Government Report Examines Alternative Energy Research

coondoggie points us to a NetworkWorld story about the Government Accountability Office's report on the state of advanced energy technology. The report notes that despite continued funding [PDF], U.S. reliance on oil has only dropped from 93% to 85% since 1973. It goes on to evaluate how the most prominent fields of research have developed in that time period, and where they are likely to go in the future.

Comments

You can copy, but you can't.

[Futurepower(R)]

I read the linked .PDF document. It is a request for money. It contains almost no useful information about what is being done with the money.

Here is an example of how corrupt the U.S. government can be. It is a quote from the end of the document: "This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately."

So, you can freely copy the document, but you can't freely copy the document, because it "may contain" copyrighted material.

The overall impression I get is that whoever wrote the document doesn't want the taxpayers to know exactly how the money is being spent.

Re:85% of a growing amount

[epine]

The consumption of oil has grown by "leaps and bounds" because oil was severely underpriced.

http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/cleancars/cafe/briefing_book.pdf

This document shows that American fleet-average fuel economy peaked in 1987 and has declined about ten percent since, despite improvements in fuel consumption technology.

Seriously, with a correct oil price, America should presently have a 24 MPG fleet-average, a 10% improvement over two decades, not something hovering around 20 MPG after a 10% decline.

The difference would offset the 20% of the fuel supply we are now frantically replacing with ethanol, without having to actually make any ethanol.

I think the answer was pretty simple: allow the price of oil to slowly creep upward until the fleet-average fuel economy was tracking a 1 MPG/decade improvement curve. At some price, people will think twice about buying that SUV they don't really need. In my mind, that price would have been a good price, as it would have corresponded with sensible consumption choices.

The whole thing could have been rather slow, steady, and painless, but no, apparently catastrophism is the American way.

The screw-up is the priorities

[WindBourne]

Wind has MORE than enough ppl doing the research. The tax credits will help keep pushing it. The research for it can stop. Solar is of the same situation. Hydrogen is a total joke, but some funding should be done for it. The place that absolutely needs funding is geo-thermal. Disregard the MIT study. Instead, look at the fact that it is the ONLY form of AE that can serve as base load. All others are intermitant. But shallow geo-thermal, has many ways to be developed. For example using old oil wells, can heat water to about 70C. Then during the day time, solar can push it to 100C or better. During the night time, we can use Natural Gas to push it. Of course, the other choice is to change the medium according to the time. During the night (cool temps), the steam can be ammonia which boils at much lower temp, while during the day time, water is used (hotter outside temps).
And of course, deep geo-thermal has the potential to account for about 20-40% of all of America's energy. Combine with solar, wind, water, and nukes, and we can kick all the carbon out. All within 10 years.

Mis LABELED AGAIN

[WindBourne]

This budget is NOT about alternative energy research. It is about Advanced energy research. Alternative is just a SMALL portion of it. In fact, about 1/2 of the research goes to Fossil fuel research. another quarter goes to nukes. Of the remainder, the bulk goes to hydrogen and ethanol. IOW, damn little research is done on true alternative energy.

Re:Fossil fuels != oil

[Rei]

What gets me is the graph in the report. They show "renewables" climbing by only one percent. They neglect to mention, however, that most of that "renewables" section is hydroelectricity, which has fallen as a percent of our electricity as it is no longer seen as a very "green" option at all. Generation by non-hydro renewables have expanded by several orders of magnitude since the 1970s.

If I have a way to generate electricity cleanly and it costs $1/kWh, while coal is $0.08/kWh, almost nobody will adopt.
If I double the cost effectiveness and it's $0.50/kWh, more will adopt, but still very, very few will.
If I double it again and it's $0.25/kWh, still more will adopt, but it'll still be a small percent.
If I double it again and it's $0.12/kWh, more will adopt, and you'll have a small dent in the market.
If I double it again to $0.06/kWh, the market will be swept.
If I double it again to $0.03/kWh, coal use for power generation will be consigned to the history books.

Rather than looking at the total share of our generation, they need to look at the growth rate of these alternative sources and how their cost effectiveness has changed. And it's been dramatic, with no signs of slowing. Wind costs a fraction of what it did in the 70s, while solar is an order of magnitude lower. Economies of scale and more advanced turbines may halve wind costs (wind already being competitive with coal in some places), while CIGS solar cells are on their way to providing yet *another* order of magnitude cost reduction, making solar cheaper than coal even in Alaska, let alone in the desert southwest. Then there's EGS (enhanced geothermal -- no need for a wet, near-surface heat source), solar thermal, wave, tidal, high altitude wind, and so on.

Let's look at the numbers. They report that the US has spent $57.5B on renewables, fossil, and nuclear in the past 30 years. Let's be kind and say that renewables got a whole third of that (I doubt it) -- $19B. We spend that in *two months* of the war in Iraq. The US consumes 1 billion tons of coal, ~7B barrels of oil, and 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Coal costs ~$70/ton, oil in the past year averaged something like $80/barrel, and naturl gas was ~$15/1000 cubic feet, so that means we annually spend about ($70B + $560B + $330B) around a trillion dollars on fossil energy. This doesn't count the externalities of fossil fuel usage -- environmental destruction, increased healthcare costs, increased use of the military, etc. Contrast this with half a billion to a billion dollars on renewables research annually. 3-4 orders magnitude less spending, and yet consumption of techs like solar are growing at almost 40% per year and seem almost certain to overtake the price point of coal in the next decade. How, exactly, is this a bad investment? And all of this ignores some of the idiotic things they've been spending money on, like corn ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells.