I’ve never pretended to be the brightest kid on the block, even when adults patted me on the noggin and called me “Sonny.” At first, I thought had something to do with that big yellow ball of bright light, meaning I was such a bright young boy. My mother explained otherwise. Even so, I’ve been trying to come with an idea for reducing our carbon footprint and finding a less toxic and expensive energy. So far, not so good.
We have been told, and rightly so, to quit foolishly wasting our natural resources. It comes as the old mantra of turning off the lights we aren’t using, lowering the furnace thermostat, and making sure our doors and windows don’t leak air. I am absolutely in favor of all of that – and more. The harsh reality is that we cannot save our way into reducing all of the greenhouse gasses. It is much like trying to save our way into prosperity. Instead, we put our money into the bank, collect little or no interest, and inflation eats it up.
For quite a while we thought ethanol was the big solution. The idea was to convert field corn into alcohol, add it to gasoline, and it would be a less expensive fuel that was good for the environment. The first time I asked if it was really doing any good, or just a shift in energy use from one place to another, I didn’t get much of an answer. I’m still not getting an answer. After all, it takes a lot of energy to plant a cornfield, more energy to spray it with Roundup, harvest it, haul it to the elevator, then haul it to the ethanol factory, and convert it into alcohol. Since I didn’t see a lot of energy saving it all of that I suggested it looked like a game of Three Card Monte and was told to shut up and sit down.
Ethanol is here to stay because no politician who hopes to make it to the White House is already plotting the visits to small town Iowa coffee shops and diners to meet the local farmers before their primary in 2024. Candidates will be asked whether they support the subsidies to make ethanol possible. A ‘no’ answer is the end of their campaign, and they know it. Three card monte or not, they uniformly support it.
What makes it look worse, unless someone can come up with reliable facts and figures, is that we used to sell a lot of our corn to Latin America where the folks there ground it and converted it into food. When we quit selling it to them, the price of their own grain went up and that moved even more people into poverty. Then the drug lords came along and told the hungry people to work for us or else, and some of their governments became increasingly corrupt. Under those circumstances, we can understand why they want to move here.
Like I wrote, come up with some facts and figures on ethanol, show your homework, and I’ll be the kid taking notes in the front row of your classroom.
More recently we started building rechargeable lithium batteries. They have been around for a decade or more, but they were always low powered ones for home devices. They were supposed to be the latest and greatest way to reduce our use of fossil fuels. Plus, we wouldn’t be filling the landfills with dead carbon batteries Of course, all of the lithium, cobalt, copper, and other metals in the mid-range of the Periodic Table of Elements has to be mined, transported to the smelter, and made into batteries. Again, can someone show me their homework on the energy we are saving to do this?
The batteries are getting bigger, and we are zipping our way through all the elements. We’re also zipping through a lot of fuel to make them.
Solar panels and wind turbines for renewable energy seem like a good idea, but I understand that the panels and fuel cells have a short lifespan. Those big windmill blades do not last all that long and aren’t biodegradable or reusable. Want to take one guess where they end up? Assuming that we humans are still around, just imagine the fun archeologists will have in a few thousand years digging them up.
There are some other challenges. When we thought about putting the panels on our roof, someone warned us that it is a perfect hide-out for squirrels who will ruin the shingles. According to the fellow who is up on his squirrel research, we can plan on replacing our roof sooner than normal. Every time we must either take down the panels and put them back up or get a new set of solar panels. I don’t know if he was right or wrong about the squirrels and other livestock, but no one else seems to want to answer the question.
If we don’t plan on storing some of the electricity but use it to get a rebate on our power bill, we’d be okay. Otherwise, we need a battery. Want to guess what’s in that big storage battery that goes along with deal? You got it – lithium, cobalt, copper, and more metals.
Scientists have tried hydrogen membrane batteries, and in 2010, Bloom Box was featured on a segment of 60 Minutes. All our energy and pollution problems would be solved; we would have the simple solution to all our energy problems. Their plan was a Bloom device for every business and home, but the idea withered away by 2018. Not one single cold caller scam artist has tried to pitch one to us, so it’s got to be a dead deal.
As for nuclear power plants, once again there is the cost of mining and manufacturing them, and if you don’t mind, I would prefer not to have another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island in my back yard or anywhere else in this part of west Michigan. Right now, however, if we are rejecting all other forms of energy, it seems to be our best hope.
The bright boys and girls, both amateur and professional, keep searching for the right answers. The other day I read of a group working on a wind-powered carbon dioxide battery. The windmill creates electricity that captures the gas, stores and compresses it, and somehow it generates megawatts of power. I suspect there is a lot more to it than that, but no one has gone out of their way to explain it in a language we can understand. They do tell us that their prototypes indicate it might be as efficient as lithium. I know, we’ve heard high hopes before, but maybe this is the ticket.
So far the one and only most efficient and effective device that uses solar and wind power seems to be an old fashioned clothes line. We need to do a whole lot better than that.
Please explain the headline. Asking for a friend.