http://www.mannecy.fr/17523-les-recherches-se-poursuivent-au-bord-du-lac-du-bourget.html

http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/Locales/Villeneuve_d_Ascq/actualite/Secteur_Villeneuve_d_Ascq/2011/10/15/article_il-va-falloir-reinventer-une-facon-de-v.shtml

Savoie – Une première mondiale au Lac du Bourget….

Source:
http://alpes.france3.fr/info/Climatisation-en-eau-profonde–57086703.html#

PDFでダウンロードはこちらです。

Image via Wikipedia

Nuclear energy is a necessary piece of the future energy mix. Outside of nuclear power there is no new fuel available for decades or centuries that will give us a stable source relatively free of weather’s changing moods (besides SWACs, and possibly OTEC systems).
All other sources depends on many factors, a smart grid, available storage, good climatic conditions to perform reasonably well.
It seems however clear that the nuclear energy industry current configuration is bringing about many troubles.
Most importantly the industry is using its clout to lobby and underplay some very important points about security and costs.
Most nuclear proponents today when they quote a kW price for comparison between different energies, forget to take into account final disposal of nuclear waste, liability insurance and total security costs.
But studies seem to show that average costs for nuclear kW are on par or higher than for most renewables (orders of magnitude higher than fossil fuels).
Moreover, in light the Fukushima accident, we are right to wonder if we are ever able to control such a risky energy, at least with the current technologies. It might be possible that the capitalist system is incompatible with the costly but necessary need for security. In that case, only new, safer technologies will help us work toward a sustainable nuclear industry.
For the time being, nuclear will remain a costly solution. Our SWAC and district cooling/heating technologies are thus very much to the point.

Image via Wikipedia

This sad state is compouding our problems and the coming more severe crunches because there is no adequate investment vehicule for taking risk and resiliency into account.
What is the value of having a very expensive back-up?
Traditional economics tell us that the market will allocate resources andthat the proper price will emerge once pure competition is allowed. We tend to agree but limit this temporarily, as we humans have perception spans that are quite short, and shallow, as we can not easily grasp probabilities.

We have however found that our district cooling systems, and our SWAC installations have much better economics than most conventional renewables, thanks to several factors that will be explained in further posts.
Utilities and large consumers can take advantage of those systems in a few places around the world already. A series of posts will describe existing systems later.

A very interesting post from Energy Bulletin.
I am quite fond of describing our energy dependence, technologies and conundrum through human power examples because it strikes and remains in one’s mind even if one does not understand the total and overall scales of the problems. Here is the link: You and your slaves | Energy Bulletin
There is however two observations, and potential limitations, that needs to be addressed when using slaves (outside of limitations on how many slaves we can cram on this planet).

1. Slaves metaphors do not address the need to properly account for energy conservation, storage, usage changes, efficiency improvements etc. The thinking here is very crude in terms of slaves simply producing energy and the master using as much as available, any remaining being dissipated into the larger environment. But there are many many possibilities in improving energy efficiency, and properly  addressing markets and users needs. Most of projects we see are often more a matter of finely understanding the energy use as the energy production. One slave can be enough (or even none!), if energy needs are rightly designed. Storage is also something very, very important.

2. There is no discussion about energy quality and nature. In our experiences with alternative energies, we discovered that we tend to bring everything back into a common unit, mostly based on electricity. This is forgetting that kWh energy and kWh heat are two different things. The slave waving large leaf, so common in Occident’s imaginary colonial scenes, is not really efficient at cooling the room. Better strategies and energy sources are available at a fraction of the cost. We think that SWACs or thermosolar solutions make more sense in many cases than conventional systems.

Very bad pieces of news this week.
The first one, oceans ecosystems collapses much faster than expected, and in very close global interrelation:
BBC News – World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline

The second one,
Ice melting at poles is increasing along with our CO2 emissions, in a very linear fashion. Potential buffers have proven inefficient.
CO2 and ice update « The Cost of Energy

Only an actual stop in CO2 emissions would seem to stop the process.

Both processes do not bode well for business-as-usual.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110301/full/471019a.html

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php

Rather old but interesting article in NYTimes. There is a global push to hold consumers and producers more accountable for « externalities« .
To put the record straight, this is good. The more we are able to take into account and reveal the impacts, interrelations,  and feedbacks between the economy, economics as a science, and the environment, and resources, the more we will be in a position to act decisively.
Carbon emissions rights and taxes are good first steps toward recognizing hidden production and consumption costs, and it is only fair that producers and consumers pay.
For this to happen however, a huge shift in mindset is needed. Accountants and auditors for once, must take into account whole new sets of assumptions and theories, and it will take years before any sensible change is realized on a global basis.

World Bank Pushes to Include Ecology in Accounting – NYTimes.com

Oil’d from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Interesting take from the blog here below on India, widely touted as a wind leader:

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/dirty-energy-dwarfs-clean-in-china-and-india/

Another way to put it, courtesy of http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/, based on BP Statistical review:

That’s right, outside of hydro, no renewable. Too small to even appear on the charts.
Other data sources give us :

Although this is not complete, as poor countries rely mostly on biomass (burning wood mostly), and adding it in the picture give us the scary chart below:

from 

We are hearing a lot about the importance of social networks and the power of the mobile internet on popular movements, and how those factors led to the upheavals in some Arab countries.
While certainly enabling factors, those are certainly not reasons for demoing and standing in front of tanks.
Reasons are to be found around despair and hope for better living. What this means in economical terms is that the Arab countries are finding difficult to employ and feed their population at acceptable prices.
Petrodollars are still increasing, but production is plateauing since several years, and revenues can not match the rise in price of natural resources, notably food supplies.
Rising price for petroleum products mean increased incomes but also rocketing related costs for food production (fertilizers based on refined petroleum products, machinery, transportation etc), and recent climate woes (« global weirding », more extremes more frequently in more regions) have further pushed global prices upward, very close to 2008 records, and we’re likely to beat them shortly this time around.
Resource revolts: the year of living dangerously | Energy Bulletin is a good explanation of current trends.
Countries with low resiliency (a limited range of products to trade, very focused domestic production, weak agricultural and industrial sectors) will be firsts in line to cope with the changing environment.
We are already witnessing the first impacts of our double plight: limited resources (incapacity to increase production, even with price increases) and climate change (resources destruction).
This is however not fate, as leaders and countries are able to develop better policies to foster more sustainable practices.
We will see if the political game underway is leading toward scapegoating and resources scrapping, as this is an easy short-term fix, or toward more strategic concerns.