This is a reply to a comment from yesterday, as I wanted to add a couple of figures to explain my position better.

Thanks for continuing to participate, Otto.

My answer is that we will supply current demand load of electricity as we phase out coal rapidly by taking no options off the table in every country, and having a frank and open exchange of ideas about the overall cost/benefit of our electric power generation means. The discussion will be different in each country, but I will give you an example based on Australia to make my point.

But let’s not even talk about the means by which we will generate power, until we first talk about how we efficiently use the power we are generating now, and take whatever incentivised approaches we can to shift people and processes to more energy efficient operation. I am talking about boring old insulation, HVAC balancing, upgrades of lines, transformers, switch and “smart grid” technologies. As we begin that, we then should begin the design, siting and planning for the transitional power plants, and more speculative R&D on the long term power plants.

For example, I believe here in Australia, we should we should have the hard argument about going from 80% coal (the first figure) to something more like 44% gas (we have bucket loads of it), 25% nuclear, and a mix of other renewables (20%) over the next 10 years, as shown in the second figure. This is an aggressive target, and as I said should be combined with the even more aggressive push in energy efficiency.

2010:

2020:

That is why I think the major thrust of your argument is technically incorrect when you say there is only one thing that can do it, and you are far oversimplifying the argument if you say that all the other sources of energies combined cannot meet our current and future demand requirements. You should have some evidence to support this argument in the USA, if you conclude that only nuclear energy can address your situation.

And note the fatalism in your argument that “we cannot wait until the renewable technologies mature”. Mate, these technologies ARE mature. They work, they have achieved thermodynamic efficiencies that equal or exceed that of the internal combustion engine, and if I switched your place over to a couple of them, you would be surprised how reliable they would run your place, even when you need to keep the big screen tv in the fallout shelter, the weapons store and the underground water purification system running at the same time. However, if what you mean by mature is that they need to cost what the magic dirt does, then that isn’t going to happen. And why should it really? Coal is the false economy, and renewables technologies will never “mature” by falling in cost until there is guaranteed installed base to justify economy of scale in manufacturing, installation and maintenance. By believing only in one answer, you are participating in killing off the others.

While I don’t buy your argument about only nuclear being the solution, your solution could be partly correct. I think that we will have to operate with a significant potion of our electricity supplied by nuclear all over the world, wherever it makes the most appropriate sense. But only for about the lifetime of one plant, which might be closer to 20 years. Then we phase out nuclear and all the other bridging fuels that we can.

In the next five years worldwide, we need to be spending lots of time, money and resources in designing and implementing the energy efficiency improvements that we know already exist (anyone smell a big jobs stimulus package here?) right when we need it, and also possibly in doing some regulation of personal behaviour (maybe even some draconian regulation), but I will open up a heated argument on at a later date.

I want to discuss a couple of questions I have had that have been bubbling away in my head for a long while. So, in no particular order, what are we going to do about coal?, and what are going to happen with jobs in a future low carbon emitting world?

See, you can get most anyone who will accept the scientific method to buy into the need to take action on anthropogenic climate change. And to fix the problem, I don’t see any way burning coal for fuel is going to work going forward, due to the huge rate of emissions in relation to the energy that can be produced. But when you talk about eliminating the vast majority of all the jobs in the industries of coal mining, shipping, and burning for fuel, you are talking about a lot of disruption. I see these as key issues that are locked together in the short and long-term. In achieving a low carbon future, we also need to attempt to limit damage to people’s current livelihood, while we at the same time entice them to a better one.

We need to have an answer for where we are going to employ people who leave the coal industry, and what sort of short-term safety net we will put in place to assist those effected, if Australia as a nation decide to make big cuts in our emissions rapidly, and at least start to satisfy the goals of the scientist greenies on the left. Because crap though they may be as a political party, their goals are closer to what are required than anyone on the right of politics, I suggest.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume we are to make cuts in CO2 emissions that are deeper than currently proposed, and more rapidly than currently proposed in the draft legislation in front of the Australian Parliament. We can save all the planet for our grandkids, great, but right now, the issue is jobs, and who is going to gain them and who is required to lose them in the near to mid-term.

Let’s first look at the losers. As I have said, there are going to have to be massive amounts of job losses in coal mining, some in shipping, and almost all those currently in coal burning. Below are some numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from August 2009:

• 40,800 persons in Coal Mining (full and part time)
• 6,600 persons in Coal and Petroleum Product Manufacturing (full and part time)
• 31,400 persons in exploration and mining support services
• 10,706,500 persons employed in today (full and part time)

Also, just for later discussion:

• 2,200 persons in electricity, gas and water services
• 55,200 persons in electricity supply

If every one of the 47,400 persons in the coal mining and coal products manufacturing industries were to lose their job, we would need to re-employ 0.44% of working population in Australia. That is a conservative number, since we know that not all of them would lose their jobs, and some of them are actually employed in petroleum refineries and not coking coal plants. But that is the direct severity of how bad the problem could be. How many people involved in shipping coal to the ports and power plants, and shipping coal overseas, would lose their jobs? I am not sure, as the statistics I have are not broken down well enough. But lets say half of the 31,400 persons in the exploration and mining support services area were put out of work. This is probably a conservative estimate, since coal doesn’t make up half of the mass of the minerals that are explored for and mined in Australia.

In the power generation area, I don’t think that there is a good argument that any people will be put out of work, because the electricity demand will continue (and in fact grow), and the persons required to operate and maintain power generation facilities should be roughly similar, regardless of the type. But let’s assume that we do lose 80% of those jobs too, based on the coal usage fraction of our electricity generation. Yes, we are that addicted to burning the magic dirt.

So all up, we have just under 1% of the working population will lose their jobs. And if you told me that we were going to suffer an additional 1% unemployment in a year, or six months or even a month, it would be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, for either our society or our economy. And the reality is, we couldn’t lose all those coal plants and replace them with anything else in less than about 10-15 years. We are talking about 80% of our generating capacity, after all.

Then, remember, all those people need not be out of work long, and they don’t all have to go take low paying jobs at McDonalds either. To replace 80% of our generating capacity is going to create so many jobs, it will make the stimulus effort last year look like a bake at a school fete. By my estimate, those jobs will include:

• R&D work for renewables that can be installed in the next 10-20 years;
• Energy efficiency equipment and materials manufacturing;
• Energy efficiency designers and installers;
• Designers of new plants and equipment to deliver power over the mid term (nuclear, gas, geothermal, wind, solar, etc.);
• Manufacturers of equipment to generate power; and
• Construction supervision and labour to build all this new infrastructure.

Of the above, I suggest that all but the semi-skilled installers of the energy efficiency equipment and some of the construction labourers will have jobs that are equally as valuable as the mining, trucking and shipping jobs that will be lost. However, having a job is not all, and we need to consider the disruption of the migrations that may be caused from places like Musswellbrook, NSW. It should be government policy to provide a safety net in the form of re-training, relocation and direct unemployment relief to workers displaced by the conversion away from coal burning.

That is, provided we don’t have to face any arguments based on the reasoning that just because a grandfather was a coal miner and a father was a coal miner, that somehow the son has some sort of mystical right to be a coal miner. There are many communities that have been built around the industries of salt, whale oil, steam engines and asbestos that are all relegated to history, and coal is going there too, whether you like it or not.

But let’s not dwell on the negative. The low carbon future has so many positives going for it, it should be a no-brainer to get society to go along, even those now working in coal. So, I challenge any real people out there working in the coal industry to call me on my facts if they are wrong, test my logic, and help refute or improve my argument. Because it is an argument I feel we must win, and now. And also recognise this: While people may face some uncertainty and disruption over the move away from coal, there are some legal persons (companies) that have a vested interest in using that disruption to real persons in an effort to thwart any attempts to reduce the activity of those companies, even though the change is in the best interest of all the real persons. We should expect that, as those legal persons are sociopathic by design.