We all know that the ready
availability of fossil fuel, particularly oil, will someday soon be in decline
and eventually run out; even delusional right-wingers know that, except that
some of them are salivating at the prospect of taking to their guns in some
future Apocalyptic adventure, or they believe
that they will be transported to some mythical higher place and be
“renewed”—hopefully in the manner of Logan’s
Run. Oil to run our vehicles, power
our industry and heat our homes is no longer cheap, but still available in
sufficient quantities for now, so while people are aware that there is finite
supply left, it is not something for them to worry about, at least not right now.
Some countries, of course, are
aware of that they must begin some movement toward so-called “renewable” energy
sources that doesn’t necessarily include nuclear energy and limited
opportunities for dam construction. Fusion power has proved to be beyond the
capacities of human ingenuity, and solar power requires excessively expensive
hardware (and besides, Ronald Reagan thought it was a waste of time). Wind
power generation seems to be a popular choice, and the U.S. and others have
begun a crash programming to at least try it out.
Harnessing this potential on a
national scale does seem daunting however, since in the U.S. it would require
hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of such units to meet most of the energy
needs of this country, and that doesn’t even address the issue of transportation
power mechanisms.
One country, Denmark, has gone
far in employing renewable energy to serve its needs; but it is a small country
with a modest population. One of its neighbors with a far larger population and
economy seems to believe it can also deploy renewable sources to meet most of its
energy needs, within the next few decades. This country is Germany, which for
the past several years has been in the midst of a massive infrastructure
project, of the scale not seen in the country since the construction of the
Autobahn system. The goal of this project is nothing less than near complete
independence from fossil fuels in the generation of electrical power by 2050. This
includes the construction of power generation plants connected to off-shore and
on-shore wind farms, and electrical lines that will carry this power into the
industrial heartland of southern Germany.
All of this is just the beginning
of an extremely expensive operation that many believe will hurt the German
economy at a time when the EU is experiencing slow or negative economic growth.
German business have been particularly skeptical—in large part because much of
the cost of overruns is being placed on them, in the form of tariffs that are
being paid to companies involved in renewable energy sources to maintain their
commercial viability until the project is completed—still many decades away.
Consumers have also been “hit” with surcharges on their energy bill to help
fund the project. And, naturally, fossil fuel interests have also weighed with
their “concerns.”
Still, those who are supporters
of the scheme point to the mythical German “ingenuity” and the “successes” like
Feldheim, a farming village of about 150 people, which is being touted as an
example of how this is all supposed to work. 43 wind turbines, a biogas plant
(using ground-up corn stocks and a slurry made from livestock dung) and a
back-up woodchip burning facility all pitch-in to serve the community’s
electrical and heating needs. On a
national scale, that would suggest that the country would require upwards of 6 million wind turbines.
Some of the more “practical” of mind
call the project a “pipe dream,” claiming that future energy policy is better
served by the use of “hybrid” technologies and power generation, providing the example
of “flex fuel” vehicles that can use multiple fuel sources, like gasoline,
ethanol and electricity—anything to decrease dependency on foreign oil. This is
fine for the short-term, but again it is only a delaying action for long-term
solutions.
If Germany is in fact successful
in weaning even half its energy needs away from fossil fuels in the coming
decades despite its cost, the project should be viewed as a remarkable and
farsighted success, and a model for what—and what not—to do. But by then, will
it be too late for some countries, like the U.S. and China, to “jump start”
their own “solutions” that will be at an even more prohibitive cost?
No comments:
Post a Comment