BI got slapped by an elephant.

It wasn’t fun. It hurt.

Why would an elephant do that? Because I asked good engineering questions on a subject that no one wants to talk about.

The scene was an open house at the Passive House in Kane last summer.

I listened to a presentation on the project, to include the advanced 40kW capacity solar panels that would be installed on the roof.

The first good question was, “How efficient are they?” After some prodding, I got an answer which I considered far too low. The next obvious question was, “Is that high enough for them to be economical?” After more prodding, the answer was, “No.”

And that’s when the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about figuratively hit me.

Environmentalists, activists, the President, and others insist that we have the technology to immediately drop the use of fossil fuels and switch right now to renewables.

The person I was talking with — who worked on technical side of the Passive House project — bluntly stated that the current renewable technologies do not work well nor are they economical. It was then added that there is a great deal more research and development work needed before any thought can be given to the wide spread use of renewables. The technology isn’t up to being able to directly replace fossil fuels. It needs to be before thought can be given to ending fossil fuel use.

Ouch!

While renewables, in theory, should be the least costly means of power generation — they don’t require extraction, processing, or transportation of fuel nor is waste disposal required — achieving economical, cost effective operation requires a very high efficiency due to the very low energy density of renewable sources. Current technologies do not obtain the needed efficiency.

Therefore, research and development must be done to obtain technology and designs that will produce power reliably and at sufficient efficiency and low cost to be directly competitive with other energy sources.

If this sounds too technical, tough. Power generation is a highly technical subject which requires engineers trained in classical sciences such as physics, fluid dynamics, and especially thermodynamics. Activists, protestors, and lawyers suing people aren’t going to do the job; protests won’t accomplish anything.

No one is supporting the type of deep scientific and engineering research needed to make renewables practical, cost effective, and economical. If the climate change activists wish the world to use only renewables, then they must support and fund the beyond cutting edge research and development work needed to make it so.

Until that’s done, the goal of 100% renewable energy cannot be met and I’m staying away from elephants.

Jonathan Bires is a Ludlow resident.