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.
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.
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