Captain Obvious

Our country just went through midterm elections with the reminder that we are far from a consensus on solving the big problems facing us and the world at large.  So many of the races were razer thin margins, and neither side is happy about where we are.  So, how do we move forward?

Can consensus be achieved on anything any longer?  Are we doomed to fight for some ideal answer despite the compelling statistics that speak volumes about our silliness?  Defunding the police, open borders, etc. may answer the needs for a certain point of view, but fly in the face of community wellness.  And, just because we stop doing this or that doesn’t compel the rest of the world to do the same … in fact, it gives them opportunity to continue down the wrong paths.

It is a funny conversation point, but many of my professional friends will use the phrase: If I were King or God I would do … to point to knowing the right answer that is simply not popular.  After all, our political process brings forth charismatic people who profess to give us what we want to get elected, and then almost never deliver on those promises.  We even shrug our shoulders in resignation of this fact, yet we continue believing democracy can and will solve big existential questions.

As I think about the attacks of 9 -11, I am reminded about how this “common enemy” brought our nation together with resolve.  We seemed to realize, if only for a time, that we needed to ban together and protect our national interests.  However, we still maintain some pretty silly precautions at our airports.  My wife was bringing me a new tube of toothpaste that we always special order and they confiscated it.

I remember when then President Jimmy Carter declared the energy crisis of 1978 the moral equivalent of war and unilaterally lowered speed limits to 55. Most Americans complied.  I remember when New Zealand shut off the electric hot water in homes for months during a drought to keep the grid up.  New Zealanders complied.  I doubt either of these decisions would have resulted from a democratic vote.

But, the underlying problem is that we do not know with any certainty how to fix the really big problems since, in part, we are so interdependent as a world community.  We put organizations in place like NATO and The United Nations, and the G7/G8/G20 Summit to at least discuss these questions and the fact that the number changes with world politics indicates the challenge.

I formed the Peak Load Management Alliance to facilitate a constructive dialogue on how demand response mechanisms could be worked into electric and natural gas markets.  Membership consists of the industry counterparties (energy suppliers and large users) along with enabling legislative and regulatory market participants.  The organization can only offer ideas and forums for dialogue but has been rather successful transforming the energy industry … in part because everyone wants it to succeed.

Notably absent are those who are not interested in its success … the energy generators whose long term growth has been stymied by this upstart social good.  They know their position is simply in denial of the right long term answers.  They know they are wrong, but they are just not willing to agree with it.  So, they attempt to work behind the scenes at the ISOs to make the rules more and more stringent, hoping this right answer will eventually go away.

We should be learning something about our democratic process through all this … but are we even looking?

I can’t remember the professor who suggested this to me, but I think it is pretty profound.  When it comes to things that you believe are real, it is always a good guideline to think that must be real if it already exists.  So, now that we have been told by our governmental researchers they can produce fusion (the same energy source as the sun), perhaps we shouldn’t be celebrating just yet.

You all know that our sun is not unique.  All of those bright, shiny objects in the sky use the same energy production methods, so we KNOW fusion works and produces an enormous amount of energy, and for a long time.  On so many levels, the research is impressive for sure, but perhaps we are not asking the truly important questions.

Go ahead and ask any science teachers you know or any theoretical physicists.  They will all admit they do not know how these bright objects were created in the first place.  Yes, you read that correctly … go and check it out for yourself.  Even though we have almost countless examples of this in our universe, we simply have no idea how they were formed.  Yes, we have theories. But no one can explain this … and my next statements should give us pause.  You do remember Madame Curie learned the hard way that radioactivity was harmful and exposure will kill you?

Now, read all the press on fusion and tell me whether this idea is safe and practical.  These suns are not contained to provide energy in a controlled way.  Nothing can exist close to them.  Oh, and by the way, why isn’t anyone talking about the size issue here.  Our sun is a relatively small star and is so big that its gravitational force holds our solar system together.  Why isn’t anyone talking about the scale issue?

Here is a nice summary from the New York Times:

Why is this result such a big deal? As a clean source of energy, nuclear fusion could help replace polluting fossil fuels and overcome climate change. And if the remaining challenges — of which there are many — are figured out, nuclear fusion could produce more energy than today’s technologies are capable of.

Serious barriers remain before that potential future, experts caution. Can scientists reliably replicate what they’ve done only once? Can it be done more efficiently and more quickly? Can it be scaled up? All these questions are serious enough that, if not overcome, yesterday’s announcement may ultimately amount to little.

Do you remember when Einstein and others worried that the atomic bomb was a bad idea.  Yes, it was the beginning of a nuclear age with wonderful examples of power plants in our world.  But, it is also the basis of our greatest fears since this same energy source can wipe us out.

What is clear is that we are about to be asked to pay dearly to follow this path … but no one is asking where that path really leads.

Very few critical thinkers would suggest we can just keep going with our conspicuous consumption and extractive approaches to manufacturing goods and services for life here on this planet.  We no longer live in that bucolic world of grass-fed local animals, farmers, and artisans who lived lightly on the planet.

So, if we are not going to limit population growth or legislate against nice things with another form of “sin taxes” that ultimately might reduce the growth rate of expensive cars, boats, planes … how are we going to ever make this planet livable and sustainable?

Watching our 26-year-old son and his attitudes, I have a clue about what might work.  If we redefine life as water, food, shelter, and comfort we can redesign our communities to be more “clustered” so that people can walk wherever they need to go and provide cluster-to-cluster public transportation to move people beyond their day-to-day boundaries.  Right now, we are powering a 3-to-4-thousand-pound vehicle to get groceries, go to work, or to visit neighbors. Some cultures around the world use bicycles instead … here, if you do that you are going to the hospital or worse.

Yes, I grew up believing that owning a car gave me freedom, but I have come to realize it brings with it high insurance premiums, worries about others on the road causing a wreck, and so much wasted time getting here or there because we are not living in clustered communities.

I got this idea by watching our son who never wanted to drive but did so because his high school dropped the school bus to our neighborhood.  His car is about 10 years old and only as about 13,000 miles on it.  If I took the insurance costs alone and factored that into this mileage, it would have been cheaper to Uber anywhere he needed to go.  Plus, half the time, he used it to get groceries, which could have been delivered to our door at lower costs.

Of course, it is kind of fun to go out and shop for our needs.  It is so interesting to see all our choices, watch for sales, and pick out the produce that looks good to us: bananas at just the perfect ripeness, tomatoes that smell like they are fresh and juicy, and of course the perfect piece of fish, chicken, pork or beef for our intended meals.

We pack these into refrigerators 4-6 times larger than those found elsewhere in the world to eventually throw about half of it away because it spoiled.  My brother lived in Australia where they shopped daily for their meat, dairy, and vegetables because the fridge was smaller than a file drawer!

He also experienced garbage police who warned him that if he persisted in mixing his garbage with recyclable items, they would stop picking up his garbage. There are places in the world that assign your new building a fixed-size transformer and electric service.  You learn to live within that constraint … so thermal storage dominates the HVAC designs there, and of course all electrical uses are high efficiency.

We seem preoccupied with symbolic ideas that fail to move the needle in substantive ways.  Choices in the supermarket are plastic, paper, or bring your own bag. In the great scheme of things, that is inconsequential.

Are we ready to rethink our basic ways of living?

Past blogs have pointed out that you can “bet against” NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center with very high confidence.  If they say it is going to be a higher-than-normal storm season you can rest assured that the exact opposite is pretty likely.  I have plotted predicted vs. actual storm statistics and they are very highly negatively correlated.  That should cause us to pause and question whether NOAA is able to predict anything… their models are clearly wrong.

And, once again they illustrated their inability this year with predicting and then seeing only 14 storms, 8 hurricanes, and only 2 major hurricanes.  Plus, if you check the actual storm paths you will see that some of the hurricanes, they say occurred would have never been discernable in the past since they only lasted for a few hours.  Poof… they showed up and were gone … nice to see them with high resolution radar but certainly not historically comparable to anything before this radar.

Even with this bias, the normal year would have 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes.  So, this year was very close to average.  Or, another way to summarize this past year was that it was milder than normal.  Now, that simply does not make news, now does it?

Do you remember least cost planning and how it was implemented in our energy supply system?  Do you remember that we considered both supply and demand side options, and made decisions on the long term, recognizing that there might be some near term more expensive items that, over time, would yield the best lowest cost options.

It was a rigorous analysis system that became the basis for regulatory proceedings.  There were gray areas where benefits were contestably uncertain, but the fact that it was a precise mathematical method offered everyone involved a transparent mechanism for negation and planning.  Yes, you could always second guess decisions after time passed, but it did offer some level of certainty to all involved.  That certainty offered utilities the ability to raise capital and be assured of cost recovery.

By contrast, we now live an uncertain world of carbon accountabilities, carbon credit uncertainties, and ESG abuse.  It is almost like we have transported ourselves back 150 years into the “wild wild west” once again with booms, busts, and almost half of the national currency being counterfeited.  Think about it:

If we accept that carbon dioxide release levels in the environment now replace the cost elements in this formula, we should be evaluating the energy alternative portfolio reflecting both the near term carbon emissions from these choices along with the longer-term estimates.  Under this type of thinking, beneficial electrification should be time phased: meaning promoting electrification in the short run may confound the end goal of carbon dioxide releases because the electricity today is far from green.

Therefore, banning internal combustion engines in cars makes no sense in the near term, and certainly not until and unless the electric grid is mostly carbon free.  Plus, when you consider that it can take 10-20 years before today’s high mileage EVs will ever have a net positive impact on carbon impact, all this push for EVs in the short run is escalating carbon dioxide releases.

Don’t you think it is high time we slowed down, stepped back from the edge, and took a cold hard look at our plans?  Why are we rushing to build our way out of the past rather than to also consider a softer path on the energy use side?

What’s really going on here?  Why haven’t we learned the lesson from the energy industry in the 1970s?