coal at 27.1%,
  • Gas at 22.1%,
  • Biofuels and waste at 9.8%,
  • Nuclear at 4.9%
  • Hydro at 2.5% and
  • Everything else (solar, wind, geothermal) at 1.7%.

Clearly by far the majority of the world’s energy (over 80%, over 90% if you include biofuel and waste, which I would) comes from burning Greenhouse gas emitting fuels.

Despite the need for transition being clearly established since the late 1980s, with the Kyoto Protocol being declared in 1997 most societies have done very little to forward the transition. Indeed coal use rapidly increased after the Protocol was declared, making the challenge even greater than it would have been. The obstacles to successful transition are apparently huge.

As is repeatedly announced, the number of companies, or government instititions responsible for most of these greenhouse gases is small. 100 companies are responsible for about 70% of global emissions since 1988 and, possibly, over half the emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution. So, in theory, it should be possible to control this. The recent decline in coal usage in many countries is also helpful, but is probably not enough, especially given the refusal of fossil fuel companies to promote their products and promote confusion about climate change, its causes and likely consequences.

Conclusion of the part

The size and difficulty of the task of transition is enormous. Social relations and EREI are likely to make the task onerous at best, and maybe impossible without some change in social relations and aspirations. Political action is important, and the transformation almost certainly cannot be left to the private sector alone, as it has so far depended on ecological destruction and misleading hype.

The reality is that the transformation is not happening fast enough, and may not be able to occur fast enough, to stop tumultuous climate change from occuring. We can only try to restrain the tumult and prevent it getting even worse in the long term.

Difficulty of transition is increased by already failing infrastructure.

Later parts of this series will discuss
Drawdown
and problems with indivudal forms of renewable energy

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Problems of Transition 04: Energy Return on Energy Input

October 23, 2019

Follows on from Technology is Social

Energy Return on Energy Input (EREI)
Understanding this concept is fundamental to understanding what is possible with energy technology. Basically, any production of energy takes energy to make. In the fossil fuel world, the ratio of energy input to energy output has been said to be of the order of 1:100. Even today when it has become much harder to find and extract useable oil the ratio is still around 1:20 or more. Easy to access fields of fossil fuels, with little energy use, and little ecological destruction, will tend to be consumed first. There are inevitably declining returns on EREI from resources, and therefore declining availability of energy, without some massive new source of energy being discovered, and this does not happen that often.

The closer the EREI ratio gets to 1:1 or lower, the more the amount of energy used to produce energy gets to resemble the amount of energy produced. The smaller the ratio, the less energy is available for free action, or action that is not tied into energy production. If the ratio goes below 1:1, then energy is essentially being wasted to make energy.

That energy is being wasted and consumed in order to make energy, does not mean the system cannot continue for a while, making things worse. Energy ‘non-production’ can be supported by the taxpayer (as the State considers it important for national functioning); by weird financial schemes or straightforward Ponzi schemes in which more and more people are persuaded to put money into the ventures while return declines (as many people suggest is the actual dynamic behind fracking); by taking energy from a better functioning part of the system; by using cheaper energy such as slave labour; and by increasing unrepairable environmental destruction. Just as we can pursue declining fish stocks with more energy and ruthlessness until they are all gone, so we can pursue low EREI until we collapse. Money acts as an ersatz source of energy as it allows human focus and activity stripped from reality but, eventually, if it does not have some relationship to available energy, the currency will collapse. The point is such practices suck energy from the necessary transition, and eventually disrupt the society in a probably catastrophic way.

Renewable energies, and any potential ‘clean fossil fuels,’ have much lower EREI, than dirty fossil fuels. Most of the renewables are also intermittant, So we need more of them and more energy production, than we needed of fossil fuel energy supplies – and again that takes lots of free energy.

This lower EREI severely limits what can be done and unfortunately, we need a truly massive energy transformation in a time of apparent declining energy availability (and particularly low ecologically destructive energy) to produce machines with lower EREI, which makes transition harder.

Continues in Problems of Transition 05: The problem of pace and size

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Problems of Transition 03: Technology is social

October 23, 2019

Follows on from: Technology as Fantasy

Some of these problems talked about in the previous post, occur because technology is not neutral, it is born into being, and designed, within existing social relations, social struggles, ecological relations and so on. Technologies will almost always be designed, and modified, to try and maintain or intensify relations of social power, and distributions of wealth. In capitalism, for example, work tools are rarely designed to give people more simple leisure, and indeed leisure tools like the internet or mobile phone, can be used to extend work hours ‘voluntarily’. Any technology with potential, become sites of social struggle.

Technology involves social organisation

In the current world, social organisation and disorganisation exists before new technologies are introduced. Sometimes we can easily think of social relations and organisation as a form of technology. Armies of soldiers are a different form of technology, to collections of warriors. The discipline of Roman troops and troop formation, generally proved victorious over warrior bands, even though the basic physical technologies were not that much different; swords, spears, shields, armour, bows etc. The pyramids were primarily built through the organisation of human action; without that organisation, they could not have been made. Irrigation systems require co-ordination and distribution systems, which usually imply allocation of power and authority. These various systems may, in some cases be primarily religious, magical or astrological – so again magic is overtly part of the technologies application. Capitalism grew together with styles of organisation of factories, offices, labour, finance, expertise and so on. Office machines and factory machines also grew within these frameworks. Technology as a part of, or enabler of, social relations, is also deeply implicated in power relations and hierarchies, and the struggles within them.

To repeat; technology arrives into a situation in which social struggles, conflicts, failures, successes and so on already exist. The technology is designed by at least one faction in this set of complex social relations, and is inserted into them. It is not always possible to clearly demarcate a technology from the social relations and organisation that exist ‘around’ it and ‘through’ it. Technology is social from the beginning.

Maybe, in another world, it is possible the internet could have become a tool of democracy but, in this world, it was born in a period of increasingly neoliberal capitalism, and was transformed by the victors of that struggle into a commercial, data collecting set of business oligopolies. It was used in the political struggles of the world, to promote neoliberal ideologies, to win elections, to increase surveillance, to arrest dissidents, to destroy other States, to find new ways of manipulating people, and so on. Its potential to be a tool of democracy was destroyed by those who wished to use it to support their own power.

The same problem of the effect of established, or victorious, social relations is relevant for renewables. If renewables are established within social relationships which already depend on sacrificing ecologies for pofit, then it seems likely that renewables will be used to continue that sacrifice.

This is not an issue that can be answered in advance of research, However, continuing sacrifice does seem a problem.

Sacrifice of some for the good of all.

Research in India shows that people can have their land stripped away from them for corporate renewable installations (possibly through fraudulent contracts, or simply by ignoring the existing use). The installations can render the land desolate through the use of mass concrete stands. The removal of agriculture, can lead to massive unemployment and skill loss, because renewables only require a small, relatively unskilled labour force to maintain. Water, in short supply to begin with, can be taken from the public to keep the panels clear of dust. Attempts by local people to establish their own renewable networks, can be destroyed by people developing national grids, who demand local homemade grids be taken down, as they disrupt ‘proper’ grids.

Research in Australia implies that standard corporate development practices flourish, with top down imposition of energy farms (in a similar way to the way coal mines can be promoted) which alienates local people, prevents discussion of the potential problems of the development, prevents people discussing the contracts they might get for land-use, and leads to envy because some people get large payments, and others get nothing. Again, this can destroy local small town economies, because the levels of employment are less. As with the internet, democratic practices can be sacrificed for profitability.

Likewise, support for these top-down installations often seems to suggest that people’s relationship to the land which they feel they are protecting by objecting to the renewable projects, is irrelevant, when we precisely wish to maintain nurturing relationships to land and ecologies to allow transition. Strategies of development seem bound up with the idea of sacrificing people or ecologies for the developmental “benefit of all”, or perhaps the benefit of some. Renewables can take on this need to sacrifice others as easily as fossil fuels – although established power relations seem to make renewables easier to object to successfully. This idea of sacrifice may need modification, but how?

Capitalism and industrial society, have depended on destructive technologies

Capitalist economies have routinely profited from cheap energy, cheap resources (ignoring environmental effects), and cheap disposal of pollution, waste and used or superseded products. At the moment, most recycling is not true recycling, as people recently found out in Australia; much of the process involved companies being paid to collect waste and then paying third world countries to make it their problem with the recyclable produce often used as land fill. Money was made but little was recycled.

This reliance on cheap pollution and low monetary cost for ecological destruction, leads to the common point about such societies consuming more resources and producing more waste in a year than can be possibly regenerated in a year. Obviously the longer this goes on, the less can be regenerated and the more living capacity that is destroyed. Therefore, the problem intensifies.

Solar panel manufacturing in China, until recently, was driven by capitalist priorities, it was made with cheap dirty coal energy, paid low wages, and emitted harmful effluent pollution, killing rivers and possibly local people – although this latter point can be disputed. However, these cheap panels did drive cleaner manufacturers out of business.

Mess of information.

Because capitalism depends on sales, information about technology and technological quality is primarily propagated through PR, advertising and hype. These factors tend to exaggerate the quality and capacity of developing technologies, in order to diminish the attractiveness of other available, or potentially available, technologies and attract sales. It certainly was routine in the software industry for programmers to declare that company sales staff would promise potential purchasers capacities the software could not deliver, which would lead to problems after installation.

The same problems occur both with renewables and clean fossil fuels. In particular clean fossil fuels never seem to have the deliverables they promise. The promises often seem to be attempts to lock in pollution, on the grounds that it might get better at some non-specified time in the future.

We also have the problems that corporations which depend on fossil fuels, and others, try to find the weaknesses or uncertainties in theories of climate change, and predictions of what is likely to happen. As we are trying to describe complex systems, such weaknesses will always be found. Sometimes this propaganda behaviour seems to have gone against the scientific advice that they accepted for their own business survival, as when they moved storage and processing facilities to higher ground. However, they have helped delay transition, promote the use of fossil fuels, and confused people as to what they are facing in order to continue to make sales and profit, rather than to wind-back, change, or profit from transition. In this sense, these corporations really do depend on destruction.

Capitalism, like many other systems, messes with information as part of its standard modes of operation. It disrupts the flow of accurate information which is necessary for its own survival.

Consequence.

Without some changes to social systems, the product which confuses people and distributes its costs and harms to the populace, rather than to the manufacturer, is likely to win out. This may be especially true in a period of rapid change, in which it is hard to compare quality and harms as they become more visible over a longer period.

Technology is social, not pure and abstractly technical

Continues in:

Problems of Transition 4: Energy Return on Energy Input

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Problems of Transition 02: Technology as Fantasy

October 23, 2019

Follows from Transformation to Renewable Energy: General Problems

Contemporary societies have social fantasies, or myths, about technologies, which may not be helpful to dealing with the reality of transition. The biggest problem, is that we all may be in the grip of these myths and fantasies without being aware of it. We can just assume the myth is common sense and that what we are saying is obvious. Obviously I am not going to be aware of all of these myths, and even if I was, I could still be captured by them.

One reason that fantasy is important is that we cannot see the future or predict the future completely accurately. Indeed, socially, we have a bad record at this. Books anticipating the future always fail in fundamental ways to predict exactly what will happen. Weather, economic and sports forecasting is difficult, and rarely always accurate. We now understand that this arises from the nature of complex systems. Trends can perhaps be predicted, but predicting specific events is hard, especially when the predictions change behaviour.

Therefore we have to imagine the future. Imagining is essential, and helpful, but it is never constrained by reality. So when we are talking about technological transition, we are engaging in imagining and fantasy. Often imagining has guiding principles which make the results seem socially acceptable, and these principles may not be correct.

Technology is either really good or bad.

In these fantasies, technologies are nearly always forces that bring either marked good or harm. There is a large proportion of the population that seems to believe technology can solve almost any problems without bringing any harms. This is rarely so, even if it is a common part of the sales techniques deployed around technologies. There are also others who think that transition to any new technology will inevitably bring disaster.

Technology is spontaneously generated when needed.

People, including economists, often talk as if, because a technology is needed or imagined, it will be developed, and it will be developed in time, and utilised as intended, with only the results expected. This is often not the case. We still do not have skies full of flying cars, we do not have bases on the Moon and Mars, but we do have climate change, which is a classic case of a known problem with technologies being ignored, because the technologies are profitable and useful and have been built into social relations, activities and hierarchies.

Technology has no real restrictions; it is magical.

There is another tendency for people to act as if technology was magical, and that because we can do one thing, or one device can be said to resemble another, then we will soon be able to do something else, which is actually difficult or impossible. Thus again, because we could travel to the Moon, we would soon have a Moon base, or we should soon be able to colonise the solar system, or travel to another star, or something. We might think computers resemble minds, so we should soon be able download individual minds into computers. We can in theory catch CO2 emissions from coal, therefore we will soon have emissions-free coal everywhere. Thorium is a good source of energy, therefore we will soon have functional Thorium reactors. Fusion is wonderful, therefore we will soon have fusion reactors. The list goes on. And the catch is that fantasy and imagining, or trying to do things which were previously ‘magical’, probably is important in developing new technology. The problem is that even if these things were possible, and I am not saying they are impossible, it does not mean they will happen now. There are other complexities to consider, including the social relations around the technology and current technology, the limited range of human attention and application, and the success of struggles for limited finance.

Technology can also be ‘magical’ in quite a literal sense, if we define magic as a way of changing human awareness, habit, focus and so on and producing ‘non-physical’ effects in the world. Technology can change the way people perceive things and think about things. For example, we can start thinking of minds in terms of computers (software and hardware), or we can start thinking of the cosmos in terms of clocks, or information processors. People can use imagined technologies to attempt to change our view of the world and our behaviour, as when they argue that clean cheap and quick nuclear energy is available, or clean coal will soon be available, or that renewable energy is already doing a large part of the energy work, and will easily be able to replace fossil fuels with no social change. Technology often seems to be part of a rhetoric of persuasion, used to change world views and actions, and to focus attention on particular parts of reality, often at the expense of others. You have nothing to fear from total computerised surveillance if you are good.

It seems easy for humans to relate to machines as if they were animate and intelligent, especially when the machines are unfamiliar; in which case their behaviour with those machines is also not purely rational. Humans give everything meaning, and use everything to try and make meaning for themselves and others, including technology, but as usual the meanings given may not be uniform throughout society, and may be a subject of struggle and disjunction. Meaning never exists by itself, so the meaning of a technology becomes tied into a web of meaning and contrasts in meaning. The technology can be made to support existing world views, even as it slowly changes them, and affects other meanings, actions and power relations. Magical/meaning warfare is not yet dead.

Unintended consequences disrupt our fantasies.

Then there is no necessity that the technologies would give the results which were intended or expected. Technologies often add complications to the task they were supposed to perform. They give people new opportunities for action and add complexities to life, and the results of those opportunities and complexities, can only rarely be predicted in detail. Even if the problems were predicted in detail, there is only a small chance many people will accept the prediction, over their fantasy. This unpredictability, can always be disruptive, in both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways.

For example, the Internet was predicted to bring a world of free information-literacy and democracy. However, as well as providing communication between people who would never have previously met, it has probably brought endless shopping, induced polarisation, distorted information, strengthened politics as a form of identity, provided echo chambers for any idea whatsoever, magnified fantasy, and given new forms of political manipulation and Donald Trump. It brought both (some) benefits and (many) harms, and its main harms were not expected by most analysts.

We might also expect (via the so called ‘Jevons Paradox’) that if clean coal or gas could be made to work, then we would burn more coal and gas, and cause more ecological disaster through the mining and transport of coal and gas.

Resolution of fantasy and imagined expectations is a problem.

The series continues in:

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Problems of Transition to Renewable Energy 01: General Problems

October 21, 2019

This post is part of a short series on the problems of transition to renewable energy. It repeats and develops some earlier posts on this blog.

As the original post kept growing, I have decided to split it up into five shorter posts.

In this series of posts, I will deal with a set of general technological and social problems which are relevant to energy transition, before going into the problems of other necessary strategies (such as drawdown), and the problem with particular ‘renewable energies’.

Introduction: Fossil Fuels; virtues and problems

Fossil fuels are the most efficient sources of energy ever developed. Modern capitalist society is built on cheap fossil fuels (and steel making and plastics, which originate with the use of fossil fuels). Modern society may be said to depend on cheap fossil fuels.

Fossil Fuels are also amongst the most destructive forms of energy developed. They poison people and other creatures, they destroy functional ecologies, they are prone to disaster (leakage and spills, have vulnerability to acts of violence, coal seams can catch alight easily and be very difficult, or even impossible, to put out, etc), they can destroy water supplies, and they generate climate turmoil. All these various destructions mount up and get worse the more fuels are ‘mined’ and burnt.

Fossil Fuels are also finite and in decline. Although some say the end of fossil fuels is still a long way off, such fuels appear to be getting harder to find and utilise – hence the development and use of fracking, tar sands, open cut coal mines and other techniques. Fossil fuels nowadays produce more ecological devastation than they used to, through these new modes of extraction.

Fossil fuels have to be replaced if we are to save contemporary civilisations from ecological and energy collapse, and yet they have been essential to modern social organisation, function, social power relations and energy. This is the fundamental problem of contemporary life.

The further posts in this series follow this post:

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Wishful Thinking about Energy

October 10, 2019

Nearly all of our thinking about energy is “wishful” and geared towards the destruction of notions of limits on action, travel and possessions. However, energy is, by its nature, bound up with entropy and limits. The first step towards ‘realism’, is realising these limits.

For example, you cannot expend more energy than you have, and it is only in rare circumstances that energy production is near free – that is that the amount of energy expended (over the production and distribution cycle) to make energy is much less than the energy produced.

It always takes energy to make energy available. Even human food gathering, takes humanly expended energy.

Making or capturing energy also usually creates mess and danger. For example, mass slavery destroys the societies the slaves come from as well as posing problems for the societies using the slaves. Fossil fuel production and burning creates poisons and ecological destruction.

We are now moving out of a rare period of really cheap energy into an era of either both expensive or dangerous energy.

Fossil fuels are getting expensive and dangerous. Coal mines are getting even more ecologically fraught and people are more likely to resist being poisoned for the ‘greater good,’ even if governments, like Trump’s, are trying to make it easier not to have to contain dangerous materials. Oil appears to have already hit its peak, taking more and more energy to extract, and gas via fracking is largely uneconomic and destructive. Gas is dangerous in general because of leakage at wells or in old, expensive to replace, pipes in cities.

However, moving to renewables will not completely solve the energy problem. The level of renewable energy sources we need to fully replace fossil fuels will take massive amounts of energy to build; some figures suggest that we have to increase the amount of renewables by a factor of fifty to seventy, in about 10 years, to fully replace fossil fuels before it is too late. Renewables, generally occupy large amounts of land (even if they don’t have destroy that land forever, they sometimes may), and require large amounts of mining for materials, and this mining probably will destroy land. Renewables also wear out eventually, and have to be replaced, although this is also true of fossil fuel power stations; it is not entirely certain we can recycle all components, and even if we can this will take energy.

If we want to survive, then we need to recognise that the era of cheap energy has gone. There is, of course, the vague possibility of massive technological innovation which will replace the cheap energy of yore with new sources, but the problem with being saved by wished for tech, is that sometimes the tech just cannot be made in time, with the energy available, or within the costs people are prepared for. That we need a new working technology does not mean it will arise, or arise in time.

We need to work with what we have, while trying to make it better, rather than distract ourselves with wishful fantasy. Fantasy that leads to more constructive action than just indulging in hope is a different matter.

There is no question that fusion could solve our problems. But despite research since the 1940s, we are nowhere near having a commercially viable fusion generator. All fusion energy, so far, seems to require more energy consumption to make than is emitted. It is not something we can depend upon solving our problems.

Clean coal, or carbon capture, is theoretically possible (if you ignore a few problems of policing the results) and relatively easy, yet it has not come into being, despite lots of public money being made available for companies to develop it in their own self-interest.

Thorium reactors have been tried and failed in Germany for commercial and technical reasons. It is possible that we could revitalise thorium research, but it is not happening at the moment, and development, testing and (finally) building new thorium based energy sources will probably take twenty to forty years, going by normal time cycles, with plenty of government investment. Again this is not happening, so thorium is unlikely to save us, even if it can be made to work. Normal nuclear reactors are not being built because of the cost, time to build, impossibility of gaining disaster insurance, resistance by local populations, and so on. So they are not going to save us either.

If we are going to be saved by tech we don’t have, then the chances of being saved are low – in my opinion of course.

A further problem is that wishful thinking plagues discussion. Pro-fossil fuel people tend to blame renewables for society’s energy problems and renewable people tend to blame fossil fuels, when they are mutually implicated. However, it serves as a distraction from those problems with the sources they are promoting.

I’m reading Michael Mills report on renewables (thanks Mark) which is realistic about the costs and inefficiencies of renewables, but completely blasé about the costs of fossil fuels, which he insists must remain the main energy source for the world. Likewise the Australian government has decided the country’s potential energy problems arise solely because we have too many renewables.

Both cases are wishfully ignoring problems with fossil fuels in order to support established industries and established cheap energy, which is no longer cheap due to its consequences.

This wishfulness probably arises because so much of our culture is bound into cheap safe energy. Without it we face an existential crisis. The future appears uncertain, and unpleasant. It is very hard to decide what to do about the problems in a way which maintains life as it ‘should be’ and which will gain the necessary support. It is much easier to be wishful.

Consequently, the most likely trajectory is that we will just crash and burn. Another reason for ‘us’ ‘choosing’ to crash and burn, is because so much privilege and security is bound up with continuing along as we have done. It is not uncommon for ruling classes to be more interested in preserving their power and privilege than in seeing the problems, dealing with them and surviving – and that is what seems to be happening.

We might need to explore and understand the conditions in which societies do not pursue wishfulness fantasies, or the preservation of ruling class power, and actually face their existential problems. I would suspect that circulation amongst the elites, in which established members of the elite can slide down, and people in the non elites can slide up without depending on a single dictator like figure, might be one common circumstance in survival, but I’m not sure this is still present in most of our societies.

Whatever, the case, wishful business as usual, does not appear to be delivering civilisational survival. Such survival is almost certainly going to demand a completely new way of organising socially, and of ‘lowering expectations’ of what can be done. This will generate more resistance from the ruling classes, and from most people who see the current mode of being as being the only one worth having.

If we keep the same social dynamics, then it is probable that any new technology will be engineered and expected to fit in with the established social dynamics of ecological destruction or exploitation, and will not work to help save society in the long term.

Others may object that its hard to change society, even if the rulers co-operate. However, it is not harder to change society than to change the working of the global ecological system to preserve social relations of power and wealth.

We have changed societies and the ways they operate quite quickly in the past. It took less than 30 years for neoliberalism to become the norm in Australia and the US. It is true that that particular change was helped by it benefiting the rulers considerably, but the working classes made heaps of sacrifices for it to come about. That is probably one reason why they won’t like making more sacrifices for new forms of social organisation – but I suspect that people could still make sacrifices, if they could see that sacrifices were equitable, and the new life was being delivered equitably, and they could participate.

People will do heroic things for their kids and grandkids (not everyone obviously, but most people)

But, at the moment, people are going to think wishfully that it is someonelse’s problem or wonder what’s in it for them. Overcoming those problems is not something neoliberalism helps, as it is based on lack of responsibility and proft, so that has probably got to go.

The point is that transition is more difficult than most people want to see, even if they do see it as inevitable. It requires transformations at all kinds of levels and all kinds of places. I’m not sure its impossible, but we almost certainly need to change social organisation as much as we need new technology, and as much as we need to guard against wishfulness…

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Energy Transitions in India, Germany and Australia

September 16, 2019

I am participating in a project with other researchers from UTS, the University of Sydney and elsewhere, which compares the trajectories of energy transition in three countries; India, Germany and Australia. This is a preliminary set of arguments. It should not be assumed to express the consensus, conclusions, or more detailed knowledge of my colleagues, who are far better informed than myself.

We can begin with the simple observation that, greenhouse gas emissions are, at best, above targeted reductions (Germany), and, at worse, are steadily increasing (Australia and India). So the socio-political systems in place to reduce emissions and help the transition to renewable energies are not working very well.

All these countries seem to be encouraging what we might call neoliberal transition, where ‘neoliberal’ is defined as State encouragement of (largely big and established) business, the judging of acceptability by monetary profit or cheapness, and the provision of taxpayers’ money to protect those established businesses. Neoliberalism officially proclaims that the ‘free market’ provides the best solution to every problem, while not being ashamed to subsidise and protect favoured and influential market players (even while policy makers are claiming they are after a level playing field). The rhetorical point of neoliberalism is to posit business as the only, or most, important element in society, and profit-taking as the prime motivation for action. That helps explain why business interests are prioritized over all other interests. Neoliberalism, expresses the State as captured by capitalism, or specific corporate players.

Neoliberalism aims at maximizing profits and cheapness of production. Neither of which may always guarantee quality, or that the company works with local people in the local peoples’ interest. In Australia, the heavily neoliberal Federal government is talking of taxpayer subsidy of coal fired energy and is attempting to prolong the life of uneconomic coal based energy stations.

After blaming renewables for the steady increase in electricity prices (a point which is contested), the Australian government is attempting to force lower prices for electricity, which may harm smaller suppliers, and leave companies with less capital for investment in new energy sources. In the Hunter Valley in Australia, this move has involved a well-publicised fight against the closure of the Liddell power station, which its owners AGL, consider uneconomical, dangerous and fully replaceable with renewables.

The Government is also encouraging the opening of massive new coal mines, the expansion of old mines (primarily for export) and fracking, in the name of economic well-being.

Through these actions, the government appears to be putting the welfare of fossil fuel companies above everyone else.

In Germany, looking after established corporations has required a lot of taxpayers money in payouts and tax breaks. According to reports from the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Germany gives 55 billion euros ($61 billion US) in tax breaks to its biggest polluting industries, through exemptions from levies on kerosene, diesel and other sources of energy. Large corporations such as BASF SE and Thyssenkrupp AG benefit from exemptions from the Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, surcharge which are offered to companies with very high levels of electricity consumption. This obviously undermines the function of the Emissions Trading Scheme, or any other economic factors in persuading companies not to use fossil fuels, or become energy efficient. In the neoliberal regime, these companies can simply point out that if they do pay the cost for not using low emissions energy, they can simply go elsewhere. And this must be morally right given neoliberalism.

Looking after established corporations in this way, has also helped lessen any beneficial effects from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which was initially weakened by the over-issuing of tradeable certificates so the scheme would not hurt big and powerful polluters. State protection of big business, while talking of free markets, is neoliberalism at work.

In India both coal and renewables are being boosted for ‘development’, which increases total emissions levels. While the official target is for a total of 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewables by 2022, a Brooking’s institute report claims that in India:

approximately 65 GW of [coal based] power plants are under some stage of construction, with about 50 GW progressed beyond paper plans

This is clearly on top of the already existing coal fired energy plants, which according to some sources amounts to 220GW.

In all these countries, expansion of coalmines and destruction of villages and fertile land continues to be a source of struggle – although this may be coming to a foreseeable end in Germany.

Community energy seems to be being discouraged. Indeed in Germany and India rates of community participation in the transformation seem to be declining, due to the reverse auction process (where players bid for a lowest price to provide electricity) in Germany, and the availability of the grid requiring locally generated power to be destroyed in India. In Australia, community energy may often depend on local Councils deciding to interact with their communities and support such participation, and is thus difficult in areas in which Councils are not supportive. This does not mean there are no community energy projects, but there are few formal guidelines, especially in Australia. In NSW, regulations appear to frequently prevent sharing of locally generated power with specific other local people, thus preventing the construction of microgrids, other than on the one property. This probably comes about because of the neoliberal benefits of privatising the grid, and the need to keep grid companies profitable.

Neoliberal methods, by definition, tend to cut out popular participation and community control. Neoliberal consultations are often cursory and private, or ‘commercial in-confidence’; as good consultations are costly and slow, and can be considered interferences in the flow of the established market. Neoliberal methods can also lead to the destruction of land rendering it unsuitable for agricultural purposes, or which change land use, and changes of people’s relationships to the land, through rigorous application of property rights which define property as disposable. The production of solar panels may also be heavily polluting, and the concrete bases used for field based renewables, both solar and wind, also emit greenhouse gases and possibly decreases the mass of soil fertility. This does not mean that renewables may not have far less disastrous effect than coal, but that renewables are not inherently without unpleasant environmental and social consequences, and neoliberal, or commercial, policies do nothing to discourage this.

All of this sets up the paradox that we are trying to reconnect people to the necessity of maintaining ecologies, by disrupting their relationships to the ecology (pleasurable and otherwise).

Cutting out community based renewables, with input from local players, may leave people open to being used to resist the transition completely, as when politicians, media and astro-turf groups appear to encourage ideas of wind turbine syndrome and normally ignorable environmental destruction, in a “by all means have renewables, but not here” move. In Germany, increasing resistance to land based wind farms, and above ground power cables going through the countryside, has already helped slow down the transformation, and similar signs are present in Australia.

One reason for supporting neoliberal transitions is that it could be relatively quick, and relatively free of financial risk to tax-payers.

However, Neoliberal transition can mean diverting money to established companies who are not engaging in transition, or supporting established companies effectively sabotaging the transition by refusing to co-operate with competitors, or refusing to build the necessary, and resilient, grid infrastructure.

A problem with community based energy democracy, is lack of co-ordination and lack of speed, as it takes time to raise money and get people on board. However, locally based renewable power grids may, as well as being more considerate to the local people and landscapes, may also be less prone to wide scale disruption from storm events, which are likely to increase with climate change.

This may suggest another paradox: energy democracy may not have the speed to produce the transformation in time, but if we do produce the transformation in time it may be alienating for most people, put in place without proper consultation or participation, and generate protest and disruption.

If all goes well, then Germany might reach its targets but, without radical changes, India and Australia will carry on increasing their emissions. This continues to suggest that the procedures of transition in all three countries require modification.

The most obvious suggestion is to stop expecting companies to do it all, to stop actively inhibiting those companies who are engaged in change, and to make it easier and clearer for local communities (rural and city based) to set up their own renewable microgrids and complexes.

But this may not be enough.

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Predictions of Energy Change

September 16, 2019

This is my somewhat harsher version of the beginning of a coauthored and forthcoming book chapter. I particularly thank Tom Morton of UTS for much of the data and inspiration for what follows.

There is a lot of discussion as to whether or not the world has reached “peak demand” for fossil fuels as an energy source. Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases are generating climate change. This is not the only ecological crisis we face, but it is the one with the largest acknowledgement.

Large players in the fossil fuel industry seem eager to imply that world demand for coal and other fossil fuels are declining, but there is little evidence to imply that an energy transition to renewables is coming with the kind of speed we need.

For example, The BHP group states that coal will:

progressively lose competitiveness to renewables on a new build basis in the developed world and in China. In our view, the cross over point should have occurred in these major markets by the end of next decade on a conservative estimate. However, coal power is expected to retain competitiveness in India, where the coal fleet is only around 10 years old on average, and other populous, low income emerging markets, for a much longer time.

(Italics added)

BP are more optimistic still, stating that “renewables are the largest source of energy growth, gaining at an unprecedented rate” and “are set to penetrate the global energy system more quickly than any fuel previously in history.”

ExxonMobil describes a more complicated picture. While they suggest that coal use “likely peaked” in 2013 (p. 29), they suggest the immediate energy “switch” will be to gas (p. 33), which continues greenhouse gas emissions, if at a lesser rate (although this is not certain because of perpetual leakage). However, they also predict that:

global CO2 intensity of energy use remain[s] fairly constant, with increased coal use in some non-OECD countries offsetting improvements in the OECD countries (p. 39).

(Italics added)

They also predict that by 2040 the global energy mix will be:

  • 30% oil,
  • 26% gas,
  • 20% coal,
  • 8% biomass,
  • 7% nuclear,
  • 4% wind and solar, and
  • 4% hydro/geo/biofuels (p. 28).

It hardly needs to be emphasized that this implies that over 80% of a our fuel use will continue to emit greenhouse gases, even by 2040. The degree of transition to renewables will be trivial. Essentially, ExxonMobil predict a transition to a state which is not much different from today, as is shown by the IEA.

The IEA, claims, in its Key World Energy Statistics for 2017, that only 1.5% of world primary energy supply by fuel in 2016 was “geothermal, solar, wind, tide/wave/ocean, heat,” while 2.5% is hydro and 9.7% is biofuel (p. 6). That is, the proportion of our current energy usage in the world, which is renewable, non greenhouse gas emitting, could be said to be less than trivial!

We may also need to recall that we have been aware of the need for transition to low greenhouse gas emission energy, since the early 1980s, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change being signed in 1992, and this is the best we have done under the current system, and leaving it to private enterprise. (Because the market always knows what is best).

The change predicted and celebrated by ExxonMobil is hardly a transition, and hardly makes much of an impact on a situation which seems to becoming worse daily.

While recognising low utilisation today, the IEA is somewhat more optimistic in its prognosis: in Renewables 2018, it predicts that the share of renewables in meeting global energy demand is expected to grow by one-fifth to reach 12.4% in 2023. Renewables should have the fastest growth in the electricity sector, providing almost 30% of power demand in 2023, up from 24% in 2017. During this period, renewables are forecast to supply more than 70% of global electricity generation growth, led by solar PV and followed by wind, hydropower, and bioenergy. However:

30% of the growth in renewables consumption is expected to come from modern bioenergy… due to bioenergy’s considerable use in heat and its growing consumption… in transport. Other renewables make a negligible contribution to these two sectors [heat and transport], which together account for 80% of total energy consumption (IEA 2018: 3).

(Italics added)

Bioenergy is not clean. At best it consumes fertile land previously intended for agriculture, or leads to felling of old growth forests, thus dispossessing poorer farmers and forest dwellers and increasing the price of food. Biofuel is only of any conceivable use, if it replaces, and lowers, consumption of fossil fuels.

In another recent report the IEA adds:

Energy consumption worldwide grew by 2.3% in 2018, nearly twice the average rate of growth since 2010… natural gas… emerged as the fuel of choice last year, accounting for nearly 45% of the increase in total energy demand. Demand for all fuels rose, with fossil fuels meeting nearly 70% of the growth for the second year running….

global energy-related CO2 emissions increased to 33.1 Gt CO2, up 1.7%….

The United States had the largest increase in oil and gas demand worldwide. Gas consumption jumped 10% from the previous year, the fastest increase since the beginning of IEA records in 1971. The annual increase in US demand last year was equivalent to the United Kingdom’s current gas consumption.

Growth in India was led by coal (for power generation) and oil (for transport), the first and second biggest contributors to energy demand growth, respectively.

(Italics added)

The IEA points out that the pace and scale of the global energy transition, “is not in line with climate targets”. This we can almost certainly agree with.

It is, however, in line with a future which maximises fossil fuel company profits and destroys normal life for most people. That is were the World’s current policies have led us.

Data like this, might make you think, that we need Revolution, even if the consequences of Revolution will almost certainly be painful and horrendous. However, while we may wonder if we have any time left to avoid looming disaster, let us try the relatively painless, if perhaps insufficient move, of encouraging high renewable targets, ending of fossil fuel exploration, mining and use, within the next ten years, even if it costs some taxpayers’ money and risks financial problems for some companies. The cost will probably be less than that of oil wars.

This may require us to also consider the necessity of “degrowth” which will be considered in a later post.

_______________________________

Addenda

A new report by the IEA (20 September 2019) states that:

After stalling last year, global capacity additions of renewable power are set to bounce back with double-digit growth in 2019, driven by solar PV’s strong performance, according to the International Energy Agency.

The IEA expects renewable capacity additions to grow by almost 12% this year, the fastest pace since 2015, to reach almost 200 GW, mostly thanks to solar PV and wind. Global solar PV additions are expected to increase by over 17%

However:

Renewable capacity additions need to grow by more than 300 GW on average each year between 2018 and 2030 to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Even with the “bounce back”, we are still not moving fast enough.

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Greens and windmills

August 25, 2019

One-time Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, has recently protested against a windfarm in Tasmania saying:

the Tasmanian public, including the people of the North-West of the island, has not been properly informed of the private deals, or public impacts or cost-benefit analyses (economic, social, cultural and environmental) of this, one of the biggest wind farm projects on Earth.

and

The transmission lines are planned to cut through wild and scenic Tasmania, including the northeast Tarkine forests and (until local outrage led to a sudden change) the Leven Canyon, en route to Sheffield and then the new export cable beneath Bass Strait. Why not use the more direct, much less environmentally destructive route aligning the Bass Highway?

He has been accused of hypocrisy and puzzlement that the ABC and so on did not report this…

Bob Brown is human so he should be allowed to be inconsistent. That happens

However, it has never been Greens’ policy, as far as I am aware, that wind farms should be imposed on people. I think those claiming hypocrisy are thinking of the kinds of policies espoused by the right, in which people should joyfully embrace the coal mines, gas fields, highways and so on, which are imposed on top of them or expanded into them – and that farmland and water supplies should be permanently destroyed for temporary private profit, no matter what local people think.

However, Brown’s actions were not unreasonable, it was not about an impact on him in particular; he was responding to worried calls from people who contacted him, which shows he can listen to the public. This is unusual, but not hypocritical.

Again, who has said there should be no controls on Renewable Energy? Why should protected forest be destroyed for windfarms? Why should there be no debate or community consultation? Why should we assume that all renewables are without problem? Again, as this is not a coal mine, a motorway, or a casino in which everything has been agreed beforehand, we can attempt to make this process hospitable to locals….

Renewable energy has to fit in with the community, its views and values, if we value a free society. This may be too slow a way to proceed, but it is an ethical way.

Bob Brown is simply supporting democracy ahead of a development he might approve of in general, and this is so unusual that it looks weird and some people do not know how to respond.

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China Problem

August 24, 2019

It is true that if China goes ahead building coal plants, and supporting the building of coal plants elsewhere in the world, then any fight against climate change is lost.

The point is often made, why then aren’t environmentalists fighting China? Is this hypocrisy?

Well I’d have to say that most of what I know about China comes from the UN, Greenpeace or other Environmental NGOs, so I don’t know that people can say truthfully, that environmentalists are unconcerned about China or not fighting them in any way at all.

Most of the environmentalists I know are totally aware of the coal problem in both China and India. However, they tend to think that the only way we can influence the State in both of those countries is through example, so they would rather reinforce environmental concerns in the countries in which they live.

Also the countries in which they live,especially Australia and the US, can often seem to be trying to join the Chinese coal rush rather than counter it, and if that happens the environment is probably lost. So the idea is to fight were we might have influence.

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