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Date:         Fri, 24 Jul 1992 11:16:00 EDT
Reply-To:     Jeremy Whitlock <WHITLOCK@MCMASTER.BITNET>
From:         Jeremy Whitlock <WHITLOCK@MCMASTER.BITNET>
Subject:      Electricity: supply, demand, and ethics.

The subject of capitalism and energy supply, or economy and electricity,
etc. is probably the most important thing to be discussed in this forum.  I
offer these observations:  (although I will be away and unable to follow up
for about two weeks...)

1) I said earlier that "electricity is a means of economic life, not a
luxury".  Of course I mean in industrialized countries.  This, however,
doesn't mean that we are necessarily doing something "wrong" if we chew up
megawatts while Tibetan monks get by with hot springs and wood fires (do
they? just a manufactured example).   Mankind has harnessed electricity to
do work for him, and harnessed everything down to the nuclear force itself
to produce that electricity.  Along the way Mankind has hitched himself to
this power flow in such a way that stable electricity supply has become a
tenet of stable economic life, everywhere that Mankind has industrialized.
Mankind has inefficiently industrialized in many sectors, which can and
should be ameliorated, but demand management should only proceed alongside
guarantees of supply reliability.

2) Many milestones in environmental and human well-being have only been
achieved because of the availability of abundant, low-cost electricity.
This must not be forgotten.

3) Alec Altman writes:

  > Electrical Power Use:
  > 1 American (Canadians should be close) = 55 Indians = 900 Nepalese
  > It is time for the biggest users to cut back on their use as an example
  > for devoloping nations.

While it is very true that the industrialized world has an ethical mandate
to ensure that industrialization elsewhere proceeds with more environmental
"awareness" than the first wave did, we must remember that we have no right
to prevent a developing country from achieving the same level of prosperity
that we have.

4) Konrad Blum writes:

  > Furthermore: what are the long term social and ecological costs for
  > e.g. nuclear compared to renewables?

Since the nuclear industry is probably the only energy-producing industry
that can quantify its long-term impact on the environment -- not just
because it has spent billions of dollars doing so, but because many
by-products of competing industries (eg. stack emissions) are just
impossible to monitor -- such comparisons are (1) very difficult and
likely impossible, and (2) usually biased, by information availiability,
against nuclear power.

5) Some comments on Lovinsian energy strategy (mentioned by Marianne
Dugan):

  > Soft energy [...] 3) is flexible and relatively low technology, that is,
  > easily accessible technologically, easy to understand rather than
  > unsophisticated

This is, I would wager, the main selling point of "soft energy".  The
"easier to understand" part, however, really applies to the people Lovins
is (literally) selling his ideas to -- the average member of the public.
Things like nuclear power don't appeal to the public partly because of the
physics needed to comprehend the energy source.  Ironically, although
photovoltaics, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and electronics are also
beyond the understanding of the average member of the public, "soft" energy
sources, which use this knowledge, are perceived as being simpler to
understand.

My point is that Mankind has a brain, and a very sophisticated one.  We can
smash the atom, travel to the moon, harness the sun and wind, extract heat
from our planet's core, and analyse more and more sources of power with
every passing year.  To shirk off one source as being "too complex", such
as nuclear power and other "hard" sources, when we (collectively) have the
ability to understand them and make them as safe, or safer, than any other
source, is to cheat ourselves and rob our children.

  > 5) is matched in energy quality to end-use needs -- that is, using a nuke
  > plant to power a toaster is "like cutting butter with a chainsaw.  That
  > sort of practice is "superfluous, wasteful, and expensive" and
  > "inelegant."

The butter cutting with the chainsaw thing is a hook of Lovins that really
seems to draw them in.  Of course you don't build a nuclear, or any other
centralized, plant to power one toaster.  Powering a billion toasters,
with one nuclear plant, however, is efficient, cheap, and, yes, very elegant.

With a million dollars (not his, of course) in "soft" energy systems running
his home, the "Rocky Mtn. Institute", Amory Lovins still plugs himself into
the power grid.

Jeremy.
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Jeremy Whitlock                        e-mail:  WHITLOCK@MCMASTER.CA
Dept. of Engineering Physics
McMaster University                    phone: (416) 525-9140 ext.7140
Hamilton, Ont.
CANADA   L8S 4L8
                   "My thoughts are mine, not Mac's"
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