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January 31 2020
Just finished reading Ronald Wright's 1997 novel 'A Scientific Romance'
which I picked up after listening to his 2004 Massey lecture 'A Short
History of Progress'. Will post something about Wright sometime soon.
Got a somewhat belated reply from the National Renewable Energy Lab
tour guide today. I'd pretty much written off hearing anything from
them. Below is my original inquiry followed by the NREL reply.
To my ear it's another sales spiel from the techno-optimist club
but at least it sort of addresses the points I raised. Given that
the NREL is always being targeted for budget cuts I can't really
blame them for taking every opportunity to tout their worth to
whomever is listening. Nonetheless, while "upcycling" select
materials and fine tuning energy flows certainly helps, unless
these efforts are coupled with a concerted move towards a net
reduction in energy/material use--i.e. thwarting Jevons paradox--
as well as human population degrowth, I feel it's not going to do
much to change humanity's current trajectory towards a collapse of
some sort by mid-century. In many ways NREL is an excellent example
of how proposed responses to our predicament framed within the
current metanarrative of progress and growth actually curtails the
implementation of meaningful corrections.
"[C]ivilizations, like individuals, are born, flourish, and die;
.. the very qualities which bring them into being --their drive,
their inventions, their beliefs, their ruthlessness-- become
indulgences that in the end will poison them."
-- Ronald Wright, 'A Scientific Romance'
-----Original Message-----
From: J****
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
To: Bosch, James
Subject: Re: Thank You for Visiting NREL's STM Campus
Hello,
Thanks again for the tour; I'd been meaning to sign up for a while
as I'm often hiking the nearby mesas and peaks from which NREL is
often prominently featured in the view.
A couple of questions came to mind after the tour that I'm hoping
you can shed some light on.
Regarding some of the technologies surveyed on the tour I was
wondering to what extent embodied energy is factored into NREL
research. Embodied energy concerns often come up in critiques of
wind and solar sourced electrical generation, essentially that they
don't produce more energy over their lifespans than was used to
produce them so their net energy return on total investment is
negative.
Along similar lines, another critique of technologies being promoted
as green and/or renewable is that they rely on the on non-renewable
inputs such as rare-earth elements, lithium, and various metal
ores, copper, iron, and nickel. Further, recycling of many of these
non-renewable inputs is currently at very low levels and requires
additional energy inputs yet arguably should be factored in if such
technologies are to be considered sustainable. To what extent does
NREL take such concerns into account in their systems/scenario
analysis?
Regards,
J****
L*****, CO
-----Reply Message-----
From: "Bosch, James"
To: J****
Subject: RE: Thank You for Visiting NREL's STM Campus
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2020
J****,
Thank you for your questions. My apologies for a belated response;
with the influx of external and internal communications, your email
was buried in my inbox. Thank you for your patience. You are
welcome to forward any follow-up questions.
In its history, NREL has received some funding to explore embodied
energy of materials--especially as it relates to Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA). Focused LCA studies did look into materials used in the
residential and commercial buildings industry but in a variety of
different applications within the built environment. NREL's work
today includes an emphasis of research in several key areas such
as solar, wind, bioenergy, hydrogen and fuel cells, geothermal,
buildings, transportation, energy storage, energy system integration,
etc., but also has evolved to link the research to the circular
economy--where all materials have the potential to be "upcycled".
This means that the technologies can be peeled apart, reprocessed
and converted back into the same technology or product. NREL's
partners are also researching living building materials--which
utilize biological organisms to utilize carbon dioxide from the
surrounding environment and sequester it into the building material.
The larger question NREL asks in buildings--is rather than just
emphasize embodied energy--researchers look at the structures that
will be built. They focus on how much energy will be required to
operate the facilities; they research how much energy is going to
be used on a daily and annual basis, and in turn, attempt to optimize
designs. Researchers, when in partnership, can examine what mediums
the structures are constructed with--and what is the value chain
that delivers these products to market. This was accomplished
through the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
buildings program. By focusing upon energy efficiency and Net Zero
Energy Design and product life cycles---the GHG emissions and
natural resource dependencies can be reduced. These analytical
questions help researchers optimize designs. Earlier in his NREL
career, Dr. Michael Deru kept a life-cycle assessment (LCA) database.
Here is his publication record--and many of his projects have
studies LCA--which may have some reference to embodied energy of
building materials: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Deru.
NREL was able to look at some conventional building materials and
the energy balance of PV and wind technologies--many of which
generate more energy than they consume in their lifetimes---and
reduce the amount of GHG emissions and water use. Energy recovery
for some of these technologies is usually in months rather than
years. You may access the cover page of the NREL LCA Database here:
https://www.nrel.gov/lci/ or
https://www.lcacommons.gov/lca-collaboration/search/\
page=1&group=National_Renewable_Energy_Laboratory.
This LCA database is now part of a larger federal LCA commons.
Here is one publication to read on the topic of energy flows and
embodied energy of materials: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70609.pdf
Presently, NREL National Bioenergy Researchers are "unzipping" PET
plastics with enzymes and unifying those materials with natural
biomass polymers which upcycles the materials back into the original
product. This does not stop humans from dumping the plastics in
the oceans but at least offers an alternative for plastics that
are not recycled fully. Please see this publication:
https://www.cell.com/joule/pdfExtended/S2542-4351(19)30047-9
NREL is also researching ways to upcycle materials into wind turbine
blades and other industrial products. By upcycling materials,
composites at the end-of-use can be turned back into products rather
than contribute to landfills. To learn more please see the NREL
COMET:
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2019/comet-brings-collaboration.html
Another way to look at this research is develop processes of
manufacturing that can create larger blades on the location of the
actual wind farm. These temporary manufacturing facilities could
improve the life cycle efficiencies while lowering wastes and
emissions.
Please let me know if you any other questions and I'll do my best
to follow-up.
Happy 2020!
Sincerely,
James Bosch
NREL