Strategy: The Why and How of Renewable Energy
BY Henry Thayer
As I was reading the BBC website the other day, I came across an interesting fact: the value of Europe’s petroleum imports from Russia exceeds the value of the EU’s military aid to Ukraine. Some countries are almost entirely dependent on the Russians for their heating and energy needs.
In other words, for all the talk about an embargo of Russian oil and gas, Europe can’t follow through because Russia is such a large part of their supply. They are literally in a place where they have to keep doing business with Russia even as Putin’s army grinds Ukrainian cities to dust.
The United States is also a major exporter of oil and gas. But even with all of our fracking and pipelines, we can’t make up the difference if Russian production were taken off the market. We are releasing a million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and barely making a dent, especially from a global perspective.
There have been diplomatic efforts to get Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States to pump more oil. But they won’t. For one thing, they have no love for democracy and no perceived self-interest in upholding Ukrainian sovereignty in the face of the Russian invasion. For another, their primary concern is the price per barrel, not the threat to individual and human rights the Russians pose.
So, there is no relief to be had there.
All of which points to a serious problem: Dependence on fossil fuels is now a fundamental national security issue. The Free World’s dependence on fossil fuels sourced from those who either don’t share, or are actively opposed, to our values is literally funding our enemies.
This condition existed during the Global War on Terror (GWOT), of course, but at much lower level of intensity. Oil sheiks buying off fanatics was essentially the way al-Qaeda was financed. But the actual amount of money involved was fairly small. Major cuts in oil imports, made possible by fracking, hardly changed the financing picture for our enemies.
Things are different now. Putin needs funding, and a lot of it, to finance his war. And the Free World is giving it to him because we need his oil and gas. There may not be a way out of this bind in the immediate term. But in the mid-to-long term, there is a way out. And it is a permanent fix to problem of buying petroleum for despots.
We need to make renewable energy a national security priority.
The truth is, it is no longer necessary to convince the skeptics that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a problem. Even if it weren’t, we can’t continue to finance our enemies. And make no mistake, the shabby collection of despots who make up OPEC are indeed our enemies, in a very real sense. While they may cooperate on certain tactical (and sometimes strategic) matters, the Saudis and the other Petro-Sheikdoms are fundamentally enemies of democracy.
And then there is Putin. We know all about him now.
Being beholden to this collection of dictators already constrains our actions in foreign affairs. And if it comes to conflict and competition — or even war — in the Pacific, there is a better than even chance that the despots will back Communist China.
All of which adds up to a simple strategic conclusion: It is time to make a determined national commitment to renewable energy.
This project sounds daunting. But actually, committing to it is the hard part. Once we have committed to moving away from fossil fuels, we face a simple technical challenge. And no one is better than the United States of America when it comes to tackling technical challenges.
How good are we at it? Three of the four COVID vaccines in wide use were developed in the United States. Three years after we were dragged into WWII at the end of 1941 the seas were full of our ships, the skies were full of our airplanes, and the Red Ball Express was becoming legendary for moving supplies across a Europe being rapidly liberated from the Nazi yoke.
In October 1957 we were shocked that the USSR had beaten us into space with Sputnik 1. But a little less than twelve years later, in July 1969, we landed astronauts on the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. When JFK had set the deadline less than a decade before, many believed it was an impossible task. Yet the flag was planted on another world, in time.
History has proven it time and again: We, as a nation, are really good at meeting technical challenges.
Drastically reducing our use of fossil fuels is yet another one. It will not be easy. Diesel and gasoline are abundant, relatively cheap and incredibly useful. They are easy to store, easy to transport, and have unrivaled energy density (energy per unit volume). All things being equal, we would be crazy to stop using them.
But all things are not equal. Most of the world’s oil and gas is under the control of people who are like Bond villains but without the comic relief. We can’t be dependent on people who see our success as a threat to their power, even their very existence. So, a serious effort is warranted.
The good news is that most of what we need has either been developed or has at least passed the proof-of-concept stage. In a very real sense, we already have what we really need. For instance, we can put solar panels of every roof. We can build massive wind farms; for example, Cape Wind should be restarted but with streamlined permitting and tax exemptions.
High voltage direct current transmission has been shown to be a viable way of moving electricity for where is generated to where it is needed. The implications are profound: Right now, there is a proposed project to build a transmission line from the Midwest to California. It would send wind energy to California when it is night on the West Coast, and it would send solar energy to the Midwest when the wind was not blowing. The project is currently being held up by the difficulty and cost of getting permits in each state along the route. A federal permitting system for the electrical grid would help clear the way for such a project and likely many others.
Storage is another big part of the challenge. But this aspect is probably easier than enacting a federal permitting process. It is a technical problem rather than one of governance, and as I’ve said, we have proven ourselves to be really, really good at solving technical problems. And there have been huge advances in battery technology in recent years, so we’re already well on our way.
Beside batteries, we can electrolyze water to make hydrogen that we can store, and then burn to produce energy when needed. Yes, as some have pointed out it is a net loss going through the Carnot Cycle. But the point is to store energy that we are collecting from the sun and wind.
There are no doubt other methods for storing energy in chemical form that are easier to manage, either in their incipient stages or yet to be discovered. They will require technological development. But people who make space telescopes and rockets that land on their tails are certainly capable of developing these technologies.
And then there is the tokamak, a type of nuclear fusion reactor. Hydrogen fusion promises vast, virtually limitless, amounts of clean energy. It still has not been fully proven. But a company has developed the super powerful magnets needed to contain the plasma in the tokamak. They should have a working demonstrator in a few years and are hoping to start selling power in the 2030s.
Who developed this magnet technology? A group of MIT students and professors, and they are building a demonstrator in the old site of Fort Devens, Massachusetts.
Yes, we actually are really, really good at developing technology.
There is a lot more we will need. Electric cars, electric trucks that use some form of trackless trolley technology, and real sustainable jet fuel will all be needed eventually to get us off of fossil fuels. But these really are basically technical challenges. And we are unmatched at tackling them.
We can do it. And we must.
Hank Thayer received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, and holds both a B.S. and a Masters in Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. After serving as a U.S. Army Infantry Officer in the late 1980s, he has spent most of his professional life working in manufacturing. In addition to being an amateur historian he is a fair-to-middling shade tree mechanic.
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