Tag: energy

2020s Technology

Therapeutic plasma exchange is FDA-approved (not for aging, but for a bunch of other conditions). I imagine there remain prohibitions on advertising that it can add years to your life, but it is safe, and a doctor can prescribe it off label. It’s also cheap. An automated plasmapheresis machine—which lets you do treatment after treatment—can be bought online for under $3000. That is less than the cost of a single transfusion of young blood sold by the startup Ambrosia. How long until someone opens a clinic offering plasma dilution? I bet someone tries it in 2021. If it works, people will get over the weirdness, and it could be commonplace by 2030.

What is more plausible this decade is enhanced and advanced geothermal systems. The legacy geothermal industry is sleepy, tapping energy at traditional volcanic hydrothermal hotspots—forget about it. The next generation of the industry, however, is a bunch of scrappy startups manned by folks leaving the oil and gas industry. The startups I have spoken to think with today’s technology they can crack 3.5¢/kWh without being confined to volcanic regions. With relatively minor advancements in drilling technology compared to what we’ve seen over the last decade, advanced geothermal could reach 2¢/kWh and become scale to become viable just about anywhere on the planet. Collectively, the startups are talking about figures like 100s of gigawatts of generation by 2030. I’m watching this space closely; the Heat Beat blog is a great way to stay in the loop. As I wrote last month, permitting reform will be important.

The 2020s will be a big decade for sustainable alternative fuels (SAF). Commercial aviation can’t electrify—batteries will never match fossil fuels’ energy density. Given political realities, aviation has no choice to decarbonize, which means either hydrogen fuel or SAF. Hydrogen fuel is much better than batteries, but still not as energy dense as fossil fuels or SAF, and so my money is on SAF, and particularly on fuel made from CO₂ pulled from the atmosphere. It is easy to convert atmospheric CO₂ to ethanol in solution; and it is easy to upgrade ethanol into other fuels. But it is hard to separate ethanol from water without using a lot of energy—unless you have an advanced membrane as Prometheus Fuels does. I have written about Prometheus before and continue to follow them closely. Their technology could decarbonize aviation very suddenly.

Construction tech is another area to watch. Whether it’s 3d-printed homes as imagined by Icon, or advanced manufactured housing as designed by Cover or Modal, there has to be a better way to build than our current stick-built paradigm. Housing costs have skyrocketed largely due to zoning rules, but construction technology is another lever by which we can increase housing productivity. This is another area where the barriers don’t seem to be primarily technological.

Liquid-filled window

When sunlight hits the liquid-filled window, the water begins to absorb the heat, blocking it from entering the room. The hydrogel causes the liquid to turn opaque in sunlight, further reducing thermal transmission. The result is that less energy is required to cool the space. As the sun goes down, the window turns clear again and the heat is released. As a side bonus, the liquid between the panes also doubles as a sound insulator. Testing indicating that it “reduces noise 15% more effectively than double-glazed windows.”

Hyperefficient Airplane

Celera 500L Aircraft 6x more fuel-efficient

We believe the Celera 500L is the biggest thing to happen to both the aviation and travel industries in 50 years. The Celera 500L has a maximum cruising speed of at least 700km per hour and a range of over 7000km. It also has impressive fuel economy, achieving 7 km / liter and 11 km / liter. A traditional business jet with similar capabilities to the Celera 500L, including its 6-passenger capacity, typically achieve 0.5 km / liter, making Otto’s design dramatically more economical, as well as more environmentally friendly. The Celera 500L will have an unbelievably low per-hour flight cost of just $328.

Revenge Of The Negabarrels

So in an oil market that sputters at $60 a barrel, faints at $40, and vanishes at $20, what do negabarrels cost to produce? In 2004, Winning the Oil Endgame detailed how negabarrels costing $17 in today’s $ could save half of US oil. In 2011, our Reinventing Fire synthesis updated how saving all US oil by 2050, with far greater mobility, could cost $20 per barrel saved in US transport or $14 just in autos. Today’s efficient autos can save a barrel for less than $7. That will fall below 0 in a few more years as superior electric cars match or beat gasoline cars on sticker price alone.

Unreliable subsidized energy

The consequences of treating electricity as a right.

In poor countries the price of electricity is low, so low that “utilities lose money on every unit of electricity that they sell.” As a result, rationing and shortages are common.

as electricity generation decentralizes, who pays for the grid?

Biased Energy Discussion

There seems to be systemic racism or stupidity in the analysis of the world energy situation. Whenever there is a global analysis of the cost of different energy sources, there is a focus on the cost of energy projects in the USA and Western Europe. However, 80-90% of the actual new energy construction action is in Asia and the Middle East. Over 80% of the reactors under construction being built by China, India, Russia and South Korea are doing fine. They are 33-50% of the cost and usually are complete in 4-6 years.