Why We Must Ignore Anti-Green Spin-Doctors

The Trump administration continues its powerful assault on green energy, aided by the usual flock of corporate anti-green spin-doctors.

The spin-doctors harp on the fact that solar energy isn't available when the sun is not shining but ignore the fact that it's always shining somewhere.

Protecting the world climate will probably require us to rely mostly on solar energy.

And to make solar power available everywhere, even where the sun is not currently shining, we will need a worldwide grid to move the electricity around.

But the spin-doctors dismiss proposals to connect the entire planet into a single grid, claiming the impossibility of transmitting electricity the long distances required.

True, if we insert a certain amount of electricity at one end of a wire, less comes out at the other end. But this does not make a worldwide grid impossible. It just means that it will cost something.

And energy losses are not uniquely a problem for electricity lines. Compared with the costs of moving coal, oil, or natural gas, electrical transmission is a bargain.

Electricity losses are determined by a current's voltage and its type — alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC).

The higher the voltage, the less power is lost. And DC lines are more efficient that AC lines. So the best combination for transmitting electricity long distances — as a worldwide grid will require — is high voltage direct current ( HVDC).

It’s no accident that the ever-larger grids currently being built around the world are using HVDC — the engineers and investors building them are nobody's fools!

To illustrate the relative efficiency of moving electricity, consider the energy used to move fuels from their source to where the power they produce is needed.

First, the coal, gas, or oil needs to be located and removed from the earth. Mining coal and drilling for gas or oil requires machines that themselves must be powered by something.

Then fuel must be moved by railroad, truck, pipeline, or cargo ship. Building and operating these facilities also requires large amounts of energy.

Oil needs to be refined, a process which also uses a good deal of energy.

When you burn a gallon of gasoline in your car, you are also burning the gasoline or other energy it took to produce and deliver it to you, but it is not running your car.

And a lot of the energy in that gallon itself does not get used to do anything.

Instead, it’s turned into wasteful heat.

Only a small percentage of the potential energy in carbon fuels is harvested, in the form of its end use — motion, heat, cooling, etc.

Compared with this, the losses incurred by moving electricity are totally acceptable.

This is why utilities often generate electricity near the sources of the fuels that run them, because it is more efficient to transmit the electricity than to haul the fuels to a distant generator.

There is one exception to the general rule that transmitting electricity always results in some losses.

That is when the wire conducting the electricity is cooled sufficiently to become superconducting. At that point, there are no losses at all.

But superconductivity, to date, requires very low temperatures.

The refrigeration required to cool the wires itself requires large amounts of energy.

This is why there is so much interest in figuring out how to get superconductivity at more normal temperatures.

Obviously, if room temperature superconductivity ever becomes possible, the worldwide grid required for a totally solar world economy will be even more attractive.

But in the meantime, it's attractive enough.

Also in the meantime, if someone tells you a worldwide grid to distribute solar energy is impossible because of transmission losses, ask yourself how much stock that person has in oil wells.

Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse's Reports — More Here.