A Stimulus Package for Renewable Energy Would Benefit Economy and Climate, Says German Study

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=54120

The solution to the world's two biggest crisis -- the economic and the global warming crisis -- is exactly the same: a huge government investment plan in renewable energy will not only help kick start economies, but it will also help fight global warming, according to a report by Deutsche Bank.

Investment in renewable energy would also help accelerate "grid parity," the point when electricity generated by solar, wind and other sources becomes cost competitive with power from conventional fossil fuels. Faced with the worst economic crisis since 1931, governments in Germany and the UK as well as the US and China are planning to use deficit spending to avert a dramatic economic slowdown.

The study by Deutsche Asset Management (DeAM), a member of the Deutsche Bank group, argues that directing any stimulus package towards the renewable energy would benefit not just the economy by boosting jobs and growth but also accelerate the creation of a booming new clean tech industry, so helping to slash greenhouse gases.

Massive investment in renewable energy would also have the advantage of establishing energy independence for countries such as US, China, Germany and the UK from oil and gas imports from crisis-hit regions.

<more>

[phantom power]

1. Darn it, these studies are one of the few things we still produce, do we have to outsource them too?

[kristopher]

2. What do they know...

The Doomers on DU say it is a "cockamamie scheme" so Deutsche Bank must be "dreaming in Technicolor".

So, that is the end of that and we'll just not have anymore such nonsense. The only real solution is to change our essential nature so that we can live in total harmony with nature like our ancestors never did, then everything will be just fine.

[phantom power]

4. So... what do you think? Will there be a big stimulus package involving energy build-out?

[bananas]

6. Yes. nt

[GliderGuider]

8. That's "One Doomer on DU", please.

Here's a story that might help.

As two Zen monks walked along a muddy, rain-drenched road, they came upon a young woman attempting to cross a large mud puddle. The elder monk stopped beside the woman, lifted her his arms, carried her across the puddle and set her gently down on the dry edge of the road.

The two monks continued their journey, but the younger monk grew more sullen and quiet as they walked along. At last, after many hours had passed, the younger monk angrily scolded the elder, “You are aware that we monks do not touch women! Why did you carry that girl?”

The elder monk slowly turned and smiled. He said, “My dear young brother, you have such heavy thoughts! I left that woman alongside the road hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?"

[quidam56]

3. Why does America have to catch up with India and Denmark on

alternative ways to power stuff ? This is ridiculous, here in Appalachia, there are less jobs because THE COAL INDUSTRY comes to our mountain home and blast the tops off, gouging everything in it's way using bigger equipment to get all they can grab at our expense with fewer workers. Appalachia is Third World America, thanks Presidebt Bush and your buddies in THE COAL INDUSTRY ! http://www.wisecountyissues.com END MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL !

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Nice to see them backing up thier report with some cold, hard cash.

http://blueskieschina.com/mambo/content/view/157/84

Or something.

[Gregorian]

7. Once this happens it will fundamentally alter politics in America.

First, we must do it. There is no choice. Second, from what I am hearing, it will anger Republicans no end. Something tells me the oil industry is Republican in nature. Why else would Gingrich be calling an alternative energy economy treasonous.

There will be no need for much of our military once we stop our dependency on petroleum. Is that a fallacious statement? It seems that Darfur is about oil. Iraq is about oil.

We will fundamentally change the way this country operates once we cut our dependency on foreign oil.

I say these things with great nervousness knowing that oil is used in ways other than combustion. Even if we were 100 percent renewable, we'd still need huge amounts of oil in order to produce our products. But still this would pull the rug right out from under the terrorism talk. And the military. They don't hate us for our freedom. They hate us for our military aggression.

Battery technology research, now! Energy storage research, now.

[GliderGuider]

9. No amount of careful analysis or clever planning

can turn an existential problem into a technical problem. Not even the Deutsche Bank can perform that miracle.

The converging crisis of human civilization is expressing itself in technical domains, but is not at its heart a technical problem. It's like if your lover were to slug you and break your nose: while it helps to go to the hospital and have your nose set, your core problem is not medical. No amount of care taken in setting your nose can possibly address the real problem.

[NNadir]

10. Actually, since the world is broke, it would pay to use infrastructure investment on stuff that

works and is non-destructive to the envirnoment and gives a return on investment..

Billions upon billions of dollars have been thrown down the so called "renewable energy" rabbit hole, particularly solar energy without producing a useful exajoule of energy.

We might as well spend money on lighting candles in European cathedrals praying for God to rain gold on us.

The world is now impoverished. It is hardly time to buy lots of new toys for children who can't think.

[jpak]

12. That's just plain stupid.

There are more then 240 GW of renewable energy systems operating in the wold today - including >100 GW of wind turbine capaicty - and they produce *ex-o-jewels* - of electricity each year.

And they are "non-destructive" to the environment.

McCain lost - no nukes for you.

:rofl:

[excess_3]

11. the electric car is coming .n/t

[OneBlueSky]

13. one of the best features of a renewable energy/conservation stimulus plan . . .

is that, for the most part, the jobs created can't be sent offshore . . . retrofitting houses and commercial buildings and installing solar, wind, and/or geothermal systems have to take place where the properties are located, i.e. right here in the good ole US of A . . . yeah, they could probably outsource some of the research, but that's not where the big job growth will be . . .

a national policy aimed at making buildings more energy efficient and converting them to renewable power would be the best kind of stimulus package possible . . . beats the hell out of war as an economic stimulus . . .

[The2ndWheel]

14. Doesn't that have a short shelf life though?

"retrofitting houses and commercial buildings and installing solar, wind, and/or geothermal systems"

"a national policy aimed at making buildings more energy efficient and converting them to renewable power"

If we want to decrease the impact we have, if we want to conserve, we have to reduce the amount we consume. Once we get through the initial increased job phase of retrofitting, installing, energy efficient renewable power, etc, what then?

[phantom power]

15. That "initial increase job phase" would take decades.

Which is a big problem, actually -- it probably can't happen fast enough to save us. But in terms of job creation, it would be fantastic. We should do it, and see how far we get.

As for conservation, everybody is going to be conserving, by economic necessity. We can already see this in the fuel consumption decreases and low fuel prices. I see no real worries that we'll have too much energy in the coming decades. We'll be scrambling, hard, to save whatever we can.

[The2ndWheel]

16. But increased job creation isn't conservation

If we're all going to be conserving by economic necessity, where are the fantastic number of jobs going to come from? Also, if the process is going to take decades, which could be a problem, why should we do it? Just to see how far we get? Isn't that how we got where we are?

[phantom power]

17. In my pony-plan, the jobs would come from the govt.

Like the CCC, and TVA, etc, during the 1930s. The idea would be putting people to work, and leaving behind new infrastructure that will allow some kind of phoenix to rise from the ashes.

[The2ndWheel]

18. Fair enough. It's just not conservation

If more people conserve, we see what happens. If banks conserve, we see what happens. If governments conserve, we see what happens.

We will not conserve, especially with renewable energy. If it's clean, unlimited, free, and renewable, we will consume more of it. We will find new ways to consume it. We will get better at consuming it. Conservation is not part of any plan.

Individual people may conserve. As long as they stay on the fringe, everything is alright. If that practice becomes necessity in a systemic way, again, we see what happens. The system can't survive conservation. That's why it expands. That's why we have to stimulate it.

[phantom power]

19. A couple observations...

Firstly, I'm pretty sure the next few decades are going to be about minimizing loss, not "growth." In that sense, the current talk about "stimulus" is maybe misleading. In the current climate, "stimulus" isn't about growth, it's about softening the collapse.

Secondly, I think it's important to keep in mind that renewable energy is neither clean, unlimited nor free. It involves environmental impact, it costs money and therefore it is limited.

Thirdly, the economic system grows because population grows. At this point, I expect GG may chime in to disagree with me, but I don't think the world has ever tried the experiment of holding human population at some constant level, and observing the long-term behavior of economies under that condition.

[GliderGuider]

20. No disagreement from me.

IMO to a first approximation food leads population, and economy follows it (with suitable allowances for feedbacks, of course).

I agree that every time we see the word "stimulus" we should think "mitigation". It's basic Newspeak.

[The2ndWheel]

21. "the economic system grows because population grows."

It doesn't even need the actual population to grow. It just needs people that live outside of it to get hooked into it.

At the same time, the population grows because the economic system grows. Everything the economic system does requires more people. As people live longer, and more people get by the first few years, the economy needs to grow in order for those people to have what they need, which requires more people to pay for it, which grows the economy, which requires more people, etc.

"In the current climate, "stimulus" isn't about growth, it's about softening the collapse."

I'm not sure people voted for that. Not that I don't agree with you, but that's a very different message.

"Secondly, I think it's important to keep in mind that renewable energy is neither clean, unlimited nor free. It involves environmental impact, it costs money and therefore it is limited."

I can't disagree. In any way. However, since we'll tell ourselves that it is clean, free, and unlimited, if we get to that point, we'll try to consume every last atom.

"but I don't think the world has ever tried the experiment of holding human population at some constant level, and observing the long-term behavior of economies under that condition."

Thankfully. I'd rather take my chances with whatever freedom is than to live in that world. Just the words you used...experiment, holding, constant, observing, under...terms of distance, separation, force, control. I think we've done enough of that. I think that's how we got here.

[phantom power]

22. Regarding the last paragraph, I was mostly just thinking of scientific method...

For a variety of reasons, I don't think such an experiment will ever be tried, but it's too bad because we could learn so many interesting things about the interaction of population dynamics and economics.

I think that the scientific method often gets an unfair rap, in terms of being blamed for the more unsavory effects of the last 500 years of growth. It was one of the best inventions we came up with. I'm using it today! It's really just about being careful and methodical.

[The2ndWheel]

23. If we have the energy, I think the experiment will continue

We're living in it right now. Obviously not completely, but, we're certainly part of it. We're still making it up as we go. Which isn't very careful or methodical. If we could stop the train, that might be one thing. Those damn variables always get in the way though.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1911taylor.html

[GliderGuider]

24. A gentle demurral on your last point

"It's really just about being careful and methodical."

Uh, no it's not. The scientific method has as its foundations the ideas of objectivity and determinism.

Objectivity plays directly to a dualistic worldview, with the assumption that there is an "observer" that is not an essential part of the system and can be separated from it without altering it. We all know this is bogus at the quantum level, but we desperately cling to the notion that it's true at our macro level of Newtonian billiard balls. The damage this idea has done comes from its support of our conviction that we (the "observers") can separate ourselves from the rest of the world (the "observed") and manipulate it without manipulating ourselves at the same time -- that we are separable from the universe and can manipulate it with impunity.

Similarly, determinism fails at the quantum level, but at the macro level seems true enough to permit engineering. There are plenty of schools of thought (all rejected by the "Scientific Method" school , of course) that insist that determinism is an illusion, that the individual pieces of the universe are not in any sense uniform but are each unique. In that view, any action is a single, unrepeatable event with its own internal chain of cause and effect that cannot be generalized. This worldview is of no use to science and especially to technology, but is it any less "true" for that? And who gets to define "truth"? If it's the proponents of the scientific method then the whole argument suddenly sticks its head up its own ass in an orgy of self-referential confirmation bias.

Are the psychic consequences of believing in "scientific" objectivity and determinism perhaps more damaging than the animistic opposite? Those principles certainly helped get us here, so much of your evaluation will depend on how good you think "here" is.

For a more complete exposition of this point of view, see http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter3-1.php

[phantom power]

25. Determinism...

is a property that should be distinguished from reducibility. It's surprisingly easy to construct deterministic systems that are irreducible: the fastest way to predict their behavior is to actually let the system run forward. So, in a deep sense, they are not predictable at all. But still deterministic.

Quantum mechanics is usually used to refute a deterministic universe, but I think that may prove to be wrong in at least two possible ways. The first is that when we observe random behavior, it may in fact be an irreducible deterministic subsystem whose rules we aren't yet privy to (see above). Alternatively, if one accepts the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, then all possibilities are directly instantiated by multiple universes. But really, that means we would be back to determinism. Any randomness is just a by-product of observing only one universe of the many.

I surely agree that in principle we cannot ever completely separate ourselves from the rest of the universe. But we can get close enough for government work. I know this because I'm actually doing some experiments for the govt today. I have to believe it does make certain kinds of well-defined experiments impossible. Experiments involving humans and earth are pretty hard to do, since we only have the one earth, and we're completely entwined with its behavior in too many ways.

I also agree that there seems to be some historic connection between the development of scientific method, and dualistic notions about separating man from nature. However, it's not really so hard to re-accept our connectedness with the rest of the world, and still be able to apply cognitive tools like reduction, or experiment design, etc. In fact, it's perfectly useful to apply these methods to study holistic behavior. You just have to be careful about what it is you are observing.

[diane in sf]

26. You can grow the economy by creating more products that embed more info and

less physical material--the internet in all its uses being a good example--Lots of server farms, but also a lot less reason to own many types of things. One example--you don't need to own a whole library of rapidly obsoleting books when you can get the most up-to-date and comprehensive information online. We've barely seen the beginning of this trend.

Also you can bring more people into the processes of recycling all the waste from our manufacturing and obsoleting of the things we briefly own into the retooling of making everything feed for the next round of manufacturing, using renewable energy sources to power the whole thing.

Also our world population is projected to peak in the middle of this century and proceed slowly downward (UN figures), so this should start to take some pressure off the world's resources.

Buckminster Fuller observed in the 70s our technological capabilities had reached the point that if our resources were used equitably and elegantly that we could afford a highly affluent (but not wasteful) life to everyone on the planet--good food, water, housing, information, education and leisure time.