In responding to Doug's comment on me being full of it on energy, I mentioned my experience with technological innovation as a counter. Later I thought of another way of looking at it. The question is, if developing practical renewable energy is just a matter of standing up to Big Oil etc., why hasn't _any_ country or region made more than token progress during this time?
Let's first look at major economies in three groups: the US, Japan, and the EU. Given that the US has, by far, the largest domestic fossil fuel industry (Japan has all but zero), one could see the influence of this industry on policy. But, why would Europe and Japan eschew practical innovation when it so much in their national interest: including their national corporate interest. I'll look at this two ways. First, I'll look at imported energy as a percentage of the total; then I'll look at the percentage of renewable energy in the total energy package. The latest dates may differ, but I'll try to compare apples to apples when possible. The percentage of energy from outside sources is: US 20% EU 50% Japan 82% (The US and EU numbers are for 2005, the latest I could get for Japan was 2002, but the % was trending up from 2001...so that shouldn't be much of an overestimation). My point is that industries in both Europe and Japan have tremendous incentives to develop new energy technology...because the money for energy is flowing out of the country. We see, especially with Japan, no shyness in developing industry to compete with...heck overwhelm in the case of autos, US industries. Given the inherent vulnerability of Japan to a cut of foreign energy supplies (it was important enough to cause Japan to attack the US at Pearl Harbor), one would be hard pressed to see how the government/industry alliance in Japan would eschew development of practical domestic sources of energy. Now, lets look at the use of renewable energy. US (2004) Hydro 2.7% Geothermal 0.3% Biomass 3.2% Solar 0.1% Wind 0.1% Total: 6.4% EU (2004) http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/atlas/viewdata/viewpub.asp?id=2628 Hydro: 1.5% Biomass: 4.1% Geothermal: 0.3% Wind: 0.3% Solar 0.04% Total: 6.2% Japan (2004) http://www.cslforum.org/japan.htm Hydro: 5% All Other Renewables: 1.2% Total: 6.2% The use of renewable energy (at least in '04) was remarkably constant across the board. The only standout is that Japan's renewables are 80% hydro. The other thing worth investigating is biomass. What is it, what's the trend in its use? Unfortunately, I had to patch together different sources to get the EU and the Japanese data, so it will be very hard to get that sort of detail from these countries. For the US, on the other hand, a wealth of information exists. In 2004, the overwhelming majority of biomass use was wood and wood byproducts for industry. Ethanol raised the use of biomass in the US recently, so I'd expect the renewable % of the US to creep up a percentage point or two. But, with half the corn crop going to ethanol now, there isn't room for a factor of 5 expansion of this program without a breakthrough in the basic science....not just the technology. So, the upshot is, by all accounts, the US will be leading the use of renewable energy resources this year. The question I'd like to ask is, if it is just big oil that lobbies to stop available alternatives, why is the country that has, by far, the biggest oil industry leading in alternative fuel uses....and the country that imports almost all of it's energy has the lowest non-hydro use of renewable energy? I think I have the answer...the US is the only country/region in the developed world with an abundance of food and wood producing land. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
