[p2p-research] Solar instead of feeder corn & Lester Brown's Plan B

[Paul D. Fernhout]

From:
"The Truth About Land Use in the United States"
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
"Developed and rural residential make up 139 million acres, or 6.1 percent 
of total land area in the U.S. This amount of land is not insignificant 
until you consider that we planted more than 80 million acres of feeder corn 
and another 75 million acres of soybeans (95 percent of which are consumed 
by livestock, not tofu eaters) last year alone. These two crops affect more 
of the land area of the U.S. than all the urbanization, rural residential, 
highways, railroads, commercial centers, malls, industrial parks and golf 
courses combined."

Note this is:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=80+million+acres+in+square+kilometers&btnG=Google+Search
"80 million acres = 323 748.514 square kilometers"

A square kilometer is a million square meters.

In round numbers, this is about 300,000,000,000 (300 billion) square meters 
devoted just to feeder corn for livestock in the USA (and about a similar 
amount to soybeans) .

If the USA was to cut its meat consumption in half, this would mean freeing 
up about the amount in feeder corn, so about 300 billion square meters.

At 10% conversion efficiency to solar electric power, that is 100 watts per 
square meter, or 30,000 gigawatts, or 30 terawatts.

The USA uses about 3 terawatts of power.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

Granted, with day/night cyles and bad weather, it takes six times as much 
solar capacity for 24X7 energy production. Round that to a factor of ten for 
other infrastructure (although remember that production panels are around 
15% conversion now, and likely soon 20%).

In any case, that 30 terawatts peak solar then becomes 3 terawatts sustained.

So, we currently have about as much land in use in feeder corn for meat 
production as it would take to produce *all* the power the USA needs for all 
purposes from solar electricity.

So, the question is, how can one get corn farmers to decide to produce 
electricity rather than feed corn for livestock? :-)

Well, one way is just taxes on fossil fuel use, so renewable power is on a 
level playing field with fossil fuels:
   "A Massive Market Failure"
   http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/PB3ch1_ss2.htm
"One of the best examples of this massive market failure can be seen in the 
United States, where the gasoline pump price in mid-2007 was $3 per gallon. 
But this price reflects only the cost of discovering the oil, pumping it to 
the surface, refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service 
stations. It overlooks the costs of climate change as well as the costs of 
tax subsidies to the oil industry (such as the oil depletion allowance), the 
burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil in the politically 
unstable Middle East, and the health care costs for treating respiratory 
illnesses from breathing polluted air. 16 Based on a study by the 
International Center for Technology Assessment, these costs now total nearly 
$12 per gallon ($3.17 per liter) of gasoline burned in the United States. If 
these were added to the $3 cost of the gasoline itself, motorists would pay 
$15 a gallon for gas at the pump. In reality, burning gasoline is very 
costly, but the market tells us it is cheap, thus grossly distorting the 
structure of the economy. The challenge facing governments is to restructure 
tax systems by systematically incorporating indirect costs as a tax to make 
sure the price of products reflects their full costs to society and by 
offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes."

Although where they suggest lowering income taxes, I suggest the money go 
back to everyone as a basic income. :-)

Now, if they wanted, the farmers could put up windmills instead, and still 
grow the corn. :-) So, it turns out, it is happening anyway, even without 
reducing feed corn production much:
   "Harnessing the Wind"
   http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/PB3ch12_ss2.htm
"In 1991 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released a national wind 
resource inventory, noting that three wind-rich states— North Dakota, 
Kansas, and Texas—had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national 
electricity needs. Advances in wind turbine design since then allow turbines 
to operate at lower wind speeds and to convert wind into electricity more 
efficiently. And because they are now 100 meters tall, instead of less than 
40 meters, they harvest a far larger, stronger, and more reliable wind 
regime, generating 20 times as much electricity as the turbines installed in 
the early 1980s when modern wind power development began. With these new 
turbine technologies, the three states singled out by DOE could satisfy not 
only national electricity needs but national energy needs. ... From 2000 to 
2007, world wind generating capacity increased from 18,000 megawatts to an 
estimated 92,000 megawatts. In early 2008 it will pass the 100,000-megawatt 
milestone. Since 2000, capacity has been growing at 25 percent annually, 
doubling every three years. ...  One of the early concerns with wind energy 
was the risk it posed to birds, but this can be overcome by conducting 
studies and careful siting to avoid risky areas for birds. The most recent 
research indicates that bird fatalities from wind farms are minuscule 
compared with deaths from flying into skyscrapers, colliding with cars, or 
being captured by cats. [Or being killed by pollution from coal burning and 
coal mining.] 12 Other critics are concerned about the visual effect. When 
some people see a wind farm they see a blight on the landscape. Others see a 
civilization-saving source of energy. Although there are NIMBY problems 
(“not in my backyard”), the PIMBY response (“put it in my backyard”) is much 
more pervasive. Within U.S. communities, for instance, among ranchers in 
Colorado or dairy farmers in upstate New York, the competition for wind 
farms is intense. This is not surprising, since a large, advanced design 
wind turbine can generate $300,000 worth of electricity in a year. Farmers, 
with no investment on their part, typically receive $3,000–10,000 a year in 
royalties for each wind turbine erected on their land. One of wind’s 
attractions is that it requires so little land compared with other sources 
of renewable energy. For example, a corn farmer in northern Iowa can put a 
wind turbine on a quarter-acre of land that can produce $300,000 worth of 
electricity per year. This same quarter-acre would produce 40 bushels of 
corn that in turn could produce 120 gallons of ethanol worth $300. Since the 
turbines occupy less than 1 percent of the land in a wind farm, this 
technology lets farmers harvest both energy and crops from the same land. 
Thousands of ranchers in the wind-rich Great Plains will soon be earning 
more from wind royalties than from cattle sales."

That doubling in capacity every two to three years is similar to the rate 
for solar electric plants which are also increasing exponentially. By about 
2030 or so, at that doubling rate, all our power will come from renewables.

I don't agree with everything in Lester Brown's "Plan B" at those links (the 
tone, more than anything, but also the population control message), but it 
still has a lot of good ideas.
   http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm

But we both agree that the central challenge is social.
   http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/PB3ch13_ss6.htm
"""
Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring 
its natural support systems, eradicating poverty, stabilizing population and 
climate, and, above all, restoring hope. We have the technologies, economic 
instruments, and financial resources to do this. The United States, the 
wealthiest society that has ever existed, has the resources to lead this 
effort. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute sums it up 
well: “The tragic irony of this moment is that the rich countries are so 
rich and the poor so poor that a few added tenths of one percent of GNP from 
the rich ones ramped up over the coming decades could do what was never 
before possible in human history: ensure that the basic needs of health and 
education are met for all impoverished children in this world. How many more 
tragedies will we suffer in this country before we wake up to our capacity 
to help make the world a safer and more prosperous place not only through 
military might, but through the gift of life itself?”
...
Combining social goals and earth restoration components into a Plan B budget 
yields an additional annual expenditure of $190 billion, roughly one third 
of the current U.S. military budget or one sixth of the global military 
budget. (See Table 13–3.) In a sense this is the new defense budget, the one 
that addresses the most serious threats to our security. 50 Unfortunately, 
the United States continues to focus on building an ever-stronger military, 
largely ignoring the threats posed by continuing environmental 
deterioration, poverty, and population growth. Its defense budget for 2006, 
including $118 billion for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
brought the U.S. military expenditure to $560 billion. Other North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization members spend a combined $328 billion a year on the 
military. Russia spends about $35 billion, and China, $50 billion. U.S. 
military spending is now roughly equal to that of all other countries combined.
   As of late 2007, direct U.S. appropriations for the Iraq war, which has 
lasted longer than World War II, total some $450 billion. Economists Joseph 
Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculate that if all the costs are included, such 
as the lifetime of care required for returning troops who are brain-injured 
or psychologically shattered, the war will cost in the end some $2 trillion. 
Yet the Iraq war may prove to be one of history’s most costly mistakes not 
so much because of fiscal outlay but because it has diverted the world’s 
attention from climate change and the other threats to civilization itself. 52
   It is decision time. Like earlier civilizations that got into 
environmental trouble, we can decide to stay with business as usual and 
watch our modern economy decline and eventually collapse, or we can 
consciously move onto a new path, one that will sustain economic progress. 
In this situation, no action is a de facto decision to stay on the 
decline-and-collapse path.
   No one can argue today that we do not have the resources to eradicate 
poverty, stabilize population, and protect the earth’s natural resource 
base. We can get rid of hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty, and we can 
restore the earth’s soils, forests, and fisheries. Shifting one sixth of the 
world military budget to the Plan B budget would be more than adequate to 
move the world onto a path that would sustain progress. We can build a 
global community where the basic needs of all the earth’s people are 
satisfied—a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized.
"""

Although, really, it does not seem like it will cost even that much. From:
   http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/PB3ch12_ss4.htm
"""
With sales of solar cells now doubling every two years and likely to 
continue doing so at least until 2020, the estimated sales for 2008 of over 
5,000 megawatts will climb to 320,000 megawatts in 2020. By this time the 
cumulative installed capacity would exceed 1 million megawatts (1,000 
gigawatts). Although this projection may seem ambitious, it may in fact turn 
out to be conservative. For one thing, if most of the nearly 1.6 billion 
people who lack electricity today get it by 2020, it will likely be because 
they have installed solar home systems. 53
   When a villager buys a solar cell system, that person is in effect buying 
a 25-year supply of electricity. Since there is no fuel cost and very little 
maintenance, it is the upfront outlay that counts, and that typically 
requires financing. Recognizing this, the World Bank and the U.N. 
Environment Programme have stepped in with programs to help local lenders 
set up credit systems to finance this cheap source of electricity. An 
initial World Bank loan has helped 50,000 home owners in Bangladesh obtain 
solar cell systems. A second, much larger round of funding will enable 
200,000 more families to do the same.
"""

So, solar adoption by the industrially-developing world might even drive 
cheaper costs in heavily industrialized countries. :-)

Ultimately, I feel most people will begin to see that the current fossil 
fuel heavy system is unaesthetic, and it will be replaced in industrialized 
nations for the same reason people buy fancy sneakers. :-)

Or, as Lester Brown suggests:
   http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update70.htm
"""
In a report compiled in early 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy listed 151 
coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about a resurgence 
in coal-fired electricity. But during 2007, 59 proposed U.S. coal-fired 
power plants were either refused licenses by state governments or quietly 
abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more 
coal plants are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will 
likely be challenged as they reach the permitting stage. What began as a few 
local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power is quickly evolving into a 
national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, 
farm, and community organizations and a fast-growing number of state 
governments. The public at large is turning against coal. In a September 
2007 national poll by the Opinion Research Corporation about which 
electricity source people would prefer, only 3 percent chose coal. ...
   In August 2007, coal took a heavy political hit when U.S. Senate Majority 
Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had been opposing three coal-fired power 
plants in his own state, announced that he was now against building 
coal-fired power plants anywhere in the world. Investment banks and 
political leaders are beginning to see what has been obvious for some time 
to climate scientists, such as NASA’s James Hansen who says that it makes no 
sense to build coal-fired power plants when we will have to bulldoze them in 
a few years.
   In early November 2007, Representative Henry Waxman of California 
announced his intention to “introduce legislation that establishes a 
moratorium on the approval of new coal-fired power plants under the Clean 
Air Act until EPA finalizes regulations to address the greenhouse gas 
emissions from these sources.” If a national moratorium is passed by 
Congress, it will mark the beginning of the end for coal-fired power in the 
United States.
   We may be on the verge of a monumental victory in the worldwide effort to 
stabilize climate. In our new book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save 
Civilization, I propose cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. The 
first step is to stop building any new coal-fired power plants. If the 
United States imposes a moratorium on such construction, as Denmark and New 
Zealand have already done, it would send a powerful signal to the rest of 
the world, bolstering the effort to cut carbon emissions. The next steps are 
to quickly exploit the vast worldwide potential to raise energy efficiency 
and to massively develop renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar, 
and geothermal, in order to phase out existing coal-fired power plants.
"""

So, maybe even socially we are in good shape in some ways. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/