Dear Peak Oilers: Please Consider Erich Zimmermann’s ‘Functional Theory’ of Mineral Resources
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 22, 2010“… knowledge is truly the mother of all resources.”
– Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), p. 10.
The peak oil movement, now trying to turn itself into a pro-government-intervention political movement, draws the wrong conclusion by logically progressing from the wrong assumption.
This post revisits this wrong assumption: fixity. From mineral fixity, it is concluded that every act of production and consumption leaves less supply. In this Harold Hotelling world, costs must go up and prices must go up….
But going from the natural science, perfect knowledge, hypothetical world to the real world, just the opposite is true. There is not a fixed supply, known or unknown, from which extractions leave less supply for the future. Costs do not have to go up, and neither do prices.…
Continue ReadingFree-Market Solar: The Real Opportunity (this solar executive tells the feds and Arizona to cool the subsidies)
By David Bergeron -- October 21, 2010[Editor note: David Bergeron is president of SunDanzer Development, Inc., a solar energy company located in Tucson. His first post at MasterResource was titled Economic/Environmental Assessment of Grid-Tiered Photovoltaics: Arizona Lessons for the U.S. More information on Mr. Bergeron and SunDanzer is provided at the end of this post.]
It’s Saturday. I’m testing a new solar powered vaccine refrigerator that uses ice packs rather than batteries to store energy and maintain cold temperatures. This is a key component of the distribution chain for vaccines and part of a global effort to eradicate polio and other preventable diseases.
Solar energy is my passion, field of study, and occupation. It started when I was 13 years old, a time of the Arab oil embargo and gasoline lines at the pump. Only later did I realize that the long lines were caused by misguided government price controls, not a tiring mineral-resource base.…
Continue ReadingSolar Cheaper than Grid Nuclear? Think Again!
By Daren Bakst and Carlo Stagnaro -- October 20, 2010Several months ago, a study by the anti-nuclear group North Carolina Waste Awareness Network (NC WARN) gained worldwide exposure by concluding that solar power is cheaper today than nuclear power.
The New York Times ran an article highlighting the findings, but the article was so criticized that the newspaper’s editors responded with what amounted to an apology.
NC WARN’s startling, untenable conclusion is the subject of this post, which is based on a longer paper.
The group’s central graph (Figure 1), which took the media hook, line, and sinker, shows a steep decreasing cost curve for solar over time coupled with a pronounced increasing cost curve for nuclear.
Figure 1. Generation costs from solar and nuclear power according to Blackburn and Cunningham (2010).
But nuclear power is less, not more, expensive than solar power.…
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