13. Solutions

All the previous chapters have been leading up to a consideration of what is possible in the future as we transition away from fossil fuels and, in the shorter term, away from petroleum. We’ve now looked at all the available information about potential energy sources and the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. The tendency has been to champion one source as the complete solution, but the answer is unlikely to be as simple as that. To find our way through the complexities, we look at three scenarios that bracket the possibilities and can help us sort through all of them.

The simple answer to our energy dilemma

The simple answer to our energy problem is for Americans to learn to live happily using just 6% of our current per-capita energy use (the amount Kenyans use). Present installations of nuclear and hydropower would provide all that the U.S. would need in 2050, even with the population increase forecast by the U.S. Census Bureau. We could stop using all fossil fuels, abandon all attempts to develop alternative sources, and not even try to increase the quantity of energy provided by nuclear and hydropower today. But it’s unlikely that we could learn to live happily on such a severely restricted energy diet—remember, transportation per capita, and energy use per capita, would have to decline.

That being the case, solving the U.S. energy problem is not going to be simple—it will involve major social, political, and environmental changes.

Is there an answer we can live with—happily?

A solution that would likely be acceptable to most of us would allow us to maintain a high standard of living, perhaps not as high as at present, nor as wasteful of energy, but one that on the whole would seem as good to most of us as it is today. Let’s consider several possibilities, focusing on the United States because the data are best; therefore, the necessary points can be made much more clearly and succinctly. It also makes sense to consider possible solutions for the nation that consumes almost one-quarter of the energy used by all the people in the world. For starters, we need to understand the following.

Maintaining both an ample energy supply and energy independence will involve not one energy source but several, and an integrated system that makes the best use of each kind. Not all the energy sources that we use today or are experimenting with today will be major players.

We need a renovated and modernized system to transport energy, through a smart grid and by making liquid fuels from the energy in electricity and transporting it through more and better networks of pipelines.

How to begin

We can’t abandon petroleum, natural gas, and coal tomorrow. Alternative energy facilities are presently insufficient, nor will they be up to the task by next year, or the year after. So our first step into our new energy future will be a staged withdrawal from our dependence on petroleum. We can think of 2050 as the deadline for completing our withdrawal from petroleum, because by that year petroleum supplies will be extremely limited and economically impractical if petroleum economists and geologists are correct in their assessments of petroleum reserves. In short, if by 2050 we haven’t done something about it, nature will do it for us in its own way.

Let’s consider three possible scenarios for the year 2050:

Scenario 1: Business as usual. The U.S. population grows to 420 million by 2050, as currently forecast by the U.S. Census Bureau, while per-capita energy use remains as it is today, as does the percentage of energy supplied by each source.

Scenario 2: Per-capita use as usual. The U.S. population grows to 420 million by 2050, and per-capita use remains the same as today, but the energy comes primarily from solar and wind, largely replacing fossil fuels.

Scenario 3: Alternative energy sources and energy conservation. The U.S. population grows to 420 million by 2050, U.S. per-capita use drops to half the current level (about that of Japan, Great Britain, and Germany), and only a small amount of energy comes from fossil fuel. The question is, which energy source or sources will we have chosen to replace it?

In discussing Scenario 3, we explore largely replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind, as in Scenario 2. Then we consider whether coal, instead of solar and wind, could replace petroleum and natural gas, and explain why nuclear power, ocean power, and natural gas are not viable as the major alternatives.

Of course, mathematically there are an infinite number of scenarios that could be considered. I have selected these three to show the range of costs, as a way to begin to think about the energy future. Economists who read this will quite likely tell you that it is difficult to extrapolate costs into the future, because technological changes affect prices in complex ways. I hope that some economists reading this will be motivated to take what I have written here and improve on the forecasts.

Scenario 1: If America does not change its habits...

Americans need to reduce their per-capita energy use. Table 13.1 and Figure 13.1 show the amount of energy use in the U.S. in 2007.

Table 13.1 U.S. Energy Use in 2007*

Figure 13.1 U.S. energy use in 2007 totaling 29.3 trillion kilowatt-hours. (Source: Energy Information Agency, U.S. Department of Energy)

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States will reach 420 million by 2050—120 million more people, 40% more than today.¹ If each of the 420 million people, on average, continues to use the same amount of energy that the average American uses today, total energy use would increase from 29 to 40 trillion kilowatt-hours, and the energy supply would have to increase by 40%. Oil would have to provide 16 trillion kilowatt-hours, and coal and gas about 9 trillion kilowatt-hours each² (Figure 13.2 and Table 13.2). If the petroleum geologists and economists are correct, that amount of petroleum will not be economically recoverable by 2050. Natural-gas use would have to increase 37%, which is unlikely, period, and especially unlikely without great environmental damage from the methods that will have to be used to mine enough of it. Add to this that hydropower would have to increase 27%, which is highly improbable—as discussed earlier, hydropower is more likely to decline.³ Conventional nuclear power plants will also not fill the gap in an economically feasible way, if at all, because of the limits of uranium ore.

Figure 13.2 Scenario 1: U.S. energy use if the population grows by 120 million by 2050 and Americans do not change their habits. Total energy use would increase to 40 trillion kilowatt-hours. According to petroleum geologists and economists, this is an impossible future.

Table 13.2 Scenario 1: U.S. Energy Use If the Population Grows by 120 Million and Americans by 2050 Do Not Change Their Habits

This is an impossible future. But it is the inevitable future for those who believe we can continue business as usual. Even the near-term future—looking ahead, let’s say, only to 2012—is beginning to look grim for maintaining adequate energy supplies if we follow a business-as-usual approach while population and demand grow. According to the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corporation, by 2012 energy demand will exceed supply in most regions of the United States, meaning that the per-capita standard of living is bound to decline without major new investments in energy-generating plants.⁴ Major changes in energy supply and construction of major new facilities can no longer be put off in the hope that somehow something will work out “because it always has.”

No, our future is not going to be business-as-usual. To maintain a high standard of living, remain a major industrial power, and continue to be a major source of all kinds of creativity—in science, humanities, the arts—we have to move away from petroleum. But, you may say, “we shouldn’t have to decrease the amount of energy each of us uses.” Okay, then let’s suppose nobody has to use less energy, but we do have to move away from fossil fuels.

Scenario 2: Per-capita use unchanged, but reliance changes from fossil fuels to solar and wind

Suppose Americans don’t lower their per-capita energy use by 2050 but to a large extent abandon fossil fuels, or what’s left of them, and turn to alternative sources of energy. The analysis of all energy sources in the rest of this book can lead you to conclude that the best thing for ourselves and America of 2050 would be a heavy dependence on wind and solar energy. Today those technologies are best prepared to provide abundant energy and the most energy independence, while being the least polluting and best for the environment.

In this scenario of unchanging per-capita energy use, I assume that by 2050 oil, natural gas, and coal will each provide only 1% of the energy in the U.S.—fossil fuels will not be gone and entirely forgotten, but we will have made a planned transition away them, continuing to use them where they are best suited, such as providing energy for peak demand and when wind and solar are putting less into the grid than is required at that time. I also assume that nuclear and freshwater energy will remain at their 2010 amounts, with no net increase or decrease—meaning that the number of hydroelectric power plants remains exactly the same as today, and that the total energy generated by nuclear power plants is the same as today, although some of the plants operating today will have been decommissioned and a few new ones added. As a result, nuclear’s contribution drops to 5.9% of the energy supplied, and hydropower drops to 2.9%.

It may be overly optimistic to assume that hydroelectric energy generation will remain at the current level 40 years from now. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration has projected that conventional hydroelectric generation will actually decline 23% by 2020 because of the removal and breaching of more dams for environmental or other reasons.⁵ And as I explained in Chapter 4, “Water Power,” it is unlikely that in the future any new major hydroelectric power plant will be built in the U.S. (or any technologically developed nation, for that matter).

For this scenario, I also assume that oceans, a yet little-tested energy source, will provide just over 2%, based on the potentials discussed in Chapter 8, “Ocean Power.” Ocean energy will begin to play some role, but ocean-energy technology will likely continue to lag solar and wind. A nation intent on expanding ocean-energy use might invest heavily in its research and development, and might boost the contribution above 2% by 2050, but today we have no real basis for planning on that for America.

I also assume that geothermal energy and biofuels will provide 5% each. This is a rather arbitrary amount, based simply on the idea that these two sources will contribute significantly, but not largely, to the total. As explained in Chapter 12, “Saving Energy at Home and Finding Energy at Your Feet,” low-intensity geothermal is inexpensive and abundant, and I believe its use is bound to increase.

I have assumed that biofuels will be a minor player for reasons discussed in Chapter 9, “Biofuels.” Right now the most promising sources of biofuels are algae and bacteria, but they are still in early development. Crops grown to produce fuels are either net users of energy (energy sinks rather than energy sources), or yield very little more than it took to produce them. As a result, I believe that this technology will be disastrous for our nation, using large amounts of water, straining the supply of phosphate fertilizers, and causing large-scale environmental damage while providing essentially no energy benefit. Despite this, my guess is that lobbyists will not fail completely to get some funding for them. Obtaining energy from waste cooking oils and other wastes is more efficient than not doing so and reduces the amount of new energy required to be generated, but it can never be a major percentage of our nation’s energy. We will continue to use firewood, especially where this can be obtained locally.

As a result of these limitations, wind and solar would have to provide 38% each, or more than 15 trillion kilowatt-hours each, to make up the difference (see Table 13.3 and Figure 13.3).

Table 13.3 Scenario 2: U.S. Energy Use in 2050 if Per-Capita Use Does Not Change but Shifts to Heavy Reliance on Wind and Solar This table shows the energy production from each energy source if the population increases as forecast by the U.S. Census Bureau, and if coal, oil, and natural gas provide 1% each, nuclear and hydro provide the same quantity as at present, geothermal and biofuels 5% each, and the oceans 2%. Solar and wind split the rest and provide 38% each.

Figure 13.3 Scenario 2: Year 2050, if no change in per-capita use, heavy reliance on wind and solar. The population increases as forecast by the U.S. Census Bureau; coal, oil, and natural gas provide 1% each; nuclear and hydro provide the same quantity as at present; geothermal and biofuels provide 5% each; and the oceans 2%. Solar and wind split the rest and provide 38%.

The calculations for Scenario 2 (no change in per-capita use and a heavy reliance on solar and wind energy) are more complicated than for Scenario 1 (business as usual) because of the technological differences between renewable alternative energy sources—wind, solar, and ocean—and energy sources that use a fuel that must be mined to obtain the energy stored within them. With a fossil-fuel-fired electrical power plant, the energy content of a unit of fuel is known, as is the efficiency of energy conversion. In contrast, although each alternative-energy installation has a maximum capacity, the actual yield is a variable depending on environmental conditions.

I have restricted the calculations of solar energy to photovoltaics, not considering solar thermal, for simplicity and because right now it looks like photovoltaics will be the dominant technology. For solar and wind each, the required generation capacity is 15,215 billion kilowatt-hours (Figure 13.3 and Table 13.3).⁶ Based on these, in 2050 solar capacity would have to be 12.2 billion kilowatts and wind-energy capacity would have to be 6.48 billion kilowatts.⁷ (In the Endnotes, in the section for Chapter 13, you will find a table in note #7 that compares the costs per kilowatt-hour for coal, solar, and wind.)

What will this cost?

Estimating the costs of future investments is not simple and it takes us into cost–benefit analysis. Economists agree that in making such estimates, we have to take into account what else we could be doing with the money we are considering investing in something—such as building a new power plant. Economists refer to this as consideration of the “social discount factor.” This becomes important in our analysis because economically there are two fundamentally different kinds of energy installations: those that require the continual purchase of fuel (fossil fuels, biofuels, uranium for nuclear power plants); and those that do not (solar, wind, ocean, geothermal). Matthew J. Sobel, William E. Umstattd Professor of Operations Research, Case Western Reserve University, kindly did these calculations that take the social discount factor into account for me, based on the analyses done throughout this book. Here are the results.⁸

Solar energy installations today average $6.81per watt. Wind-energy installations recently have ranged between $1.00 and $3.00 and today average $1.71 per watt. For both, there would be negligible subsequent costs after the initial outlay. (Estimates of maintenance costs are hard to find, but the existing ones suggest they will not be greatly different for coal, solar, and wind.) Using a standard social discount of 5% for Scenario 2, “Per-Capita Use as Usual,” solar energy installations would cost $38.6 trillion and wind energy installations would cost $7.6–10 trillion, or a total of $46–49 trillion for the two. If work on these installations began immediately and continued at the same pace until 2050, an investment of about $1.1–1.22 trillion would be required each year in current U.S. dollars.

According to the 2009 federal budget, U.S. federal receipts in 2008 were $2.524 trillion, and 2009 receipts were forecast to be $2,186 trillion.⁹ Thus, this business-as-usual approach to per-capita energy use is obviously going to result in an expensive transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind. New technologies and improvements in existing ones will lower the costs, and economists will tell you that the amount of energy people use changes quickly with changes in energy costs. There’s also some comfort in knowing that in 2009 the federal budget forecast that 2019 federal tax receipts would rise to $4.446 trillion. Consider also that the 2008 U.S. Department of Defense budget was $0.593 trillion ($593 billion) and the estimated 2009 DOD budget was $728 billion, so the annual transition costs to Scenario 2, with no reduction in per-capita energy use, is 50% higher than the 2009 DOD budget.¹⁰ For those interested in additional comparisons, here are some other funding allocations in the 2009 U.S. federal budget:

• Department of Energy: $26.4 billion

• Transportation: $70.5 billion

• Environmental Protection Agency: $7.8 billion

• Climate Policies (Clean Energy Technologies): $0

• Total for these: $104.7 billion

According to the United Nations Environment Program, there was a total investment of $155 billion worldwide in 2008 in renewable-energy technologies, and “the G-20 group of nations recently announced stimulus packages totaling $3 trillion or 4.5 per cent of their GDP.”¹¹

These government budget numbers help us to weigh the relative cost of the energy conversion. It’s much harder to get an analogous estimate of the total national outlay from private corporations. Clearly, however, there will either have to be massive additional federal expenditures, or the transition will not be funded significantly by the U.S. federal government and will instead have to be done by the private sector. Either way, it will be a major economic and technological commitment.

The bottom line is that Scenario 2, with unchanged per-capita energy use, just doesn’t look particularly good.

Scenario 3: Per-capita use drops 50%, solar and wind provide two-thirds

A third and more realistic scenario is of a future in which each person in the United States uses about half as much energy as each American uses today. This means that per-capita use in the United States in 2050 would be about the same as it is today in Great Britain, Germany, and Japan—an energy level at which, on average, these people live well (Table 13.4 and Figure 13.4). The information and analyses in the two preceding chapters indicate that Americans could lower their energy use to this level with little or no loss in the quality of life and, in fact, considering that there would be less pollution and surface mining, probably an improvement.

Table 13.4 Scenario 3: U.S. energy use in 2050 assuming a 50% drop in per-capita use and heavy reliance on solar and wind. Each fossil fuel provides only 1% of the energy; nuclear power provides the same amount it did in 2007 but a greater percentage (11.71%) of the total energy than in 2007. Hydropower also provides the same quantity as in 2007 but a percentage increase from 2.9% in 2007 to 4.3%. Biofuels and ocean energy each provide 5%. This leaves a shortfall, which for the sake of simplicity is accounted for by an increase in low-intensity geothermal (assuming that the costs will be less than that of any fossil fuel energy it replaces).

Figure 13.4 Scenario 3: U.S. energy use in 2050 assuming a 50% drop in per-capita use and heavy reliance on solar and wind. Each fossil fuel provides only 1% of the energy; nuclear and water power provide the same as in 2007; and biofuels, geothermal, and ocean energy each provide 5%.

Although a 50% reduction seems very large, most of it should be pretty painless for the individual. It will mainly require more-efficient cars, more-efficient cooling and heating, and so forth—technological improvements rather than radical changes in our personal lifestyles. The great advantage is that the demand for solar and wind energy would be only 44% of what it would be if there were no improvement in per-capita energy use. There is one important caveat, however. According to an article in the New York Times, “Electricity use from power-hungry gadgets is rising fast all over the world. The fancy new flat-panel televisions everyone has been buying in recent years have turned out to be bigger power hogs than some refrigerators.”¹² The International Energy Commission estimates “consumer electronics”—all our computers, cell phones, video games, and so on—use 15% of home energy use, that this is likely to triple by 2030, and, if so, would require “building the equivalent of 560 coal-fired power plants, or 230 nuclear plants.”¹³ Meanwhile, we lovers of computer gadgets complain about the amount of energy jet airplanes use. Perhaps this is another case of not-in-my-backyard—that we may be looking to solve somebody else’s problem far away at 35,000 feet, while ignoring the energy problem occupying our ears and fingertips.

Wind and solar for Scenario 3 are together projected to contribute 6,448 billion kilowatt-hours by 2050 (Table 13.4). Solar energy capacity would have to be 5.22 billion kilowatts, and wind energy capacity would have to be 2.75 billion kilowatts.^14,15 We can ask: Will production capacity for solar and wind meet this challenge? Interestingly, production of photovoltaics has been increasing rapidly, growing by 49% from 2005 to 2006, then another 54% between 2006 and 2007, and increasing a remarkable 91% between 2007 and 2008. Overall, from 1999 to 2008, production increased twelve-fold (1185%), with 987 megawatts produced in 2008.¹⁶ At this growth rate, the goal of 5.22 billion kilowatts required for Scenario 3 would be reached by the year 2037, well short of the deadline year of 2050.

Based on current installation capabilities, the billions of kilowatts of solar capacity required in Scenario 3 would take an area of 5,307 square miles, about 2% of the area of Texas. The 2.88 billion kilowatts of wind turbines would take 1,140 square miles, less than half a percent of the land area of Texas.¹⁷ All the solar and wind energy production for this scenario could be accommodated by about 2.5% of the land area of Texas, or about 0.2% of the land area of the lower 48 states. By comparison, urban area occupies 3% of the lower 48 states, cropland 22%.¹⁸

Taking into account a 5% annual social-discount factor, here are the results for Scenarios 2 and 3:

Scenario 2 (Per-Capita Use as Usual): Wind
and solar replace fossil fuels and together
provide 64.4% of the energy required:        Cost: $91.34 trillion

Scenario 3 (With Energy Conservation): Wind
and solar share equally and provide 64.4%
of the energy required:                                Cost: $34.77 trillion¹⁹

This is expensive, but how does it compare to alternatives? Perhaps surprisingly, importing petroleum costs a sizable fraction of the projected installation costs for Scenario 3. For example, in 2008 the United States imported 3.57 billion barrels of oil at an average daily price of $95.62 per barrel, for a total import cost of $341.46 billion. (At this writing in 2010, oil prices exceed $70 per barrel, which would amount to $250 billion annually.) The 2008 total cost of importing oil was about 37% of the annual cost of Option 3’s transition to solar and wind by 2050.

Can we plan a reasonable future based on coal?

Coal is the one fossil fuel we’re not going to run out of in the next 50 years or so, even using existing technology, and it has been fairly cheap, so it’s reasonable to ask: What if Americans opted for a coal-energy future rather than solar and/or wind? But consider: With wind and solar, most costs—close to all from this long-term perspective—are for installation alone, because the energy from then on is free. With coal, after paying to install a coal-fired plant, there are annual costs for the coal itself, all the indirect costs of mining’s toxic pollution and destructive effects on the land, and additional costs of “clean-coal” plants to bury carbon dioxide. To make matters even more complex, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory views the total money spent to run a coal-fired power plant (including pollution and land restoration costs) as an economic benefit to the state where the plant is located, while my analysis sees these as expenses.

In June 2008, the U.S, Energy Information Agency recalculated the costs to mine coal and determined that at $10.50/ton, the cost a few years ago, only 6% of the coal in Wyoming, the country’s largest reserve, would be economically recoverable.²⁰ At the time of this writing in 2010, the price of coal delivered to U.S. power plants averages $36.06 per ton. But worldwide, coal is selling at much higher prices, and prices have been rising to as much as $120 a ton (Figure 13.5).

Figure 13.5 The price of coal has been rising rapidly in recent years, for example, doubling between October 2007 and April 2008. (Source: AP Images/Platts, AP)^{21, 22}

Factoring in a social discount of 5%, the cost of a transition that has coal replacing petroleum and natural gas and providing 64.4% of the energy by 2050 is $31.07 trillion. This is based on the traditional estimates of the costs of building coal-fixed power plants—between $1 and $2 per watt. But as noted in Chapter 3, these costs have been rising rapidly, and one report estimates the cost as high as $3.50 per watt. This would obviously make the total cost much greater.

Could wind do it alone without solar?

We might in theory consider a future in which wind provides 64% of the energy and solar none, in the hope that this would lower the costs even more. Obviously, at present efficiencies and prices, wind is much cheaper than solar, so it would make economic sense to emphasize wind over solar—except for one thing: There is more solar energy available, and it is more consistent.

Interestingly, if wind alone provides 64.4% of our energy needs, the cost falls to $6.44 trillion, which, distributed evenly over 40 years, would be $161 billion a year. (All the cost estimates are summarized in Table 13.5.)

Table 13.5 Total Costs of a Transition to Wind and Solar from 2010 to 2050 (Taking into Account a 5% Annual Social Discount Factor)

The American Wind Energy Association estimates that the windiest 20 states have enough wind-energy potential to provide one-third to one-half of all the energy Americans currently use—and half of the total energy used in Scenario 3. However, with present technologies, depending totally on land-based wind installations may not be feasible in the United States because of various kinds of opposition to local wind turbine installations, environmental and social. Even allowing for the possibility that additional offshore sites could be found and developed at the same costs as onshore sites, it’s unlikely that a nation would want to go completely to wind energy, for several reasons, including landscape beauty, bird mortality, and the risks of relying on just one energy source. Variety provides redundancy, so if anything goes wrong on a large scale with one form of energy production, others are available.

In sum, wind is already more cost-effective than coal. The net present value for wind is less than for coal even if coal were free. In fact, coal would need a $177-per-ton subsidy to cost as little as wind alone, taking a 5% annual social discount factor into account. Solar, on the other hand, is unlikely to be cost-effective against coal as both are priced today within the United States, unless we take into account all the costs associated with mining and strip mining (costs of erosion, land restoration and conservation, sedimentation, and health care), which I have not done. (However, this story could change considerably if installation costs of coal-fixed power plants triple or quadruple, as some reports indicate.)

As for solar energy, assuming the total costs are in installation, and there are no maintenance or other costs, solar matches coal when coal reaches $433.64 a ton (taking into account net present value).

How about a nuclear future?

I haven’t considered nuclear power as the major replacement for fossil fuel because, as you saw in Chapter 5, “Nuclear Power,” with continued competition for fuel for conventional nuclear reactors, there just won’t be enough uranium. Despite what you may hear from corporations in France and elsewhere, breeder reactors and nuclear-fuel recycling are still too experimental, are unlikely to be successful and safe on a large scale, and are even less likely to provide the large amount of energy needed in 40 years.

Constructing a conventional nuclear power plant costs $5–14 billion.²³ For nuclear energy to replace wind and solar in Scenario 3, the U.S. would need 572 functioning nuclear power plants by 2050—that’s 468 in addition to the 104 running now. That would require 12 new plants a year (the first 12 to be added by the end of 2012). This seems out of the question, given how much time it takes to determine the plant design, find a suitable site, get all the approvals, and carry out the construction. It also seems unlikely that sites could be found that would be politically acceptable for 468 new plants. After all, that’s an average of more than 10 new plants per state, if the lower 48 states are included. And we could forget about Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, and probably Vermont and New Hampshire, because of their small size, leaving 43 states and an average of more than 11 new plants per state.^24,25

As discussed in Chapter 5, the lifetime of a nuclear power plant is about 30 to 40 years, and the cost to decommission and dismantle a nuclear power plant is estimated to range from $200 million to more than $600 million.²⁶ For example, the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant near Portland, ME, one of the first commercial nuclear power plants in the country and one of the first to be decommissioned, cost $231 million to build and is estimated to cost $635 million to dismantle. (And this is an estimate made in 2003.) According to Matthew Wald in a Scientific American article, decommissioning this power plant is “an unglamorous task that was not fully thought through during the era when plants were being constructed.²⁷ Except for one or two experimental power plants, none of the decommissioned nuclear plants in the United States have actually been taken apart and all the radioactive material transported to safe storage.

If we suppose, conservatively, that only the 104 plants that currently exist will have to be decommissioned and dismantled by 2050, that could add as much as a $66 billion to the cost of nuclear power. It is unclear whether these estimated costs are realistic or whether the dismantling cost is going to be in proportion to the construction cost. Because construction costs have gone from several hundred million to more than $10 billion, the dismantling costs could also be orders of magnitude greater than presently estimated. And this assumes no costs associated with accidents or the transportation and storage of radioactive wastes.²⁸ Nor does it include insurance, because—and this is important—no private insurance company will write a policy for a nuclear power plant, meaning that the federal government is acting as the insurer of last resort, providing another subsidy for nuclear energy.

In sum, no matter what you may have heard, nuclear power would be really, really expensive, in addition to being an environmental and health problem of huge proportions.

However, many proponents of nuclear power suggest building a lot fewer than 468 nuclear power plants, so let’s consider what they might contribute. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee has proposed building 100 nuclear power plants in 20 years.²⁹ If they were built over the next 40 years instead, that would be more than two a year. They would add about the same capacity as all the presently operating plants, providing approximately 2,344 billion kwh a year. This would be about 12% of the energy required in Scenario 3, so the100 new plants plus the existing 104 would provide almost 24% of the nation’s energy.

As mentioned, the cost of a nuclear power plant is estimated at $6.8 to $14 billion. The average output is 22.5 billion kWh. Wind turbines to provide the same amount of energy would cost $9.5 billion based on today’s average installation costs and energy output. Thus, installation costs of wind turbines appear to be within the price range for nuclear power plants. However, because of a tendency to underestimate their building costs, the nuclear plants can be considerably more expensive to build, and then there’s the annual cost of fuel, the decommissioning costs, and any other costs. So it appears unlikely that nuclear power would be cost-competitive with either wind or coal (Figure 13.6).

Figure 13.6 Comparison of annual costs to convert to non-fossil fuels (using a social discount factor of 5%).

What about natural gas?

I have not considered a natural-gas future because, first of all, as shown in Chapter 2, “Natural Gas,” at current rates of use, the world’s known reserves of natural gas accessible with known technology will last a short time—about four years according to the latest U.S. Geological Survey information, if America becomes energy-independent; approximately 60 to 65 years, to about 2070, if world resources are purchased—not much longer than petroleum. And the nonconventional sources, right now, are both highly speculative and highly polluting at the source.

So what’s the best choice?

In sum, considering only the costs to build power plants, pay for fuel, and deal with coal pollution, wind is the cheapest alternative, coal probably next, and nuclear probably third (assuming there would be sufficient uranium to fuel the power plants). Using solar and wind together to contribute a total of 65% of the energy would be the most expensive. For reasons explained in the chapters on coal and nuclear power, neither coal nor nuclear is a good choice for the environment and for human health.³⁰

How to reduce per-capita energy use in the United States

The only workable scenarios for the future—Scenario 3 and perhaps some of its variations—are based on the assumption that we can and will reduce per-capita energy use by about 50%. How can we do this as painlessly as possible? The major ways are mainly technological, not personal: increased energy efficiency in transportation, especially automobiles; increased efficiency of space heating and cooling; and increased efficiency in lighting.

According to the Department of Energy, of the 29,297 billion kilowatt-hours that the United States uses in a year, 28% is used in transportation; 21% is residential (space heating and cooling, lighting, cooking, and running refrigerators and other appliances); 18% is commercial (the same kinds of uses as residential but in businesses of all kinds, as well as all governments and private and public organizations); and 32% is industrial (agriculture and forestry; fishing and hunting; mining, including oil and gas extraction; and construction).^31,32

Energy used in transportation can be reduced even more than 30% by (1) no longer having to transport as much coal, (2) halving the number of miles driven per person, and (3) increasing the average automobile fuel efficiency to 50 miles per gallon. But it is worth repeating the caveat that the rapid increase in consumer electronics is leading to a large increase in domestic use of electricity, and, if it continues at the present rate, will work against energy conservation.

Storing and transporting solar and wind energy, and using it to transport us

Solar and wind energy are not generated 24 hours a day, day in and day out. Thus, for them to meet a large percentage of our energy needs in the future will require finding ways to store and transport their energy, and ways to convert it into a form that can transport us. Little talked about, but I think necessary to the transition from abundant petroleum and natural gas to alternative energy sources, is the development of large-scale chemical conversions to make liquid fuels from energy generated as electricity.

The basic idea is simple: An electric current passed through water separates the water into its components: hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen can be burned as a fuel but is difficult to store and ship. Professor Nathan S. Lewis, of Caltech’s Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, has pointed out that chemists can make methane from hydrogen and carbon atoms. When methane is available, the next step is a straightforward chemical process to convert methane to wood alcohol (methanol, whose molecule is just a methane molecule with one oxygen atom added to it) or to ethanol, a slightly more complex molecule.^33,34 Alcohol can be, and is, used to fuel automobiles, trucks, and many other internal combustion engines.

Some more imaginative chemistry can then take hydrogen, methane, ethanol, and methanol and make gasoline and jet fuel in a kind of reverse refinery process. Each chemical step uses some energy, so the overall energy efficiency goes down, but there is enough alternative energy for this not to be a serious problem. Now is a good time for the big chemical, petrochemical, and power corporations to get together and start developing the chemical technology and building the reverse refineries that will be required.

Improving transportation energy efficiency

If Americans do not drive less, and automakers do not increase the average miles per gallon of fuel, then in 2050 the United States will need 173 billion gallons of gasoline. But we’ve already proved that we can manage very well with less. In response to the soaring prices of gasoline in 2008, people stopped buying gas-guzzlers and pickup trucks, used public transportation more, and took shorter vacation trips or none at all—taking “staycations” at home and pretending to be on a trip. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires that passenger cars average 35 mpg by 2020, a 44% improvement overall but still asking for a less than 1% improvement in gas mileage per year.³⁵ If the miles driven per person dropped 50%, the total fuel used by motor vehicles in the U.S. would drop to 42 billion gallons, 10% less than we used in 2007.

More than 6% of all energy used in the United States is for transporting coal, so if the nation stopped burning coal, U.S. energy use for transportation would decline by that amount. In Scenario 3, energy from coal declines from 6.7 trillion kilowatt-hours to 205 billion kilowatt-hours (just 3% of what it was before).

The costs to build railroad lines are said to be no higher than $2.5 million a mile for construction and equipment. Taking into account the additional costs to purchase land and rights-of-way, a reasonable average cost is between $20 million and $40 million per mile. On this basis, the price to build from scratch a new high-speed railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco or Sacramento would be as low as $700 million. Adding in the cost to purchase land would bring the price to between $7 billion and $14 billion.

This is comparatively inexpensive in comparison to the installation costs of new power plants—about the same as one nuclear power plant or a wind turbine installation that provides the same energy output as the nuclear power plant, with a big payoff in energy conserved. It is also small compared with the estimated $1.6 trillion needed to restore America’s infrastructure—including bridges, tunnels, highways, airports, sewage lines, dams, hazardous-waste disposal, schools, and navigable waterways.³⁶

So, why all the opposition to high-speed rail in the United States? The claim is that it is too costly without adequate payback, but if in restoring America’s infrastructure we shifted our emphasis from highways to railroads, the costs would be small by comparison to everything else we have discussed. This leaves us with the sinking feeling that the opposition to railroads cannot be based simply on overall economics but instead is influenced by special interests in automobile and truck transportation, the building and repair of those vehicles and their highways, and the profits made from selling fossil fuels to run them. And without question it is also influenced by a cultural attitude about railroads, that they are just plain old-fashioned and for that reason alone not worth bothering with. Add to this the wonderful convenience of the personal automobile and you have an arsenal with which to argue against railroads, as if it were an economic argument, when it isn’t.

Savings in residential, industrial, and commercial use of energy

Savings in these areas could be accomplished by using low-density geothermal energy and passive solar energy—that is, the natural flow of energy without mechanical pumps—to move air or water and by using modern insulation and insulated window glass in heating and cooling, as discussed in Chapter 12, “Saving Energy at Home and Finding Energy at Your Feet.”

Solving the energy problem the American way, which is ...?

If the third scenario—reducing our per-capita energy use by 50% and replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar—is the future, how might it be achieved in the United States? No doubt there will be heated debate as to whether the changes in energy sources and energy use would best be achieved by the free market or by the government. But the answer seems clear from the history of photovoltaic manufacturing in the United States. At the current rate of increase in photovoltaic production, the amount needed for Scenario 3 would be reached by 2037 if all photovoltaics produced in the U.S. were installed in the U.S. Whether the future manufacture and installation of solar facilities will be determined by the free market or by government depends largely on whether our society views the supply of energy as a social service, therefore to be funded by government, or as just another commodity to be traded in a free market.

The modern world has not settled this question, one that is especially troubling and is at the heart of the energy debate and energy dilemma of the United States. If energy is just another commodity, then an argument can be made that it is not the business of government, but only the business of business.

Mulling this over, I called Tom Veblen, a retired corporate executive whose career included major positions with Cargill, a corporation that describes itself as “an international provider of food, agricultural and risk-management products and services.” Tom organized and for many years has led “The Superior Business Firm Roundtable,” an informal gathering of retired CEOs and other interested people who discuss what makes for a superior business, what are the roles of business in a democratic society, and, by extension, what makes for a better society. I told Tom about the conclusions I had reached and asked how he thought America should approach solving its energy-supply problem.

As a believer in free-market capitalism, Tom replied that we should do nothing, that the market would take care of it, that the rising price of energy would drive activities to conserve energy. But, he said, this will never happen, because elected officials will be asked to do something and will feel that they have to do something. In that situation, he suggested, the government should promote mass transportation and the rebuilding of inner cities to reduce overall energy consumption.

Those with different economic/philosophical perspectives will point to Nick Taylor’s 2008 book American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA.³⁷ The author reviews the events of the Great Depression as a time when the free-market philosophy per se failed. Before becoming president, Herbert Hoover, an accomplished and smart man, had risen to fame when he was secretary of commerce and led a response to the 1927 Mississippi River flood. He had gone on the radio and helped the Red Cross raise $15 million for flood victims. He had visited 91 communities suffering from the flood, and coordinated eight government agencies, arranged for 600 ships with supplies and a trainload of feed for cattle. Altogether, he appeared to be a man who cared for the welfare of the ordinary person.³⁸

After becoming president, however, he said no to a proposed federal response to the economic crisis, believing that business is not the role of government, and that helping the needy was the province of private charities. In 1932 he vetoed a $2 billion public-works jobs plan, which he called “a squandering of public money,” while thousands of out-of-work veterans of World War I marched on Washington seeking jobs. When the unemployed veterans camped in Washington, Hoover sent in troops led by Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. The campsite was destroyed, and several small children were killed.³⁹

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, he appointed Harry Hopkins to head a program under the newly passed Federal Emergency Relief Act. In some states 40% of the people were out of work, and in some counties 90% of the people were on relief, and people began to agitate for improvements. Roosevelt pushed legislation establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority that built major hydroelectric dams in the Southeast, and later the Bonneville Power Administration to do the same in the Pacific Northwest, the point being not just to generate electricity but to provide jobs. Hopkins meanwhile helped the Civil Conservation Corps get started on employing out-of-work people in doing good works: building fire towers, clearing firebreaks in forests, stocking fish in rivers, planting trees to retard erosion, and so on.⁴⁰ Roosevelt got the National Industrial Recovery Act passed, which allocated $3.3 billion for dams, bridges, and other large projects.

Proponents of this kind of government action say there are times when the free-market approach just doesn’t work, at least not fast enough to avert a crisis and ease the suffering of millions of Americans. They firmly believe that today’s energy crisis is one of those times. They fear that the rapid increase in the cost of energy and decline in energy availability will have disastrous effects on the American economy and possibly help to cause a major depression. In sum, they argue that at least temporarily federal programs will be necessary to promote the transition to alternative energy. A Civil Energy Corps, for example, could employ out-of work-people to build modern intercity and intracity railroads, retrofit government buildings for more efficient heating and cooling, and so forth.

My own experience during the last ten years has brought me face-to-face with a curious contradiction: Although the U.S. government provides large subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, even my environmentalist and environmental-economist friends and colleagues almost always raise the question of why solar and wind can’t pay for themselves. It’s interesting, and disturbing, that the old energy sources that pollute the environment and are going to run out soon will continue to benefit from special-interest lobbying and heavy government subsidies, whereas developing new forms of energy to replace them must pay for itself. In my view, it’s not really a “free market” unless either all energy sources are equally subsidized or none are subsidized. But this is unlikely to happen at present because of the heavy influence of special interests.

My guess is that most Americans will see energy not as a completely free-market commodity but as a combination of social service and commodity. For example, we are currently seeing what happens when a major form of transportation, air travel, is treated not as a national and international necessity but as an ordinary commodity whose problems are left to be solved by the marketplace. Regulated only minimally now, primarily for safety and traffic flow, airlines are having difficulty making a profit and are cutting flights to all but the most profitable destinations. Some existing airlines may not survive. Because air (and rail) transportation is essential to our market economy and fundamental to our way of life, most Americans will almost certainly want some government assurance that adequate transportation to and from major cities will be restored and maintained.

Many years of interactions with government agencies that deal with natural resources, planning, scientific research, and data gathering have left me with a mixed picture and mixed feelings. Although it has become clear to me over the years that huge government bureaucracies are inefficient and often unproductive, these agencies have nevertheless done some necessary things that would not have happened otherwise. Our highways, railroads, and hydroelectric dams are just a few examples.

All in all, I’m convinced that without some social/economic incentives, the transition from fossil fuels to alternative fuels is unlikely to happen in time to avoid a full-blown crisis. As I read the newspaper every day, I see things that government and private enterprise need to do now, things they need to do soon, and things that need to be done in the future to help us accomplish the transition to new energy systems. Here is a list of some of those things.

Proposed energy program for federal and local governments

Build federally funded solar and wind plants to produce gas and liquid fuels. Within the next year, the Department of Energy should build a 10-MW solar energy plant and a 10-MW wind energy plant whose output is used only to produce gaseous and liquid fuels, as a start on the technological development that will be needed in the future.

Put a similar installation on a military base. In addition to the 2009 Department of Defense decision to fund research for algae-produced renewable F-76 Naval Distillate fuel (which is a good development and probably should expand), the Department of Defense should build a solar/wind facility of similar size on a military base to produce liquid fuels for military vehicles. Both Department of Energy and DOD facilities would have a number of small gas turbines—aircraft jet engines slightly modified to generate electricity from liquid fuels to test the new fuels. (Note: These are already in use to meet peak power demand at many locations.)

Use land on military bases for wind and solar installations to supply energy beyond the bases. Many military bases have large land areas that serve as buffers from the rest of the country for the safety of citizens. Some of these large tracts are available for biological conservation and could be used for wind and solar energy generation. This has been discussed for several decades for Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California.

Increase federal funding for alternative-energy research and development. U.S. political leaders currently propose spending from zero to $10 billion a year for alternative-energy research and development. The president and Congress should greatly increase this amount.

Level the subsidy playing field, by either eliminating all subsidies (probably a political impossibility) or equalizing subsidies (also a politically difficult feat). Ideally, eliminate all subsidies for oil and gas, and use that money instead to fund alternative energy. Or revise the conditions of these subsidies so that the oil and gas companies use them to develop liquid fuels from alternative-fuel electricity.

Encourage development of ocean energy. Private funds, from foundations and individuals, should be used to establish a series of prizes for technological development of ocean energy and for vehicles that use forms of alternative energy.

Popularize vehicles that use alternative energy. Establish an automobile race like Australia’s solar-energy-car race but in this case including vehicles powered by wind, solar, or ocean energy that has been converted to electricity or a liquid fuel. This will attract attention to research and development of such vehicles and boost their popularity.

Offer a prize for the first rocket to launch a satellite into Earth’s orbit using liquid and gas fuel produced from electricity generated by wind and solar energy.

Enhance building codes in cities and towns to require improved efficiency of space heating and cooling and require the new highly insulating windows.

Refit government buildings to save energy, using the best insulation and windows to improve efficiency of space heating and cooling.

Reduce the need for private cars in cities, not by punitively taxing the use of cars but by improving public transportation, making walking and bicycling safer and more attractive, and promoting such things as ZIP cars, and concentrating development around “intermodal transportation” hubs—locations where several kinds of transportation come together. Much of the technology to do this exists now.

Embark on a major program to improve rail travel.

For example:

• Provide railroad subsidies equal to highway subsidies.

• Provide high-speed rail from Boston to Washington; Washington to Atlanta; Los Angeles to San Francisco; San Francisco to Seattle. To do this, revise the EPA and OSHA rules and other rules so that French, German, or Japanese train technology can be used directly in the United States, rather than the unnecessarily heavy and perhaps unworkable current Acela designs.

• Revise railroad rules to give passenger trains the right-of-way when both they and freight trains use the same tracks.

• Improve the nation’s train tracks and roadbeds.

• Link major airports of major cities to the central city by high-speed rail.

Boost employment and help conserve energy during economic downturns. When many people are out of work, the federal government should establish the Civil Energy Corps, which would

• Employ people to retrofit government buildings and private residences with energy-saving materials such as wall insulation, weather stripping, and insulated windows;

• Employ landscape architects to plan, design, and develop wind and solar facilities that not only generate energy but also improve landscape aesthetics.

Improve public access to energy information. For example, the Department of Energy says that it is no longer reporting the costs of dealing with nuclear waste. Reinstate public access to this vital information.

Major conclusions

What won’t work

Natural gas cannot make America energy-independent without major environmental damage—and even with it, available reserves may be insufficient.

• Within U.S. lands and waters, natural gas accessible by known technology will last only a year or a few years; the rest is in methyl hydrates (which lie in the deep ocean or in permafrost), coal gas, and shale. The technology to mine these is in limited development, and its success remains unknown.

Conventional nuclear power plants cannot make America energy-independent at a reasonable cost. The supply of uranium ore is too limited, and as world demand for it increases, the price will rise rapidly. At present, nuclear power plants are also among the more expensive to build.

• To replace the use of fossil fuels in the U.S., 468 new nuclear power plants will be needed by 2050, almost ten per state. This is just not likely to happen.

• Nuclear power plants have a fixed lifetime, after which they have to be dismantled and their radioactive wastes stored and protected for a long time.

• Contrary to assertions by nuclear-power enthusiasts, dealing with radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants remains an unsolved problem in the United States.

• Except for one or two experimental reactors, no commercial nuclear power plants have yet been completely dismantled.

Nonconventional nuclear power plants are not yet ready for prime time—breeder reactors, large-scale recycling of fuel for conventional nuclear reactors, and fusion reactors are still in the research-and-development stage for large-scale and widespread installations.

• Fusion has yet to prove technically possible after a half-century of research and attempted development

• There are few operating breeder reactors in the world, and it is unclear which and how many are actually “breeding” in an environmentally benign and cost-effective way.

• Little recycling of spent conventional nuclear fuel is being done, and it is unclear whether this will be technologically possible in ways that are environmentally benign and cost-effective.

Conventional water power—large dams and reservoirs on major rivers—cannot increase in any significant way and is likely to decrease in the United States in the next 40 years.

• All the good U.S. sites are already in use.

• Many dams are likely to be breached or removed because of environmental concerns.

Deep-earth geothermal energy—from volcanically active areas, such as Hawaii and Yellowstone National Park—can be only a minor contributor to America’s energy. Not enough can be made available, and there are major environmental and cultural reasons not to go this route.

Agrifuels—land crops grown to produce fuels, not food—are among the worst sources of energy. In most cases, they take more energy to produce than they yield, and even if they are slightly energy-positive, they cause great environmental damage and take land, water, and fertilizers away from food production. This is especially an economic problem for phosphorus fertilizers. In some places, land that provides habitat for threatened and endangered species or is useful in many other ways is being converted to growing fuel crops. All in all, agrifuels should be avoided.

What’s questionable

Ocean power offers some potential. Even though the most optimistic estimates suggest that this cannot be the key to America’s energy independence, still, research and development should be supported and expanded.

Coal is sufficiently abundant to make America energy-independent, but, contrary to conventional wisdom, will not be a cheap alternative. Taking into account the 5% annual social discount factor, plus purchases of coal for fuel, and the costs of pollution impacts, coal is much more expensive than wind. In fact, for coal to be cost-competitive with wind would require a government subsidy exceeding $100 a ton—the cost of building coal-fired power plants, which appears to be rising rapidly.

What will work

Nonconventional water power—such as submerged turbines in free-flowing rivers—could make some small contribution, insignificant nationally but perhaps useful locally in certain areas.

Low-level geothermal energy is one of the cheapest and best ways to heat and cool buildings and can be an important contributor to America’s energy independence. This is energy that originates from the sun or in some cases from the Earth itself and is stored in soils, rocks, and underground water. For political and cultural, and technological reasons, it’s hard to estimate how much energy this can provide in the next 40 years. A major increase in research, development, and installation of existing technology is needed.

Wind today is as cheap as any energy source, and in the future, taking into account net present value, cheaper than any alternative. Wind will be one of the major sources of energy in the future, and its use is increasing rapidly. It can provide a large fraction, but not all, of our energy needs.

Solar energy is the largest and most reliable source, with a potential greatly exceeding what people could ever use in the next centuries, but at present it is expensive. Today’s off-the-shelf devices convert 20% of solar energy into electricity. Great scaling up is needed, and the technology is there. However, right now solar energy is much more expensive than wind, coal, or low-level geothermal.

• Like it or not, solar is going to be a major contributor to America’s future energy supply. How costly it will be depends on how much research and development goes into it.

• The 2008 total cost of importing oil equals about 37% of the amount required to transition to solar and wind by 2050.

The one great hope for biofuels is microorganisms—algae and bacteria. Some of these can produce methane (natural gas), biodiesel, or ethanol directly, without distilleries and expensive transportation adding to the production cost. But this energy source is only in the exploratory stage. The potential appears great, but as yet, it’s impossible to estimate how much these could contribute over the next 40 years.

Using organic wastes as fuels—waste cooking oil, wastepaper—can contribute to our energy efficiency, and it certainly is a more efficient use of wastes than dumping them in the ground. However, these are not net energy sources; using them recovers some of the energy stored in them.

What else is needed?

Improved energy transport. None of the energy sources—neither fossil fuels nor conventional or unconventional alternatives—can satisfy America’s energy needs without major improvements in the way we transport energy. This requires extending the electrical grid and developing a smart grid. It also requires a kind of reverse refinery, where liquid fuels can be produced economically from electricity and then transported by pipelines, railroads, and trucks.

• Further improvements will involve microgrids and land-use plans that bring heavy users of energy closer to energy sources so that energy will have to be transmitted only short distances without using a national grid or pipelines.

• Off-the-grid local installations of wind and solar can contribute to America’s energy independence in ways not possible before.

America’s energy independence also requires improved and extended energy storage, both for specific devices (better batteries) and for large-scale installations.

Right now, it is unclear whether batteries or liquid fuels will be the best energy source for autos, trucks, and buses in the future. We have become so used to gasoline, kerosene (jet fuel), and diesel that we forget what marvelous energy-storers they are. It’s going to be hard to replace them but perhaps not necessary if we learn to make them from algae, bacteria, and electricity-operated reverse refineries.

A final word

In sum, I believe that America needs abundant energy. It is necessary for our leadership in science and technological development, for our culture, arts, humanities, health and welfare, and also appears important to democracy, as energy-poor people need to focus more on survival than on political science. I also believe that Americans can continue to have abundant energy, not by becoming energy misers but with improved energy conservation and the use of energy sources that are environmentally benign and cost-effective. We can achieve this with little or no change in our standard of living or in the quality of our lives. In fact, it could lead to an improvement in both.

I have tried to provide objective information and analysis that citizens of a democracy can use to arrive at their own conclusions about what needs to be done to ensure an ample energy supply for the future. But stepping out of my role as a scientist, I have to say that the implications of the information seem clear, and it would be incorrect to leave the matter without telling you what it means to me and what I believe needs to be done and should be done. For what it’s worth, here is my judgment.

Today the energy debate is sometimes expressed as only a subset of the debate about global warming. But we need to move away from fossil fuels for a number of reasons:

1. They are going to run out. Oil will run out soonest, and as we are already seeing, its diminishing availability is causing its price to rise rapidly (which petroleum experts have for years been warning would happen).

2. Moving away from oil and natural gas is in the best interest of America’s foreign policy and military security and the safety of its citizens.

3. Petroleum is made up of many compounds that are used in manufacturing all the plastic articles, too numerous to count, that we use every day. Rather than burn it, we should save petroleum for those uses. They require considerably less than what we burn, so the petroleum we have left will last longer.

4. The trade-off for petroleum’s wonderful fuel derivatives—gasoline, diesel, and kerosene—is their toxicity and their pollution. We have learned to live with these to some extent, but they are not the best choice for our health and for other living things.

If the diminishing supply of oil and gas weren’t forcing us to seek other energy sources, these considerations, and current concerns about global warming, would make a strong case for moving away from petroleum and natural gas as soon as possible.

As for nuclear power, the abundant writings about it, while claiming that it is safe, rarely discuss realistically the potential costs of dealing with radioactive waste and nuclear accidents. Having worked with radioactive materials and in an experimentally radioactive ecosystem, I disagree. I am convinced that it is in the best interests of humanity and civilization that we choose an energy path that minimizes pollution of all kinds and promotes, to the extent that it can, the beauty of landscapes, the diversity of life on Earth, and the livability of our villages, towns, and cities.

Even if you don’t agree, let me reiterate that, like fossil fuels, nuclear fuel is in short supply and will likely run out in 40 or 50 years or less, which in itself makes it pointless to invest in infrastructure based on it.

The analyses I put together in writing this book suggest that moving away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy is possible but expensive. I concluded that we should pursue the two most viable alternative sources of energy: solar and wind. We should also pursue the development of energy from the ocean, and seek ways to use all of our energy sources as efficiently as possible. We should do these things because they will be best for our descendants, their civilizations, their creativity, health, welfare, and happiness, and best for all of life on Earth.