Interesting 1975 Prediction on Electrical Energy Production in the Year 2000.

[NNadir]

I happen to be writing this brief and useless post in the Princeton University Library of Engineering where I am browsing in the record of the 10th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference that was held at the University of Delaware.

Here is a statement made in one of the papers:

"Inasmuch as the bulk of the energy from coal or from nuclear reactors, there is a strong incentive to develop advanced cycles that will give a high thermal efficiency when employed with coal or nuclear fuels."

As to what part of the above statement is true, I may refer to the figures of the http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html">Energy Information Agency.

Dangerous coal is the largest source of electrical energy in the United States on the day of this writing, and nuclear is the third largest after dangerous natural gas.

Around the same time, the dangerous fossil fuel funded oil company greenwasher Amory Lovins predicted in an insufferably stupid article, "The Road Not Taken" - which was certainly not printed in an engineering journal, but in a journal called Foreign Affairs - that solar energy would represent the largest source of electricity by the year 2000, although he offered in the same article, great praise for wild cat distributed coal burning.

Here's a graph of what Amory boy was predicting:



Um, no nuclear there. Four years later, in 1980 in the very same not an engineering journal, Amory confidently announced, "Nuclear Power is Dead!!!!" Kaput. Pushing up daisies. Finished. Over with. Not even worthy of consideration. Goner. Off in the great beyond.

However, I note that the 1975 Proceedings to which I refer, and will not actually cite, the author of the paper predicted high thermal efficiencies for power plants (didn't happen except with dangerous natural gas), and helium prices of $10,000/1000 square feet.

He predicted that world inventories of minable helium would be depleted by 2000. That may happen - I think it will happen, but it hasn't happened yet.

Have a wonderful evening of deep reflection and passion.

[jpak]

1. Yeah - Lovins wrongly assumed that the US would elect officials with brains in their heads

Instead we elected pronuclear pro-fossil fuel anti-renewable GOP assholes like Ronald Reagan, Poppy, Shrub, Lott and Gingrich.

yup

[Kolesar]

2. If you feed them, they will keep coming back

:hi:

[madokie]

3. That is it in a nutshell

but only in big guys world does that mean that Amory Lovins is a bad guy even though if not for the political turn we as a country took Lovins would have been spot on. What a piece of work this op is

[NNadir]

4. There is NOT ONE place on this planet, NOT ONE, where Lovins' fantasy came to pass.

Zero. Zilch.

Nada.

However, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1016_TVhypercar_2.html">hydrogen HYPErcars have been in showrooms since 2005.

And of course, Gerhardt Schroeder made a killing working for http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901755.html">Gazprom at high salary.

Germany is however, phasing out it's stupid "screw the poor to subsidize rich people" subsidy for the http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2262661/shares-tumble-germany-slashes">the failed solar industry that has never, not once, shut a single dangerous fossil fuel plant anywhere on earth.

Zero.

Now we know why Amory Lovins gets paid so much by BP and other oil and gas companies.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Amory+B.+Lovins">Famous Anti-nuke Amory Lovins describes his revenue sources:

Mr. Lovins’s other clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included the OECD, the UN, and RFF; the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments; 13 states; Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.

[GliderGuider]

5. Instead, here's what actually happened

There was apparently a reporting change by the EIA is 1989, so the data since 1990 is the most significant. Since 1990, the generation mix has been essentially constant, with coal providing about half the electricity. Within the renewable sector, wind is coming on, the contribution of hydro is dropping, and solar is still bringing up the rear.

[Massacure]

6. I think that second graph is probably a little bit misleading.

Hydroelectric power is a smaller slice of the renewable energy pie, but that is because capacity hasn't grown like that of other technologies.

As for your comment about solar bringing up the rear, that is because solar is a money pit. Wind is cost competitive with fossil fuel generation. The Northwest has substantial hydroelectric capacity, and has significant wind resources. If they were to develop wind energy and use the hydroelectric capacity for energy storage, I think that region has a lot of promise for reducing reliance on fossil fuels.