@Sic - I'm not arguing that wood is more sustainable than coal; I'm arguing your calculations for how much would will be required are off.

A common hardwood, red oak, has an energy content of 14.89 megajoules per kilogram (6,388 BTU per pound), and 10.423 megajoules recoverable if burned at 70% efficiency.

1 watt hour = 3600 J

Therefore, 1 kilogram of wood can generate approximately 2.9 KWh - or about .01% of the value you postulated (6000 KWh x 4 hrs x .7 kilogram = 34,200 KWh / kilogram)

strategos - great article, I love that site!!

and when you say "several orders of magnitude" - while true, I don't think really conveys the point as to how far off the numbers are.

For those who didn't check the link here's the summary:
714 pounds of coal to produce 876 kWh = 1.2 kWh per pound of coal
versus lower range 6000 kW for 4 hours on 1.5 lbs wood = 24,000 kWh per 1.5 pounds wood = 16,000 kWh for 1 lb wood

1.2 for coal versus 16,000 for wood.

Clearly your friend has miscalculated Scarius. Wood is less energy dense than coal, and huge mass production power plants are much more efficient than personal ones.

to make the math easy, lets just assume that due to drop in efficiency and drop in potential energy, but taking away the transport and mining costs, evens things out on a per pound energy production basis. So that effectively each produced 1 kWh per pound (probably being very generous in favor of wood on both accounts. you would still need 24,000 pounds of wood to power your block for that 4 hour period, not 1.5 lbs. Makes the situation a little less attractive, no?

@stratagos - our numbers are fairly close approaching it from 2 different directions. I bet they'd be even closer if you used something closer to the 40% efficiency that the HSW article cited for coal power plants, rather than the 70% number you used.

The most compelling topic, mentioned somewhat by Siccy but not yet touched upon, is food synthesis.

We need to figure out how to MAKE more food.

The answers will be found underwater, or life as we know it will be bye-bye BEFORE we know it.

Jerky-ish seaweed is available, but I refer to the task of making or growing ALL food underwater(or from resources found underwater).

The sustainable land resource toothpaste is out of the tube. We are down to less than 10% of the world's ocean supply, so there is no sustainable fishing. So crops, animals, fish, birds....all kaput, or soon to be so.

Nobody is going to give a shit about sustainable energy when everybody is starving to death.

My two cents....

I'm an architect, have studied sustainability as it relates to buildings and sites, am a LEED AP, and take an interest in such things. I haven't read all of the posts on this thread, but thought I'd share a few quick ideas, since that is what Sicarius claims he is after.

As far as solar, PV panels to produce electricity are relatively expensive, but they do pay off in the long run. Solar hot water panels typically pay off much quicker than PV panels. BUT, if it's just about money, creating an energy efficient home is a great place to start, sealing leaks around doors/windows, insulating ducts, etc., etc.

Doing some passive solar is great, orienting your home so the long side faces south with lots of windows is a step in the right direction, though you must insulate (make your home able to keep cold temperatures out) before you insolate (allow the sun into your home). This approach also works for passive cooling and keep hot temperatures out.

Most all of the landscaping at my home is edible. I live in the high desert, where water is valuable, so if I'm going to use it to get plants to grow in my yard, I want to be efficient and have plants that produce food. I have a number of fruit trees, blueberry plants, strawberries, grapes, etc., etc.

Hmmm, not sure how helpful I'm being, so I'll leave it at that, but here are a few programs that encourage "sustainability" that involve constructing a building and on site considerations:

http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1988
http://www.earthadvantage.org/

A portion of my company deals in solar hot water. Solar hot water is has been around for a long time and is equivalent to and as simple as leaving your hose out in the sun to let it warm up.

If you can create an energy efficient solar panel, your hot water problems (as far as sustainability is concerned) are solved. It wouldn't even need power to pump the water, because as all know, heat rises.

mapleleaf, I thought we'd all be eating insects for all of our meals in a few years, no?

@Sicarius - when you were living in Flaggstaff, did you ever check out Arcosanti about an hour south of Flag? I think you'd dig it. Actually MadMarx, you'd probably dig it too, maybe more as an architect with a mindset very similar to the design principles there. For instance they don't just design for the daily rising and setting of the sun, but also with the seasons. Their building face south, but have domed shade that lets the sun in durring the winter months when it's lower in the sky, but shades it durring summer months when it's higher in the sky.

It's a very cool place to tour.

http://www.arcosanti.org

The solution is obviously to stop sending out humanitarian aid so that all the starving people in worse-off countries die so the survivors have more living space and resources.

...Oh, you wanted a real answer. Well, there isn't one.

@Darwin - heat, in and of itself, doesn't rise. A liquid or gaseous medium storing the heat will rise over the same medium with less heat as heat (aka energy) causes expansion between the molecules, reducing the mass per volume such that the lower mass rises over the greater mass. But, melted gold (if you could keep it melted) would still sink in cool water because the mass per volume of liquid gold is still greater than H2O even as it (the water) approaches freezing. Similarly, pouring room temperature mercury into a glass of very cold water sees the mercury sink despite the relative warmth of the mercury.

@Pres Eden - A sense a little Dickensian influence in your sarcastic answer. "Then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

Draug...I couldn't think of the correct term (thermosiphoning) when I wrote it and figured that it would have been implied by using the phrase, "heat rises". I was being lazy.

But my point was that there is no need for electricity. Thank you for the scientific explanation though.

I suppose I ought to pay attention in class... before you know it, I'll be posting quotes from my professors' lectures... you got me, we were going over some nonsense about social responsibility with one's possessions or something, and the professor decided to talk about Scrooge, and I felt inspired to post in this here topic.

I don't know why everyone is worrying about food - there is a self sustaining food source all around you! And I'm about to have a meeting with some of them...

My parents have a closed loop system for their heating (radiated through the pipes in the floor) and an open loop system provides their household hot water. Our house uses an open loop system for our hot water as well, but we have a traditional gas furnace and gas fireplace for our heat.

Without reading 47 posts, I have to say right off the bat: 1 Pallet of wood can power an industrial block for 1 day?!?!? OK....and, THANK GOD trees GROW. Thank an even greater god (i.e. capitalism) that the lumber industry REPLANTS this wonderful renewable resource.

Right off the bat, you say your objective (in part) is to "save trees" while demonstrating that this *wonderful renewable* resources is a freaking GOD-send if used appropriately.

You demonstrate your hidden "green" agenda by ignoring truth in favor of populist feelings of harmony with nature....

Pleeeease....give me a break. I was hoping for a *real* disucssion...not some political, feel-good claptrap.

I garden...grow whatever veggies I can in my space. I filter my own water and re-use bottles. I try to use everything I can to the best use I can find for it just because it makes sense and is economical.

If your argument is we want to "save trees" then I suggest you get off your ass and drive across the country and you will find that we have more trees than we know what to do with. And IT this RENEWABLE resource is so good at providing energy, you should be SUPPORTING the burning of trees!!!! Solar Energy? It's a ***bad*** investment! The energy returned on the cost of an energy panel is nill to negative. Always has been. THAT is why we don't see solar panels anywhere. Windmills are the equivalent of trying to sustain humanity through homosexuality (that should provoke a few of you to call me a troll)....but windmills can NOT power the nation becuase wind is INCONSISTENT! You MUST have alternate power (i.e. coal, oil, nuclear) to FULL CAPACITY in case the wind stops blowing, or doesn't blow enough. again, the cost of windmills is PROHIBITIVE without government funding. It can not pay for itself...the cost of HAVING windmills outstrips the gains.....

You want to talk about SENSIBLE energy? Geo-Thermal...which no self-resepcting liberal/environmentalist will EVER promote becuase it works against their ANTI-INDUSTRIAL motivations, which is the *real* agenda behind the environmental movement.

Ugh....I could go on, but I have already said enough to piss about 90% of you off, I imagine. but that's only because you are young and idealistic...and stupid. sorry...

without reading 47 posts, maybe you shouldn't make assumptions about the demographics of those posting. I bet you'd see many more than 10% that agree with you for the most part.

And while it may be true that young people tend to be idealistic, it's not the case here in my experience. There are many young cynics here.

Not too many, in my experience...

Someone called my name? Anyway, I at first glance want to agree with mapleleaf that sustainable food is a greater priority (after all, global warming damage is at this point unavoidable, and its worst effects won't be enough to significantly damage human civilization) However, I then realized that not only are we not a hive mind, and can focus on more than one problem at a time, but also that the long term solutions are to be found in the same field: biotechnology. Genetic engineering is about to get awesome, folks, and I see the solution to a lot of our problems within said field. (I've always had this pipe dream for a fabricated closed ecosystem which efficiently turned sun in to calories and heat.)

Also: were the caps strictly necessary? I always favor the *asterisks * for emphasis.

Yes but the machine power of the steam engine itself is more than the sum of the energy input. why else would we make machines? the numbers are based off of existing steam engine design outputs, with tweaks in the fuel system. it uses a wood gassifier rather than a wood burner. also since it is a monotube flash boiler it doesnt have to use a lot of energy heating up a big tank, like in most steam engines. I may be off in my terminology, but not in the fact that the design can provide power to the whole block. It was conceived of by someone who has a much better technical mind than I (who has in the past made an air powered car engine).
Anyway, the amount of wood needed is a pretty low amount. I know how much wood it takes to keep a campfire going, and I know how easy it is to find that. coupled with responsible use of available materials, and planning, it is not a problem at all. And its not fair to compare small individual usage of resources with the massive usage of industry.

@Sic - no matter how efficient the engine is, there's only so much energy locked up in a given amount of wood. If you can give a figure for how much power you'd need, the calcs are pretty simple - but even if you only need 6000 KWhs, (aka 6 MWhs) you're still talking over a ton of wood *every hour*. Even if we assume you can get that from a single tree, that's 8700 trees a year, and if we assume 5 years until maturity, you need 43,000 trees to be sustainable.

Lets assume you can grow 1000 trees on an acre of land. You need 43 acres of land to make this work - and that's assuming nothing bad happens to your fuel source (pests, forest fire). That's 43 football fields, to put it in other terms

So then you've built steam engines before?
good I could really use your insight.

"Without reading 47 posts, I have to say right off the bat: 1 Pallet of wood can power an industrial block for 1 day?!?!? OK....and, THANK GOD trees GROW. Thank an even greater god (i.e. capitalism) that the lumber industry REPLANTS this wonderful renewable resource.

Right off the bat, you say your objective (in part) is to "save trees" while demonstrating that this *wonderful renewable* resources is a freaking GOD-send if used appropriately.

You demonstrate your hidden "green" agenda by ignoring truth in favor of populist feelings of harmony with nature....

Pleeeease....give me a break. I was hoping for a *real* disucssion...not some political, feel-good claptrap.

I garden...grow whatever veggies I can in my space. I filter my own water and re-use bottles. I try to use everything I can to the best use I can find for it just because it makes sense and is economical.

If your argument is we want to "save trees" then I suggest you get off your ass and drive across the country and you will find that we have more trees than we know what to do with. And IT this RENEWABLE resource is so good at providing energy, you should be SUPPORTING the burning of trees!!!! Solar Energy? It's a ***bad*** investment! The energy returned on the cost of an energy panel is nill to negative. Always has been. THAT is why we don't see solar panels anywhere. Windmills are the equivalent of trying to sustain humanity through homosexuality (that should provoke a few of you to call me a troll)....but windmills can NOT power the nation becuase wind is INCONSISTENT! You MUST have alternate power (i.e. coal, oil, nuclear) to FULL CAPACITY in case the wind stops blowing, or doesn't blow enough. again, the cost of windmills is PROHIBITIVE without government funding. It can not pay for itself...the cost of HAVING windmills outstrips the gains.....

You want to talk about SENSIBLE energy? Geo-Thermal...which no self-resepcting liberal/environmentalist will EVER promote becuase it works against their ANTI-INDUSTRIAL motivations, which is the *real* agenda behind the environmental movement.

Ugh....I could go on, but I have already said enough to piss about 90% of you off, I imagine. but that's only because you are young and idealistic...and stupid. sorry..."
Geothermal, great.

However, I'd like to see your evidence for the 1 pallet of wood thing, and...
"Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation" FAO Forestation department. Yep, more trees than we know what to do with...How idiotic can one get?

Not at all, but I'm a *Business Analyst*, which means I'm a research junkie. I don't have the skills to build a steam engine, but people who *do* have the skills have published information.

Look, Sic, I'm not saying it isn't doable to have a steam powered energy system, but to make this work you're either going to need to drastically downsize your power requirements or move to the boonies and get used to chopping down trees.

If your friend has calculated differently regarding his fuel needs, I'd urge him to recheck his figures before you decided to build this thing, because I think he dropped a decimal somewhere.

also, 100% of the world's energy could be gained from wind and solar energy combined. It's idiots like you who are stopping this, as well as who made us the last major pwr save China to ratify Kyoto, and who maintain the US as the country with the highest carbon footprint. Also, even if we had enough trees to serve our demands in the status quo, much less, with the burning, the CO2 impact would be tremendous, as would the erosion and loss of fertility from deforestation. So, I beg you, do a little research before you speak.

Arya - that's a pretty bold statement, that 100% of the world's energy budget (15 Terawatts/year last time I checked), when currently all the world's renewables, less hydro, are about 1% of that. What's your source of that statement, and how do you handle both the peak demand and the intermittent nature of them?

Simple statement of fact. Mass and energy can neither be created or destroyed. Therefore it is impossible to get more energy out of *any* system than you put into it. If you could get more out than you put in, you could build a true perpetual motion machine.