Friday, November 27, 2020

My Answer

Given economic and population de-growth, ERoEI* is the unique indicator of sustainability. We all know that sustainability can be contravened by war, pestilence, plague, and so-called acts of God; but, this does not invalidate the simple statement or its usefulness. We have practically agreed that the term "sustainable development" refers to incorporeal or spiritual development. Who else will agree that the simple statement about ERoEI* completes the answer to Jayanta's original question? ERoEI* is defined at https://eroei.blogspot.com/ and/or https://www.dematerialism.net/

 

So, you don't think GDP is useful. It may not represent Quality of Life, but I cannot get along without it. Please don't advocate something (like getting rid of GDP) that, apparently, you don't know how to use. Now, Doug, admit you did not read Wikipedia article on thought experiments. The whole point is that, given de-growth which goes without saying, ERoEI* is all you need. Everything you claim is not in it IS in it.
 
 
Now, William, you really know how to hurt a fellow's feelings. You have recommended a book to me that I am almost positive is full of ideas that won't work and besides is an insult to me. I can have it read to me at no cost except time; but, I can't believe that it won't be a waste of time. Perhaps 40 years ago I would have heard something new in a book like that. While it brushes lightly upon reducing population, I saw nothing in the table of contents that suggests de-growth or an end to capitalism, dechrematistics, markets, or private profit. And, the title is so promising. I suppose ERoEI is discussed somewhere in the book, but is almost certain to be wrong. The reason his book is available from Amazon etc. is that the powers that be don't want it to work. If you don't like what I wrote (never mind how it's written), please attack it directly so I can explain why you are wrong.

 

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

More distractions from three point sustainability platform

 I think you folks ought to challenge me directly if you don't believe the three conditions that must be met to prevent collapse and die-off in the sense of the late Jay Hanson and other visionaries who used to haunt the Peak Oil forums. Now, a mere seven years ago people had been convinced we were on the cusp of Peak Oil. Something had to be done by the owners of the world. (Perhaps they are only excessively rich, powerful, and privileged.) Commerce was flooded with venture capital to squeeze the junk oil out of deep earth porous media regardless of the harm to the environment and the likely bursting of the bubble soon, but not before the believers in Peak Oil lost patience and stopped listening to forecasters of doom. Tune in to peakoil.com, theoildrum.com. and ourfiniteworld.com to get a completely different point of view. Here's a comment from an apology I felt it necessary to offer to Gail Tverberg at OurFiniteWorld.com which got repeated on PeakOil.com. I reposted it on my blog at https://eroei.blogspot.com/ as I do with everything I write. Whether you check that out or just read Alain's comment doesn't matter to me. After Alain's comment (below), I'll come to the point of this post:

Alain Le Gargasson on Mon, 23rd Nov 2020 7:30 am <br /><br />Endless recycling is not possible for several reasons:<br />Even if you had infinite energy this does not guarantee you infinite raw materials, the circular economy is also a large consumer of energy and an impossibility in the medium term for several reasons:<br />· We still have a loss on melting metal, example: recycling case of aluminum beer cans, of the recovered quantity only 95% is available again.<br />There are thousands of steel alloys with noble metals: niobium, vanadium, tungsten, chromium, etc., only two classifications when it comes to recycling, carbon steel which will be used in construction as medium steel and l ‘stainless steel. Which never go back to the original use,<br />· Automotive industry, on average 10 years of life. For recycling, draining liquids and melting in an electric furnace, mixes up to 10 alloys of steel, copper from the electrical circuit, aluminum engine casing and combustion plastics.<br />· Disperse use, metal oxides used as colorants in paints (walls, prints, plastics, cosmetics, fireworks, etc.). The most emblematic case is titanium oxide, a universal white dye (paints, resins, cosmetics, toothpaste, etc.) 95% terminated in landfills, rivers and seas. Nanotechnology prevents recycling like the silver used in socks to prevent odors. Mobile phone with more than 40 different mendeleiev table elements (nano elements).<br />· Natural wear: Today, for example, in the streets, asphalt contains a higher concentration of palladium or platinum than certain mines, due to the exhaust of cars, copper and zinc from tires.<br />• No substitute for copper for electrical conductors, nickel for stainless steel, tin for soldering, tungsten for cutting tools, silver or platinum for the chemical and electronic industry, phosphorus for agriculture etc …<br />Agriculture: totally disperse, diesel from 100 to 150 liters per cultivated hectare, limestone in the correction of agricultural land, fertilizers (NPK- nitrogen, potash, phosphorus) phytosanitary products (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides …) which will end up in rivers and sea, as well as arable land due to erosion.<br />Renewable energies, wind turbine of 5 MW 1000t of steel and concrete at the base, 250t of the steel mast, the 50t of the 3 blades of fiberglass, carbon fiber and plastic resin, permanent magnet motor, in steel alloy with neodymium. Photovoltaic panel, with gallium, indium, selenium, cadmium or tellurium. Today not recyclable.<br />· Everything that spins needs lubricant. 50 million tonnes / year.<br />The improved return to life in 1800 is therefore assured around 2050 with a maximum of 1 or 2 billion inhabitants. In a constrained world, you can forget about democracy and going back to slavery.
Alain Le Gargassonhttps://peakoil.com/generalideas/tom-wayburn-and-gail-tverberg-discuss-eroei
************************************************
I want the same things as all of you want in the social, moral, ecological, and spiritual realms; but, these things are distractions if we don't do what is necessary to preserve humanity long enough to achieve them. (1) Reduce the population to some sort of optimum; (2) decrease economic activity, especially chrematistics, in the spirit of turning Earth into a garden; and (3) develop renewable energy technology of sufficient scope. We will know that we have achieved this last when ERoEI* is greater than or equal to 1.0. If ERoEI* < 1.0, we are on the way to collapse and die-off. Think of what Alain has written. Of course, I might be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it.

Monday, November 23, 2020

The Recycle Problem redux

I do not agree with Antius and I believe what I have written about ERoEI* is sufficient to reject ERoEI* of 43 for anything. My computations and lucubrations are all over the internet and depend upon all of you to review because I have no desire to deal with the corporate-controlled journals and the peer-review system I have been very much a part of and which I investigated to my own satisfaction and found unsatisfactory.

However,Alain Le Gargasson has raised a serious and very real concern. I agree with him except for a few mitigating facts, which you can bet are going to save my thesis if I have anything to do with it. I have already thanked Denis Frith for pushing me closer and closer to a complete solution. Let’s face it: Denis had a better grip on the difficulty of solving the recycle problem than I did. There I said it and Denis is OK in my book.

BUT, I don’t have to solve the recycle problem for everything – only the renewable energy candidate under investigation. Lately, I have decided to investigate the case of tellurium. Begin by establishing a rule: No one gets a new panel without returning the old panel or the pieces of it. I’ll report myself unless Alain wants to do it and report on https://eroei.blogspot.com/ .

Remember too that we may have any number of years before we have to come up with a workable plan for recycling most things. As for structural metals, I would argue that the heat of fusion is an upper limit for the cost of recycling. If you recall, I expect that most of the structural and delivery components are amenable to do-it-yourself and decentralization. But, if not, they are going to sink a whole lot of systems whose purveyors don’t even take the trouble to compute ERoEI* they are so over-confident.

I guess https://www.dematerialism.net/CwC.html was not so far ahead of its time that I couldn’t take another look at it after fifteen years. But this is not merely another opportunity to complain about how shabbily I have been treated by the scientific community. I don’t suppose my socialist,communist,syndicalist, and dechrematisticalist sympathies had anything to do with it.

Tom Wayburn

“Any society that permits private profit is doomed.”

 

Saturday, November 21, 2020

An Apology to Gail Tverberg

 

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

June 11, 2013 at 8:03 am

The minimum ERoEI has to be a whole lot higher than 1.0. I am not sure what the right number is. I suspect it is something close to 9.0; certainly at least 5.0. The calculation leaves out way too much. In particular, it does not properly charge for energy which is generated by front-end inputs (it does not handle timing at all). It does not consider the need to generate a high enough return to support the need for government.

The idea of moving an economy to lower and lower ERoEI does not work. This is what leads to collapse.

 

First of all this is meant to be an apology for my inexcusable, childish, pathological, lousy, no good, furshlugginer posts reproduced at the end of this apology so that I never forget my 15 minutes of madness.   And I almost never get angry.  In my defense, I shall argue briefly that I was provoked.

Just the other day I realized something I had left completely out of account:  My readers may not be familiar with thought experiments and don’t know how to use them or interpret them.  Therefore, many of them might find it useful to read the brief Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

 

 

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 11, 2013 at 8:26 am

Gail,

Obviously, you have not read the material I have made available. Until you do, it is unfair, misleading, and wrong to make these kinds of comments. All of that is taken care of, even the energy costs of the technology’s share of government. The Principle of Substitution covers many of your objections. Yes, absolutely, sustainability is possible for ERoEI* = 1.0. This is the case of the Autonomous Alternative Energy District supporting itself and exporting nothing. Do you think I would make a mistake about this? Of course, I did not cover every detail; but, you can see how to handle anything that comes up by how it has been done in some other category.

 

The above explanation just about covers it, except Gail reminds me that a little more emphasis on taxes might help not hinder the case for discarding American-style so-called capitalism.  In my earlier article  “On Capitalism”, I pointed out that the movie The Trouble with Harry reminded me of capitalism.  If you remember, the trouble with Harry was that he was dead.

But, the thing that set me off, was Gail missed completely what was so ingenious about my thought experiment, namely, that it constituted a constructive proof of just whose living expenses should be included in the energy-invested term and whose should not.  Moreover, it showed how to make ERoEI truly useful as a tool to determine sustainability or not.   I am just one old man who has spent most of his life pursuing other goals; but, during the last 30 years or so, I have served the human race without concerning myself too much with the extent to which it will be appreciated or even accepted.  But, this thought experiment is the real deal.   I know it; and, you will know it too if you just let it tell you what it can.  By the way, check out the figure that indicates ERoEI decreasing toward collapse:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


·                     Gail Tverberg says:

June 13, 2013 at 12:53 pm

I told Charlie Hall (in my talk at the Biophysical Economic conference at the University of Vermont this week) that the current average EReEI of society is too low–it is leading to collapse in the near term. If we are to prevent collapse (which I don’t really think is possible), we need to be raising the average ERoEI. The current average ERoEI of society is clearly a lot higher than 1.0, no matter how it is defined.

I don’t know where you are coming from, but it doesn’t make sense to me. As society becomes more complex (what Tainter talks about) the cost of government becomes greater both absolutely and relative to other costs. This strongly suggests that after a certain point, average ERoEI needs to be increasing to prevent collapse.

Gail doesn’t understand that the thought experiment is contrived so that the cost of government and other business costs (including interest on debt and private profit – and the energy budgets of the profiteers) go in the Energy-Invested term.  So, yes, the ERoEI can be precisely equal to 1.0 under the strange circumstance where the stakeholders know all of the other relevant numbers and, therefore, how much to take for themselves.  They are entitled to live from the work they do even if it is not very much.  People know better than to quibble about who did what.

Suppose none of the proceeds are exported and all the energy investment data is known and sums to EI’.   If the Energy Recovered is known for the entire life cycle, then ER- EI’ can be distributed to the stakeholders leaving ERoEI = 1.0 exactly and everything paid for. 

Of course the Energy Recovered is used by the community where it was generated.  Is there a problem with that?   One notices that in this exercise everything of value is measured in emergy units, which in my system are electricity-like units such as emjoules or emkilowatt-hours.  This is not a personal practice.  I’ll tell you when I am doing something that only I do.

 

·                     thomaslwayburn says:

June 13, 2013 at 6:39 pm

Charlie doesn’t understand either. It seems that many people have trouble getting their heads around this idea. I think, if you read this very short piece a couple of times, you will get it. I am not that much smarter than the rest of you. Part of the problem is that I put a number of items in the energy-invested term that are not strictly investments. In fact, normally, analysts do not debit the process for inconveniences of time and space, or the necessity to convert some portion of the energy produced to another form with a low efficiency process. They do not charge the process for environmental degradation or resource depletion.

[from http://dematerialism.net/eroeistar.htm ]


Let us suppose that a group of people representing all of the trades and professions wishes to support itself completely by relying on a single alternative, renewable energy technology for all of its energy needs. Let us suppose further that all of the natural resources necessary to do this are available within the Autonomous Alternative Energy District (AAED) [and the repositories of such natural resources can be retained at steady state from the detritus of the AAED including superannuated installations of the technology].


Nothing is imported from outside the District whereas energy and only energy is exported. If a man needs a car to drive from his home (in the District) to his job (in the District), the car is built, maintained, and fueled in the District. If his wife is sick the doctor in the District will treat her with medicine made in the District from chemicals produced there from raw materials mined there and subsequently recycled agressively. The ERoEI of the new energy technology is the total energy produced, ER, divided by the quantity ER minus the quantity EX, where EX is the energy exported; i. e., EX = ER – EI. If the District is able to export any energy at all the ERoEI ratio exceeds one and the technology is feasible – at least.

In the case of a single energy technology, the energy produced by each technology can be assigned a transformity of unity and the value of emergy is quantitatively the same as the Gibbs availability, which, at room temperature, is the Gibbs free energy. I prefer to report emergy values in units of emquads rather than quads, emjoules rather than joules, etc. Thus, the units of transformity are emquads per quad, for example. [snip]


If this doesn’t make sense to you, think harder. I mean it. This is important. If you don’t understand it, you don’t understand sustainability. There are a lot of people addressing the multitudes who don’t know what they are talking about. Don’t be one of them. I heard a lot of silly stuff in Austin at the ASPO conference. I couldn’t begin to speak as there is too much they don’t know. The finiteness of the world is just the beginning. You must close the energy balance in terms of consumption as well as production. If the AAED does not export energy, ERoEI* is at most equal to 1.0. If the District needs to import energy to keep going, ERoEI* is less than 1.0. Thus, if all of society is in the collapse phase, it is because the composite ERoEI* for all energy technologies properly matched is less than 1.0.

·                     John Christian says:

June 14, 2013 at 2:01 am

Its possible to make a lot of nice calculations around utopia like distribution of energy and resources, but I do believe Gail is more rooted in our current predicament for the finiteness we encounter in the industrial civilization. That the current set of living arrangements will hit a steep decline curve soon due to our misuse of resources. I also think she is sober in the way that she knows you can’t really turn enough people to believe in this utopia when so many of us cant even embrace simple ideas within socialism and sharing of wealth. I do believe many of us here knows whats wrong with the system and have all kinds of ideas how to improve it – but there is no chance we will be able to implement a fraction of these before a complete and utter collapse. Small pockets within society might find a better lifestyle more in pact with the limits of nature and approach some sort of equilibrium with how much you take out of it and how much you give back.

From a mathematical point of view there is also the unavoidable concept of entropy which cannot be left out in any processing of resources. Stuff rust and decay, and take a form that is very hard to recycle unless you have a fantastic device that gathers atoms and reassemble them in a clean form. The best engine for recycling today is the organic one with how soil, plants, animals interact with water and air. Any single species impact on his planet has been fine tuned over millions of years shaping synergies where the nature is somewhat self sustainable as long as no single species “take over”. Homo Sapiens (a name we don’t deserve) has basically been raping and pillaging this natural world for resources in a way that is just insanely destructive on a planetary scale. We have also bred our species completely out of proportions so no matter how much you plan to conserve, recycle and aim for renewables – continued breeding will require a substantial number of us to become part of the soil again. No doubt for us to have any chance at all to find some sort of equilibrium with the planet again we need to cut our numbers dramatically. The question is whether we do it willingly or not – realistically I cant see any other option besides the finiteness of the planet forcing the population down. That might start with an oil or energy shock or it might be because of major climate change incidents as the Arctic is thawing and releasing massive amounts of methane and CO2 to the atmosphere.

John Christian probably believes a good deal of the same things I do (or visa versa), but this is not about some utopia.  It’s a very good way to understand what should go into the energy-invested term. 

Suppose I started with Houston, Texas, and made a list of all the full-time workers and other stakeholders who get 100% of their livelihoods from Energy Plant X (not forgetting the wives and children).  I might compile a list of energy either of the type produced or transformed into the type produced.  But, many of their fellow citizens spend a small part of their time (energy) serving these Plant X workers, like the dentist and the man at H & R Block.   But, that’s a hell of a tangle.  How will I ever compile a list of energy expended on behalf of Plant X much less list the pro-rata portion of the energy budget of the man who cuts the hair of the man who shines the shoes of the man who does the taxes for the Plant X worker.

Suppose, however, that energy is the only product of District A in Houston.  Everyone either works for Energy Plant X or depends upon it for a livelihood.   Everything other than energy that is produced in District A must be part of the cost of producing energy.  We know exactly what to do.  Let’s consider additional products and districts.

 

We don’t need to know exactly who belongs to each district.  We need to know how much of each product including energy is produced and we need to have a number that describes the labor density for each product.  Finally, we need the total production for the city.  We may need some further description of the economy; but the result we seek can be a rough approximation and still be good enough to determine sustainability or not.

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 11, 2013 at 1:55 pm

Gail,

Please do not assume that you know what I am going to say and that, therefore, you don’t have to read it. What I have said is very different from what you seem to expect. You made an unfair criticism of ERoEI* replete with numerous incorrect statements. An ERoEI* = 1 corresponds to the Autonomous Alternative Energy District of http://dematerialism.net/eroistar.htm supplying all of its own needs and exporting nothing. In my blog at http://eroei.blogspot.com/   I indicated how each of your objections can be handled. I didn’t specifically mention that the costs of government appear in the energy-invested term; but, you should realize how that would be done by analogy with the specifics of other details I offered as examples. I thought I answered your objections previously, but I can’t find my answer on your blog. Sorry if this is a repetition.

 

Gail’s next comment is what set me off.  You cannot imagine how enraged I became.   She thought I was describing how things work.  My definitions are not different  from the standard definitions except in the more  technical aspects of the problem to which I did not expose her.   The only possibility that Gail failed to consider was that perhaps I am right and, perforce, everyone else is wrong.

 

In any case, Gail, I apologize for my outburst.  It is not likely to happen again.  The world will eventually adopt my definition of ERoEI* or one that is even more like my definition than mine is.   It doesn’t matter that someone else will take credit for it or simply say they always did it that way.   I agree with nearly everything you say.   But, they also  say that you always hurt the one you love.

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

 

June 13, 2013 at 1:38 pm

I am sorry but I do not have time to figure out your personal view of how things work, with definitions different from the standard ones. It is difficult enough dealing with standard definitions.

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 13, 2013 at 6:51 pm

Gail,

You are hopeless. You don’t want to learn anything you don’t already know and most of that is irrelevant or wrong. The rest of you know where to find me.

·                     Jan Steinman says:

June 13, 2013 at 7:42 pm

Tom, if you need to have a superior attitude, at least you can be civil!

Gail does a lot of good. Calling someone “hopeless” because they are unwilling to cater to your whims is hardly a way to make friends and influence people.

 

Jan, you are right.  I am ashamed of my outburst.  The Autonomous Alternative Energy District is one of the best ideas I ever had.  Naturally, I expected a much different reception for it.  It’s a good thing there’s no  crying in chemical engineering.

·                     Scott says:

June 13, 2013 at 8:01 pm

Jan, I think Tom sees something that he is having trouble communicating to the group and perhaps he is frustrated by that. I wish I could understand all the things he has written, I get some of it but much of it hard for most of us to grasp. I noticed we do have several doctors of science writing on the site and I hope they stay with us so I can try to understand their thesis. Sometimes scientist fail to understand the human aspect of things since they are hung up on math and facts. I would like to understand Tom’s ideas and I hope he stays with us but try to post in a way that we can understand as I have very little college.

I am trying to write so as to be more easily understood.   A lot of my difficulties come from years of writing only for myself.

·                     Thomas L Wayburn, PhD in chemical engineering says:

June 14, 2013 at 3:22 am

My definition of ERoEI* corrects all the defects of the standard definition which is what the critics of ERoEI usually complain about. But, you already know everything that you need to know. You don’t need no stinking scientific progress. I have been ahead of all you Peak Oil superstars no matter how late you jumped on the bandwagon. They tell me that I am hard to understand. What did you expect? It is always thus with true genius. I am afraid I shall have to give up on Gail Tverberg, the entertainer, who has no business addressing public policy. The rest of you know where to find me.

This is one of the worst things I ever wrote.  Perhaps it’s because I like and admire Gail so much.   Sorry Gail.  I don’t suppose you would let me take you to dinner.

[snip]

 

 

And, that's the way it ends.  I suppose I should contact Jan Steinman whom I know from The Solution Magazine and its ancillary activities; but, I see a catering to "notability" there too and I am reasonably certain no good will come from that quarter.  They are not sincere.  I appreciate Scott's defense of me.  I am afraid I am writing for a rather select audience.  As time goes on, it seems that fewer and fewer understand me until, I suppose,  I shall be writing for no one.  By the way, I am not sure I am a "true genius".  But, I'm not sure I'm not.  As I said to Albert Bartlett, average intelligence is decreasing; but, the single highest intelligence, corresponding to the right-most point under the bell curve that can accommodate a complete human being, is getting higher.  There must be many people much more intelligent than me. 

 

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Checklist for ERoEI*

 


In this post, I will diagram that which I have been unable to explain in words.  In particular, the recycle problem receives special attention.

1. The community must be dedicated to the production of energy and only to the production of energy until such time as the individual's share of the sustainable community dividend can afford such an exchange on a moral basis. Until then, nothing produced by the members of the community including art and music and science, including spectator sports as well as building maintenance and healthcare, serves any other ultimate purpose than the production of energy.  Every item in the monetary budget has a counterpart in the energy budget. 

 

a)     Manufacture

b)     Installation

c)     Operation

d)     Maintenance

e)     Storage

f)      De-Installation  This usually amounts to merely building another installation after retiring the previous one; but, in the odd case, it is necessary to restore the plant site to its original natural condition.

 

2. The steady-state condition of the managed stockpiles of vital materials is met by solving the recycle problem as discussed in the appropriate section of https://www.dematerialism.net/ . The inevitable deficits due to imperfect recycling are made up from the residuum of the resource, by which I mean the world supply minus the stockpiles, in such a way that the half-life of the residuum is not reached during the first one thousand years, after which time other arrangements must be made.

 

 

Figure 3.  AAED with associated storehouses at A, B, C, D, & E, repositories of A through E, and recycle installations at ea, ed, bc, and cd serving the Autonomous Alternative Energy plant

 

Take the Repository of A, which could be a rare earth that is used in solar cells.  It is very large whereas the Storehouse of A might better be called the Box of A inasmuch as we are pretending that only a few molecules go into each cell, The repository might take in one half of a continent, whereas the Box might be a shoe box.  We might be sure that the residuum of A will last 10,000 years at the present rate, which we have a right to assume under a de-growth regime.  We do not replace solar cells unless they bring back the corresponding retired solar cell.

 

3. The maximum sustainable community dividend (MSCD) is the emergy returned (conservatively estimated and harvested on schedule) (ER) minus all of the emergy budget items in this list except this one (EI’). The net emergy, EX, must be subtracted from the MSCD to get the actual dividend, ED*. Then, ERoEI* = ER/EI* where ER is emergy returned and EI* is the emergy invested, which is the sum of all the budget items in this list except that, instead of the MSCD, add in the actual dividend, ED*. EI* is the emergy returned minus the net emergy, that is, EI* = ER - EX. The actual dividend, ED*, is divided by the number of economic actors in the community. This determines maximum community consumption. The individual economic actors determine the final disposition of the actual distributed dividend. Does it satisfy the technical pre-condition of happiness? The net emergy is the MSCD minus the actual dividend. The community must decide what to do with the net emergy. It should be obvious how to include foreign trade in the balance sheet and not so obvious what might go wrong with it.

ER = Emergy Returned

EI’ = Energy Invested except the actual dividend with which the stakeholders support themselves and those who depend upon them

ED* = Actual dividend

MSCD = Maximum Sustainable Community Dividend = ER – EI’

EX = Net emergy for export

EI* = EI’ + ED* =  ER – EX

EI’ + ED* + EX = ER

4. Prevent pollution altogether regardless of environments self-healing capabilities.  Don't forget sound and light pollution and the intrusion of ugliness where formerly there was beauty.  Finally, there is motion pollution and the filling up of space that was formerly empty.

5. Sustainability amounts to providing a sustainable renewable energy technology, a technology that harvests energy (corrected for entropy) from the sun in real time and that returns more energy than is consumed to install it, operate it, maintain it, store enough energy to complete its mission, maintain its storehouses of natural material capital, prevent or repair environmental damage including aesthetic damage, and support the community that serves the renewable energy installation both directly and indirectly.   It's one thing producing enough computer chips for half of the world.  This may indeed require a non-stop cyclical operating schedule.  But to make one or two chips every ten years for only the economic actors in the autonomous alternative energy district (AAED) we can use a slightly more primitive batch process, which might run only when the sun shines.