Transformative Technology Needed? -- Powerline -- May 22, 2019

This is another very, very good article at Powerline.

The article begins:

The United States, and much of the Western world, has gone badly off the rails on the subject of energy. Obsessed with CO2 emissions, a minor factor in the Earth’s climate, Western policymakers have turned to archaic technologies like wind energy as though they were futuristic. 

Transformative technology needed? The writer concisely states everything I've been arguing for years with regard to renewable energy. From the linked site:

Energy expert Mark Mills has produced five parts of a series in Real Clear Energy discussing the tremendous demands for electricity from developing electronics and associated high-tech equipment.

The development of “smart” technology and artificial intelligence will place burdens on the grid that renewables cannot meet.

Among the critical requirements for data centers, and other “smart” centers is that electricity must be reliable. Wind and solar are not, and battery back-ups are quickly depleted. The power demands are too great.

If we want a disruption to the energy status quo, we will need new, foundational discoveries in the sciences. As Bill Gates has put it, the challenge calls for scientific ‘miracles.’ Any hoped-for technological breakthroughs won’t emerge from subsidizing yesterday’s technologies, including wind and solar.

The Internet didn’t emerge from subsidizing the dial-up phone, or the transistor from subsidizing vacuum tubes, or the automobile from subsidizing railroads.

If policymakers were serious about the pursuit of the next energy revolution, they’d be talking a lot more about reinvigorating support for basic science.

The idea that batteries will somehow make intermittent energy sources like wind and solar reliable is fanciful.

There is, however, a newish technology close at hand that could solve any problems relating to power generation without–unlike wind and solar–emitting CO2, if you think that is important. That technology is nuclear energy. 

Throwing money down a CO2 rathole:

There has been a number of comments made about ExxonMobil giving $100 million to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and other DOE laboratories with emphasis on “developing transformative advanced energy technologies with a focus on reducing emissions.”

However, based on reports much of this money will be going into failed technologies such as “biofuels, carbon capture and storage technologies.” One wonders if anything really transformative will come from this research.

Some years ago it looked like nuclear energy was going to be the answer to our energy needs. Miniature nuclear plants -- nuclear plants in a barrel -- were on the horizon and actually already in use in remote areas (such as Alaska). That "nuclear revolution" was disrupted / short-circuited by another revolution: the shale revolution. 

By the way, back to the beginning of this article:

The United States, and much of the Western world, has gone badly off the rails on the subject of energy. Obsessed with CO2 emissions, a minor factor in the Earth’s climate, Western policymakers have turned to archaic technologies like wind energy as though they were futuristic.  

The only reason "we" turned to this archaic technology was to minimize CO2 emissions (if that's even important). It had nothing to do with a shortage of energy (even without shale, we had nuclear and coal). There was a recent article that a wind turbine will result in a net increase in CO2 emissions based on all the "costs" associated with manufacturing and siting the turbine. 

Every wind turbine you see will have resulted in more CO2 emissions than it might have saved. Ironically, those CO2 emissions will be front-loaded; the minuscule decrease in CO2 emissions per turbine will occur over 20 - 30 years.