Its interesting that the two major alternatives to fossil fuel energy (wind+ solar and nuclear) are mostly at odds with each other. In the debate, they both point out the weaknesses of the other, and to an objective outsider clearly paint a picture where neither is a viable solution. The problems with cost overruns on new nuclear plants in the US and Europe have sharpened the debate recently with Toshiba’s announcement of massive losses from its Westinghouse division. The pointers at the bottom below show three perspectives on Toshiba’s woes. 

My most recent blog posts have focused on the problems with intermittent wind and solar. Nuclear clearly has its problems too. Toshiba’s and others (Areva) problems at minimum show how hard current nuclear is, without even getting to how it could be modified to be more sustainable and load follow. With reactors being shut down in Europe, the US and Japan and cost overruns leading to no new orders, nuclear is not going anywhere. China is the only country adding any significant nuclear capacity. This would seem to end what had been seen as the beginnings of a nuclear revival.

Most nuclear advocacy centers on new designs to remedy problems with current reactors. Nuclear takes a long time from experimental to demonstration to production power plants. Minimally the sequence takes decades and costs billions to tens of billions of dollars. 

So, nuclear power and wind and solar face similar problems. Neither are viable replacements for fossil fuels and it will take significant development of new unproven technologies to make them so. Compare this with StratoSolar. Much of StratoSolar is just today's PV. The unproven parts are relatively simple engineering based on existing mass produced technologies. To follow the nuclear model, the first step is to build an experimental platform. This could be done in less than a year for a few million dollars. An experimental nuclear reactor is many years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Relative to a new nuclear reactor, StratoSolar demonstration and production platform steps are equally as fast and low cost as the experimental platform. The point is that StratoSolar is no more speculative than wind, solar and nuclear, when the development paths of each that lead to viability are objectively analyzed. 

The perspective that wind, solar and nuclear are all unproven and speculative is not the perspective of their advocates. Wishful thinking rules the day. Recently Bill Gates led the founding of Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a fund to invest in long term energy ventures. Given Bill Gates fondness for nuclear power, funding nuclear power is probably the focus of the fund. Given the funding required to get to production plants, its very unlikely that a private fund could raise the tens of billions required even to develop one new plant. Presumably the plan is to fund the earlier cheaper development stages and persuade governments to foot the major bills. Perhaps we can persuade BEV to fund StratoSolar? It might be high risk but its cheap and fast. Its actually a typical venture funded opportunity. 
 
By Edmund Kelly

Rod Adams: reporter
http://www.theenergycollective.com/rodadams/2398838/toshiba-announces-6-3b-writedown-229m-construction-company-acquisition
Jim Green: Friends of the earth:
http://www.theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2399091/nuclear-safety-undermines-nuclear-economics
Michael Schellenberger: The breakthrough institute
http://www.theenergycollective.com/shellenberger/2398737/nuclear-industry-must-change-die

The UN climate change conference in Paris starting today (Monday 11/30/2015) has focused attention on the CO2 emissions issue The politics is focused on what can be achieved politically, which is non binding commitments to reduce CO2 without specifics on how this will be accomplished. The conference has also prompted many articles and initiatives trying to leverage the publicity associated with the conference.

There are two related items that were specifically noteworthy. To coincide with the conference The Economist magazine has just published a 16 page report on climate change. This is a factual and pragmatic overview of the problem, the potential harm and the various approaches to solutions. The report summarizes the ineffectiveness of current subsidy policies, recognizes the political unlikelihood of a world carbon tax regime, and ends by advocating more investment in R&D.

Also to coincide with the conference Bill Gates announced a grand coalition pledging $B to R&D in energy innovation. The breakthrough energy coalition is a collection of VCs, entrepreneurs and tech titans. Its not clear how much money is involved or how it will be spent. It may be good news for innovations like StratoSolar, though many of those in the coalition have rejected the idea in the past. 

Either way the beginnings of a broader focus on energy R&D is welcome.
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by Edmund Kelly

Bill Gates is perhaps the most influential public advocate for a "technology led" approach to reducing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. This article, and this site are strong advocates of the "Policy led" approach. Unfortunately, as this article shows, Bill, by advocating that the funds currently used to support the "Policy led" approach be used instead to fund R&D and the "Technology led" approach is adding to the extreme polarization that marks this debate. Those who agree on the urgent need to reduce GHG emissions don't need to waste their time fighting each other. They need to talk to each other and not at each other.

A reasonable analysis would say that both approaches are necessary. It is clear that on the current path, the technologies supported by the policy led approach are not succeeding in reducing overall CO2 emissions and are unlikely to ever have a sufficiently large impact.  At a global level, the developing world, which accounts for almost all growth in world energy consumption, has resisted policies to reduce GHG emissions since the 90's and continue to do so, based largely on economic concerns. 

When viewed at a global level, alternative energy has gone through a series of local boom and bust cycles as policy support has waxed and waned. Currently, Europe which used to be the leader has slipped back as policy has waned and China and Japan have come forward as policy has waxed. The US has gone up and down as policy has oscillated but has not been a significant player at the global level for decades. Because of declining PV prices driven by China, the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and low interest rates have made PV investable in the US. The ITC and the US PV boom will probably end next year, a reminder of the fickle "boom and bust" nature of the "policy driven" approach.

The subsidy level for alternative energy investment worldwide is about $100B/year, about half of the $200B/year world investment in alternative energy electricity generation, which in turn is about half of the $400B/year investment in electricity generation. It is going to have a hard time increasing significantly from this already significant level. We need better clean energy technologies, but as Bill Gates points out, the investment level in energy R&D is pitifully low. The "policy led" advocates have to accept this reality. "Policy led" has to accept a change to include significant R&D in a wider range of speculative technologies, not just subsidizing an entrenched status quo.

By Edmund Kelly

This post from 2012 discussed Bill gates negative perspective on alternative energy as a means to reduce CO2 emissions. Apparently Bill has not changed his opinion much since then as he discussed in a recent interview with the Financial Times described in this article in The Register . One thing about Bill is he puts his money where his mouth is. He claims to have invested $1B in non fossil energy R&D, and will spend at least $1B more.

Bill is explicit in his reasons for his negative opinion of wind and solar, citing cost, intermittency and no viable storage technology. StratoSolar solves all three of these problems for solar. Perhaps we can get Bill to take a look?

By Edmund Kelly

By Edmund Kelly

There was a recent article in IEEE Spectrum that explained why Google halted an energy research effort called RE<C (Renewable Energy less than Coal). It prompted this critical analysis by Joe Romm. Its rare to see this perspective on clean energy  discussed in any detail, so I was pleasantly surprised to see two articles on this topic. Between them they explained two positions that have much in common but differ in important ways.

The Google engineers discussed how they had started with the goal of renewable energy less than coal and after several years of effort came to the conclusion that current technologies were not going to achieve that goal. In large part this realization came from the understanding that the problem was far larger than they had initially understood. Google halted their efforts in 2011. Google invests heavily in alternative energy deployment and in its operations is very focused on reducing energy, so halting RE<C was in no way a vote against clean energy or dealing with climate change.

Joe tried to paint the Goggle engineers as confused and misguided. Joe is a strong advocate for the status quo opinion on how to deal with climate change. Basically that position is;  what we have with current wind and solar is good enough and what is needed is policy change, preferably a carbon tax. This tax will somehow magically cause fossil fuels to decline and alternative energy to prosper.  Joe does not see RE<C as a necessary or desirable condition for dealing with climate change. At its core this is a view that politics can dominate the large scale economics of energy.

When Joe  discusses the problems with nuclear power he is happy to use the facts of nuclear costs to counter the optimistic promises of nuclear advocates. In contrast when Joe discusses energy policy he uses  the optimistic promises of carbon taxes rather that the facts of decades of failure to get agreement on such policies and the overwhelming evidence that such policies are unlikely to ever be approved at a global level.  On top of that there is no clear evidence that such taxes will have the desired consequences. Developing nations, where most new energy consumption is concentrated see higher cost energy as a threat to their development.

The central debate is simple. Some (including Bill Gates) see RE<C as a necessary condition for the world to deal with climate change. This opinion is guided by the facts on the ground and the central importance of economics in decision making. Joe and the status quo clean energy consensus he represents see economics as secondary to policy, and believe that advocacy will achieve policy change and policy change will lead to the demise of fossil fuels and the rise of clean energy.

StratoSolar is a solution to RE<C. As Joe makes clear, the clean energy status quo does not believe that such solutions can exist and that they are not necessary. Unfortunately this perspective is self fulfilling in ensuring no such solution sees the light of day.

By Edmund Kelly

I realized that the last two posts centering on the Bill Gates TED2010 talk and the “Beyond boom and bust” paper from The Brookings Institution et al. have the same major theme.  They both agree that the current energy subsidy policy has failed and needs to change to a focus on R&D of system level solutions rather than on deployment of technologies that are inadequate.  

The current science community and green advocates have not yet gotten to this point of understanding and are still pushing wind and solar as viable solutions.  They believe we just have to re engineer the grid, invent cost effective storage and be willing to pay a lot more for energy.  This is political suicide as the costs and limits become apparent. 

 Bill Gates vision is more complete in that it recognizes the need to attempt many unorthodox “miracle” solutions in order to find one that succeeds.  Intuitively his investment and promotion of Terrapower also show that investment needs to target companies that are attempting a complete solution, not science, basic technologies or government R&D. 

At TED2010, Bill Gates unveiled his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explained why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor (Terrapower).  The necessary goal?  Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

In my view in this talk Bill gets a lot right, including the woefully inadequate level of energy R&D investment, the misplaced investment in deploying uneconomically viable technologies, the inadequacy of current alternative energy solutions, the need to be cheaper, and the need to try a lot of different approaches to improve the odds of success. These perspectives have led him to conclude that nuclear power is the best available option, and putting his money and time where his mouth is he has invested in and promoted a high-risk nuclear power venture called Terrapower.  With his investment in Terrapower he also perhaps inadvertently has created a big angel investment model for what is necessary to get the ball rolling given the inability of the capital markets or government to address the problem.  

Terrapower represents the big R&D investment approach aiming to produce carbon free energy that costs less than energy today.  It is using around $100M to produce paper designs.  It will need billions and a decade to build a test reactor and billions more and another decade to design and deploy production reactors.  It ultimately has to overcome the public skepticism of nuclear power and a whole host of technical problems.  It’s definitely the big R&D approach but relative to the scale of the energy business it is tiny.  It is small even relative to US investment in clean power which mostly funds deployment of technologies that can never realistically compete but satisfies various political constituencies.  

In contrast StratoSolar is solar not nuclear and is a small R&D approach.  It builds on existing PV and construction technologies and materials.  A relatively small investment of $10M builds a test platform in 18 months rather than computer simulations.  Incremental investments develop production platforms and then assemblies of production platforms.  It generates competitively priced electricity in production, so it needs no subsidies.  It simply needs R&D investment.  Energy is so large scale that ramping up production initially may need government guarantees to bolster investor confidence.