Everything is based on this. We can’t exist unless there is growth. But the dilemma now is the foundation that it is based on can not support it.

I saw the smiley, but I’ll reply seriously anyway. There’s no exception/contradiction here. California electricity costs more than the US average (12.82 cents per kWh vs. 8.90 cents per kWh), so you could argue that price is driving efficiency, but that’s probably a tiny part of the story. Californians use only 7,032 kWh per capita vs. 12.347. Multiply those out and you get $901.50 vs. $1098.88 per year. My point was that the lower out of pocket annual expense doesn’t negate the efficiency gains. People spend their savings on lattes instead

Higher prices do lead to efficiency, but so do other things, and in many cases the other things are more important. Government policies, incentives, and regulations that encourage efficiency lead to consumers being able to have efficiency and other things they want, instead of having to make a choice between alternatives (e.g. efficiency vs. features). Often left to a choice between efficiency and features, consumers have chosen features. Policies that let them have both improve efficiency. In this way regulation can lead to greater consumer choice.

That hasn’t kept the local price from climbing and climbing.

Something like 37% of current global energy consumption is in petroleum. The easy oil is being depleted as we speak. It is likely that conventional oil production will be significantly lower by the middle of the century and/or the “energy return on investment” (EROI) will be significantly lower – which is to say that we will need to burn more energy than ever before in order to extract or manufacture a particular barrel of oil. This later point includes unconventional oil sources. So even if everything putters along as it is today with no major growth in oil demand – we will still have less oil for consumer use since the EROI will be steadily dropping.

So over the years, countries will have to find replacements for oil and natural gas.

I think what I’m trying to say is that it is not just a matter of meeting future demand – you must also consider the impact of oil depletion.

My gut tells me that while renewables *may* be able to grow fast enough to meet future growth in this and other industrial countries, but that the cheapest option (minus environmental impact) is coal and the second is nuclear. I would like to see more acceptance for nuclear in the climate policy community. A strict adherence to renewables is putting too many eggs into a single basket – and if that basket fails, coal is and always will be the ‘fast and dirty’ solution.

for that matter – see the work of Vaclav Smil, for instance…

is it not that the exception that proves the rule?
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Don’t you think that if gasoline in US would be as expensive as e.g. in Europe, US citizens would use less of gasoline?
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By the way, that’s already happening, more expensive fuel leads to higher efficiency – in fact, higher efficiency is the result of scarcity and wise versa… Americans are throwing away their inefficient SUVs (finally!!!) – simply, if somtehing is scarce, one uses it more efficently AND *less* and if something is abundant and cheap, one uses it inefficienly and wastfully… it’s no more complicated than that… doesn’t matter, if it is energy, wood, water, food, whatever…

First, wind can be made more reliable by interconnection of geographically diverse farms. See Archer, C. L. and M. Z. Jacobson, 2007: Supplying baseload power and reducing transmissions requirements by interconnecting wind farms, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 46, 1701-1717. This interconnection effect can be enhanced by combining wind and CSP and CSP+TES.

Second, wind can be used as the primary method of charging PHEVs, which have tremendous flexibility in when they charge (i.e. they can charge when the wind blows, and wait when it does not).

Third, a technology called V2G, which is synergistic with Joe’s call for plug-ins, has the potential to allow 50% wind power on the grid. See Kempton, W. and J. Tomić. 2005. Vehicle to Grid Implementation: from stabilizing the grid to supporting large-scale renewable energy. J. Power Sources Volume 144, Issue 1, 1 June 2005, Pages 280-294.. They say, “Our calculations suggest that V2G could stabilize large-scale (one-half of US electricity) wind power with 3% of the fleet dedicated to regulation for wind, plus 8–38% of the fleet providing operating reserves or storage for wind.”

Humans are capricious and willful and often not rational in their actions. That’s the way we are. I could very likely save myself a lot of money this winter, and cut our family’s carbon footprint, by adding insulation in my attic; instead I stood 2 hours in line Friday for my new iPhone (very cool though . Maybe I’ll get to the insulation later, but we certainly are attracted by the shiny and new. That’s one of the things R&D can bring us – new products and ideas can change thought patterns in a way that regulations simply cannot. The Toyota Prius won a large following relative to other hybrid contenders in large part because of its distinctive look, not so much because of its price, which was definitely marginal at the time (much clearer benefit now, making us Prius owners look ever smugger). We want energy production technologies that make coal power plants and coal mining look ever more archaic and unfashionable so that no developed or developing nation can build another one with any pride, and so even energy companies will shut down existing plants with a sense of relief, rather than regret.

Cost is part of that – a coal plant may be ugly, but if it saves hundreds of millions of dollars over alternatives, that money looks awfully tempting to anybody. So the costs of the alternatives and efficiency measures need to be roughly competitive, particularly when you include the needs of developing nations that are less likely to be able to agree on or enforce regulatory measures. But the other part of it is the existence of some capability that, at least in peoples minds, can’t be matched by alternatives. Wind may be close to competitive with coal in some areas, except it can’t supply more than 20% of grid capacity, except it doesn’t come with a cost-effective storage solution, except it requires building new underutilized transmission capacity, except some people think the windmills are ugly or kill birds etc… You need to not only compete on price, but also figure out how to get rid of all those “excepts” that make coal still seem viable. R&D that brings out new product solutions – perhaps combinations of different energy options, perhaps improved storage, perhaps shiny new (superconducting!) transmission lines – and of course makes them cost-competitive – is what will actually make the transition happen, without the need to use an undemocratic degree of force.

But that need for R&D is certainly not any reason to delay taking what actions we reasonably can now.