I need a new energy source. I have $10 trillion.

[phantom power]

(I've been trying not to post that for days)

But, seriously: discuss...

[GliderGuider]

1. There's no contest. The only rational choice is

ZPE. And if you disagree, I'll focus my scalar energy beam through the earth onto your house.

[phantom power]

6. Ha! Think twice, doomsday boy...

you aren't the only geek with a black budget

\

[hunter]

2. You could finance a nuclear war with that.

Someone would win. Ants maybe?

And a million years from now these ants might discover interstellar space flight and then a successful earth species might control an entire sector of this galaxy.

Rah, rah, go EARTH!

[phantom power]

3. Yeah, but we could hold a nuclear war almost for free...

I mean, break out the codes and turn the keys, eh?

The ants would thank us. Eventually.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. Completely New, or just non-fossil?

If you are just looking for alternative energy sources and willing to spend $10Trillion. I would suggest Diversification.

1) Wind appears promising.
2) Solar Thermal with Stirling Generators
3) Conventional Solar Heating
4) PV
5) GeoThermal
6) Bio-Gas
7) Bio-Diesel
8) Tidal
9) Wave

And most importantly Pig Shit with a dose of Mel Gibson!
:evilgrin: (Couldn't resist)

Now if you want completely new and you had some real serious cash to spend.(A couple orders of magnitude more) Why I would suggest researching
A) Dyson Sphere
B) Fusion

[phantom power]

7. If you had a few trillion to spend, starting today...

and your goal was to migrate our current economy to non-fossil energy, what would you do? Assume existing options, not R+D projects.

With some googling and a calculator, it is actually possible to estimate how much of various energy sources you could purchase with a given amount of money.

I'm pretty sure people have also estimated price-tags for related projects such as upgrading electric grids, or other necessary infrastructure changes.

[One_Life_To_Give]

9. Well that might get the US Electric Supply CO2 Neutral

But it won't do anything for replacing Motor Fuels for Planes, Trains, Autos, Trucks.
I posted a week or so ago that to replace all Fossil and Nuclear Power on the US Electric Grid would cost slightly over $20Trillion to do with PV. (Calc @ $8/w Installed).
Wind equipment can be purchased for $1/w and for similar installation costs to PV you would just make it at $10Trillion.

Again I think you need to diversify. Also we likely need to make some changes away from a pure demand type grid. The Grid ISO will need the ability to shed load as necessary without screwing up critical infrastructure in the process. e.g. The ability to electronically turn off residential air conditioners while leaving the refrigerator powered. Est. such a device might cost $1000/household * 100million households would only be an extra $100Billion.

[phantom power]

10. That agrees pretty much with the estimates I've done.

Regarding diversifying, I'm somewhat more skeptical, because I see it used mostly in hand-waving mode.

I mean, it's one thing to say "we should diversify our energy sources." On the other hand, that begs the question: how, and why, and what will "diversification" actually buy us?

for instance: PV is more expensive than wind. It's externalized cost is also higher. It's also got a lower loading factor: 20% versus 33%. So, seriously, why bother spending any money on PV? The goal is to get as much energy per dollar spent. So, that's really quite a strong argument for finding the cheapest energy, and spending it all on that. And if not, there must be some very specific and compelling reason not to.

Nuclear and wind are fairly comparable in price per unit of energy delivered. On the other hand, they aren't interchangeable because nuclear provides baseload power, and wind provides intermittent power. Maybe grid energy isn't the ideal niche for wind. Maybe fuel manufacture is. If that were true, then maybe diversification of electricity is unsound: maybe the most effective goal is an all-nuclear electric grid.

Notice, this is a different question than R+D money. It's more than sensible to continue R+D on PV, or fusion, or all manner of things.

It's also makes a big difference what scale of budget you are operating at. As an individual, with $10K to spend, I'm going to spend it on something like PV. As a government, with $10T to spend, PV makes very little sense, compared to the options that are available at the $10T budget, and also with respect to the goals of a government, versus individual household goals.

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. Re: Diversify; Single source has problems

Not just the Simple Wind doesn't blow everywhere. But also we need to calculate what problems will come from trying to field this many units all at once in terms of the supply chain.
Nuclear Reactor growth is limited by the number of sufficinetly large scale foundries and the backlog at the foundries. Wind it might be composite fibre components for blade manufacturer(SWAG). Globally they only sold some $28Billion installed cost last year. Increasing production a couple orders of magnitude in a short time will put alot of strain on the supply channel.
A Solar Thermal (Stirling or Steam) uses different materials again. Mirrors in that case.

I think they all have potential use in solving the problem. The real issue is we need to spend something on the order of $100Trillion Globally in the next few years to avoid a major crisis. That may break down to (SWAG) $30Trillion in Wind Turbines, $20Trillion in Solar Thermal Systems, $45Trillion in Bio-Fuels, $4Trillion in Nuclear and $1Trillion in Advnced Load shedding grid infrastructure.

[The2ndWheel]

5. How about the 10 trillion dollars?

Might be able to build a decent fire from that.

[Javaman]

11. Pretty much all it's good for these days anyway. nt

[tesla78]

8. Free Energy Research

Specifically the T.P.U(toroidal power unit) of Steven Marks:

Free Energy Coil UEC Group Demo (claim: taps into earth's magnetic field)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=v6pOpcSmIzE

Free Energy Coil Group Demo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vnxjLWR0VXM

Discussion & replication of Steve Mark's devices. They are getting interesting results!!
http://www.overunity.com/index.php/board,49.0.html


Here are more interesting phenomena related to free energy:

Free Energy Simple Demo Unit (super capacitor & magnets -hall effect?? )
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5iGEsVaIftk

Marco's Dancing Magnets at 7.8Hz (Earth's Resonance - has same oscillations as Steve Mark's device!)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5540717206741162529

Research related to Marco's Dancing Magnets
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=2814.0;topicseen

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Here's an alternative:

Just pay $2,000 to any guy who gets a vasectomy, with a $2K bonus if they're childless. You could drop the population down by at least 4 billion over the next 40 years...

[GliderGuider]

17. You know, 5 billion vasectomies might just do it! -nt

[phantom power]

18. Can you do 5 billion vascectomies on a human population of 6.5 billion?

dividing by two, etc...

[GliderGuider]

19. Of course not, but over the next two generations?

Didn't your mom teach you not to spend your whole allowance all at once?

[phantom power]

20. I'm a trillionaire. It's not *possible* to spend it all at once.

Unless you're trying to save the world, I guess.

[Bread and Circus]

14. Nice thread, let me ask you something:

Ok, if I have $10 trillion, do I have to solve the U.S. Energy issues or the whole world's energy issues with that money?

[phantom power]

16. Interesting question. I think the United States.

However, it brings up the issue of how much economic resources the world has in general (or any country has, in particular) to devote to adapting. I don't really know. You can make a disturbingly good argument that the United States doesn't have any money, considering that we have a $9 trillion dollar national debt, and the average individual savings is now negative. On the other hand, we do still have resources and manufacturing infrastructure, and people. So you can also imagine a hypothetical CCC-like economy, where people are paid very little, but get shelter and 3 squares a day for working on a very large scale adaptation project.

[NNadir]

15. I suggest you give all ten trillion to Amory Lovins.

This would get you at least a solar powered McMansion in Snowmass/Aspen and probably 5 or 6 hydrogen hyper cars equipped with a full time engineer to drive around with you.

OK, it's not a complete solution, but all you have to say is "by 2050" and make sure you're dead by then so no one could check up whether the money was wisely spent.

You could use any left over money to run for Governor of California on the platform of a brazillion solar roofs.