284. RENEWABLES PROVIDE A LOT MORE THAN A "TINY" FRACTION OF PRIMARY ENERGY

Hacks and propagandists for the fossil fuel industry are fond of saying that renewables only provide a tiny fraction of our energy needs, and thus are not a viable option for the future.

Here's a classic sample from Lee Raymond, former CEO and Chairman of Exxon:

One of the difficulties people have, even some who work in this business, is understanding the scale and size of the energy industry. This is important to understand in order to put in perspective what some of the alternatives are and to judge if they are significant in the context of the whole. There are many alternative forms of energy that people talk about that may be interesting. But they are not consequential on the scale that will be needed, and they may never have a significant impact on the energy balance. To the extent that people focus too much on that — for example, on solar or wind, even though they are not economic — what they are doing is diverting attention from the real issues. And 25 years from now, even with double-digit growth rates, they will still be less than 1 percent of the energy supplied to meet worldwide demand. I am more interested in staying focused on the 99 percent than the 1 percent.Source

This is a load of self-serving corporate PR bullshit. In fact, renewables provide the vast majority of our energy needs, even today, and can very easily provide much much more at almost no cost. Sound unbelievable? I thought so too, because I was brainwashed just like everybody else. Then Rowan from sydneypeakoil.com turned me on to Hermann Scheer, a German who is a true genius of energy analysis. Scheer has a more correct way of looking at things which I'll explain for you in my own words.

Consider a simple example. Like most people in Japan, I generally dry my laundry by hanging it out the window. This process uses two renewable energy sources: wind and solar. In the U.S., on the other hand, most people use electric or gas dryers which consume about 1000kwh/year/dryer (about 6% of power consumption in the average household).

The odd thing here is that, when an American dries their clothes with non-renewable energy, the electricity and gas is included in the energy statistics. But when I dry my clothes with renewable energy, the solar and wind isn't included in the statistics. So it's no big surprise that renewables account for a tiny fraction of primary energy. Whenever you use renewables, the statistics don't count it!

If everybody in the U.S. started drying their clothes on the line, or using a laundry rack, you'd have an immediate gain of about 30GWh in renewable energy "production". And it's not like there is a problem with "scaling" or bad economics here. The cost of switching to renewable clothes drying is about $20. The payback time on your investment in a clothesline/rack is about a month.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Another obvious example is Africa. Most energy needs in Sub-Saharan Africa are met with renewable solar and biomass, but that somehow doesn't count as "real energy". That's because it's only real when Lee Raymond and his country club* cronies make money on it.

Here's some more examples from Scheer's book The Solar Economy:

Heating needs met from solar collectors or from wood burning stoves, houses positioned for maximum solar gain, conservatories, transparent insulation, double glazing, exploitation of the heat input from the human bodies living or working in the building, heat exchangers, exploitation of none of these solar heating gains find their way into the energy statistics.

Further examples: people need artificial light from sunset to sunrise; during the daytime, the sun meets lighting needs. The need for artificial light is lower when the days are long than when the days are short. The difference in electricity demand between these two times of year is an indication of the proportion of lighting needs that is met by the sun.

These energy inputs are ignored because they are taken for granted, yet they are of great practical importance. These is considerable scope for energy conservation through using town planning to maximize solar gain, and through architectural features and additional 'daylighting' technology that allows a maximum amount of daylight into the building. Nevertheless energy statistics take no account of energy-conscious planning and design. The same can be said for the replacement of cooling systems powered by diesel motors or grid electricity with natural cooling and flexible shading.

The inadequacy of energy statistics also extends to the figures for electricity consumption: what does not flow through the grid does not get counted. Not a single form of autonomous energy generation is recognized in the energy statistics! Yet the range of autonomous systems extends from wristwathes to pocket calculators, from water pumps to autonomous houses with no grid connection, from solar lamps to street signs lit using PV, from solar battery charges to the solar home systems in developing country villages and small-scale wind turbines. This list could be extended indefinitely, both for heating and for electricity. It includes sun-dried crops, irrigation windmills, biological fertilizers, cycling, solar-powered boats and more many more examples of how fossil fuel consumption can be avoided or replaced.

[...]

These blind spots mean that energy statistics oriented toward commercial piped energy can only provide a fragmentary and thus wholly inadequate understanding of energy. They obscure the fact that, notwithstanding massive consumption of fossil fuel and nuclear energy, the sun is still humankind's largest single energy source.

[...]

With current data-collection practices, theoretically it would be possible to replace more than half of all fossil energy consumption with solar technology without significantly increasing the statistically observable proportion of energy demand met from renewable sources. (P. 141-143)

So this whole bit about renewables making up only a tiny fraction of the energy pie is nothing but accounting chicanery -- just what you'd expect from the greedy, polluting scumbags who run Exxon.

Kinda makes you want to do a lab-rat experiment on Lee Raymond. We place Lee in a world without energy supplied by the sun and the wind. Just switch the sun off, and let Lee take care of business with fossil fuels from Exxon. As the food shrivels and the temperature plummets, Lee shouldn't have much trouble. After all, the sun and the wind are just small-scale, insignificant energy sources which "may never have a significant impact on the energy balance".
-----
*) When I say "country club", I do mean country club:

A proxy statement filed by Exxon with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday disclosed that the former chairman Lee Raymond received a compensation package worth about $140 million last year, including cash, stock, options and a pension plan. He is also still entitled to stock, options and long-term compensation worth at least another $258 million.

The total sum paid to Raymond amounts to at least $398 million and is among the biggest US compensation bonanzas ever. [...]

Exxon's board also agreed to pay Raymond's country club fees, allow him to use the company aircraft and pay him another $1 million to stay on as a consultant for another year. Mr. Raymond agreed to reimburse Exxon partly when he uses the company jet for personal travel.

[...]

The company [Exxon] also paid $210,800 for Mr. Raymond's country club fees, financial planning and tax assistance services. It also provided two years of protection for Raymond and his wife, including paying for a security system for his principal residence, security personnel, a car and a driver.Source

Lee Raymond, poster boy for disgusting rich people

Yes, if you hear anything coming out of Lee's grotesque oral cavity, you can be pretty sure it's just the greed talking.

-- by JD