The Myth of Alternative Energy
TUCKER, WILLIAM
The Myth of Alternative Energy The life and times of Amory Levins, green guru BY WILLIAM TUCKER Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are...
...Because commitments to the first may foreclose the second, we must soon choose one or the other—before failure to stop nuclear proliferation has foreclosed both...
...At the same time, the state has built nothing larger than small co-generation plants...
...There are no other alternatives...
...Much energy at power plants was vented as steam (think of the cooling towers on nuclear reactors...
...These energy utopias then become an excuse for doing nothing in the present...
...And by the time he's through, he thinks he'll have so much electricity that he'll be able to replace the electricity he started with...
...Today, Lovins readily admits that, "except perhaps for Maine," no state has been more diligent than California in putting his "soft energy path" into effect...
...By 2025 we would be living in Energy Utopia—a world run entirely on renewable resources...
...The Golden State has over 100 windmill facilities generating 1,400 mw, 3 percent of the state's capacity...
...By contrast, many nuclear plants now run nearly two years without interruption...
...Once again, Lovins has made the mistake of concentrating on the capacity of the system while ignoring the energy required to fuel the system...
...The alternative "hard path," on the other hand, promised a brittle, unreliable world of extended transmission lines and nuclear power...
...California itself remains unconverted...
...They did essentially nothing on the demand side...
...A fairer and more logical explanation would be that the soft path and the theory that alternative energies could replace central generating stations proved to be woefully misbegotten...
...oil industry produces gasoline...
...There's a heck of a lot of methane in the solar system that doesn't come from living things," says Lovins...
...Why not match the two...
...Let us give credit where credit is due...
...These efforts have been largely successful...
...The key breakthrough is the fuel cell, a device that uses hydrogen to produce an electric current, with 170 degree water the only by-product...
...If Nevada had built more efficient houses and casinos, we'd have a much better balance of supply and demand in the western pool today...
...What Lovins has invented here is a perpetual motion machine—a machine that runs on its own output...
...The state has spent billions on conserva tion through countless mandates and incentives to the utility companies to subsidize conservation investment and cut consumer demand...
...But we use only 3 percent less electricity...
...Every other power source added to the grid has been "clean and renewable...
...Small "co-generation" plants at manufacturing sites could generate electricity while using the waste steam for industrial purposes...
...What went wrong...
...Gasoline has 1.5 to 2 times the fuel value of alcohol per gallon...
...You could produce enough liquid fuels out of all the farm and forest wastes that are produced and disposed of today...
...But this violates one of the fundamental laws of physics—the conservation of energy...
...The carbon dioxide, of course, is just another "greenhouse gas," but Lovins would re-inject it into the gas wells, keeping it out of the atmosphere and increasing subterranean pressure that would make more gas easier to extract...
...California now ranks dead last among the 50 states in electrical consumption per capita...
...The state must import 20 percent of its electricity, most of it from hydroelectric dams in Oregon and Washington and coal and nuclear plants in Arizona and Nevada...
...He subscribes to the theory of Cornell astronomy professor Thomas Gold that not all natural gas is necessarily biological in origin...
...Even before PCs began replacing mainframes as the major source of computing power, Lovins was arguing that small, "distributed" sources of power could take the place of large nuclear or coal facilities...
...But is that much natural gas really available...
...At least half the energy growth never reaches the consumer because it is lost in elaborate conversions in an increasingly inefficient fuel chain dominated by electrical generation...
...Not content with reforming electricity generation, Lovins has gone on to invent the Hypercar, a lightweight, hydrogen-powered automobile that he informed Fortune will "end the car, oil, steel, aluminum, nuclear, coal, and electricity industries...
...Moreover, Lovins has made the Hypercar part of a larger scenario that he claims will (1) power the entire transportation sector, (2) solve our air pollution problems, and (3) "end the car, oil, steel, aluminum, nuclear, coal, and electricity industries"—all in one blow...
...Lovins sees no problem...
...Existing natural gas resources—roughly 200 years of supply at current rates of consumption—could provide a long bridge to a fully renewable energy system," he says...
...Lovins is seeking $250 million...
...In addition, of course, there was the ever-present environmental anxiety that nuclear power might actually prove to be reasonably cheap and manageable, opening the door to more mass consumption, suburban sprawl, and industrial progress...
...Some of the hydrogen would be fed into the buildings' fuel cells, to supply their electricity, heat, and hot water...
...Although Gold's theory has scattered support in the scientific community, it is by no means proven...
...There is only one problem with the Age of Hydrogen: Where do you get the hydrogen...
...It's like cutting butter with a chain-saw," Lovins said pithily...
...Each new windmill and landfill adds about 2.5 mw...
...Yet since we actually use electricity for many such low-grade purposes, it now meets 13 percent of U.S...
...The story begins in 1976, when the nation found itself in the throes of the energy crisis...
...Still, these ideas have enormous impact...
...In what became the most widely reprinted article in the periodical's history, Lovins made the startling proposal that America could live without both coal and nuclear energy...
...But in the event those supplies do not turn up, Lovins has another scheme...
...Recent research suggests that a largely or wholly solar economy can be constructed in the United States with straightforward soft technologies that are now demonstrated and now economic or nearly economic...
...In February, BMW introduced a model that can do 140 mph...
...As prophetic as he proved to be about energy conservation, however, Lovins wildly overestimated the potential of alternative sources...
...Yet we were meeting these needs by turning water into steam in 10,000-degree nuclear reactors, using the steam to run electrical turbines, transmitting the electricity along high-voltage lines to homes, and there using it to heat water to 150 degrees...
...But that's not the end...
...Each year the U.S...
...It's supposed to ensure reliable supply by making sure you have a supply-demand balance...
...When confronted with these figures, Lovins argues that hops and grapes are not a good measure of gasohol's potential...
...But notice he doesn't bother to calculate how much organic material would have to be run through such a system...
...Windmills, solar panels, small hydroelectric dams, geothermal sources, even backyard generators burning "clean" coal or natural gas could eventually produce most power...
...No system can produce more energy at the end than it has at the beginning...
...Much of this oil had to be imported—prompting the abandonment of oil-import quotas, which had protected the domestic industry...
...Even if it proves true, there is no guarantee that deep deposits will be virtually unlimited...
...In April, Business Week named him one of its "Masters of Innovation," saying he has "envisioned a new kind of power grid in which homes and businesses could generate their own electricity...
...It gets 30 percent of its power from hydroelectric dams (more than half of them out of state...
...Planet" in a special Earth Day issue of Time in April 2000...
...None of this is to say that conservation and renewables are not worth pursuing...
...Buildings could be redesigned to conserve heat...
...Natural gas and even coal (burned cleanly in "flu-idized beds") would serve as "transition fuels" for the co-generation era...
...It has the world's largest complement of solar-electric cells, generating 413 mw...
...As a result, we now burn 400 million more tons of coal a year than we did in 1980...
...Should we go back to coal, which was dirty and required disruptive strip-mining, or should we move ahead with nuclear power...
...fossil fuels...
...Many industrial uses required steam...
...The Bush administration is wisely considering nuclear power...
...This should have been apparent from the beginning...
...Energy conservation was cheaper and faster to implement than new power plants were to construct...
...By contrast, the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility contributes 2,100 mw of power...
...Much of our energy is consumed as low-grade heat (below the boiling point of water...
...Electric motors hadn't changed since the 1920s and were ripe for improvement...
...The auto companies themselves are experimenting with hydrogen cars...
...Let's look carefully at what Lovins has devised here...
...No state took these teachings more seriously than California...
...Gold himself doesn't see the need for Lovins's hydrogen scenario...
...It must be consumed as it is generated...
...Nevertheless, Lovins is undeterred...
...It has 56 more renewable-energy projects generating 1,100 mw on the drawing boards—including plans to burn methane for electrical power at nearly every landfill in the state...
...On Earth, it is all tied up in chemical compounds...
...He has invented a system that uses electricity to produce hydrogen to produce electricity...
...Lovins argues that the problem is "freeloading" by neighboring states...
...Well, the balance was unbalanced by those other 16 states, particularly 3 or 4. The villains would be—and I'm not sure in which order— Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado...
...This would be "the last nail in the nuclear coffin...
...This plays havoc with alternative energies, which are largely dependent on the weather...
...Alternative energies can never be more than a supplement to the more reliable base-load plants...
...Although hydrogen is indeed the most common element in the universe, free H2 exists only in outer space...
...With heat loss and work done, the product will always be less usable energy...
...Others are on the fringes of scientific speculation...
...Thus, hydrogen, like electricity, is not a "natural resource...
...That input can come only from the existing grid itself—which is what Lovins thinks he can eliminate...
...His proposal to eliminate the coal and nuclear industries through a transition to a hydrogen economy defies the laws of physics...
...Lovins's central argument was that the generation of electricity was uneconomical and inefficient...
...As Vice President Cheney prepares to make his energy recommendations to the Bush administration this week, environmental critics have already raised the cry that he will rely too much on power plants and not enough on conservation and renewables...
...The Hypercar has been praised in the Economist, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal, and has received $500,000 in funding from BP Amoco and $1 million from Sam Wyly, the solar-minded Texas billionaire...
...There may be huge "astronomical" deposits at depths of five to ten miles beneath the earth's surface...
...Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler a few years back...
...The remaining H2 would power the Hypercars...
...For the last 20 years, California has done nothing but follow the soft energy path...
...Ultimately, plug-in Hypercars could provide 5 to 10 times as much generating capacity as all utilities own," says Lovins, "enough in principle to displace essentially all central thermal power stations at a profit...
...Since January, he has been the subject of two admiring front-page stories in the Wall Street Journal...
...All this becomes particularly interesting as California prepares to mandate that 10 percent of all new cars sold in the state be "non-emissions vehicles" by 2003...
...In the end, though, the nation still faces the clear choice it confronted in 1978: coal or nuclear...
...The most available sources are natural gas and water...
...This involves producing hydrogen by electrolysis— splitting water (H20) using an electric current...
...The potential for further conservation is just coming into view as the Internet and other electronic networks disseminate timely information...
...It is ubiquitous and abundant on Earth as well...
...In this moment of uncertainty, Lovins electrified the environmental movement by arguing that neither coal nor nuclear was necessary...
...This means multiplying again by 20, which gives us 9.6 billion acres—ten times the entire cropland of the United States—to produce one-third of the fuel we needed for transportation in 1977...
...According to the plan, individual buildings all over the country would install "hydrogen appliances"—small electrolytic devices using "cheap off-peak power" from the "ubiquitous electrical grid" to produce hydrogen...
...First, the conversion losses have been reduced from two-thirds to one-third in the newest power plants...
...That's enough to run an efficient U.S...
...The nuclear effort had received some early support from the Sierra Club, but now environmentalists had their doubts...
...Each of these Hypercars— equipped with its own fuel cell—would in turn become a "plug-in 20-plus-kilowatt power plant...
...Given an almost infinite supply of natural gas, of course, just about any energy strategy becomes practical...
...In the natural gas scenario, methane (CH4) would be combined with oxygen at the wellhead...
...Averaging Lovins's conversion figure of 10 to 14 gives us about 480 million acres, half the cropland in the United States...
...Much of our improved energy efficiency has come precisely through this conversion...
...Energy consumed per dollar of GDP has fallen more than 35 percent since 1973," he points out...
...Nuclear plants sucked up huge amounts of water, there was the potential for accidents, and radioactive wastes had to be disposed of...
...After all, didn't Amory Lovins prove twenty years ago that large polluting power plants are unnecessary...
...cellars and breweries, albeit using different processes, would produce roughly one-third of the present gasohol requirements of the United States...
...Today the nation's overall consumption is slightly below the seemingly impossible trajectory that Lovins first traced in 1976...
...The laws of physics require, broadly speaking, that a power station change three units of fuel into two units of almost useless waste heat plus one unit of electricity...
...Lovins's Hypercar runs on such fuel cells...
...By applying careful technical fixes, we could reduce this 8 percent total to about 5 percent (mainly by reducing commercial overlighting), whereupon we could probably cover all those needs with present U.S...
...Thus, an affluent industrial economy could advantageously operate with no central power stations at all...
...hydroelectric capacity plus the co-generation capacity available in the mid to late 1980s...
...Lovins's statistics are correct...
...The largest co-generator is the 385-mw Arco Watson plant completed in 1988...
...You couldn't possibly power California by littering the countryside with windmills or solar cells, as Greenpeace and other environmental groups now advocate...
...The most recent is a 158-mw plant built by Campbell Soups in 1997...
...John Maynard Keynes As environmentalists roam up and down the country opposing every power plant in sight and insisting we can live in a world run on "renewable resources," they are almost invariably quoting Amory Lovins, an obscure genius, MacArthur fellow, and author of 27 books who now runs the Rocky Mountain Institute out of a solar-heated aerie in Snowmass, Colorado...
...It is important to recognize that the two paths are mutually exclusive," wrote Lovins...
...Some 8 percent of all U.S...
...Electricity cannot be stored...
...Some of his ideas are sloppy or ill-thought-out...
...As these smaller generators came on line, the grid itself would decentralize, becoming more flexible and robust...
...Lovins correctly notes that we now use 35 percent less energy per dollar of GDP than we did in 1975...
...Thus a conversion industry roughly ten to fourteen times the physical scale (in gallons of fluid output per year) of U.S...
...Extracting hydrogen requires energy...
...The figures are easy to estimate...
...What to do next...
...To this point, environmentalists have tacitly accepted coal...
...As conservation brought consumption down and alternative energies came on line, the supply and demand curves would meet...
...Yet if greenhouse gases are indeed affecting the earth's climate—as environmentalists themselves believe—that choice must be reexamined...
...Appropriate and benign technologies could do the job much more efficiently...
...Using its own fuel cell, each Hypercar would pump electricity back onto the grid...
...energy end use, and similarly little abroad, requires electricity for purposes other than low-temperature heating and cooling...
...Even as electrical shortages engulf the West, state officials are pushing ahead with plans to eliminate the internal combustion engine by mandating a switch to electric- or hydrogen-powered cars...
...Lovins has been the wunderkind of the environmental movement since 1976, when he published "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken...
...Today we have electronic ignition, which produces enormous savings...
...He makes his argument in a single paragraph, using the beer and wine industries as a benchmark: The required scale of organic conversion can be estimated...
...In 1975, 40 percent of household natural gas was wasted in pilot lights...
...in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs...
...A fleet of Hypercars might indeed have far greater generating capacity than the entire electrical grid, but it will still require energy input...
...While parked ("96 percent of the time"), they would be connected to a building's hydrogen supply and the electrical grid...
...It is the philosopher's stone of physics...
...Altogether, California gets 12 percent of its electricity from small-scale renewables—more then ten times the average for the rest of the country...
...Aware of these problems, Lovins has brought forth a grand new synthesis—the hydrogen economy, utilizing "the most common element in the universe...
...In prose worthy of a 19th-century English novel, Lovins wrote: There exists today a body of energy technologies that have certain specific features in common and that offer great technical, economic, and political attractions, yet for which there is no generic term...
...As we capitalize on electricity's greater efficiencies, alternative energies become more and more unfeasible...
...This would produce pure hydrogen (H2) and carbon dioxide (CO2...
...Lovins later coined the term "negawatts" to describe this strategy...
...Inevitably, Lovins comes on the scene and conjures up a glorious future where the hard practical realities of the world we know have vanished...
...As the transition occurred, renewables and alternative energies could be phased into the system...
...The Myth of Alternative Energy The life and times of Amory Levins, green guru BY WILLIAM TUCKER Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist...
...A careful look at Lovins's teachings makes it clear why things have gone so far awry in California and why— as these ideas inspire more environmental opposition to new energy development in other parts of the country— they could get worse...
...But second and more important, electricity itself is so versatile and fungible that it creates its own efficiencies...
...Lovins went on to become one of the principal strategists behind California's revolutionary energy planning, begun under governor Jerry Brown...
...But if they don't, they must admit that they choose to go on burning fossil fuels...
...Even as California's energy infrastructure collapses, Lovins continues to receive adoring coverage in the press...
...Hop fields and vineyards occupy about 40 million acres of farmland...
...In March, amidst rolling blackouts, Lovins was the keynote speaker at the Silicon Valley Energy Summit, where he argued that Calpine's proposed 600-mw gas plant for San Jose is unnecessary because the Golden State will soon have an energy glut—once his latest conservation proposals are put into action...
...Through midcentury, we had produced most of our electricity from coal...
...After all, our domestic production has leveled off, and we import 17 percent of our gas from Canada...
...The process would be economical all the way...
...end-use needs—and its generation consumes 29 percent of U.S...
...The scale of effort required does not seem unreasonable...
...transportation sector run on crop-based "gasohol...
...It is also the mechanism by which Lovins and his disciples believe the nation can avoid making the difficult choice between coal and nuclear energy...
...But beer and wine are only about 5 percent alcohol (whereas gasohol is 100 percent alcohol...
...Here's what he would do...
...Once windmills made up more than 25 percent of the grid, random fluctuations in frequency would start damaging electric-powered equipment...
...Even hydropower is highly seasonal, dependent on rainfall and snowmelt...
...The nation was at a crossroads...
...beer and wine industry, for example, microbiologically produces 5 percent as many gallons (not all alcohol, of course) as the U.S...
...Lovins's predictions about the potential of energy conservation have proved startlingly accurate...
...transportation system"—meaning a system three or four times more efficient than what we have now...
...Take Lovins's proposal in Soft Energy Paths for a U.S...
...His subsequent best-seller, Soft Energy Paths, was sitting on Jimmy Carter's desk when Lovins visited the White House in 1978 to advise the president on energy...
...Conservation and renewables should be supported—if only to keep environmentalists happy...
...The Bush administration was foolish to defund these efforts— although this week's proposals may change the emphasis...
...In 1975, we consumed 28 percent of our energy as electricity...
...As concern about air pollution rose in the 1960s, however, we switched to low-sulfur oil...
...Environmentalists may not agree...
...Yet California has the nation's only energy crisis...
...The 17-state Western System Coordinating Council is supposed to be a vehicle for the integrated resource planning that is still required by federal law, in case you didn't notice," he commented in a recent interview...
...Just as swiftly, the Arab oil embargo of 1973 made it clear that imported oil was a volatile and unreliable resource...
...Today the figure is 40 percent...
...Lovins and his former wife Hunter were named two of nine "Heroes for the William Tucker is the author of Progress and Privilege: America in the Age of Environmentalism...
...Cheney's plan is the more-pollution solution," says Greg Wetstone of the Natural Resources Defense Council...
...Although Lovins's arguments often became dense and difficult to follow, his conclusions always remained the same: Stop building power plants, start conserving energy...
...Like electricity, it only carries energy derived from other resources...
...Lovins's biggest mistake was his presumption that generating electricity is inherently inefficient...
...The electric current would come and go with the wind and sun...
...It has 43 geothermal sites generating 2,500 mw...
...In light of the disappointing outcome of California's energy experiment, it may not come as a surprise that Lovins is also a bit of a crackpot...
...For lack of a more satisfactory term, I shall call them "soft" technologies: a textural description, intended to mean not vague, mushy, speculative, or ephemeral, but rather flexible, resilient, sustainable, and benign...
...With the exception of two nuclear reactors commissioned in the early 1970s, no new central generating stations have been added to the grid since 1980...
Vol. 6 • May 2001 • No. 34
