Clean energy: what’s your bad movie script?

Thanks for always food for thought Marginal Revolution website, I came across an article on how to solve all of America’s energy problems with one gigantic megaproject: tapping into the geothermal energy that is evaporating under the Yellowstone “caldera,” the area left over from a volcanic eruption. Or, in the case of the Yellowstone Caldera, it is thought to be the aftermath of three giant eruptions that have occurred in the last 2 million years or so, with the most recent eruption perhaps 700,000 years ago. Thomas F. Archuolo and Miad Faezipour describe their proposal in the article “The Yellowstone Caldera Volcanic Energy Plant: A New Engineering Approach to Nationally Emission-Free Green Volcanic Energy Harvesting”. (Renewable energy, October 2022, pages 415-425). The abstract summarizes:

The US is facing three challenges of epic proportions: (1) the need to produce energy on a scale that meets the nation’s current and future needs, (2) the need to face the climate crisis only by producing renewable, green energy that is 100% emission-free, and (3) the need to permanently prevent the Yellowstone supervolcano from erupting. This article offers both a provable, practical, novel solution and a thought experiment to solve all of the above problems at the same time. Using a new copper-based engineering approach on an unprecedented scale, this article proposes a safe means of extracting the powerful energy reserve of the Yellowstone Supervolcano from the Earth’s interior, superheating the steam for rotating turbines at sufficient speed and on sufficient scale. in order to power the entire US. The proposed single multi-redundant equipment uses a star topology in the form of a grid for this. Over time, the release of enough energy could potentially prevent this supervolcano from erupting again.

When I mentioned this article to people in the last week or so, they usually start chuckling and then say something like, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie!” You know, almost any movie where science or industry messes with the planet Earth, and the result is a volcanic eruption.

But of course, just because there’s a possible disaster scenario suitable for special effects doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Indeed, it seems to me that almost all scenarios of clean energy can be turned into a bad movie.

For example, if the US had followed France’s lead in building nuclear power plants back in the 1970s, perhaps 80% of the electricity in the US today would come from non-carbon sources, as is the case in France. But nuclear power plants everywhere is just another bad movie scenario, right?

There are proposals for “geoengineering” by releasing particulate matter into the atmosphere in a way that offsets the effects of carbon emissions. But the possible unintended consequences of such a policy is another bad movie scenario.

There are proposals for the complete “electrification” of the US economy, mainly through renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy. But if such a policy replaces fossil fuels, it will run into its own movie scripts. Existing solar and wind power equipment will need to be scaled up many times over and will take up vast tracts of land when installed. We will need to greatly expand and upgrade the electrical network. We will need to invent methods for mass storage of electricity for dark or windless times. The two possible storage technologies currently appear to be giant battery farms or giant hydrogen storage facilities—neither currently viable on a large scale, and both have their own security risks. Many of these steps will require a dramatic expansion in the extraction of materials such as copper and lithium as raw materials, energy-intensive production, and waste management practices. Film scripts ranging from heartbreaking to catastrophic can also be written about this policy.

And, of course, if you don’t take any of these steps, you run the risk of getting a bad movie script. In the short to medium term, burning fossil fuels for energy increases common air pollutants, which are one of the world’s major health risks and sometimes cause localized environmental disasters. Then, ultimately, it turns out that the true pessimists about the risks of climate change were right from the start, and the Earth is experiencing devastating shifts in sea levels, weather patterns, and temperatures.

When you weigh the costs and trade-offs associated with other potential disaster scenarios, the idea of ​​using geothermal energy around the Yellowstone caldera begins to sound more plausible. Perhaps more importantly, there is no soft transition to non-carbon energy when it all comes with some tax breaks for solar panels and electric vehicles and a dose of wellness. If the transition to carbon-free energy occurs within a few decades, it will entail truly dramatic changes in the production and transmission of energy, changes that have their costs and risks for the environment both in the US and around the world. You have to choose the bad movie script you prefer.