Validity of Solar PV and Wind Energy in the 21st Century Earth
Frequent commenter SilentRunning notes: Dear Craig, you deserve a Star of Peace for allowing Dr. Cannera to pontificate against the two forms of energy, solar and wind as inefficient toys that will not significantly contribute to the global energy challenge in a meaningful way. My response is simple and straightforward. He should share all his concerns with the global investment community, as all publicized forecasts for total energy investment show by a wide margin that these two renewables garner close to 60 % or more of all the investment in new energy going forward thru 2040. Both technologies will only improve going forward. Even Shell Oil predicts 60% or more of these two energy forms by 2050.
It’s true that the global investment community, driven in part by the consensus of the global scientific community, supports solar and wind in a big way. To take a quick example, General Electric has more than ten thousand engineers on its staff, with a huge concentration on wind. Doesn’t it challenge the imagination to think that all these people (and their managers, investors, and bankers) are pursuing something that doesn’t make sense?
I don’t claim to understand Dr. Cannera’s position on all this. He seems to select an extremely narrow set of facts, and uses them to draw conclusions that are at odds with the much broader scientific consensus. His favorite weapon, for instance, is how much surface area wind farms require due to their low (“pathetic”) energy density. The rest of the world doesn’t dispute this, but we don’t think it’s the end of the world either, given that wind is extremely cheap, has an attractive EROI, and is already off-setting 370 GW of electricity that would have come mostly from fossil fuels.
He’s also no stranger to ad hominem attacks. He refers to me as a marketing guy, for example. While this is not entirely untrue, he likes to imply that my ideas can’t be correct because he has more degrees in physics than I do. Committing obvious fallacies like this is not in keeping with a strong, objective scientific spirit.
