The Plowboy Interview talks to Amory Lovins

The original, very long interview is here. Below are the controversial highlights (page 13 of the web page)

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The Plowboy Interviews spotlights Amory Lovins, energy Analyst and environmentalist and author of the 1976 essay, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?"
By the MOTHER EARTH NEWS editors | November/December 1977

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Mother Earth: it wasn't so long ago that our energy leaders were pointing at atomic fission as the panacea that would — in a couple of decades — solve all our energy worries forever.

Amory Lovins: Yes. And now it seems that many people have begun to say the same sorts of things about nuclear fusion. The people who are always saying "something will come along to save us" are now pointing to fusion.

Mother Earth: What do you think of fusion's potential?

Amory Lovins: I used to think it would be a good idea to try to build a fusion reactor, but I don't think so anymore, for three reasons.

First, fusion will — at least with the designs we're pursuing now — be rather dirty. It won't be quite as bad as fast breeder reactors, but it won't be clean enough to be attractive. You'll still have the problem of what to do with radioactive wastes. But even if — contrary to most fusion experts' expectations — fusion turns out to be a clean source of energy as advertised, I think we would lack the discipline to use it with restraint. If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.

Which brings me to my second point . . . namely, that fusion produces a lot of fast neutrons that could — and probably would — be used to make bomb materials. The kind of fusion research that involves compressing pellets by means of high-energy lasers is a technology that I think should be abandoned immediately because of its very worrisome military implications.

Thirdly, fusion is nothing but a very clever way to do something that we don't really want to do. That is, it's just another complex, costly, slow-to-deploy, centralized, high-technology way to make electricity. And that's not what we need.

Shiny white roof good, solar PV panel bad.

It seems that all this fuss (e.g. the Guardian solar subsidy campaign) over installing solar PV panels is actually bad for the environment. Solar PV panels cause global warming! The best way to prevent global warming is by reflecting sunlight back into space using white and/or reflective surfaces. For example shiny white roofs! If one really wants to save energy, and stop using fossil fuel, the best contraption to put on one's roof is a solar water heater. Wikipedia has two articles on this: Solar radiation management | Reflective surfaces (geoengineering)

Alex Cannara: tell your friend that roof of his does more to damage climate than he gains from energy savings! Remember, the sun delivers 1kW/square meter. PV only converts ~20%. The pic shows what we should all do, as recommended for many years by The Heat Island Group [2], Lawrence Berkeley Labs,the CEC, Steve Chu.

Alex Cannara: your friend's panels aren't better than 20% efficient, no matter how he loves them. That means they radiate ~800 Watts per square meter back into air ... That waste of convection and IR radiation adds directly to local global warming. By the way, solar hot-water is good, because its collectors run at lower temps and transfer most heat to their intended target -- insulated water storage.

Alex Cannara: The fundamental point is that a 100 square meter, poorly-reflective roof/solar installation, generates about 100kW of waste heat/IR while the sun is on it, giving the physical effect of greater GHG concentration that actual. That waste dwarfs whatever savings the design & systems in the home can make, or cause to be saved, at a serving utility.

	Solar reflectivity increase	CO2 offset by 100 m²	CO2 offset globally
White Roof	0.40	10 tons (~ 2 cars)
Average Roof	0.25	6.3 tons	24 Gt
Cool Pavement	0.15	4 tons	20 Gt
Total potential	--	--	44 Gt
	Value of 44 Gt CO2 at $25/t ~ $1 trillion 100 gallons of gasoline/year => ~ 1 ton CO2 Global CO2 emissions in 2009 ~ 24 Gt (Akbari, Menon, Rosenfeld[1]. Climatic Change, 2008)

Alex Cannara: just increasing roof reflectivity around the world by 40%, would have the same warming prevention as parking all 700,000,000+ vehicles on Earth for a decade.

1. Akbari, Menon, Rosenfeld. Climatic Change, 2008, DOI 10.1007/s10584-008-9515-9
2. The Heat Island Group, Lawrence Berkeley Labs,the CEC, Steve Chu.

"The Bicycle: Freedom Machine"

The BBC praise turning people into animals. See: "The Bicycle: Freedom Machine". Prior to industrial revolution 50%, or so, of our energy use was muscle power, but at least a lot of that was animal. Hence the term horsepower. The BBC promote turning people into animals just to generate a tiny bit of electricity. BBC (Bridget Kendall):

"Could you just go and peddle for 20 minutes please I just need to put on the kettle"

At the margin, at least Bridget does her research. Bicycle power generates 80 watts maximum (i.e. in 1 hour). Pedalling for 20 minutes a day, 30 days a month, gives (30 × 26.7 =) 800 watt-hours, or 0.8 kWh. My kettle uses 2kW, taking about 110 seconds to boil 2 cups of water, using about 61 watts. 23 minutes for a near athlete peddling flat out gets you your cup of tea (plus one for the cyclist). He'll need it after that!

Meanwhile, ThorCon announce a nuclear power plant that can make non-GWG electricity at about 2.5 pence per unit (wholesale), with the expressed aim of powering half the planet's electricity needs PDQ. So world media black-it-out as it's not there. ThorCon claim they can make electricity at about £25/MWe [2.5p/unit] - less than one third the cost of Hinkley C, or the cheapest wind power. They intend to start delivering such electricity in Indonesia within 5 years:
ThorCon press release | ThorCon executive summary (page 79 for their cost estimate).