Tao’s 2 Cents

I have a new favorite magazine. I’ve heard about Mother Earth News and probably seen copies of it laying around since I was young but never really read it until a couple weeks ago. I got a subscription after reading about the articles coming out in the next issue and after reading it cover to cover I ordered the 40 years of archives on CD. I can already tell it was an excellent investment. That’s a lot of wisdom for $50.

I’ve been reading back through the issues looking for articles and information that might help me on my way to a sustainable existence. I’d say about 75% of the articles are relevant or interesting to me. I’m especially interested in the renewable energy, natural building, gardening and water/rainwater management articles. I came across a really interesting one on solar power and wanted to share a few of the highlights.

One thing I want to say about energy before I get into this is that the source, bi-products, and sustainability of energy is important, but the efficient use of it is paramount at this point. I think that also ties into population growth, as does just about every other problem facing life on this planet. We need to head off demand, renewable energy can never catch up and non-renewable energy is doomed to fail by definition.

It’s always seemed kind of obvious to me that we need to figure out the best way to capture the sun’s energy. I mean, every other kind of energy we have comes from the sun, just several times removed. The possible exception being nuclear, but creating poisons that will last for millennium doesn’t strike me as the way to go either. Anyway, we need to cut out the middle man and go to the source.

The name of the article is “Solar is the Solution” and it came out in the December 2007 issue of Mother Earth News. The thing that really grabbed me was the pie chart of available renewable energy every year compared to the total non-renewable energy left on the planet. It gave me that same “ah ha!” feeling that I remember having after seeing that global warming graph that put CO2 levels and global temperatures side by side. It put the debate over whether we should go to wind or solar to rest for me. Not that wind doesn’t have its place in filling in the sunshine gaps, but as for a global strategy, wow, I mean just look at this chart!

Now I realize that we can never capture 100% of the energy striking the planet with anywhere near 100% efficiency, BUT even capturing a tiny fraction of it is all we would need. I also loved the way he converted the remaining non-renewable energy we have into it’s sunshine equivalent. Here’s a breakdown.

• Coal - Used to produce more than half of U.S. electricity and the largest remaining non renewable energy source. If it were all burned today it would produce the same amount of energy that hits the earth from the Sun in 6 days!
• Natural Gas - The second most abundant non-renewable and it is equivalent to just 1 and half days of sunlight.
• Nuclear - Even if we were to recover and use all of the fissionable uranium left it would also only provide the same as 1 and a half days of sunlight.
• Oil - This is the one everyone wants to know I’m sure. Including everything even all of the possibly recoverable oil reserves. All of it only provides 1 single day’s worth of sunshine.

It’s also increasingly more apparent that biofuels aren’t the way to go either considering how energy inefficient it is. I mean fossil fuels are essentially millions of years of stored sunlight. How can one year’s growth ever compare, especially when we need that growth to eat. Did you know the price of tortillas in Mexico quadrupled in the last year. All of that and when it’s all said and done biofuel is only about .05% efficient. Compare that to solar battery charged cars that are 3-20% efficient and it makes even less sense.

Another interesting tid-bit on Hydrogen fuel cells. It takes 4 times more non-renewable energy to create the hydrogen than to charge batteries on a solar car to go the same distance. Not to mention that currently 96% of the hydrogen created is extracted from fossil fuels! What a joke!

Another thing I was unaware of is how much more efficient electric cars are compared to a combustion engine. Electric drivetrains are by their very design, 5 to 10 times more efficient. That means that if my little Honda Civic had an electric drivetrain I would be getting 175-350 miles per gallon if that same gallon of gasoline were just burned at a regular fossil fuel power plant and converted to electricity!

It’s all very frustrating to see how the forces of greed and capitalism are forcing us down the wrong path. There are definitely things going on to be hopeful about. I guess the only thing we can do is try to implement these things on our own personal basis and hope it moves from there. Think global, act local!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 3:11 pm and is filed under World Hunger, Agriculture, Sustainability, Energy, Oil, Global Warming, Pollution, Awareness, Environment. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.