The Economist on Energy

Priya and I are fine and no one we know has been affected in the bomb blasts. Touchwood. It feels odd, we can't ignore them completely despite the low-intensity, and it doesn't seem to be necessary to go into a serious defensive mode either.

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I just got around to reading in detail the June 21st issue of the Economist, which had a special report on energy. A paen is in order for this remarkable magazine but not in this post. The Economist has been spending quite some space on energy issues, not surprisingly. Their take is that rather than go into a funk with all the oil and coal pollution problems, stride bravely into the brave new world of alternate energy (and make pots of money in the bargain).

Lots of interesting ideas:
-- in the current oil scenario in the US, the case for plug-in cars is compelling, the equivalent fuel cost of a plug in is 25cents a gallon. I've seen the same point elsewhere too, and no wonder since it doesn't take a lot of brains to see the point. It should be really interesting to watch this dramatic shift happen (or not). The picture is less obvious in India where the erratic power supply gives one pause.
-- The Economist's take is that various renewables are proming and will become commercially viable on larger and larger scales at various points in the near future. Wind already provides 1% of the world's power and growing at 30%. Nuclear provides 15% of the world's power. Solar is at .01% and growing at 50% with lots of technical innovations. Putting a carbon tax on coal will bring wind and nuclear power to the same cost as coal, currently the cheapest source of power.

More: Some aspects of the changes are gradual (more energy from other sources will not change anything disruptively with respect to existing energy sources), and some are not (a wholesale shift to plug in cars will affect the power and oil industries in significant ways). Lots of people who made their fortunes in silicon valley are shifting their attention to energy, most well-known, Vinod Khosla of Sun etc., also Elon Musk of PayPal, the Google founders ( RE less than C !), Robert Metcalfe of the Ethernet and John Doerr.
Smart grids: when you use wind power or solar power, the amount of power coming into the electricity grid varies with time. So the grid must be 'smart' to accomadate this, including doing things like switching off some power consumers from the grid according to a pre-arranged contract, when the power flowing into the grid dips. There are also ways to store power, like pumping water up a gradient to let it flow down again when needed. More exciting ways of storing power include the idea of recharging your plug-in car at 3am in the morning and therefore avoiding overloading the system during higher demand times.There is a point about needing to tranfer energy over longer distances and therefore switching to a DC power grid rather than AC.
Carbon sequestration is explained (costly to impossible) as is geothermal energy (probably only after 2050 -- but what will happen to the earth's internal dynamics if we suck out all its heat, I ask !), and the next generation of biofuels (too strongly reminiscent of today's chemical farming and factory farming for my taste).

The full report from the Economist is viewable here:
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11565685

(Keep clicking "Next article" at the bottom to go on to succeeding articles in the special report)

I think I want to be an alternative energy marketer in my next avatar


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Catching up with the zietgiest: Here's a really nice speech by Dr. Randy Pausch. Lots of context, but just go and watch it: