A new detailed analysis has been published on the intermittency of renewables, "Household Solar Photovoltaics: Supplier of Marginal Abatement, or Primary Source of Low-Emission Power?"

Here are some observations about this article:

• Any future scenario involving the continuing indulgence or coddling of fossil fuel interests is delusional. Catastrophic climate change is at the door. Even if our only issue were peak oil, it is already too late for a smooth "transition" or "energy conservation." We are in a state of emergency and it is time to stop kidding ourselves about our plight, especially within the well-informed but small peak oil / EROI / climate change / renewables community. More than ever, the world needs clear, honest, deep understanding. The politicians and the business community will catch on only when we get real ourselves and "tell it like it is."
  
• Given the high risk of social disruption due to climate change, the only rational future for nuclear power (including nuclear weaponry) is rapid decommissioning and secure sequestration. The last thing humanity needs is coastal nuclear power plants flooded by sea level rise and on-river nuclear power plants running out of cooling water while marauders are out on the front lawns of the nuclear industry custodians. Others may be in denial about this risk, but we need not indulge their fantasies of a nuclear resurgence. 
• That leaves us with only one sane course of action: demand destruction combined with renewables. Any challenges to high EROI renewables carry the responsibility to find high EROI solutions. If batteries don't cut the mustard, then forget batteries. If the main challenge is intermittency, then it is time for us to set the bar higher and put qualified intermittency engineers to work. Many serious developers are working on low cost, high capacity, high round-trip efficiency storage. And they aren't wasting their time on batteries. If trees can survive the night (and winter even in Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia), then so can humans. 
  • By the way, a good peer reviewed scientific report on the costs and impacts of intermittency can be obtained from the UKERC:
           http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/Intermittency
    It explains the important concept of "root mean square error" and debunks a lot of the myths about intermittent generation.
• Likewise, if we need a smarter grid to make renewables work, then we need to put more smart people to work, and pronto. One can identify the challenge and the inadequacy of efforts to date. Fine. Then what happens? (Robert Heinlein's admonition comes to mind: "Always listen to experts. They will tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.")   
  
• Residential rooftop solar has a place but it carries the challenges of high installation cost, poor orientation/shading, roof penetrations, etc. These issues stand in the way of large scale high EROI deployment. 
  
• Better we look elsewhere. Stronger candidates are low profile commercial buildings, parking lots and streets (integrated with grade-separated transportation).
  
• Nor does the need for scale necessarily imply huge remote solar farms out in the deserts. That's appropriate if we are up to something out there in the first place, but extensive transmission and environmental costs can be mitigated by integrating most renewables into the urban fabric.
  
• Charlie Hall's claim that society's EROI has to be on the order of magnitude of 10 is similarly built upon the premise of many steps between, e.g., the well and the wheel. No wonder he's right. We fly rednecks from Houston to extract oil offshore in Angola, ship it to refineries in Rotterdam, conjure magic potions and send it off to who knows where by truck no less, and then run it through a 15% efficient engine pushing around mostly metal. What a waste! By uniting generation and application (source and sink) within a single physical structure, much of that inefficiency can be readily eliminated and the minimum EROI can get back down to a reasonable number. 
• There is no significant future for electric cars (and thus V2G). Using the Biblical cliche, it doesn't make sense to put new wine in old wine skins. In the context of peak oil, humanity is poised to eliminate the treacherous bad engineering (misnamed "auto"-mobile / "free"-way) that willy-nilly juxtaposes children, pedestrians and bicyclists (not to mention pets, squirrels and deer) against heavy fast-moving machines on the same terrestrial plane. With grade-separated Solar Skyways, for example, we can reclaim the streets for people-not-machines and meet our energy needs as well. In the process, with a 10X improved solution, we can drastically cut the source-to-sink steps which whittle away at full EROI  / LCA / efficiency considerations.
  

Unprecedented economic expansion over the past century has been powered by abundant and relatively inexpensive oil and other fossil fuels.  How would the U.S. and global economy respond to an oil supply crisis and the prospect of diminishing oil supplies?  What would economic “growth” and “development” look like in a future with less oil?

 I think this might be the time for me to highlight the theme of equity (in particular, international- and inter-generational equity).

That statement, "... in a future with less oil," is hinting in the direction of "oil continues to be treated as a fuel." Hmmm. If there is no awareness of the value of oil, not for burning up one-time-only, but as a substance for long term use by our progeny, what right do we have to tie up people's time talking about an economy? What is an economy without leaving behind some resources for a next generation to take over?

Where do we weave this fundamental into the peak oil story? I for one am coming to loath the continuing using the term "fossil fuels." We are burning stones to get around?! How do you explain that to your grandchildren? We are so shortsighted to consume these resources that belong to their future.

I'm probably going to drive to town soon, and jump in an airplane before the year is up. Shame on me. The point though is to put our heads together, to find common ground, so that collectively,  we can put a new spin on oil, to begin to treat it as a valuable resource, too precious to burn. Might that perspective serve well to transform our efforts into a more noble cause?

Today we look back in disgust at whaling for lamp oil. How primitive to kill those magnificent sentient leviathans just to light up a room. What will the beyond-oil people of the future think of us?!

Now here's something to think about…

I don't know that we can "throw out" money as a metric in a world where the economy is the main narrative and is likely to be for a long-time.

Obviously we aren't going to do away with money -- or economics, for that matter. It's the direction of the connection that matters. Economics is an instrument of policy; it is a consequence of policy, not a precursor; therefore economics cannot determine policy. Policy, based on whatever metrics, is carried out by economic instruments -- subsidies, grants, taxes, lending rates, etc. -- once the underlying premises are understood and desired outcomes are determined.

Whenever this relationship is reversed -- with economics determining policy -- then policy is built upon a circular argument: for example, a portion of the premium rewarded to special interests can be recycled back into the system in the form of lobbying power. Otherwise, how could energetically bankrupt ethanol become economical? Those who have already been successful at gaming the system can readily use ethanol [take soil; add sunshine, water, oil and coal] to continue successfully gaming the system. It doesn't have to meet the test of good energetics.

It's easy for the economically powerful to pull this off. As Jeremy Grantham wrote in his April GMO letter, "The problems of compounding growth ... are not easily understood by optimistic, short-term-oriented, and relatively innumerate [can't do math] humans (especially the political variety)."

We are unlikely to persuade the world to do away with money. But on the subject of energy, we will use kW-hours, BTUs, EROEI, etc., as metrics to point us toward sane policy. Then we have at least a fighting chance of creating economic instruments that discourage depletion (e.g, fuels recovered at low EROEI) and encourage energetically attractive alternatives (e.g., with high EROEI).

Taking it one step further, if we care about our children and our neighbors, then we will also factor equity into the equation and save a little for them. That's just sound energetic policy.