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Fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) are traditional energy sources. Not only is burning fossil fuels bad for our environment but these energy sources will not last forever, because they are finite energy resources that will eventually become exhausted. The renewable energy seems like the right solution to replace them on the long-run but our society still needs to make certain steps to avoid future energy crisis.

The recommend steps would no doubt be:

1) Investing more in energy efficiency concepts and technologies because using energy more efficiently can be just as beneficial as finding new ways to produce energy.

2) Modernization of current energy infrastructure. Without modernization there is no progress, and energy is no exception, particularly if our society wants to adapt new clean energy technologies.

3) Reforming regulatory measures to promote efficiency and clean energy. Adequate legislation will attract more investors and also push economy forward.

4) Education of entire society on possible ways to reduce energy waste World leaders must stop ignoring the benefits of energy efficiency. Some recent reports claim that U.S. alone could be using 50% more energy than it uses today by just adopting the right efficiency measures and reduce its energy waste.

Energy efficiency always starts at home from TVs, air conditioners as well as other electrical appliances. Every home is part of a larger energy system which means that our homes need to become more energy efficient. This means running your appliances at the optimal time of the day, and only when you really need them.

Joe Romm has a post at Grist about some poll results about subsidies for nuclear power - Wall Street Journal poll: Most popular spending cut is subsidies for new nuclear plants.

It is no big surprise that Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or K-12 education. But the new WSJ/NBC poll does have some surprises:

The survey found that the most popular potential spending cuts were subsidies to build new nuclear plants, with 57 percent support….

Of course, nuclear is absurdly over-subsidized (see “Nuclear Pork—Enough is Enough“). In fact, a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies (the source of the chart below), finds:

Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry over the past fifty years have been so large in proportion to the value of the energy produced that in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy kilowatts on the open market and give them away ….

New nuclear power plants look to be even more uneconomical:

* Nuclear Bombshell: $26 billion cost—$10,800 per kilowatt!—killed Ontario nuclear bid
* Exelon’s Rowe: Low gas prices and no carbon price push back nuclear renaissance a “decade, maybe two”
* The staggering cost of new nuclear power
* GOP wants 100 new nukes by 2030 while Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as $8 billion

The SMH has a look at Australias entrant into the rare earths industry and the problems facing its Malaysian processing plant - The global race is on for rare earths and Lynas.

WHEN a Chinese trawler fishing in disputed waters collided with Japanese coastguard patrol boats early on September 7, the global supply of rare earths - crucial for producing smartphones, flatscreen televisions, hybrid cars and iPads - was plunged into turmoil, even if it was not immediately apparent.

And Australias crucial role in the lucrative trade was also to be thrust firmly into the international spotlight.

The errant vessels skipper was arrested and detained, calls for his release went unheeded, and a diplomatic row, seeded by a long-standing territorial feud, erupted between the two Asian nations. For two weeks, tensions worsened with no resolution in sight - until China decided to hit Japan where it hurt.

On September 22, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao banned rare-earth exports to Japan, and threatened further action if the fisherman was not released. Two days later, the man was set free.

In order to further grow our mutually beneficial relationship based on strategic interests, I believe it is necessary for Japan and China to handle matters calmly, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at the time.

The export ban was swiftly revoked, but the world had received a nasty wake-up call. China has a stranglehold on the rare-earths market, accounting for 97 per cent of worldwide production. And it was clear it was prepared to use that dominance for political, as well as economic, gain.

Japan, in particular, had to find alternative sources of rare earths, or risk whole industries being affected.

New applications for rare earths are being discovered all the time. The 17 closely related elements have remarkable magnetivity and help make phones smaller, TVs bigger and display panels brighter. They also represent our best-known chance to make energy-efficient technologies, such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar cells financially viable.

We are as addicted to rare earths as we are to oil, we just dont know it, says Nicholas Curtis, chief executive of Australian rare-earths miner Lynas Corporation.

Even before the diplomatic incident, China had begun to restrict exports of rare earths, to ensure it could meet the demand from its local industry. Shipments have been cut from 67,500 tonnes in 2005 to 30,250 tonnes last year. With prices of some rare earths having soared up to five times since the start of the year, the worldwide race to break Chinas stranglehold is officially on. I think the situation has become more acute more rapidly than anybody would have ever predicted, Curtis says. The crisis in the supply of rare earths in the last year or so has resulted from a combination of events that came together and created this perfect storm - and that focused policymakers very heavily on the strategic implications on rare earths.

With California-based Molycorp also in the mix, Australias Lynas is widely considered to be leading the pack. Much like Andrew Forrests Fortescue Metals in its infancy, Lynas has rocketed from a penny-dreadful stock to a company worth $3 billion almost on expectation alone - it has yet to start production.

Chris Nelder has a post at Smart Planet on the baseload fallacy and the path towards 100% renewable power - Why baseload power is doomed.

The grid’s architecture developed in a fairly ad-hoc way. As the country was built up, more generation capacity was added, and the grid was extended. Technologically speaking, most of the grid is old and “dumb”: Power gets generated somewhere, and transmitted somewhere else, but there is very little in the way of sensors, storage buffers, switches, or security mechanisms along the way. It’s more like plumbing than an iPhone. This is why it was possible for one overloaded transmission line in Ohio take down much of the grid in Ontario, the Northeast and the Midwest in the blackout of August 14, 2003.

Grid operators have one overriding, fearsome task: They must maintain enough supply from this very complex system, within a narrow range of frequencies and voltages, to meet constantly fluctuating demand at all times. Therefore they tend to be risk-averse, preferring to stick with what they know to be reliable, and avoiding innovation.

Enter renewables

Before the advent of renewables, generating power was a pretty straightforward task: When demand increased, you just added more fuel to an engine. With renewables, the task is reversed: The engines (wind turbines and solar collectors) ramp up and down of their own accord, and grid operators must adjust to accommodate their output.

The growth of renewables in the U.S. has been driven primarily by state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) requiring a certain percentage of power to be generated from renewables by a certain date. According to an April 2011 MIT report just released this month, 29 states have RPS mandates which typically require 15 to 25 percent renewables by 2015 to 2025. Many of these states mandate that grid operators give the renewably-generated power priority, so when wind generation spikes, for example, they must ramp down other generating units. In other areas of the U.S. and in parts of Europe, operators may instead curtail peak production from renewables to accommodate their baseload generation—for example, forcing a wind farm operator to furl their blades or apply brakes to their turbines.

The baseload fallacy

The notion that renewables cannot provide baseload power is really an artifact of the way the grid and its regulators have evolved. If all generators were able to ramp up and down on demand, and if grid operators were able to predict reliably when and where the sun would be shining and the wind would be blowing, accommodating any amount of power from renewables would be no problem.

A 2010 study called “The Base Load Fallacy” by Australian researcher Dr. Mark Diesendorf, an expert on integrating wind into power grids, fingers the “operational inflexibility of base-load power stations” as the main obstacle to further integration of renewables. “The renewable electricity system could be just as reliable as the dirty, fossil-fuelled system that it replaces,” he observes, if demand were more efficient and intelligent, and supply were made up of a wide variety of renewable sources plus a small amount of gas-fired capacity to cover the peaks. The perpetrators of the baseload fallacy, he argues, are mainly the industries who benefit from the status quo: coal, oil and gas companies, the nuclear industry, power generators, and industries who depend on them like aluminum and cement manufacturers.

Claims that renewables could never generate more than a few percent of grid power without taking down the grid have been given the lie by the real-world experience of areas that deliberately adapted their grids.

The best example in the U.S. is Texas. By virtue of having its own grid (technically, an “interconnection”), it is generally outside the purview of federal regulation by FERC. The entire grid is operated by a single ISO, ERCOT, so it has a lot of control over its generation mix and grid planning. Texas decided long ago to pursue its wind potential vigorously, and now has the largest installed wind capacity in the States at over 10 gigawatts (GW).

On March 7, ERCOT used a record 7,599 MW of wind power, constituting 22 percent of the load and representing over 77 percent of its nameplate wind capacity. The previous day it had met 24 percent of the load with wind. Baseload proponents had said that such levels of integration were flatly impossible. But ERCOT had made it possible with the help of a new modeling tool that analyzes real-time conditions every half-hour, giving grid technicians greater ability to match generation with demand and control transmission more discretely. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has found that if other grid operators adopted similar tools, over one third of U.S. power could be generated from renewables.

All that ERCOT needed to accommodate more wind power was some sensors, a better flow of information, and better modeling tools. As the MIT report notes, the hardware to provide better grid information already exists, but few operators have employed it in their control and dispatch operations. The obstacle is not technology, but “the industry’s culture of resistance to new and experimental projects.”

That’s not a problem for China, however. The MIT report mentions that China is piloting a program that will allow it to monitor the national grid in real-time and control it automatically. The system eventually could allow China’s grid to uptake a far greater percentage of renewably-generated power than the antiquated and obsolete U.S. grid can, although the former is still the world’s top consumer of coal for power generation.

Another 2010 study by the German Renewable Energies Agency turned conventional baseload logic on its head, finding that due to their relatively inflexible ability to adjust to changing demand, “nuclear power plants are incompatible with renewable energies.” To meet forecasted wind production in Germany, conventional baseload operation would be cut in half by 2020, assuming renewable generation continues to enjoy priority dispatch. As renewables gradually replace conventional baseload capacity, only more flexible gas generators that can operate at under 50 percent of their capacity will still have a role to play.

The European example

Europe serves as another model of why good grid planning and management are key to integrating renewables into the grid. If baseload proponents were correct, then we would expect the countries with the highest levels of renewable penetration to have the most trouble in managing their grids, but the reality is quite the opposite.

A comprehensive new report on renewables integration by European consultancy eclareon GmbH surveyed the policies and grid functions of the 27 member states of the European Union, and found that “large quantities [of renewable generation] can be effectively managed on the grid.” Countries that planned for adequate grid capacity generally didn’t have a problem with accommodating renewables, and unsurprisingly, those are the same countries that have pushed for more renewable generation.

Solar and wind generation as a percentage of electricity consumption in 27 European Union countries in 2010 (first bar) and 2020 (second bar). Grid integration designated by color: green = positive, yellow = neutral, red = negative. Source: RES Integration Final Report, eclareon GmbH.

Countries where the share of renewable power is greatest—Germany, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal—offer “positive conditions for grid operations,” although some barriers to integration were identified, including the potential for curtailment in Germany, challenges to priority dispatching in Ireland, and strict distribution parameters in Portugal. Identified barriers for grid development in those countries revolve around public policy issues, permitting, regulatory regimes, cost distribution, and the obligation (or lack thereof) of grid operators to beef up their grids to accommodate more renewable power.

Ripe for innovation

The real issues around the integration of renewables into the grid have to do with human arrangements, not technology. As the MIT report concluded, “There is a clear need for a statement on national goals for the electricity sector to streamline the US regulatory structure, which currently is complex and fragmented.” We need smart policy, and an intelligent approach to planning the grid of the future that is not simply beholden to the vested interests of the status quo.

This will run directly at odds with the free-market ideologies that have brought us this far. As the EU project THINK observed, “the main shortcomings of the conventional regulatory framework are that grid companies have disincentives to innovate.” A firm regulatory hand, like that in the most renewably-powered countries of Europe, will be necessary to integrate more power from solar and wind onto the grid.

Renewables should be able to meet at least 20 percent of electricity demand without disrupting the grid just about anywhere in the world with good grid planning and management. As geothermal and marine power technologies mature, they will become a much less intermittent, natural substitute for the baseload technologies of the past. A host of other technologies will even out the bumps in renewable generation by adding storage (batteries for distributed storage, and pumped hydro and solar thermal for utility scale); increasing the connections between grids (allowing better transmission between sunny and cloudy, or windy and still areas); and transitioning to on-demand natural gas-fired peaking generators. Over the next decade, the current assumptions about the need for traditional baseload capacity will begin to fade as new storage, interconnection, and smart grid management strategies come into play, and ultimately, a combination of these technologies might raise the limit on renewables to 100 percent.

I was amused watching PM Abbott spending much of the week in the bushfire zone while the News Ltd press complained the greens were politicising the event by linking it (obviously) to global warming. The Age has an editorial on the topic - Action on climate is a duty above politics.

As at least 56 bushfires rage across New South Wales in the worst fire disaster to hit the state in nearly 50 years, The Age endorses the sentiments of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has expressed the nations sorrow and sympathy for all who are suffering. Likewise, we support Opposition Leader Bill Shortens tribute to the brave and tireless work of firefighters and police. With one life already lost, and probably more to come as the infernos indiscriminately continue to take their toll, this is indeed a human tragedy.

Given the scale and terrible consequences of the fires, and the fact that NSW Premier Barry OFarrell has declared a state of emergency, it might have appeared unnecessarily churlish of the Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt to criticise the Abbott governments policy on climate change. Mr Bandt says that the Coalition is dismantling Australias global-warming action in the face of scientific opinion that global warming and its associated dangers are increasing. Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has accused Mr Bandt of scoring political points from the fires.

The Age believes Mr Bandt has a valid point. Rather than politicising on his own behalf, his criticisms draw necessary attention to the Abbott governments own politicising: the swift fulfilment of its election promises to downgrade the prominence of science in general and the effects of climate change in particular. As we wrote a month ago, It is reasonable to fear that science and the science portfolio are being sacrificed to politics.

It is not just Mr Bandt who is concerned. The Climate Institutes chief executive, John Connor, says there are high risks in disregarding the nexus between the advancement of climate change and the growing severity and frequency of bushfires. An analogy may be drawn with the responsibility of government to respond to road safety issues as they arise. When causes of tragedies on our roads are identified, it is not politicising the issue to demand they be tackled.

TreeHugger has a post on the surge in hype about natural gas - Incoming: A Glut of "Natural Gas is Green" Nonsense.

It has begun. Okay, so it began a while ago, ever since natural gas companies first got wind of the news that their product produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than the worlds other favorite fossil fuels. But now that gas prices are once again rising (and increasingly unlikely to come down for long) and coal plants are coming under increasing scrutiny, the natural gas industry is rearing its head. Conservatives are smelling an opening to embrace natural gas on bipartisan territory, and will soon start driving towards the hoop with increasing gusto. Exhibits A & B: An unabashedly anti-clean energy and pro-natural gas op-ed in the New York Times and a nat gas love-fest in the typically liberal Salon.com.

John Laumer already poked some holes in the false choice presented by the NY Times op-ed, which was authored by a member of the far-right think tank the Manhattan Institute. That piece argued that since renewable energy projects require so much land and new materials and endanger wildlife, its better just to switch to nat gas. He even turns the words of economist E. F. Schumacher against greens (many of whom hold as an inspiration), claiming "small is beautiful" and renewable energy aint small.

Of course, neither is natural gas, whose extraction sites, transportation via massive pipelines, refineries, and distribution networks span hundreds of miles and also endanger species -- and of course our underground drinking water stores. But that doesnt quite make it into the article.

Michael Linds article in Salon is even more egregious, which argues that the fossil fuel era is just getting started. It dismisses both renewable energy and climate change as relative nonsense in the course of advocating for exploiting our vast natural gas reserves.

A case can be made for using natural gas as a transition fuel. That doesnt make it "green". Discounting the climate impacts of burning the stuff and counting out the potential renewable energy holds is just plain stupid -- the amount of emissions that extracting and burning natural gas creates is still up in the air, though it does undeniably yield a substantive amount. And yes, there will be challenges with deploying solar and wind on a large scale -- but there will be (far more environmentally detrimental) challenges to ramping up natural gas extraction too. Neither author is up on the latest climate science, or understands the urgency by which we must stop spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Renewable technology is getting better and cheaper, and clean energy solutions are proving viable and being embraced by nations around the globe. Mapping out a future that relies on fossil fuels for decades longer just isnt really an option if were keen on stabilizing our climate and keeping temperatures at a range that planetary life is accustomed to.

So be forewarned -- a storm of high-minded, seemingly well-reasoned arguments that natural gas is green looming on the horizon. And if those opinionators, pundits and policymakers get their way, they could doom us to another few decades of fossil fuel reliance. If we do so without making serious, serious inroads in clean energy deployment, we can kiss that stable, livable climate goodbye ...