Wind power and solar are generally considered clean and environmentally friendly. Although the manufacture of their components, the generators, blades, solar cells, concrete foundations, and other parts generates many pollutants and releases a lot of CO2, the actual systems produce no CO2 when they are producing power. That makes them desirable from the viewpoint of climate change advocates.
The problem with these systems is that there are essentially no good storage mechanisms for the power they produce. All the power produced is "use it or lose it". Furthermore, the power produced is unpredictable, depending as it does on the vagaries of wind and cloud, and the lack of sunlight during night.
Why we use fossil fuels
While a variety of mechanisms have been proposed to store energy produced when it is available, most of them are not especially effective or have significant drawbacks. Probably the most common method involves batteries. At the current state of the battery art, though, a lot of battery is required to store energy, and battery manufacture is expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and often dangerous.
To date, the most common energy source has been obtained through fossil fuels. These fuels have high energy density, are easily stored and transported, do not spontaneously combust, are non-toxic, and inexpensive. Their primary drawback from the standpoint of climate is that release of their stored energy through combustion produces CO2. This is true whether the combustion is in an automobile, a power plant, a tractor, a ship, or an airplane.
Performance of a battery is highly dependent on temperature, relying as it does on a reversible chemical reaction, so battery capacity will drop dramatically in cold weather as we have been experiencing this winter. Fossil fuels are only very slightly affected by temperature, so nearly all the energy is available for use regardless of conditions.
Moreover, if one becomes stranded, or if electricity is unavailable in emergency conditions such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or other circumstances, electric powered vehicles will quickly exhaust their charge, and will be unusable until power can be restored. This will include electric powered emergency vehicles such as fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars.
Fossil fueled vehicles can be refueled easily from stored stocks or from emergency supplies quickly provided. Even in more mundane circumstances when someone simply runs out of energy, one cannot call triple-A and have them bring a couple of gallons of electrons to recharge an electric vehicle, while a gallon or two of gas is quick and simple.
It would require decades of effort, and massive investment that would dwarf even wartime expenditures to build out that infrastructure
These considerations are only the smallest factors when one considers the energy needs of tractors, harvesters, and other farm equipment, of construction equipment, air transportation, railroad systems, and many others, all of which provide vital solutions to meet real human needs. Most of the all-electric alternatives for these applications are novelties with no real practical ability to provide equivalent service, even in rail applications.
Consider, too, that wind and solar account for only about fifteen percent of our current electricity generation. Over sixty percent is produced using fossil fuels, while the remainder is nuclear or hydroelectric. Even to replace the current fossil fueled electric generation capacity with wind and solar would require building over four times the wind and solar facilities that we have built to date. It would require decades of effort, and massive investment that would dwarf even wartime expenditures to build out that infrastructure, not even including the necessary battery production with its attendant environmental degradation.
Even were we to make the expenditure of time and treasure, we would still have to maintain our current fossil fuel generation capacity to provide electricity for those times when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. In other words, we would need two parallel electricity generation systems and still wouldn't eliminate the need for or use of fossil fuels.
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What do we do?
For climate activists, the drawbacks of CO2 production outweigh all the benefits of fossil fuels, and all the disadvantages of wind and solar. But what if there was an alternative that had the benefits of fossil fuels in terms of energy density, stability, transport and storage, as well as compatibility with our current transportation and energy generation systems, but was also carbon neutral and did not involve the pollution and other costs of wind and solar systems?
As it turns out, there is such an alternative.
If we look at fossil fuels, we find that they are simply chemical compounds composed of carbon and hydrogen. These compounds were formed naturally from plant material that accumulated over millions of years and were transformed through natural processes of heat and pressure into the oil that we find buried thousands of feet below the surface. We extract that oil and separate it into different components to obtain gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, natural gas, and other useful materials. When we burn those fuels, we combine the oxygen in the air with the hydrocarbons in the fuel to produce water, carbon dioxide, and of course, energy.
So far, we have been relying on the natural reservoirs of stored energy captured in these fossil fuels. More recently, though, we have made great progress in capturing the energy of the sun and storing it in hydrocarbons of our own manufacture. There is now a nascent, but growing industry producing synthetic hydrocarbons that can be used as direct replacements for fossil fuels, but where the carbon they contain is obtained from the carbon already in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.
Synthetic fuel production
The idea of synthetic fuel production is not new. During the Second World War, the Germans were cut off from most sources of oil. In response, they utilized the Fischer-Tropsch process that turned carbon monoxide and hydrogen into hydrocarbon fuels. The carbon monoxide can be obtained from a variety of sources including atmospheric carbon dioxide, plant biomass, or other carbon containing materials, while the hydrogen can be obtained from ordinary water. The only carbon needed is what is already in the air and environment - no fossils need apply.
A synthetic fuel plant has been operating in South Africa for many years producing high quality hydrocarbon fuels economically competitive with fossil fuels. A special advantage of synthesis is that the fuels have no contaminants such as sulfur that contribute to pollution. Clean synthetic diesel fuel is just one result.
Grass clippings to gasoline
One aspect of synthetic fuels is that the production does not require large industrial plants. Community scale production facilities can use local biomass to produce fuels. Our own farmers produce hay and straw in great quantities that can readily serve as feedstock to the process.
Modern computer control systems can monitor and control the production process with little or no human input required. The hardware needed is relatively simple and does not need the exotic rare earth elements required for efficient wind generators, nor the dangerous materials needed for batteries, nor the highly refined and processed materials used in solar electric systems.
Converting vegetable matter to CO2 leaves behind a number of valuable minerals that can be returned to agriculture and used in new crops, making the whole process sustainable. When the hydrocarbon fuels are burned, the CO2 released is captured by the grasses, and with the energy of sunlight, converted into biomass in an infinitely renewable process so long as the sun shines.
What's the catch?
If this is such a great idea, why aren't we doing it? On one hand, there is a growing interest in synthetic fuel production as an alternative to conventional fossil fuels. Despite this, however, there are still major interests promoting electric vehicles, elimination of fossil fuel power plants, and many other destructive policies.
The catch is that there are a lot of people who have built their livelihoods, reputations, and even political power on the idea that human produced CO2 is responsible for our changing climate. They are a deeply entrenched group that benefits from climate concerns and will fight viciously against anything that threatens their position.
It appears that we cannot fight these beneficiaries readily by political means alone, but must bring market forces to bear to show that we don't need a massive switch to electric technologies, but can accomplish a carbon neutral future without disrupting our economy and society. We may even discover that carbon neutrality is not such a good thing, after all. We would be wise not to burn our bridges.
What is at risk
The history of civilization is the history of the growth in the amount of energy each person can control for their own purposes. By providing cheap, easily stored and used energy, fossil fuels have raised the great majority of the peoples of the world out of abject poverty. Those who wish us to abandon these sources of energy for ones far less available do not have the good of the people in mind. It is only their own power and comfort that is their concern.
Readily available energy is the foundation of freedom. We cannot let the enemies of our freedom persuade us to accept less.
Image courtesy: Synfuel: synthetic fuel for cars and how it works
David Robb is a practicing scientist and CTO of a small firm developing new security technologies for detection of drugs and other contraband. Dave has published extensively in TheBlueStateConservative, and occasionally in American Thinker.
