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Why I Want Solar Energy for my Home
By Solar energy | November 20, 2008
Why I Want Solar Energy for my Home
This quest to use solar energy to power my home leads through a scintillating labyrinth of alternative energy issues. The more I learn about energy in general and alternative energy in particular, the more I love solar.
Browsing through a local bookstore, my husband came across an interesting book, Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines
I have yet to finish the book but what I have learned thus far from Muller is:
• The world is NOT running out of fossil fuel—but only out of oil
• Coal supplies will last for centuries (let me say that again—centuries)
• Coal is cheap
• We can make oil out of coal (via the Fischer-Tropsch process)
Why does this matter?
Here’s the other important piece to the energy puzzle—OPEC.
OPEC sets the price for oil.
When OPEC oil prices go higher than $50 per barrel, it makes more economic sense for us to make our own oil from our own coal. You see, a barrel of oil made from coal—using the Fischer-Tropsch process—costs $50 per barrel.
If OPEC’s oil is $100 per barrel we can say, thank you very much, but we’ll make our own oil from our own coal.
If oil prices are below $50 per barrel, it is cheaper to buy OPEC.
However…coal is not good for the environment!
So I am an advocate of solar (and other alternative) energy.
• Because I care about the environment
• Because I do not like being yanked around by OPEC
• Because I do not want my energy dollars funding terrorism
Topics: home solar energy, Renewable Energy, Renewable Energy Politics | 1 Comment »
February 1st, 2009 at 7:40 am
Hm, it’s not as simple as price. The Fischer-Tropsch process is very energy intensive and has a very bad energy-return-on-investment. It takes as much energy to run the fischer-tropsch process as is in the oil which comes out the other end. The F-T process is only used by those who are desparate for liquid fuels .. such as .. the Nazi’s during WWII who did not have access to liquid fuels (why did they invade Russia? to get access to Russian oil fields). They invented the F-T process which let them have liquid fuel to run their war machine.
The problem with your desire for solar is.. it doesn’t replace oil. Oil is primarily used to drive transportation, and unfortunately 99.99% of the transportation in the developed world is driven by liquid fuels. Solar produces electricity and only .001% or so of the transportation in the world is electrically driven. Hence there was a curious proposal from the Bush administration in 2005 to develop more nuclear power plants so we can keep driving and likewise nuclear plants make electricity, not liquid fuels. But there was some theorizing I found then that the electricity (and heat) from a nuclear plant could be used to drive the F-T process e.g. with tar sands in Canada.