Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects

We certainly are the uncouth ones, leaving nature's paws and feathers for tires and metals driving cars on the endless pavement covering more and more of the land, flying in ever larger, faster more numerous airplanes that have netted the sky with vapor trails. Smil's book is about our transition into all this. He starts with wood fires, water wheels, windmills and animal powered wagons and machines then goes on to the steam engine, internal combustion engine, and gas turbine.From Fire to Wire. First crouching before fire in smokey caves then recently flourishing everywhere by wire, to be lit, heated or cooled by electric machines from distant power plants.As usual with Smil, the book is very good but it leaves out so much. All these machines are like a giant Stalagmite that has formed thanks to a drip drip of precious life, everything is built on a deposit of what came before, all the equipment, the power and convenience.Smil is a historian of this stalagmite, a study of energy, apparatus, formed by human hands. I see him, the professor from Prague in a white lab coat lecturing us. We are spellbound, the topic, science and Smil partakes of it, he wants to be part of it why else would he choose the joule, a mere watt second as a base unit of energy? We buy energy at least by the kilowatt hour as we buy gasoline by the gallon not the drop.Three million six hundred thousand joules per kilowatt hour. Smil wants to use big numbers. There he is in his white lab coat woven with fleece of the metric system a historian now with a chance to use big numbers like one of the scientists. We really have to bear down on those who want to appear scientific. They are after undue influence from the scientific badge. Smil, ever the erudite European professor with scores of fascinating books gives them a charming Dr. Strange love touch by occasionally leaving out the English article as on pg. 126 "to make profit".Should one speak of the distance from Los Angeles to New York as hundres of millions of inches or use miles? (1.56M (million) inches or 2,462 miles?)This insistence on stupefying measurements of man made energies has him neglect the really awe inspiring dimension of nature. He is like an agent for self important but actually dwarfish technologist preening themselves despite their uncouth accomplishments. He forgets mention of the sun unless it is transformed into electricity or of less interest, hot water. Smil, historian of science never mentions glass, silent, odorless, long lasting glass surely an energy invention as important as an engine. Power lines, railroads, freeways oil and gas lines are all to be noticed but not glass and certainly not clotheslines. We have better examples think of our migrating cranes who leave no vapor trails and thrill us with their musical calls.I was upset to find the y axis of historic energy use graphs suddenly change from an easily understood quantity to the Fisher-Pry plot. f/1-f He never explains it and I have now forgotten already what I finally learned from someone else. What is the point? Those who understand a mystery can bully those who don't. The old energy vs. time plots were fine by me.Smil leaves out one transformation that plays a large part in our affairs. This is a kind of technical overshoot where developments are made compulsively for their own sake. Like the famous shark feeding frenzy that has sharks once started on bloody meat next gobble tin cans, bottles and garbage in a "feeding frenzy".We build solar power plants to feed a grid that lights shopping centers with fluorescent lights during the sunniest weather. At much less expense we could put in skylights turn off these lights, and forget the PV power plants. This is the essence of overdevelopment. We are forgetting good old use of the sun, windows and skylights faster than we develop cost effective new uses.The same frenzied over development places mysterious unitary valves that cause me technical panic on motel showers, the old hot and cold faucets worked fine.This compulsive development seems not the same as that which transformed the last centuries but maybe it is the same and the steam engine and the diesel engine on which his transformation are based never really got us anywhere. Smil, a recent book and one of his best Prime Movers of Globalization dwells on a key inventor Rudolph Diesel 1858-1913 whose engines power so much of the world today. Diesel told his son Eugene "It is wonderful to design and invent in the way an artist designs and creates. But whether it all has a purpose, whether people have become happier as a result that I can today no longer decide."Diesel drowned in the English Channel in 1913 an apparent suicide, he was not yet 60.His ghost may have something to tell us but the throb of the diesel engines make it hard to hear. Read more

Muy bueno

This guy has to all together when it comes to energy. His vision is awesome. I captured some of his quotes for my web site.

Energy transitions that have occurred because of technological progress (from wood to coal to oil and to renewables) may also be driven by government investments in the future. As the author explains many facts and examples, the physics and chemistry of each type of energy, matters not ordinarily considered by the general public, are nearly always the underlying reason for use of one energy source over another.One of the largest sources of primary energy, particularly the chemical energy in plants and wood, is of course solar energy. In a global warming scenario nations in the tropics and temperature latitudes, may be forced to consider whether solar PV and solar thermal energy, or crops and woodlands will be priority for maintenance. A hot world condition may reduce a substantial part of the Great Plains in the US and farmland in China (in areas of similar latitude) to arid lands. At that juncture, new canals and pipelines that transport water from high latitudes (where new rainfall patterns would exist because of the loss of the mid-latitude jet stream and the new importance of the polar jet stream) to temperate farmland would be an option; the other being the large scale construction of solar PV and solar thermal power stations to use sunlight that used to supply crops.Considering this challenge optimistically, though, a third option of canals and solar power stations exists: this would involve canals and drip irrigation pipes that efficiently water the land, and provide water for cover crops to reduce soil erosion and some harvests, and above this irrigated cropland, interspersed solar panels and mirrors would be constructed. The land would be stabilized against erosion and sandstorms, some crop production derived, and the ongoing production of renewable electricity would occur. Other ideas about combining renewable energy and cropland has been proposed, and successfully implemented, with wind power. However, this is unlikely to perform at continental scale because of rare earth shortages and the vulnerability to tornadoes, whereas solar power stations are much closer to the ground and can be shielded with adjustable steel plates and beams, perhaps even with a structure using steel and wood. Our huge economic gains obtained from oil, gas, and coal are unquestioned, and efficiency and energy transitions occur. However, the sunlight necessary for crops which feed a world of 7, 8, or 9 billion people are unlikely to found in the sub-Arctic and sub-Antarctic regions, now matter how advanced greenhouses may become. Thus, the national interests of the US, China, European, and most other nations will be served by maintaining adequate freshwater flows if rainfall in the temperature regions diminishes and if deserts and arid lands spread through most of the mid-latitudes. With good planning and wise use of money, and various treaties and UN guidelines, a substantial part of the money spent on conventional wars will go towards building a vast and historic canal and pipeline system on each continent. With this success, every continent will be sufficient in food production, in water resources, and famine will never destroy one of the world's major powers.

Very incisive and thought-provoking work though excessively technical at times. Smil does a good job demonstrating that energy technology transitions are protracted affairs with frequent "bumps in the road." While he favors renewable energy, he recognizes that the claims of many renewable energy proponents, most notably con artist Al Gore, are vastly overblown. One area Smil could have done a better job in is describing the consumer costs of transitioning to renewable energy; particularly in areas such as transportation, fuel prices, and fueling convenience. Until it is possible for consumers at large to purchase renewable powered vehicles at prices comparable to today's cars, recharge or refuel them in the amount of time it takes to fill up at the gas station, the utopian fantasies of renewable energy as a panacea to carbon emissions will remain the expensive pipe dreams of limousine liberals.

The information about the history of human energy use is informative and concise. Taking figures, where possible, from historical records.An interesting read but remember it was written a decade ago so, as the author astutely points out, the future predictions herein are subject to change. Ten years later, we can see that to be the case.

The first two thirds of the book is a detailed review of the transition from wood and human power to the 21st century dependence on fossil fuels. Dispells some myths along the way.Paints rather gloomy but realistic picture of the difficulties of transitioning away from fossil fuels, without offering any specific solutions.Very much a technical view of the innevitable changes that he acknowleges must come. Smil only touches lightly on the social, political, and commercial aspects of how to achieve / accelerate the coming transition.Good, realistic background reading.

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