Technically, carbon-free competitive energy may not be so hard

I was recently surprised to find how low operating costs can be for wind energy. At suitable sites, operating costs after initial depreciation (only three years for payback on a wind tower in some cases) are now below those of thermal power, as evidenced by the fact that wind energy is being installed in India and China where the environment is hardly considered at all. This is for average utilisation, allowing for when the wind does not blow. The latter is limiting factor on the proportion of power which can be generated by wind, not its costs - there has to be back up power for windless days.

This report indicates that in Australia, at suitable sites (coastal sites in the very hot N.W Australian desert) a solar thermal energy tower could produce electricity for under 4.5c/KWh, virtually all the amortisation of capital costs. Even if initally out by a factor of 2, then with a normal experience curve, it looks pretty competitive. The best sites are a long way from consumers, except in a few places like southern Spain and southern California, but as discussed in the last blog the best potential for this technology is to make cheap ammonia for fuel

It may prove to be cheaper and easier, with limited technical risk, to replace carbon fuels without resorting to the difficulties of carbon sequestration or nuclear power (although I do regard the latter as the lesser of two evils compared to CO2 emissions). It just requires will, enormous investment, and above all sufficiently high long term price signals for carbon fuels. This probably does require carbon taxes otherwise coal replaces oil, and coal is even worse for carbon emissions - but at the cost numbers above, perhaps not.

So why are we risking destroying the world if it is not so hard to solve? Inertia, ignorance, vested interests and more charitably huge risks on future prices to evaluate projects. If governments across the world (and especially America and China) are serious about a "Manhattan project" on energy, then underwriting this risk may be the best way to proceed

While ammonia does look like a good substitute for gasoline and diesel for land and sea transport, upon reflection the numbers do not add up so well for aviation. Some sort of biofuel may have to be a second best here.

I doubt if "peak oil" will help in time. Raw materials running out is very rare. There is probably plenty of unexploited oil in Russia, and in Saudi, Aramco still caps wells when they stop producing under natural pressure i.e when plenty is left underground. In any case the danger is that China and India especially would then turn even more to coal, even worse for carbon emissions than oil. This chilling article (no pun intended) reinforces the idea that we must act in the next ten years, and cannot depend on the unaided help of energy markets.