[quote=gandalf]BTW, our EXISTING petrol-based energy industry has been the recipient of enormous investments, subsidies and foreign policy support from the United States Government over the last century.
Just don’t go yanking my chain about free markets and socialism and how renewable energy will never work because ‘Oil and Gas’ is as close as you can get to a state-sponsored, state-supported industry.
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How much did Iraq cost? Big oil got some tasty contracts from that. That was a huge subsidy. However:
ENERGY IS the capacity to do work (no energy = no work). Thus, the global economy is 100 percent dependent on energy — it always has been, and it always will be.
THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS tells us that neither capital nor labor nor technology can “create” energy. Instead, available energy must be spent to transform existing matter (e.g., oil), or to divert an existing energy flow (e.g., wind) into more available energy. There are no exceptions to the thermodynamic laws!
THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS tells us that energy is wasted at every step in the economic process. The engines that actually do the work in our economy (so-called “heat engines”; e.g., diesel engines) waste more than 50 percent of the energy contained in their fuel.
ENERGY “RESOURCES” MUST produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called “sinks” (this is known as the “net energy” principle). About 735 joules of energy is required to lift 15 kg of oil 5 meters out of the ground just to overcome gravity — and the higher the lift, the greater the energy requirements. The most concentrated and most accessible oil is produced first; thereafter, more and more energy is required to find and produce oil. At some point, more energy is spent finding and producing oil than the energy recovered — and the “resource” has become a “sink”.
There is an enormous difference between the net energy of the “highly-concentrated” fossil fuel that power modern industrial society, and the “dilute” alternative energy we will be forced to depend upon as fossil fuel resources become sinks.
No so-called “renewable” energy system has the potential to generate more than a tiny fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels!
So no, there is nothing that compares. Conversely, we don’t price it appropriately as I stated in my above post. Because markets on think short term when developing and energy strategy for the future requires long term thinking. Thus, the market can’t save us or the mythical invisible hand.
