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francisl

Aug 29, 2011
05:02

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I have a suggestion for the section: CLOSE THE CARBON LOOP: MAKE FUEL FROM THE AIR Locate the advanced nuclear reactors next to the heavy carbon emitters and use the exhaust to supply the CO2 to produce synfuels. This would greatly improve the efficiency of the CO2 collection and reduce the disposal cost for the carbon emitter. The big carbon emitters like power plants could own the whole process. This would allow them to make use of their existing plants until they are fully depreciated and society has transitioned to more efficient electric vehicles. This type of co-location makes use of the existing electrical infrastructure and benefits everyone. The carbon is used twice with less than twice the impact on the environment.

Dennis Peterson

Sep 7, 2011
06:21

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Not a bad thought, but the overall efficiency might not be the best. I'm thinking that using the nuclear reactors to make fuel from coal exhaust, while getting electricity from coal, would result in more emissions than just using the nuclear reactor to replace the coal plant, and using fossil oil for fuel. So I'm guessing we'd get the fastest emission reduction if we replace the power plants first, then build more reactors for the fuel-from-CO2 process. Collecting CO2 from air takes only about ten percent as much energy as the energy content of the fuel, and with efficiency losses in making the fuel, the collection is an even smaller portion of the overall cost.

Kevin Huang

Sep 12, 2011
12:51

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This proposal appeared to be very thorough and comprehensive as well as well structured. Many of the proposal’s components seem to be technically reasonable and/or feasible, but as with many policy solutions, many of them also have significant political challenges to realization. The strength of this proposal could be enhanced if the author were to develop strategies for political passage and implementation of these prescribed policy solutions. As with this proposal in and of itself, there is no shortage of candidate policy solutions; the challenge has always been rallying political as well as broader social support behind any one (often politically polarizing) solution. Aside from this, I wish to comment on several items in this proposal. First, as the author noted in his section on carbon tariffs, finding the optimal level for a fee, cap, or price on carbon is also quantitatively challenging. In order to ensure that a fee isn’t unnecessarily burdensome such that it causes economic distress and that it’s not too lenient such that it doesn’t provide enough incentive, a fairly accurate price must be obtained. This is often difficult to do as a result of imperfect information and non-ideal market conditions and actors. Second, as the author rightfully pointed out, carbon rights need to be verified by a trusted, standardized third party. This has been an ongoing problem in the carbon offset space. Third, what scale of biochar storage must be reached to have meaningful impact? Do the necessary feedstocks exist in sufficient quantity? Fourth, while the levelized cost of nuclear energy is relatively low, two (of several) barriers to accelerated deployment in the United States are the extremely high upfront capital costs required as well as the regulatory process involved. Finally, the author impressively identifies a wide range of prospective technological solutions throughout his proposal. It should be noted, however, that many of these technologies are still in an early proof-of-concept R&D phase and have yet to be demonstrated or widely deployed at scale, a process which can take decades, if ever.

Dennis Peterson

Sep 29, 2011
01:22

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Thanks Kevin. these are great suggestions. I've added sections on political strategy and financing, and a note on biochar's potential (conservatively, about a gigaton carbon absorption per year, globally). On technology, I hoped the executive summary summed up my approach: "We can't assume that any particular technology will work, and take others off the table. Our plan should allow multiple avenues to success." I should probably emphasize this more. For determining a carbon fee, I'm thinking it's best to start with what's politically achievable, and build on that success as people start enjoying their monthly rebate. The regulatory process for nuclear power is certainly a problem, but it's one we've created. Recently I saw an interview with the head of the NRC, who said that the NRC is tasked by Congress with preventing nuclear accidents, but not at all with getting nuclear plants deployed. Given that premise, the obvious solution is to prevent new nuclear plants from being deployed at all, and the NRC has been rather effective at implementing that strategy. However, the licensing process has been improved lately, according to Brand's book...I'll add a note on that, too.

Dennis Peterson

Oct 4, 2011
10:50

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I just came across another possibility for the "make fuel from air" section: ammonia. blog post, with some good commenters: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/10/04/np-nh3-killer-app/ presentation slides, which include discussion of LFTR reactors, with an estimate of how many would be needed, and some critical discussion of Green Freedom: http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/nuclear-ammonia-2011-sendrev.pdf Organization promoting ammonia fuel: http://www.nh3fuelassociation.org/

Dennis Peterson

Oct 4, 2011
05:02

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Blees chapter on boron fuel: http://www.filegarden.com/tomblees/Misc/boronchapter.pdf More information: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/graham-rl-cowan.html

Dennis Peterson

Oct 6, 2011
02:14

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If this reddit comment is correct, ammonia fuel might not be such a great idea: http://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/l0j8e/nuclear_ammonia_a_sustainable_nuclear/c2p66hh

2011 Judges

Oct 11, 2011
05:16

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Overall assessment: Political feasibility is the big question for this proposal—the team will want to work on that aspect in the next round and also on focus. Specific comments and suggestions for improvement: - Important issue that requires multiple approaches, but this is too scattered. It is difficult to follow the multiple threads, and there is little sense of the extent each component might contribute. - This is fine, but didn't strike me as anything that's not already on the table.

2011 Judges

Oct 11, 2011
05:49

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Overall assessment: Political feasibility is the big question for this proposal—the team will want to work on that aspect in the next round and also on focus. Specific comments and suggestions for improvement: - Important issue that requires multiple approaches, but this proposal is also somewhat scattered. It is difficult to follow the multiple threads, and there is little sense of the extent each component might contribute. - This is fine, but it’s mostly a compendium of ideas that are already on the table—could maybe strive for new ideas or a more novel combining of existing ideas in the next round.

Dennis Peterson

Oct 11, 2011
08:14

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I've added this to the "what" section: The various elements of the proposal can work independently to some extent, but also support each other. A carbon fee alone provides no incentive for absorbing CO2; adding credits for audited CO2 absorption (but nothing else) improves overall cost-effectiveness, while avoiding the drawbacks of cap-and-trade. Advanced nuclear power brings the physical ability to respond to economic incentives in cost-effective ways. The combination of nuclear power and economic incentives makes fuel from air a competitive option. Albedo enhancement buys time to implement new technologies, and allows a gradual approach to carbon fees. Carbon tariffs allow the entire program to begin at the national level, without large economic disadvantage, while motivating other countries to follow suit. Nuclear power plants have low operating costs but are expensive up front, so adequate financing is critical.

Dennis Peterson

Oct 26, 2011
07:47

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Nevermind the above comment, I've completely rewritten the executive summary and "what" sections. Also adding a lot to the section on political strategy. Fee and Dividend section is reorganized, new material is added to Financing, a bit more added to fusion, and various other edits scattered throughout.

Joseph Robertson

Oct 30, 2011
11:10

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My main comment regards the Fee and Dividend section. First, having worked on a 100% fee and dividend approach, it seems necessary to address the question of using the fee as a penalty for not doing something else. In this plan, that turns out to be a way of balancing the options, but the underlying economics I've seen suggests the fee is less about penalizing any participants in the energy economy and more about making sure the price at market reflects the cost of the fuels in question. It may be worth considering whether or not this pricing mechanism is really intended to be a penalty or whether it is more important to view it as a measure designed to prevent fundamental market failure, in the form of unprecedented negative externalities from underpriced carbon-based fuels.

Joseph Robertson

Oct 30, 2011
11:17

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On cloud seeding and geoengineering, there are a couple of things to consider: 1) we don't know how this will work out, and 2) it has often been proposed as a means of getting around the problem of climate destabilization resulting from higher global average temperatures. If there is going to be any place for this kind of research, it may need to be accessible to profit-making interests only where they participate in the transition away from dirty energy to clean.

Dennis Peterson

Oct 31, 2011
11:43

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On comment #11: I'll try to make that point a bit more clearly. Economically I think it works out the same no matter what you call it, but the way I described it may also be a bit misleading...paying the fee is a valid option people can choose, rather than a legal penalty that's applied after some kind of court proceeding. I'll add a sentence or two to that effect.

Dennis Peterson

Oct 31, 2011
11:45

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On comment #12: there are some geoengineering approaches that definitely make me skittish. I picked one that at least is thought to reset itself to normal pretty quickly once halted, and I do think we need to know more before applying it at large scale. One thing I maybe didn't specify: I'm not seeing the cloud seeding as a way for anyone to avoid paying carbon fees, or to earn carbon credits. Rather, I'm seeing it as a government-run program, separate from the market mechanisms. We need to reduce CO2 even if the temperature is fine, because of ocean acidification. It would be very important not to let it be "spun" as an easy escape from our problems. Cloud seeding seems less damaging to me than, say, large methane releases from undersea polar ice. I think we need to accept that changes are happening, and figure out as best we can what is going to do the least damage, without treating the changes differently based on whether they happen on purpose or by accident. It's the same to the planet either way. If we figure out a way to reduce emissions dramatically in the short term, that changes things. If for example one of the alternative fusion projects I mentioned comes up with a breakthrough, then I'd happily abandon all forms of geoengineering.

Bill Moomaw

Nov 3, 2011
07:35

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Safe nuclear power - Presenter Historic argument is interesting – Seaborg Report Scaling factor is an unresolved problem - 1 GWe per week is not a trivial matter. Do not document why wind, solar, etc. is not a useful alternative Can we actually get thorium in the ring=ht amounts from RE mining to do the job? Where are the numbers? Concept of thorium MSR is good, but numbers are not there to judge feasibility. Possible contender

Dennis Peterson

Nov 3, 2011
09:13

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Here are some numbers on easily-available thorium deposits: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html There's about four times as much thorium as uranium. But with uranium we're only burning the U-235, which is just a small fraction of the total. With thorium we burn it all. A golfball-size chunk of thorium is enough to provide one person's lifetime energy needs. Thorium availability is the least of our problems. A trickier problem is the startup fuel. We can't start a reactor on thorium alone, we need U233 or some other neutron emitter. In the proposal I linked Sorenson's plan to build 70 GW/year in the U.S.: http://energyfromthorium.com/plan/ I do think wind and solar are useful. I just think it's unproven that they can support baseload power at large scale, and many people think they can't. Intermittency and storage are the issues there, and even if feasible, storage adds a lot to the cost. Here's a good discussion of challenges for large-scale renewables: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/10/29/gws-sg-es/ From a land-use perspective, thorium or other advanced nuclear would be far better than renewables.

Dale Lueck

Nov 5, 2011
01:22

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Thermodynamics says the conversion of CO2 and H2O to gasoline will cost you more energy than the produced gasoline will provide. This fact is obscured in the details presented in the proposed conversion of air CO2 to fuel. There is no free lunch here and the burning of the fuel produced just returns the CO2 to the air. This is not a recipe for net removal of CO2. It does keep liquid fuels in the loop for transportation, but at a net loss of energy. Likewise, the production of CaO from limestone is the cement production reaction that consumes large amounts of thermal energy and produces 1/3 of the current man made CO2 emissions. Producing this to absorb CO2 from the air requires capture and permanent storage of the CO2 produced in the calcining of the limestone. The original limestone is the best storage available. Again, this consumes a lot of energy with no net CO2 reduction. I suspect that direct use of the energy needed is a better use via replacing all fossil fuels in energy production.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 7, 2011
06:12

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Of course you have a net energy loss when making the gasoline. No process is perfectly efficient. But if the energy comes from a nuclear plant, the fuel is still carbon-neutral. If you make liquid fuels from biomass, you also have a net energy loss. The energy in that case comes from the sun, and plenty of that energy is lost in producing the biomass. I hope I didn't imply that liquid fuels would be carbon-negative, rather than carbon-neutral. I didn't go into detail on the limestone idea, since it's a minor part of the proposal. From one of the links: "The key aspect of the concept process is that each mol of calcium oxide acts to enhance the capacity of the oceans to absorbs two mols of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at dilute concentrations (387ppm), whilst, to produce the calcium oxide, only one mol of pure carbon dioxide is generated." Replacing fossil plants is certainly a good idea, and a major emphasis of the proposal. I only advocate CO2 absorption to the extent that it's cheaper. (Biochar in some cases is extremely cheap.) Also of course we need some solution for transportation.

Fj Tkj

Nov 8, 2011
04:06

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I especially agree with advanced nuclear power and closing the carbon loop. We've been shunning nuclear power in this country for too long. We're afraid of it for little reason - the US hasn't had any major nuclear incidents in over 30 years, and the 2 major incidents its had in its history have been minor with few medical issues and no deaths I believe. Thorium reactors could remove the possibility of dangerous scenarios altogether. Also, about closing the carbon loop, SkyTran's proposal ("Personal Rapid Transit grids") would solve this problem since it lowers energy use per mile of travel by an order of magnitude compared to cars, while also improving the quality of travel tremendously. That is the proposal I voted for.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 8, 2011
04:03

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SkyTran's pretty cool. I don't think it closes the loop completely, since we'll still need trucks, ships, and airplanes, plus some cars for the old-fashioned types...but if it works out it'd reduce the number of nuclear plants we have to build. The faster we can get to carbon neutrality, the better.

Terry Floyd

Nov 11, 2011
08:59

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LFTRs are scalable Dr. Robert Hargraves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOoBTufkEog “These include the tailings of ancient tin mines, rare earth mine tailings, phosphate mine tailings and uranium mine tailings. In addition to the thorium present in mine tailings and in surface monazite sands, burning coal at the average 1000 MWe power plant produces about 13 tons of thorium per year. That thorium is recoverable from the power plant’s waste ash pile. One ton of thorium will produce nearly 1 GW of electricity for a year in an efficient thorium cycle reactor. >>>>{([Thus current coal energy technology throws away over 10 times the energy it produces as electricity.])}<<<< This is not the result of poor thermodynamic efficiency; it is the result of a failure to recognize and use the energy value of thorium. The amount of thorium present in surface mining coal waste is enormous and would provide all the power human society needs for thousands of years, without resorting to any special mining for thorium, or the use of any other form or energy recovery.” http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971

Ondrej Tutko

Nov 12, 2011
03:09

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Yes! LFTRs and IFRs were ignored for too long. Advanced nuclear breeders will be the solution to our energy problems. It is for all practical purposes a renewable energy source: http://sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad11983cohen.pdf

Christopher Fry

Nov 14, 2011
03:27

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Disclaimer: I'm the author of the PRT proposal current in 2nd place :-(. On Comment #20, Dennis is essentially correct. My proposal as it stands can carry refrigerator (and smaller) freight packages to the urban/suburban areas but still needs trucks for bigger things and for rural delivery. SkyTran doesn't cross oceans so ships are needed, as are airplanes. (But trips of several hundred miles and perhaps further are faster door to door in SkyTran so I hope to cut down significantly on air traffic.) The proposal only attempts to get rid of 50% of cars so Dennis was being generous when he said we still needed "some". This weekend I took a 2nd look at Cycling Carbon, spending a couple hours reading the entire proposal and comments plus following a few links. Then I tried to do the impossible: pretend I wasn't the author of another proposal and see which one I'd pick, PRT or Cycling Carbon. As I work on decision support, I have various structured strategies for making complex decisions, often of the sort: comparing apples to oranges. But in this case, its more like comparing apples(PRT) to a whole orchard(Cycling Carbon). The normal strategy when making such comparisons is to try to get each into the same format. But since it's not clear which "semantic format" is best, I decided to convert each proposal into the other's format, then compare the formats themselves, then go meta for a new paradigm. The format of PRT is, pick a core technology, industry, "market segment" (population), and geography then describe a relatively few "helper" technologies and use up words on definitive detail. For PRT, core technology=SkyTran industry=transportation market_segment=The densest 50% of the US population geography=The area where the market segment lives. helper technologies=bike share, electric cars, zipcar detail=cost per passenger mile, cost per mile of guideway, day in the life scenario, etc. Since this is NOT the format of Cycling Carbon, I'm going to have to do some shmushing to cram it in there, but bear with me. core technology=there are many but I think the core is Advanced Nuclear Power. industry=energy market segment=the whole world. (yes its in the "national" section and perhaps some portion of it would work best if applied to the US, but since the proposal addresses the global air pollution and CO2 sequestration from free air, the World Trade Organization and tariffs on imported goods, the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation with international monitoring, 3rd world biochar stoves, (note the link in the proposal for WorldStove is broken) ocean geo-engineering of pumping seawater up from the depths, spraying seawater in the air to make clouds over oceans, and 2 other ocean engineering ideas this is a global proposal. To be sure, any significant change to any large country is going to affect the whole world, but Cycling Carbon is inherently much more global than the other 2 United States proposals. Overall that is not a bad thing, it is simply a mis-classification) geography=the world helper technologies=biochar stoves, CO2 sequestration via pulverized rocks, the above ocean engineering tech, carbon tax & tariff, make gasoline from air, the STEP process (note the link in the proposal for STEP is broken), white roofs detail=necessarily lower than PRT due to breadth of proposal. Again, this is not a bad thing. I bet most voters didn't read all of the PRT proposal, let alone the several times longer Cycling Carbon proposal. OK now I attempt to expand the PRT proposal into the "semantic format" of the Cycling Carbon proposal. Unlike the last transformation, I have to actually add new material to attempt to make it as comprehensive at CC. I'm not going to succeed, but I'll give it a shot. First, on getting that other 50% of the US gasoline cars off the road: We expand the SkyTran network from the 3% or so dense regions to the whole country, except we lower the resolution to make it affordable. So maybe there's a ring around the 1 mile grids of the original proposal of 10 mile resolution grids. And outside of them we tile the rest of the country at 100 mile grids. Better would be to do detailed design and adjust the grid resolution to the specifics of each region. With 100 mile grid our maximum, that means 50 miles from the furthest point to a station. (Thanks to Howie Goodell for this idea.) We fit electric cars with 50 or 100 mile range batteries (now just barely doable). We put solar charging stations at the PRT stations, and solar panels on rural garages that charge swappable batteries. To get rid of trucks, we use rail freight more and interface it with PRT. We'll still need a few trucks, but maybe we go electric with them too, or use Europe's new clean diesel technology and call that good enough. For ships, well, there's sails and the wind-powered kite ideas. http://www.kiteship.com Maybe we steal some small advanced nuclear reactors from Cycling Carbon a la aircraft carriers! For aircraft, I don't have any great near term ideas, but note that from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation#Aircraft efficiency has not been improving much the last couple decades but it does say: "As over 80% of the fully laden take-off weight of a modern aircraft such as the Airbus A380 is craft and fuel, there remains considerable room for future improvements in efficiency." We can also get much faster PRT if we run them in evacuated tubes. By much faster, I mean much faster than commercial jets and using far less power. At a constant speed with no air and maglev, you can coast for a long ways! http://www.et3.com/index.html I consider this technology to be a bit far out but perhaps less so than advanced nuclear. With all of that under our belt, we expand the PRT grid to other countries, especially dense ones like India, Pakistan, Japan, the dense regions of China and Europe. Next: building efficiency. Steven Chu told us in a talk at MIT last year that he thinks buildings can reduce their energy needs by 80% with passive solar design plus smart controls and a host of other near term technologies. That seems optimistic to me, but then I don't have a Nobel prize in Physics like he does. Off grid houses aren't exactly unheard of these days. Solar panels, wind and geothermal are getting cheaper to supply that extra 20%. Next the industrial segment. There's too many diverse technologies needed here to cut energy use. I will note that new processes for making things from Nanotechnology to rep-rap http://reprap.org may help out. Agriculture: There's some advances in hydroponics and aeroponics (growing in air). The most radical I've seen is http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/14/dutch-plantlab-revolutionizes-farming-no-sunlight-no-windows-less-water-better-food/ I don't know that this uses less energy than traditional farming yet but it shows promise. If we get really local, as we can with such technologies we won't have to use transportation to carry food so that helps. We can further reduce burdens on infrastructure and the negative externalities it produces by getting houses off the water grid: collect rainwater, locally process sewage with graywater gardens and composting toilets. Communications can be via cell or wi-max and now we've disconnected a house from all wires, pipes and roads, decreasing numerous negative climate effects. Now let's compare these "semantic formats" independent of actual content. The original PRT format is focused, narrow, definitive, relatively simple. The original Cycling Carbon format is defocused, broad, less definitive (as in providing multiple options for a given 'niche' such as 4 different nuclear technologies) and relatively complex. To its credit, the CC format is much more comprehensive, and works on a world scale. This is what we ultimately need. But I chose to start with the less-comprehensive PRT format as its easier to digest and, for executing the whole thing, less risky. If I step back and look at overall strategies, the comprehensive PRT proposal maximizes energy efficiency and minimizes polluting. The comprehensive CC proposal optimizes energy production and doesn't try to minimize polluting too much since sequestering utilizing cheap energy can "clean up the mess". These are not incompatible approaches, in fact, perhaps both will be necessary. I could, at this point, pick which format is best, then compare the 2 proposals in that format for an apples-to-apples comparison but I'm not going to do it because I think there's a better alternative. My better alternative does not fit in the bounds of the contest rules so consider it an idea for next year. As far as I'm concerned, what proposals win or lose is not so important. What is important is that we identify the best solutions in each niche and get cracking on implementation. Here's how I'd proceed. - Pull from each proposal (and I mean ALL proposals submitted) the key solutions. For the PRT this is the SkyTran technology. For Cycling Carbon, this is the numerous technologies listed above. I call these "cards on the table". - From each proposal pull out criteria to evaluate the cards by: From the "comprehensive" PRT proposal above, that would be "energy efficiency" and "minimize polluting". From the CC proposal that might be "make energy cheap and clean", "sequester carbon" and "reflect sunlight back to space". There's more criteria, I'm sure. - Next we group our cards as to the criteria they fill - Now see which cards are "overlapping" in the sense that there's no reason to do more than one. - Now pick the best of each overlapping set - Finally, make sure that the remaining cards are compatible with each other, or better yet, synergistic. Those cards comprise the winning proposal. The source of origin of those cards doesn't really matter. What matters is getting this planet in good shape. All contributors plus the organizers are winners in my book. But everyone will be losers if we don't get our act together.

cjracer1000

Nov 14, 2011
11:15

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I blindly voted for you, until I actually read what you were promoting. This is the most authoritarian thing I've read in a long time. The UN already has far too much power, and now you're promoting a tax on carbon? This is just stupid.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 14, 2011
11:20

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fry: Great comment...though I still think my proposal is pretty U.S.-centric :) Thanks for the heads up on the broken link....I post that "dutch plantlab" indoor farming link in my "vision of the future" section, it looks really cool. I suspect it uses a good bit more energy than traditional farming, but with plentiful carbon-free energy it might just work out. I'm wondering whether the long-distance PRT would be best as a grid, or just as direct connections between population centers. I throw in a lot of seemingly redundant technologies just because there's no telling what unknown problems might crop up as we develop them. One working technology in each category would be sufficient. (And some, like fuel from air, we wouldn't need for a good while yet...we should replace the power plants first.) Last year in DC, members of the winning teams met at lunch and went through a process much like you describe, at least to the extent it's possible informally over one lunch. The result of that became my "2010 Combined" global proposal. I'm definitely interested in doing more of that sort of thing.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 14, 2011
11:00

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cjracer1000: This is a proposal for the U.S. What does the U.N. have to do with it?

matthewkol186

Nov 15, 2011
09:32

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Voted for this in two places. I think you know where, Mr. Dennis.

Gary Rucinski

Nov 15, 2011
10:59

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Overly prescriptive. Sufficient to put a gradually increasing fee on carbon at the source, return proceeds to households in equal amounts, and implement border adjustments. The rest of the world's economies will fall in line. The free market will figure out the rest. I can imagine that politicians will continue to posture over whether to return funding for advanced R&D to previous levels (as a percentage of GDP say). Such funding would be valuable in many ways including restoring vitality to university and government laboratory programs that would produce the next generation of scientists and engineers we need to solve our energy and, now, climate remediation challenges. So be it. But let's not hold up fee and dividend waiting for that debate to happen. Similarly, let's leave the debate over safe nuclear to happen in a standalone fashion rather than complicating this proposal. Geo-engineering too.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 15, 2011
11:17

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There's no way around government involvement in nuclear. At a minimum you need a licensing process that makes it feasible. I think that pursuing these things together makes them all easier to achieve. People are more likely to agree to a carbon price, if they see a clear path to zero-carbon energy sources. Conservatives are more likely to believe in AGW if the proposed solution is nuclear power (see the study I cite in the proposal). Giving farmers a way to make a lot of money absorbing carbon will help erode the resistance of the Republican base. That's not to say that nuclear and carbon price initiatives should be in the same bill, but advocating them all gives a clear path to solving the problem while growing the economy.

Christopher Fry

Nov 15, 2011
09:33

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Fry responds to comment #25. Whoops, you DID mention the Dutch plantlab. I should have referenced you. Sorry. I read somewhere that the average head of lettuce travels 1k miles to your supermarket, so we can afford to spend more energy growing if we make it up on transportation. These plant labs are another nice card on the table. On direct connections between urban centers: Yes this is Plan A and I think as you're implying, mostly makes sense. Some cases we might have a rather "wide" direct connection as sometimes there's population corridors. There's some jobs for urban planners here to figure out the optimal grid, direct connections or something in between.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 27, 2011
11:23

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Turns out China is implementing pretty much every part of this proposal's "Advanced Nuclear" section: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/11/27/china-fr-summary/ On another note, "fuel from air" would be more practical with more efficient cars. The December Popular Science mentions an opposed-piston automotive engine with thermodynamic efficiency close to 50% (compared to about 30% for current gasoline engines). The most efficient diesel engines can do that too, but this engine ways 30% less. It's five to seven years from commercialization. The company, EcoMotors, has investment from Bill Gates, and has signed deals with a truck manufacturer and...a Chinese automotive supplier.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 27, 2011
01:57

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I ran the numbers on indoor farming. Average sunlight per square meter is 250 watts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation The dutch plantlab doubles photosynthetic efficiency, so we can figure 125 watts/m^2. Crops and pastures take up about half of U.S. land area: http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full U.S. total land area is about 9 million square kilometers. Let's assume we get more efficient with our food production, perhaps going more vegetarian and/or converting to a lot of lab-grown meat by 2050 or so. Also we're getting rid of ethanol production. For nice round numbers we'll say we need one million square kilometers for food production. Maybe we can do with less, but probably not by an order of magnitude. A million square kilometers is a trillion square meters, so we'd need 125 terawatts to convert entirely to indoor farming, in the U.S. alone. Current world energy production is about 17 terawatts. Not to mention, we'd need to build a million square kilometers' worth of indoor structures and light sources. Sadly then it doesn't seem feasible to convert to indoor farming for bulk food production, unless maybe we invent really cheap nuclear fusion. But it might work for high-value specialty crops that are normally shipped long distances.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 28, 2011
08:42

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More on China's nuclear investment: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/china-doubles-down-on-nuclear-power Much of their motivation is health problems from coal emissions. Combined with their renewables investment, one projection says they'll reduce CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 80% by 2050, and reduce the carbon intensity of their economy by 40% by 2020, compared to 2005. Along the way they'll secure a solid technological lead if the U.S. doesn't take action within the next decade.

Dennis Peterson

Nov 28, 2011
11:00

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I started thinking about the theoretical limit for indoor food production. What if we could use some kind of nanotechnology to synthesize healthy, good-tasting food? One watt-hour is about equal to one kCal (dietary calorie). Let's say we need 2000 per day per person. At about 25% thermodynamic efficiency for the synthesis process, that's an input of 8 kWh per day per person. Divide by 24 to get a third of a kilowatt per person. By the time we have technology like this, we could easily have 9 billion people on the planet. Food synthesis would then require 3 terawatts for the entire world's food supply.

Robert Bernal

Dec 28, 2011
01:52

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I'm glad I stumbled by! I read about skytrans (it seems decades ago), I know about lFTR and the IFR (but otherwise hate any reactor type that requires water for cooling), I have thought of "giant mailer tubes" for transpo (but realize they need to be a vaccum for any appreciable distances). I learned about biochar, here and love to read the comments! I thought of very thin reflective mylar covering vast areas (but do not like the litter aspect of it). I would like to add another "old fashioned idea"... Robotic factories for almost all the parts required for (the best kind of) solar and for the LiFePO4 which has virtually no dangerous thermal issues (as does the other lithium class batteries) and thus a 2,000 complete charge/discharge cycle life (to 80% initial capacity). Good enough (invented by team led by John Goodenough)! I try to list parameters for the development of solar energy at yesonsolar.com which are: Efficiency, Ability to be made for almost free by advanced machine automation, Integration into the cheapest energy storage, No massive bull dozing, Least amount of infrared emittance, Greatest EROEI, Simplicity, And longevity... Any other parameters? Obviously, we might not want to just mass produce 250,000 sq km of infrared emitting, 15% panels, as that would counteract "global white paint" by a wide margin. I believe it is machine produced GaAs freznel array and lifepo4 battery (but do not know). The much less costly molten salt (for solar power tower thermal storage) seems temping, despite necessary turbines... Most other aspects of the efficient yet practical future should require only "good enough", not the absolute best, as machine automation may be much easier to fit, so to speak. Perhaps, it will take a game, (name it "solarville" in this case?) to produce the most numerous "best scenario" possibilities.