In case there weren't enough energy worries...

[Singular Intellect]

Fifty years? Seriously? That would in theory be actually quite a comforting notion that we have that much of a margin for oil supplies. But I do find this part quite disturbing:

There could be less than 49 years of oil supplies left, even if demand were to remain flat according to HSBC’s senior global economist Karen Ward.

It's a projection based upon zero growth in consumption, which is a very dangerous and ignorant method of making any kind of projections of available resources. In other words, this is a pie in the sky, best case but not gonna happen estimation assuming no more growth in consumption.

However, I'm a complete proponent for the projections that solar power will rapidly and easily be capable of supplying the entire world's energy needs in roughly twenty years, and will do so much cheaper than current conventional power sources. So if we manage to squeeze another decade or two out of oil supplies as we transition to a solar based energy infrastructure, we're in the clear.

[Simon_Jester]

One wonders how this study estimated the as-yet-undiscovered reserves.

Which we know, on a statistical basis, exist; they're just getting less valuable and harder to find as time goes on.

[aerius]

However, I'm a complete proponent for the projections that solar power will rapidly and easily be capable of supplying the entire world's energy needs in roughly twenty years, and will do so much cheaper than current conventional power sources. So if we manage to squeeze another decade or two out of oil supplies as we transition to a solar based energy infrastructure, we're in the clear.

Wanna run some math on a best case scenario which assumes zero growth in energy use? Current global energy consumption is around 400 quads (quadrillion BTUs) per year. The electrical equivalent is a bit under 120,000 TWh, which is 13.4TW worth of electrical generation running 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Assuming 25% efficiency that's around 54,000 km2 of solar collectors. Since the sun don't shine 24 hours a day and there's also fun stuff like clouds & weather, you'll need at least 3-4 times as much. Call it 150,000-200,000 km2 of solar collectors, or about twice the area of Lake Superior at a minimum. And we're going to build it all in the next 20 years. Yeah, good luck.

[Singular Intellect]

One wonders how this study estimated the as-yet-undiscovered reserves.

Which we know, on a statistical basis, exist; they're just getting less valuable and harder to find as time goes on.

It's a very dangerous gamble for energy extraction and consumption efforts/projections to include 'as yet undiscovered reserves'. If you assume they're there and act accordingly, you're in deep shit if they end up not being there or significantly less than anticipated. On the other hand, if you work under the assumption they aren't there and extra reserves end up being found, you're in a positive situation, at least temporarily.

[J]

One wonders how this study estimated the as-yet-undiscovered reserves.

Which we know, on a statistical basis, exist; they're just getting less valuable and harder to find as time goes on.

A long time ago some very smart people working for the oil companies realized that reserves discovery for regions, countries and also the world more or less resembled a bell curve. We can then look at where we are on the curve and get a reasonable idea of how much oil remains to be found. That's the basic concept anyway, the math gets really messy though.

[Singular Intellect]

Wanna run some math on a best case scenario which assumes zero growth in energy use? Current global energy consumption is around 400 quads (quadrillion BTUs) per year. The electrical equivalent is a bit under 120,000 TWh, which is 13.4TW worth of electrical generation running 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Assuming 25% efficiency that's around 54,000 km2 of solar collectors. Since the sun don't shine 24 hours a day and there's also fun stuff like clouds & weather, you'll need at least 3-4 times as much. Call it 150,000-200,000 km2 of solar collectors, or about twice the area of Lake Superior at a minimum. And we're going to build it all in the next 20 years. Yeah, good luck.

My claim would rely upon a few factors like the following:

-exponential growth in the solar power industry
-rapidly dwindling costs of solar power techologies
-rapidly increasing efficiency in solar power technologies
-increasing costs of conventional power sources
-abundant and cheap materials to produce solar power technologies
-significant political support, both publicly and economically
-cost parity with current energy costs and eventually becoming cheaper
-sufficent solar radiation to meet energy demands
-energy storage capabilities to meet demand in reduced power production timeframes

I think that's most of them, off the top of my head.

[aerius]

My claim would rely upon a few factors like the following:

-exponential growth in the solar power industry
-rapidly dwindling costs of solar power techologies
-rapidly increasing efficiency in solar power technologies
-increasing costs of conventional power sources
-abundant and cheap materials to produce solar power technologies
-significant political support, both publicly and economically
-cost parity with current energy costs and eventually becoming cheaper
-sufficent solar radiation to meet energy demands
-energy storage capabilities to meet demand in reduced power production timeframes

I think that's most of them, off the top of my head.

Yeah, and maybe I can get a dog that shits out 20 oz gold bars every day so that I never have to work again.

[Singular Intellect]

Yeah, and maybe I can get a dog that shits out 20 oz gold bars every day so that I never have to work again.

-exponential growth in the solar power industry
-rapid growth
-rapid growth
-rapid growth
-rapid growth

-rapidly dwindling costs of solar power techologies
-30% falling costs for thermal solar power
-40% falling costs for solar panels
-costs still falling

-rapidly increasing efficiency in solar power technologies
-41.1% efficiency solar power
-PETE solar technology
-50%-70% efficient solar power
-80% efficient solar power, works at night
96% light capturing polymer solar cell

-increasing costs of conventional power sources
-increasing oil prices
-increasing price of natural gas
-increasing coal prices

-abundant and cheap materials to produce solar power technologies
-cheap and abundant materials
-plastic solar panels
-cheap full spectrum solar cells

-significant political support, both publicly and economically
-strong American public support for solar power
-United States solar industry booming
-India solar power booming
-China solar industry booming

-cost parity with current energy costs and eventually becoming cheaper
-five years until solar reaches grid parity
-solar power to soon compete with coal
-US report indicates cost parity by 2015
-solar power will be cheaper than than conventional energy in ten years
-solar power cheaper than nuclear
-solar energy to match fossil fuels by 2013

-sufficent solar radiation to meet energy demands
-50% of solar radiation hitting upper atmosphere reaches surface of earth
-breakdown of solar radiation hitting earth

-energy storage capabilities to meet demand in reduced power production timeframes
MIT solar power storage breakthrough
-Molten Salt energy storage

Admittedly, I'm just touching on the tip of the iceberg here with regards to what's going on with solar power. The available information is absolutely enormous and I'm sure I could dig up much more on any particular point above if I wanted to.

Regardless, I'm seeing a very clear and obvious picture here.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok thats nice, but people like you need to know there is no ONE answer. JUST solar is not the answer, JUST wind is not the answer, even JUST Nuclear is not the Answer.

Solar is good, but you need more, I won't argue with your facts, but we need every option available. From wind, to geothermal, to even things like tidal power Solar Towers.

So just throwing that out before arguments heat up too much,

[K. A. Pital]

I don't think the transition will be swift, but the energy crisis will cause a political disturbance undoubtedly, especially in less wealthy nations. Which, in case of Russia for example, means a definite "no to kids" and "yes to guns".

I think you're being a little pessimistic there Stas. Even with oligarchical corruption, Russia's natural resources and nuclear power industry should allow it to ride out the energy crisis much better, than say, Ethiopia or Bangladesh (with all due respect to our Bangladeshi and Ethiopian friends).

Thank you very much - both Ethiopia and Bangladesh had famines in the later part of the XX century and both nations are some of the most food-insecure places in the world. I'm not even saying that it goes without any discussion whatsoever that if I were born in Bangladesh or Ethiopia my first goal would be the AK-74, not a child. I'm not being pessimistic, by the way - unlike many who have never seen Russia I've been actually living here since Russia became what it is now, more or less.

As for solar power enthusiasm, see you when you get there, fellow optimists. Just like the electromobile, which could, if there were a government strong-arming people into getting rid of their crap gasoline cars, solve lots of our problems is already there (some of the 2009-2010 models have batteries good enough for slow but lengthy rides). However, the price is high, demand is miniscule and nobody gives a crap. And don't give me this "the market will force them to switch" - by that time it might be already too late.

[Singular Intellect]

Ok thats nice, but people like you need to know there is no ONE answer. JUST solar is not the answer, JUST wind is not the answer, even JUST Nuclear is not the Answer.

I'm not suggesting other sources of energy will cease to exist or not be utilized in some fashion. However I will go so far as to suggest they will be overtaken by solar and it will become the dominate energy provider by a significant margin.

Solar is good, but you need more, I won't argue with your facts, but we need every option available. From wind, to geothermal, to even things like tidal power Solar Towers.

Versatility is great and I agree with it, but it's nonsense to suggest the largest potential energy source that is rapidly developing and will soon (relatively) become the most economical, practical and virtually inexhaustable source of energy for society isn't the one to bet on.

I tend to find it frusterating the amount of misinformation and ignorance on where solar power is at and where it's (very obviously when you look) going.

[K. A. Pital]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_el ... _estimates
From these tables one can easily see that solar photovoltaics, by now the most advanced solar energy production method, are several times more expensive than nuclear, hydro, coal and natural gas.

Accoding to what the Club of Rome spouted in the late 70's , we should already be back in the stone age, considering how agressively they marketed that oil would've run out by now. Well ,that obviously didn't happen. Of course the reserves ARE limited and there will be a time when it will be in shorter supply than it is now. However, it won't be a sudden apocalypse.

You missed the collapse of industrial economies of the Second World, which drove down oil consumption, and the biggest recession in ages which lowered the oil price down to almost a third of what it was? I think people don't understand that reserves are not just limited - many companies have been intentionally using mathematical uncertainties endemic to reserves calculations to inflate reserves. Saudi Arabia's reserves may be 30 or 40% lower than they claim, depending on how pessimistic you are (this has been highlightened during the recent Wikileaks release).

Not the "run out of oil" is scary, even a collapse of oil production to 30-50% lower than it is now is going to create enormously massive problems for the world power grid. Our grid is inefficient, obsolete and jokingly primitive. It is very hard to adjust and adapt it to less efficient energy production method.

I like this illustration. It shows that even wind has better EROEI than solar, although one can note that PV can reach 20:1 investment balance if people start building ENORMOUSLY HUEG SOLAR STATIONS.


And a word on "biofuels being an emerging science". Yes, there are ways you can make biofuel without impacting food production areas. No, capitalists are not going to give a crap about that, they will use the cheapest method. Which is First World outbidding Third Worlders for food, as they have shown us before.

So the technical feasibility does not matter, because the optimal, i.e. non-harmful solution will not be used. That's just like forcing everyone drive a small electric passenger car (e.g. Toyota iQ or Smart ED). It will not seriously impact the world in a negative sense, it will help the environment right now and it will make people speed less and make driving less accident prone. However, it can't and won't happen right now, despite the technical feasibility being there.

Hell, was it unconscionable to have children during the fucking Dark Ages? When infant mortality was 10-20%, when random barbarian warlords kept sacking people's villages, when the average human being could look forward to nothing but a lifetime of toil at subsistence agriculture, ending in death by plague or wound infection or some other cause of death we would now consider easily preventable?

Obviously yes. The fact that they still had children is merely a consequence of primitive knowledge and instinct-driven life, religious nonsense and - yes - a lack of modern technical means of contraception.

Imagine if there was a steady supply of birth control devices in the Middle Ages. I think quite a bit of babies would not have been born. Well, maybe not, because the Church did a good job of supporting the main human instinct. Nonetheless, if humans were able to comprehend just how fucking bad their situation was, they could've went the way I do.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, I'm not at all sure that's a healthy choice to make.

If we argue in broad, there are the obvious social consequences of a greying population: increased burden of labor on the few children who are born into such a society, and misery for the elderly. Demographic collapses aren't pretty.

(And if that's not a valid argument against "no children!" then why is overpopulation a valid argument for "no children?" Appeal to social consequences cuts both ways)

If we argue in narrow, people throughout history have preferred life to death even when times were miserable- even when they became miserable in relatively short order. The idea that conditions materially worse than those we now enjoy would be "unlivable," or "a fate worse than nonexistence," either for us or for our descendants, is a product of a long Golden Age, one which has given rise to a generation unable to imagine retaining the will to live if they didn't live in a Golden Age.

You can make arguments for population control, good ones. "Peak oil therefore it's unjust to bring children into the world in such a time of horror!" isn't one of them. And the idea that the proper response to bad living conditions is to commit demographic seppuku is just...

I honestly cannot imagine a working system of values in which that makes sense. It's flat out incomprehensible to me.

[K. A. Pital]

Thing is, I'm not at all sure that's a healthy choice to make. If we argue in broad, there are the obvious social consequences of a greying population: increased burden of labor on the few children who are born into such a society, and misery for the elderly. Demographic collapses aren't pretty.

Perhaps. On the other hand, the world is full of poor and starving who continue to have lots of children. Why can't they replace the unborn? Because of... petty nationalism? *shrugs* I am unimpressed with humanity, but it's a fact that each child born in an industrialized nation is going to take a huge swath of resources of the world for itself, whereas each child born in the Third World has a huge chance of dying, and even if he doesn't die, he's most likely confined to a lifetime of misery. I'm not even saying "generations and generations of misery", although that's quite true. So why should one be born to enjoy wealth and overconsumption while the other is born to face death and suffering? A more equitable distribution of supplies is a better solution than forcing people of industrialized nations to have children.

If we argue in narrow, people throughout history have preferred life to death even when times were miserable- even when they became miserable in relatively short order. The idea that conditions materially worse than those we now enjoy would be "unlivable," or "a fate worse than nonexistence," either for us or for our descendants, is a product of a long Golden Age, one which has given rise to a generation unable to imagine retaining the will to live if they didn't live in a Golden Age.

I am not speaking about "unimaginable" or "unlivable" conditions, Simon, you know that perfectly well. I merely decline to have a child, because I know that it is more than likely he will not see a future better than I do. The core principles of having a child under exceptionally bad conditions is that you believe your child, and the next generation in general will have a greater life standard than you do. So a person giving birth during the Nazi genocide in World War II might be doing it with the dream that his child might see a future far better than he does. Starving peasants in the XIX century gave birth to people who never saw famine. A constant improvement in life standard for certain segments of the population drove forth the concept of the new generation "seeing things one couldn't dream of".

On the other hand, a person who'd give birth on the verge of a massive decline in life standards must consider the consequences, one of which might be that he would have to bury his own child. I have seen that too often here in Russia. The lack of foreknowledge prevents people from knowing about wars, etc. in advance, but if they did, the picture would change inevitably.

And the idea that the proper response to bad living conditions is to commit demographic seppuku is just... I honestly cannot imagine a working system of values in which that makes sense. It's flat out incomprehensible to me.

See above. I'm not talking about a demographic seppuku. But neither am I going to take on the role of demographic producer regardless of the circumstances. I do not see a reason to give birth unless my child will see a greater life standard than my own. This has been the consequence of industrialization, and it should ultimately lead to abundance. If instead we get a decline, unrest and violence, why should I give birth? Because... of what reason? The total amount of suffering my child will see will be greater than what I have seen. As for caring about the collective ("demographic collapse" argument), I must beg the pardon, but humanity chose capitalism, individualism and atomization in favour of any and all collective triumphs. Humans chose the ideology which says nobody owes you anything unless you can pay for it. Therefore, if the collective pursues this ideology, I reserve the full right to shit on anything this collective demands from me.

The conscious choices of leaders that people have brought to power are leading us to a decreased education standard (which means my child will learn bogus science, bullshit ideas like religion in school, et cetera, which I have no desire to see at all), collapsing healthcare, science in malaise. I refuse to support this. I feel my life would be more useful as that of a rebel against their policy than that of a willing cog in their machine, and sorry for the amount of EPIC DRAMA here. And, as a rule, people who protest against corrupt governments usually face a small problem - their family members can face real threats. So it is best to keep this family as small as possible. Children are a weakness from any point of view - be it that of a political activist or that of an economic crisis survivalist, because roving gangs of marauders are going to target your weakest spots too (see Argentina in 2001 and the amount of kidnapping and murders that followed).

I hope I've explained my choice well enough. It is not just related to "Peak Oil, DOOM DOOM DOOM", but a deeper desire not to cooperate in any form with the current course civilization is taking in general and to minimize possible weaknesses that would hinder me from taking active part in rebel actions or make me any more vulnerable to gangsters than I already am.

[Maelstrom]

I certainly don't want to be all doom and gloom. I am, in fact, guardedly optimistic that ultimately we'll put our collective heads together and figure this shit out as a species. Nevertheless, that being said, I think there is the potential, and I stress potential, for some really bad things to befall humanity over the course of many of our lifetimes. I don't believe the degree to which our modern concept of civilization is dependent on petroleum can be overstressed. Petrochemicals are damn near ubiquitous. Look around the room you're in right now and think about how much of the shit in there contains petrochemicals. And, it's just slightly disturbing that around the time oil is really gonna start to get scarce, we're gonna be getting into peak world population territory. Feeding all of these people is really gonna blow without lots of cheap oil. And, many of these new world citizens are gonna be in 3rd world countries, where the impact on them is going to be even worse. Good luck industrializing and getting your slice of the pie. So, a world full of a shit ton more poor, starving people, and a crumbling 1st world, with very discontent populations. That's just awesome. The real hope lies in the fact that oil isn't going to just run out one morning. So, hopefully, over time, we'll be able to incrementally implement new technologies and policies which will save us from spiralling too far down the toilet. The sooner we get on this the better, obviously. Because, I do believe, even best case scenario, barring some new "magic" tech, we're looking at a bumpy road. Hopefully just not Mad Max bumpy. Fingers crossed.

[aerius]

-exponential growth in the solar power industry

Yeah, extrapolate current trends into future indefinitely, neglect all possible constraints.

-rapidly dwindling costs of solar power techologies

Predicted to decline. May decline. Also, this from the last article you linked.

Despite declining margins for most in 2011, the overall outlook for the industry remains positive and IMS Research predicts that the polysilicon market (for PV applications) will grow by nearly 20% this year to reach nearly $8 billion. Ongoing detailed quarterly analysis of PV module, cell, wafer and polysilicon demand, supply, pricing, margins, costs and installations is available from IMS Research.

From a business & industry standpoint, you do not want to see that. Declining margins usually lead to bankruptcy if prices aren't increased or costs reduced.

-rapidly increasing efficiency in solar power technologies
-41.1% efficiency solar power
-PETE solar technology
-50%-70% efficient solar power
-80% efficient solar power, works at night
96% light capturing polymer solar cell

1) It's only 41.1% efficient when exposed to the intensity of 500 suns. In other words, you need a giant magnifying glass or set of mirrors to focus sunlight on it. Either that or it has to be somewhere between the Sun and Mercury. And it's a gallium-indium based cell, those are rare earth elements and pretty damn expensive.

2) Claims to hit 60%, only at well over 200C. Meaning same problems as above.

3) These are also gallium-indium based cells. These are rare earth elements, they'll never be cheap. Just like things made of platinum won't ever be cheap.

4) According to the article there's no way to get the energy out of the device. Bit of a problem there.

5) That's the capture efficiency, it says nothing about the actual conversion efficiency of the material. A black piece of fabric probably captures 90%+ of the light falling on it, doesn't mean you can get anything out of it.

-abundant and cheap materials to produce solar power technologies
-cheap and abundant materials
-plastic solar panels
-cheap full spectrum solar cells

First 2 have nothing about the efficiency. The last one is a gallium-arsenide based cell, that ain't ever gonna be cheap considering that gallium costs something like $400-$500 per ounce the last time I checked.

[K. A. Pital]

Gallium cells... oi. That stuff can be efficient, but efficiency also depends on the capability for massive implementation. Which, considering gallium's rarity and price, just isn't there. Aerius is right.

I've thought about outlining some other problems with solar, but I think there's enough knowledge to understand that the Great Solar Revolution not only requires tackling enormous practical problems, it also requires a change in our current system, because solar itself has some problems. Solar under capitalism as it exists now has insurmountable implementation problems.

[Bakustra]

Stas, I'm not seeing how capitalism comes into play here. Why exactly would a syndicalist or democratic socialist/communist state/entity be willing to adopt more expensive solutions on the grounds of ecological well-being? The problem that you seem to be suggesting is that people in general are too unwilling to suffer mild hardship to avoid greater hardship later on when it comes to the environment- but that's not a direct argument against capitalism so much as against representative/democratic governments altogether. Theoretically, a truly capitalist state demands a representative government, but pure capitalism is largely mythological anyhow. I say this as a fairly socialist individual who would prefer such a global trend towards socialist economics.

I also disagree that it's impossible to convince people to accept mild inconveniences for the sake of greater benefits- convincing people to accept mild inconveniences is done all the time through marketing via rebates, leasing agreements, etc. The problem is not insurmountable, though it is incredibly difficult.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll reply to Stas's reply to me in greater depth soon, but for the moment:

Bakustra, on the one hand, social-democratic governments have a better track record when it comes to "mild inconvenience now to avoid large inconvenience later" than do republics that are bought and sold by oligarchs.

The greater the extent to which the economic oligarchs can exercise veto power over state policy, the less likely it is that any such policy will be enacted, because the institutional pressures that make economic oligarchs promote the success and growth of the ones who are best at short-term thinking. They don't promote the ones who are good at long-term thinking, or who have a balanced picture of what's needed for society to function, because you don't need that to make a billion dollars on the stock market.

Back when capitalism was dominated by industrial tycoons rather than financial ones, this was at least a little bit different,* but the Communications Revolution has tipped the balance in favor of financiers at the expense of industrialists.

So more capitalism, and I totally see Stas's point here, does contribute to this kind of "lazy grasshopper**" approach to long term social problems. Not just climate change or peak oil, but also socioeconomic and demographic issues.

*Someone like Carnegie or Ford, for all their vices, would at least stand a better chance of grasping the implications of peak oil, because they were more used to thinking about where their business would be in ten years' time.
**Classically, the rich in capitalist societies tend to try and appropriate the ant's side of this fable for themselves. But when it comes to problems that take decades to emerge, the pattern is fairly clear, and which side is singing the years away while the other tries to figure out what to do is equally so.
_______

At the same time, capitalist models for getting people to accept mild inconveniences usually require someone to step in from outside the local system. You personally make such decisions in the short term because more powerful economic entities can create the choice for you: to take the small hit now or the large hit later.

To impose the same choice on corporations, or the public as a whole, requires an entity with enough economic leverage to do that. Socialist economies, including social democracies that by Stas's standards are probably not that socialist, have the means to do this. Oligarchic capitalist republics do not.

[Bakustra]

Oligarchy is no more a necessary function of capitalism than it is a function of socialism. To criticize a semi-oligarchic state like the US for capitalism while ignoring the essentially capitalistic nature of a socially-democratic state is pretty faulty. But the point I was making is that the criticisms of people behaving in response to convenience are not economic arguments as much as they are arguments about power; essentially, they rely on people being too dumb to make good decisions without some enforcing body. But that is not directly related to economics. A libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist society would still have that problem, and a state capitalist society (like social democracy) does not have it to the same degree. The authoritarianism necessary is not dependent on economics.

[K. A. Pital]

Capitalism more than socialism places the responsibility for self-correction on the market. This is why electric cars will be introduced not when they can be technically introduced but only when it becomes profitable to introduce them and this means they have to outperform hybrids and petroleum cars by technical characteristics. That hinders their mass acceptance.

A non-capitalist system is not magically prone to making the correct choice, but a system where decentralized decision making is centered entirely in the market and is centered around buy-sell operations, the correct choice might not even be viable.

I think that sums up why. Like I said, you could force everyone to drive electromobiles and build a huge nuclear power grid to charge them up, getting rid of petrochemical dependency in a relatively short term. However, that requires lots of non-market coercion to happen rapidly. Same goes for many other technologies.

[Simon_Jester]

What it comes down to is that certain choices will not be made in a timely fashion unless they are imposed on the system by an outside force.

As long as no such choices are necessary, the market works reasonably well, often outperforming a command economy*. When such choices become necessary, the task of implementing them is extremely difficult in a market, but extremely easy in a command economy- or, at least, no harder than getting anything else done would be.

So, Bakustra, capitalism "comes into play" because the evolution of Western capitalism has led to a near-total rejection of the role of the state in making economic choices. The capital-owners don't get to make all the decisions, but they can still set the agenda and decide which options are 'allowed' on the table for consideration. They have the initiative even if they don't have all the power.


When the state wants an economic change to occur, and it is not in the perceived interests of the capital-owners to make that change, the state has three options. It can give up, it can force the owners to change against their will, or it can come up with some incentive structure that bribes the owners into obedience.

Option two is not a 'real' option under modern Western capitalism: even if he wanted to, Obama would not be able to get away with, say, threatening to nationalize the auto industry and force them to stop making fuel-inefficient vehicles to help stave off peak oil and global warming.

Option three is very expensive and creates inefficiencies. Rather than enact a policy itself, the state is forced to pay a middleman to do so, and the middleman's interests are best served if they take the money and then do as little as possible to enact the policy.

And option one leads to disaster.


In a state which did not regard the property of wealthy business interests as sacrosanct, it would be much more plausible to threaten owners with option two. And as a result, option three would be cheaper: rich men who fear losing their wealth because of their recalcitrance are more obedient than rich men who stand to lose more by doing as you say.
_____________

*And "command economy" is not the same as "socialism." A command economy is one where all major economic activity occurs in state-run institutions; there are ways to have socialism without doing that. Command economies are an alternative to markets, but you can have socialism and markets in the same system.

At the same time, "market" is not the same thing as "capitalism," either. Capitalism is a specific model for how to produce goods to supply the market, by putting control of the engines of economic activity (the industrial, financial, and service sectors) into concentrated private hands. You can have a market with little or no capitalism.

Socialism stands in opposition to capitalism, and command economies stand in opposition to markets, but the two dualities there aren't quite the same things.

[Exonerate]

To touch upon the photovoltaics a bit... The high efficiencies that Singular Intellect brought up are limited to laboratory prototypes. Right now, the most efficient commercially available PV cells hover around the 24% efficiency range, and as one might expect from the high-end market, it's not the most cost efficient. There are also physical limits on what kinds of efficiencies can be achieved - the 41.1% efficiency cell cited is a triple-junction cell, which drives up the cost significantly.

Gallium Arsenide is rather expensive, thanks in part to demand from the electronics/computing industry, but fortunately there are viable alternatives. For example, Cadmium Telluride is showing a lot of promise. There's a lot of focus on doing more with less in terms of semi-conductors (Thin-film PVs, for example).

IMHO, the emphasis on efficiency is rather misplaced. We're used to thinking about how to get the most out of our existing resources we're paying for, but sunlight is, for all purposes and intents, infinite anyways, so why do we care how much of it is not being converted to do work, as long as we have enough to meet our needs? The cost of efficiency is not always affordable. There are many areas with limited space, but there are also many areas with lots of unused land. The great thing about electricity is that it's a great way to transfer energy long distances with minimal losses. The primary hurdle is the ratio between lifetime output and the lifetime cost. PVs suffer significant degradation over time (Most warranties are good for 80% of original output at 25 years); if that degradation could be cut down or eliminated altogether, that would be a huge step towards improving PV's viability as a major source of energy.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Very good point Exo.

Solar power can afford to be "inefficient". You just build large amounts of it and causally let it collect power. Cheaper but inefficient in this case is better then Efficient, but highly expensive. One of the other things to consider is "energy density" or how much energy you get. Oil and coal produce a LOT of power for the amount you use. Renewables like Wind and Solar much less so.

Thats why Nuclear right now is still the best, it offers nearly as much energy density as oil and coal, but deeply more plentiful and clean.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, like I said, building enormous solar plants might help. The problem is, as always, we see nothing that would indicate they're building solar plants of the necessary size and in necessary numbers to cover existing + potential future demand.