theautomaticearth | Renewable energy is never going to be a strategy for continuing on our
present expansionist path. It is not a good fit for the central station
model of modern power systems, and threatens to destabilize them,
limiting rather than extending our ability to sustain business as usual.
The current plans attempt to develop it in the most technologically
complex, capital and infrastructure dependent manner, mostly dependent
on government largesse that is about to disappear. It is being deployed
in a way that minimizes a low energy profit ratio, when that ratio is
already likely too low to sustain a society complex enough to produce
energy in this fashion.
Renewable electricity is not truly renewable, thanks to non-renewable
integral components. It can be deployed for a period of time in such a
way as to cushion the inevitable transition to a lower energy society.
To do this, it makes sense to capitalize on renewable energy's inherent
advantages while minimizing its disadvantages. Minimizing the
infrastructure requirement, by producing power adjacent to demand, and
therefore moving power as little distance as possible, will make the
most of the energy profit ratio. The simplest strategy is generally the
most robust, but all the big plans for renewables have gone in the
opposite direction. In moving towards hugely complex mechanisms for
wheeling gargantuan quantities of power over long distances, we create a
system that is highly brittle and prone to cascading system failure.
In a period of sharp economic contraction, we will not be able to
afford expensive complexity. Having set up a very vulnerable system, we
are going to have to accept that the the lights are not necessarily
going to come on every time we flick a switch. Our demand will be much
lower for a while, as economic depression deepens, and that may buy the
system some time by lowering some of the stresses upon it. The lack of
investment will take its toll over time however.
While a grid can function at some level even under very challenging conditions - witness India
- it is living on borrowed time. We would do well to learn from the
actions, and daily frustrations, of those who live under grid-challenged
conditions, and do what we can to build resilience at a community
level. Governments and large institutions will not be able to do this at
a large scale, so we must act locally.
As with many aspects of society navigating a crunch period,
decentralization can be the most appropriate response. The difficulty is
that there will be little time or money to build micro-grids based on
local generation. It may work in a few places blessed with resources
such as a local hydro station, but likely not elsewhere in the time
available. The next best solution will be minimizing demand in advance,
and obtaining back up generators and local storage capacity, as they use
in India and many other places with unstable grids. These are
relatively affordable and currently readily available solutions, but do
require some thought, such as fuel storage or determining which are
essential loads that should be connected to batteries and inverters with
a limited capacity. Later on, such solutions are much less likely to be
available, so acting quickly is important.
Minimizing demand in a planned manner greatly reduces dependency, so
that limited supply can serve the most essential purposes. It is much
better than reducing demand haphazardly through deprivation in the
depths of a crisis. Providing a storage component can cover grid
downtime, so that one no longer has to worry so much when the power will
be available, so long as it is there for some time each day. Given that
even degraded systems starved of investment for years can deliver
something, storage can provide a degree of peace of mind. It is
typically safer than storing generator fuel.
Some will be able to install renewable generation, but it will not make
sense to do this with debt on the promise of a feed-in tariff contract
that stands to be repudiated. Those who can afford it will be those who
can do it with no debt and no income stream, in other words those who do
it for the energy security rather than for the money, and do not
over-stretch themselves in the process. Sadly this will be very few
people. Pooling resources in order to act at a community scale can
increase the possibilities, although it may be difficult to convince
enough people to participate.
It is difficult to say what power grids might look like following an
economic depression, or what it will be possible to restore in the years
to come. The answers are likely to vary widely with location and local
circumstances. Depression years are very hard on vital economic sectors
such as energy supply. Falling demand undercuts price support, and
prices fall more quickly than the cost of production, so that margins
are brutally squeezed. Even as prices fall, purchasing power falls
faster, so that affordability gets worse. Consumers are squeezed,
leading to further demand destruction in a positive feedback loop.
Under these circumstances, the energy sector is likely to be starved of
investment for many years. When the economy tries to recover, it is
likely to find itself hitting a hard ceiling at a much lower level of
energy supply. With less energy available, society will not be able to
climb the heights of complexity again, and therefore many former energy
sources dependent on complex means of production will not longer be
available to simpler future societies. Widespread electrification may
well be a casualty of the complexity crash.
We are likely to realize at that point just how unusual the era of high
energy profit ratio fossil fuels really was, and what incredible
benefits we had in our hands. Sadly we squandered much of this
inheritance before realizing its unique and irreplaceable value. The
future will look very different.
