Hi Jim. Thanks for the clarification on the Daniels model.
I'd be more inclined to agree with your assessment of the role new energy sources (i.e., there not being sufficient time to develop for the demand that is being predicted) were it not for the multitude of energy forms that have already been under extensive development for many decades, with some of those showing great promise.
Some of the more promising technologies may already be stored on the shelves of some of the larger energy concerns who hold numerous patents to them, not to mention the acquisitions of some of the most promising startups that they've made in the field over the years, where some of these technologies are being honed for packaging and sold on the open market at some later date when the time is right. Or maybe never, as would be the case if more efficient alternative forms arrived, first.
The top oil companies are not about to cannibalize themselves NOW in their own markets with replacements of the likes of fuel-cell, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro-electric, tidal-, and other you-name-it forms of energy delivery, when their traditional fossilzed supplies that they hold in reserves, along with those that lie waiting in foreseeable drillings that they have rights to, are still malleable enough for them to meet their revenue and profit objectives(+) for decades to come.
While we're on the topic of alternative forms of energy, I'd like to point out that a growing number of hospitals and other building tppes demanding of non-stop electricity are now being outfitted with fuel cells, not as their backup power systems as was once perceived, but as their primary electrical power generation plants. While some of these are impressive in their own right, they don't amount to a mosquito bite on the butt of an elephant where the power utilities and oil firms are concerned. At least not yet, they don't.
Consider this: Fuel cells, along with the other modes of energy production that I've mentioned may be successful enough in these very early stages to inspire an uptake and subsequent growth curve that could pick up some of the slack in a complementary demand system manner, as the ability of conventional forms of energy to deliver on a percentage (or even absolute) basis declines, so, too, shall the alternative methods of delivery increase, in a slowly displacing manner.
I see fuel-cell technology and other alternative paths to energy today being at about where VoIP was eight years ago in the international telecomms sector, where it first made meaningful inroads. Back then, VoIP was a mere nuisance - if it was even noticed at all - but today it is devouring everything in its path. As one who has studied the industry's projections for voice services for many decades, I can recall a point in time during the Seventies when die-hard analogists predicted the need for massively enormous deployments of coaxial and microwave high frequency systems to keep up with demand, only to see those projections squelched into the ground with the advent of optical fiber systems five years later.
The ramp up of alternative power systems to the point of disruption of conventional methods may not be as swift in the electric power sector as VoIP was in the telecom sector, but even if it takes four to eight times as long (not even counting the time already spent in prior development), these alternative forms may still have the potential to deliver the complementary levels of powere that are needed when the 50 year time frame we've been discussing is reached. Dreaming? Maybe. But I don't think so.
I'd look to China and maybe Taiwan and S. Korea to see what they're doing as they look toward the horizon. If you read some day on the nFCTF that an Asian or PacRim country is cutting a deal with Columbia or Bolivia in S. America involving the trade of alternative energy generation capabilities for coffee beans, then I'd pay some real close attention to what they are doing and how they're going about it.
FAC
frank@fttx.org |
