Obama Doesn't Mince Words at the National Clean Energy Summit
I thought I’d post a pic of my press credentials from the National Clean Energy Summit. Apparently, anytime the president is in the same room with a member of the media, a “White House Press Pool” tag is required, even if the meeting is more than 2000 miles from the White House per se. Who knew?
My favorite quotes (which I paraphrase):
“Renewable energy has grown to the point that it’s a serious threat to the fossil interests, the Koch brothers, and so forth. 
But what its enemies are just now learning is that this is America. We don’t move backwards; we’re visionaries, we’re innovators, and we always move forward. Their attempts to lock the people of the United States into old, obsolete and dirty technologies will ultimately fail.”
“You people work towards tomorrow’s energy future every day of the week. Understand that I stand with you; I’m here, at your side. Thank you and good night.”
I looked around at the standing ovation and noticed that there were many people in the audience shedding tears of pure joy.
The president, unfortunately, said nothing that will actually make a significant difference. It is too little and too late. Nuclear power is essential to minimize global warming. Half-way measures will make little difference.
By the year 2100, the global demand for power will increase by about FOUR TIMES as poor countries strive to lift their people out of poverty. That includes power for heating, cooling, lighting, cooking, transportation, sea water desalination, manufacturing, etc. To reduce CO2 emissions to acceptable levels, about 90% of that power must come from non-CO2 emitting sources.
Renewables, because of their intermittent nature, can make only a very minor contribution towards reducing CO2 emission although they are useful under some circumstances and have improved the lives of people in remote areas, especially in developing countries.
Only nuclear power can adequately reduce CO2 emissions so that 90% of global power will come from non-CO2 emitting sources. Unfortunately, the anti-nuclear crowd, by making government leaders afraid even to mention nuclear power, are leading us down a very destructive path.
Even though our current nuclear power technology is worse than mediocre, it still has a far better safety record than any other currently used power generating technology. It is capable of reducing CO2 emissions to an acceptable level and should be greatly expanded until we develop a better nuclear technology.
The reason we are temporarily stuck with a bad nuclear technology is that funds for R & D for better nuclear technologies were cut off in the late 1960s else we would already be using a better, more economical, more efficient, and safer nuclear power technology. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) looks especially promising, partly because it cannot melt down, but there are also other nuclear technologies that could be used to replace our current pressurized water nuclear reactors.
For more information, I suggest spending many hours studying. The following google searches will provide a good start:
“thorium reactor”
“integral fast reactor”
“pebble bed reactor”
Our government leaders should get over their fear of the anti-nuclear crowd and do what should be done, i.e., greatly expand nuclear power while supporting research for better nuclear technologies.
We should immediately fast track the molten salt reactor IF there are no proliferation concerns. All the other so called problems are just nothing compared to globl warming. If there is concern, that’ll explain why politicians want no part of it.
The best bet is to put all energy related research into laser initiated fusion. Just make the lasers and confinement better.
And finally, continue to research the cheapest long lasting batteries for solar and electric cars.
By the year 2100, we’ll be able to power 5x today’s energy demands with just solar and batteries alone. Of course, we’ll be able to power 10x that, even, with fusion. So, it’s a matter of timing – and the we’ll to perfect fusion and batteries.
We’ve got the tech to transition beyond fossil fuels, now, we need the will (not we’ll).
For our immediately crucial transition away from prehistoric carbon fuel, nuke tech is not a viable option. Thorium reactors are a pretty concept, but they don’t yet exist in the real world. We can’t afford to wait years for a tech that’s in it’s embryonic stages.
All the genuinely planned projects and currently operating commercial facilities are nuclear old-style fission energy technology. That old and persisting form of nuclear power is prohibitively expensive when all the costs are accounted for – mining, refining, construction, insuring, waste containment, facility lifespan, decommissioning – and, given natural disasters, human error and sabotage/terrorism potential, it’s clearly proven to be inherently dangerous to the biosphere just to operate.
Instead, we could today be building ten thousand Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants, each a mile square – completely proven power generation technology – dotted along our Sunbelt from Southern California to Georgia.
Using our proven storage technologies – such as molten salt and pumped hydro – and transmitting power over High-Voltage Direct-Current (HVDC), those plants will provide all the electricity currently consumed all across the entire continental US. This system will also scale up nicely to power a new electric infrastructure for freight, as well as public and individual transportation. Advances in battery technology will also very soon compete in the grid energy storage arena.
Those 10,000 plants will cover less than a third of one percent of the land area in the lower 48 states, and at $600 million per square mile, those ten thousand CSP plants will total $6 trillion (plus a few hundred billion for infrastructure improvements). It sounds like a lot of cash, but that’s just nine years of our foreign oil expenses (and that’s without even mentioning any of the military savings) – and it’ll put in place a permanently maintainable and renewable system that provides cheap, clean and sustainable energy for all our nation’s electricity.
“If that’s true,” you say (and it is true), “why aren’t we doing it?”
Ask why seat belts took decades to become a required standard in cars.
Ask why US vehicle fuel efficiency still drags behind Japan and Europe, and even they are still far behind the standards that we ourselves achieved decades ago during WWII.
American broadband speed and coverage are yet further examples of the willful restraint of technology that’s been inflicted on us by entrenched vested interests.
Unless they’re forced by law to behave otherwise, corporations can only be expected to do whatever increases profit, no matter what the consequences for humanity and the biosphere.
CSP is completely doable and is, in fact, inevitable. It’s already pouring energy into the grid in California, Arizona, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, and a growing number of other places around the globe.
The vast majority of the material needed is concrete, steel and glass. The present barriers against this elegant solution are not technical nor resource-based, nor even financial – they’re purely political barriers erected and reinforced by bribery, and by the fossil interests that do the bribing.
Isn’t it about time We the People stood up, and put an end to bribery, and an end to the ruin it spreads across our society and the world?
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is safe, clean, proven technology, and modern energy storage systems make it viable. Harvesting modern sunshine is much cleaner and safer (and cheaper in the long run) than sucking and digging up filthy prehistoric sunshine, dragging it dangerously all over the planet, burning it up, and pouring 32 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly into the modern sky. Only bribery keeps that toxic filth marketable.
Maybe someday we’ll have point to point molecular transporter beams, but for now, we need to move to electric drive that facilitates transportation using non-carbon energy sources. Don’t let the dream of distant tech be the friend of the nightmare of the present carbon overload.
The MSR was somewhat developed decades ago. The ONLY reason to even hesitate for a second is IF proliferation concerns have any weight. Fusion WILL take longer to develop than a very simple MSR. (Read my other comment).
Sorry, i wanted to say that i like the solar idea as well.
Well said Cameron. But single technology solutions depend upon constant and uniform conditions. Under present conditions I completely agree with your understanding that MSR is a technology that has not yet been proven while CSP has working plants. I would like to see your vision become a reality. But this ideal solution is like imagining a world where we would create electrified highways and simply transmit power to electric cars. It is also technologically possible. It would be cheaper and more efficient than our present course of battery technology, but is highly unlikely in our political environment.
Instead we could imagine a future where Geo-engineering or environmental disasters (man made or natural) so degrade the potential insolation that solar energy solutions (and even natural crops) are not sufficiently efficient. This would be the dystopian future that some envision on our present course of partisan, corporate financed politics. Energy solutions for such a dark, probably more polluted and hotter world would need solutions that are independent of solar energy. So as “devils advocate” if we are going to ruin our world then we may need nuclear energy. (The only other energy sources completely independent of solar energy are volcanic geothermal and tidal energy)
And then there are places on Earth that don’t get sufficient solar energy. Geothermal and wind might be renewable solutions but there is also going to be a strong demand for nuclear solutions in present cold and dark areas of our globe.
Alternatively we might eventually see a global market in heat as there is more development in the game changing technology of chemical based, stable heat storage batteries. And if this technology breaks in the near term it would create a global demand for CSP.
its, not it’s 😛
I noticed that too; there has been a spate of that here recently…. 🙂
Graig,
You have posed an insight into US politics, those who fervently believe in things that should be right, and those who believe in what is practical.
Those in tears at President Obama’s speech, belong to a class of people who need a faith. These folk have developed their own new religion from a bit of science, enlightenment philosophy, old leftist economic theory, and Christian morality. While this may seem no bad thing, it soon become obvious that the new faith is based on a distorted understanding of the original believes.
Due to a gullible media, desperate for sensationalism over analysis, these fuzzy feel good, prophets of populist hysteria, have gained massive political traction.
They practice the old populist rhetoric of telling people what they what to hear, wrapped up as scientific fact. Thus a new faith is born. A home for all those leftists , who lost relevance as the Berlin wall crashed, all those church goers, who lost faith as organized religion lost popularity, the young seeking a cause to rebel against their parent society, and those who just needed somewhere that didn’t make them feel powerless and insignificant in a rapidly globalizing world.
Compare the response to your article between the commonsense, practical, unemotional comment by freggersjr, and Cameron’s emotional comment containing wildly impractical claims.
The real problem with advocates like Cameron, is they operate under the delusion the they represent the “people” ! In this they have never really grown out of that student phase that imagined a group of self-appointed, deluded, spoiled, know-it all’s, really represented anyone but themselves.
That’s the real problem of debating environmental and scientific progress. Emotional, philosophical, ideological, rhetoric becomes more important politically, than any practical progress.
The President’s speech was a sop to all his old faithful supporters, a bid to create a legacy for good intentions, instead of a Presidency distinguished by mediocrity and lost opportunities.
Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/09/03/obamas-tour-of-alaska-what-are-his-motives/.
Hey, marcopolo…
“The real problem with advocates like Cameron, is they operate under the delusion the they represent the “people” ! In this they have never really grown out of that student phase that imagined a group of self-appointed, deluded, spoiled, know-it all’s, really represented anyone but themselves.”
…wow… emotional much…?
Yet another in a long line of sad straw-man attempts to insult and discredit people on this site, offered to us by the confirmed skeptic of anthropogenic climate disruption, the defender of greed, and the champion of fossil fuels (except bunker oil).
Breath On the Wind
I appreciate your comment.
Incidentally, I understand High Voltage Direct Current is capable of transmitting electricity efficiently for many hundreds of miles, so quite distant areas within a certain range can still be powered by CSP installations in sunbelt regions.
Also, a place and plug distributed CSP solution is apparently near finalization – something Google had worked toward but had been unable to achieve. I find that promising also.
I have read about efficiency over more than 1000 miles for HVDC. Desertec was the umbrella name for a huge group of investors who planned to mine the Middle East and Sahara sun instead of oil. CSP would be one way to capture the power. HVDC would be used to transmit power to Europe. The plans seem to have fractured now: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-desertec-solar-energy-project-has-run-into-trouble-a-867077.html But there are other players intending to pick up where they left off.
1000 miles would cover much of the Continental US. But leaving aside a dystopian future, there continues to be several solutions: NW has lots of hydroelectric. One long term solution for the East Coast seems to be Offshore wind (higher capacity factor) with a HVDC line in the Atlantic. Hawaii has volcanic geothermal but there are some surprising pollution problems. And then there is another dark horse with dry well geothermal around the country. There are certainly enough renewable resources to enrich the economy and provide plenty of power form decades to come (Without Nuclear.) But what about Maine and Alaska?- How about Canada, India, South America, SE Asia and Indonesia with its thousands of islands and a huge population.
Here is another solar tech with integral heat energy storage for 24/7 energy production that you might enjoy: http://www.except.nl/en/#.en.articles.93-solar-updraft-tower-upgrade
I agree with your conclusions with regard to CSP, HVDC and hydro.
These would cover the vast majority of human populations, and therefore of energy use.
There will doubtless be isolated areas for which alternatives may not present themselves for some time.
It’s a pity Tesla’s goal of harnessing the earth’s magnetic field to generate electricity for the world was never realized – such a system wouldn’t have the same regional criteria.
Cameron, perhaps there is something to Tesla’s wanting to harness Alternative Energies around the Earth related to humidity, ions, and / or magnetic fields, but his original problem with his famous backer was that “free” does not immediately suggest a business plan for investment capital. Some of the issues with the internet follow the same themes where we resort to a news business model with paid adverts. Someday we may have to agree to paid adverts scrolling across our shower doors so we can turn on the “free” lights to take care of business.
Cameron,
I sorry you took my comments so personally.
However, your reply sort proves my point ! You find it necessary to attack anyone who holds other opinions, or even just more moderate opinions, as a ” heretic ” in need of public damnation.
I certainly see no shame in remaining skeptical of any claim, scientific or otherwise. I see no shame in remaining objectively analytical. Because I’m not jealous of those more affluent than me, that doesn’t make me “a defender of greed”, just perhaps a little more tolerant and realistic.
I’m not a “champion of fossil fuels”. But I’m also not an extremist. Fossil fuels created our entire industrialized world, they remain the largest factor in the world economy. The oil industry produces more than 350,000 products, including life saving medicines and technology.
This is reality, just ranting inanely about the evils of something you use every day, ( and can’t live without) is not productive, it’s just a futile exercise in hypocrisy.
The environment isn’t a religion ! Nor can any pristine Shangri-la, or Utopia be created by advocating unworkable technologies be implemented at vast cost to the taxpayer.
(why do people like you always want the taxpayer to pick up the tab, why not use your own money? ).
But, I think the real difference between us is that while you sit advocating the government should put your disruptive ideology into action, I raise money from like minded investors, or use my own money to develop new technologies to benefit the environment, using evolutionary, not revolutionary methods to gain public acceptance.
So far, I’ve met with mixed success. But at least something’s happening. From the failures I learn, from the successes I earn :).
marcopolo, I don’t take anything anyone says personally. If I ran my life in accordance with the opinions of others I’d expect a fairly miserable and pointless existence.
I simply made an observation that your accusation of emotionalism was rather emotionally charged:
“In this they have never really grown out of that student phase that imagined a group of self-appointed, deluded, spoiled, know-it all’s, really represented anyone but themselves.”
Wouldn’t you agree it has a rather sour flavor? I found it rather amusing and revealing.
Cameron,
Hmmm… you don’t think your description of me as ” confirmed skeptic of anthropogenic climate disruption, the defender of greed, and the champion of fossil fuels (except bunker oil). ” got a little personal ?
In fact, as I pointed out on a different thread, it’s also completely inaccurate.
The principal difference between us is that I don’t believe that endless lofty pronouncements about futuristic solutions requiring vast amounts of “other peoples” (taxpayer) money is a substitute for actually doing something practical yourself.
I also fail to see how stentorian condemnation of exiting contributors to the economy, can be of any benefit until those elements can be practically replaced.
A Beauty Contestant may be quite sincere when she claims to want to ” work for “World Peace”, but I wouldn’t place much faith on her sentiment having any constructive value !
Concentrating Solar Power just doesn’t work the way you imagine. A highly industrialized modern nation requires an abundance of ” power on demand”. From your optimistic projections, it’s clear you don’t understand the complexity of power generation and distribution in an industrialized economy.
As Germany has discovered, it’s not practical to try and adapt demand to supply, it must be the other way around, the grid must be able to respond to demand.
That doesn’t mean solar can’t contribute to supplement power consumption “on site”, but Solar contributions to the grid are largely illusory . much of the energy is dumped to prevent the grid being overloaded and creating power surges. This may improve in time as better storage technology is developed.
In contrast, Thorium generated power can generate efficient, practical, energy, that can be used within the existing distribution system. The fears of Thorium technology are based on misconceptions and prejudice.
The US doesn’t have “six trillion dollars”! Have you looked at the national debt clock lately?
If it wasn’t for the recent energy boom in the US created by domestic (North American) fossil fuels, the US economy would be in serious recession (even default).
The US needs to invest it’s current oil and gas economic windfall into procuring real domestic alternate energy production, instead of wasting this opportunity, as Australia did with it’s resources boom.
I want a molten salt reactor in every city, however, is it really true that there would be NO proliferation concerns? Would there not be a need for security (at every site on the planet)? Obviously, no security is 100% failsafe. Perhaps, there is a design that requires no security. That would be awesome!
I still feel the need to not put aside the potential of batteries and solar. We can’t base them (including nuclear) on their past since the technology of mass producing using less energy can only improve.
For many the MSR sounds like a great solution with no apparent drawbacks. However even before a working power plant there are several potential issues we might reason.
– It is part of the nature of a MSR to “burn up” some of our Nuclear Waste. Great! But than means moving that waste around. With such movement accidents can happen.
– We continue to be dealing with a radioactive substance that requires containment. That containment can easily corrode. It must be maintained. And probably a worst case it could be sabotaged.
_ And then proliferation might continue to be a serious issue: http://www.whatisnuclear.com/reactors/msr.html
Nuclear Energy is brought to us by those who like the concentrated and powerful. Then tend to be experts who like to keep their knowledge to themselves. This distrust of the general public and their concerns has lead to many conflicts. At this point some of the general public is very concerned and distrustful of anything “nuclear.”
Sounds like there are serious optics going on about it but what about the grid and storage systems? Those transformers are expensive, have long lead times, serious logistic issues, and aren’t kept in storage or inventory. Putting in new power lines always seem to have issues from what I read and hear in the local news.