The Efficiency of Everything

I’ve recently come to find that one of the most difficult tasks in life is reaching the Goldilocks zone, the just-right zone. I think that this zone exists in a number of forms that we see practically every day. It is consistent with one of my favorite philosophies of balance and a symbol of Taoism: the yin-yang.

It can be interpreted as a balance of good and bad or rather anything polar, but it most importantly shows that neither good or bad is wholly so. I bring this up with the discussion of renewables in that though I believe renewables are definitely the way to go, they cannot exist independently at this time. The reason they cannot is that they simply are not efficient enough yet. Rather, they are not as efficient as their counterparts.

The world runs on optimization. By setting prices just right, one can achieve the highest profit per sale and more sales. Stores and similar venues are experts at optimization. For example, think about how the last big grocery store you visited was laid out. Anyways, my proposition is that the same way grocery stores set up their stores to entice customers, why not approach renewables in a similar manner. Optimize the methods of getting renewables out there  in the hands of the consumers. Just as with the yin-yang, there must be an effort made to balance out the good and bad of the renewables such that they overall balance out the non-renewables. This has a lot to do with efficiency. There are different ways we can look at efficiency:

• Short-time Efficiency – Can they do what I need them to do now?
• Long-time Efficiency – Can they continue to do it in the long run?
• Cost Efficiency – How costly is it upfront? Do I receive a return on my investment? How soon does it pay off?
• Performance Efficiency – Am I getting as much as possible out of the source?
• Access Efficiency – How easily can I gain access to this source? Does it make sense to gain access in my situation?

These are just criteria that I made that I felt adequately covered the basic needs/wants when looking into renewable energy sources. Just from your own experience and knowledge it would be easy to get a basic “best” to “worst” scale for each criterion and energy source be it renewable or not. As you can tell from the last bullet point, some of this is very dependent on the individual and how and where the source will be used. Below is a basic breakdown of 7 energy sources and how I would rank them on a scale of 1-5. I did not include cost efficiency or performance efficiency as bullet points because I’ve included graphics to represent that data:

For Cost Efficiency:

For Performance Efficiency:

Coal

• Short-term efficiency: 3, it’s available but in order to use it you need specific hardware that is more common to industry and larger applications
• Long-term efficiency:2, it will definitely run out in the long run
• Access efficiency: 3, the average consumer can gain access to it, but not as easily as other sources

Natural Gas

• Short-term efficiency: 5, it’s readily available and does what it needs to do right away
• Long-term efficiency: 3, on a grand scale there eventually will not be enough left
• Access efficiency: 5, you can get access to Natural Gas practically anywhere and it is highly common to use so there are multiple ways of getting it

Oil

• Short-term efficiency: 5, just like natural gas it is also readily available and ready-to-use
• Long-term efficiency: 2, will eventually run out and sooner than natural gas
• Access efficiency: 4, almost as accessible as natural gas but due to primary use it is more common to industry than the average consumer

Nuclear

• Short-term efficiency: 5, does what it needs to do
• Long-term efficiency: 5, will continue to do it in the long run
• Access efficiency: 1, you really can’t have a nuclear power plant in your backyard as a personal energy source

Biomass

• Short-term efficiency: 5, does what it needs to do
• Long-term efficiency: 5, we will always have waster product that we can use to create fuel
• Access efficiency: 4-5, everyone has access to waste, but it may not be viable necessarily to use Biomass on a consumer-level instead of a community or industrial level

Wind

• Short-term efficiency: 4, it does what it needs to do so long as there is wind
• Long-term efficiency: 4, will continue to do it so long as there is wind and it is maintained
• Access efficiency: 3, you need the space and the wind

Geothermal

• Short-term efficiency: 5, will work as needed
• Long-term efficiency: 5, will continue to work depending on existence of geothermal source
• Access efficiency: 1, limited to areas of seismic and geothermal activities such as tectonic plate boundaries

You’ll notice that I did not directly include solar PV. I just felt that it receives a bit too much focus and tends to outshine the other options by too much. The options laid out above serve to provide a subjective interpretation of the benefits of each source regardless of the fact that they are renewable or not. In reality, though looking to the future is important, looking at what fits our needs now is more important. By using a simple analysis as above, one can determine which sources both renewable and nonrenewable can be used hand-in-hand for the time being to suit our energy needs while more efficient and better sources spring up.