2300AD energy sources

[Strithe]

Is 2300AD basing itself on some sort of liberal agenda "eco-friendly" or "green" energy politics? That would be good reason enough for me not to get the book or even game in the 2300AD era.

Not unless you're idea of "liberal agenda" is any setting that doesn't have petrochemicals as the primary source of energy. By that standard, virtually every science fiction setting ever created has a "liberal green-energy agenda."

Plus, the setting has many parallels to 19th century colonialism, and several of the Core World nations are run by dictatorships & oligarchies. On Cold Mountain, the locals are basically at war with the local wildlife, and Hermes has a particularly nasty flying predator (a sort of furry pteradactyl) that's hunted for sport by tourists. A couple of planets have been aggressively terraformed.

The only place that explicity has a "green" agenda are the Core worlds, and while they do have 90% of the population & nearly all the heavy industry, they're also don't have that much real clout more than a couple star systems away. Only one of the foundations has an aggressively "green" agenda.

So, overall, I'd definitely say the setting isn't some sociology professor's wet-dream. The thing I always liked about 2300ad is that while it definitely has some weird aspects to it (mostly due to the fact that the background was created through the original developers at GDW playing a grand strategic game), it's very nuanced & internally consistent.

If you want a quick description, I'd call it "Firefly" without the Western trappings, as seen through the lens of classic movies like Outland, Aliens, or Blade Runner. There's a lot of sources for potential conflict: the Core vs. the Frontier, the various national rivalries, the corporations & foundations versus the governments each other, enigmatic & sometimes dangerous aliens, and the struggle for survival on colony worlds that are just barely habitable.

 

[Lemnoc]

Wasn't trying to enflame a "culture war" by launching this thread... The fact that our energy discussions so INSTANTLY flare into a culture war is interesting, though: Dirty Rotten Effing Hippies and their Foul Conspiracies versus "Drill Baby Drill" Rapacious Extractors and their Foul Conspiracies. No middle ground.

My point was to zero in on the very kernel of fact: Nothing known produces the BTUs of petroleum for the extraction cost. Everything else is falloff, one side or the other. We can yak about shale, we can yak about vegetable oil, we can even wave wands and yak about fusion. Doesn't change the basic equation.

As one energy analyst put it, in economic terms there is no perfect substitute for petroleum. A perfect substitute in economic terms means something is swappable for another thing at basically the same value—corn versus wheat, for example. Nothing beats gasoline for sheer, jaw droppingly cheap power.

I saw a documentary on BBC. The narrator shot a soup can filled with concrete into the air with a cannon powered by gun powder. Wow, it went way into the air. A few seconds later it landed, THUD. Then he shot a similar can from a similar sized cannon powered by a similar weight of gasoline. He began a long, long discussion about energy units and comparable power scales, blah, blah, blah, BBC style. Laid back, not trying to rush anything. Blah, blah, blah. Finally, THUD, the can landed in the field behind him. Three minutes must have passed, 20-fold the elapse on gunpowder. The damned can must have been fired 20 miles into the atmosphere.

Just sayin'.

As a civilization, our work is cut out for us.

 

[Mikko Leho]

You cannot separate human feelings and preconceptions from anything we decide to do. For instance growing insects for food is much more efficient than growing animals, but we do not do so (at least in large scale in the western world) because insects are concidered "icky". Some communities decide to cast out modern technology and it would not be impossible to imagine some group with rich benefactor to accept space travel for means to escape the sinful existance on Earth and to start again with 19th century technology on another planet.

 

[Captain Jonah]

There is plenty of middle ground. You just have to fine it between the two extremes.

In terms of powering a colony you have limited ability to bring in resources so you need to use what is there.

Refusing to use one or more types of resource because of a Green agenda or religious beliefs is up to the colonists.

There are always alternatives, they may be nowhere near as efficient in terms of energy released but that’s up to the colony involved.

Rabid environmentalists who refuse to burn oil, do they agree with terra-forming a new colony?
How do vegans feel about cloned meat for example, no animals harmed to make it?
What about plastics, about as non biodegradable as it is possible to be, do the eco types still use it?

There are extremes on both sides, always will be. As a ref you set the game where you want. You can even go in the opposite direction to what you think as an example.
That colony that burns oil all day, players need masks outdoors and 10% of the population has lung cancer.
The eco friendly green world that burns nothing, computers fail and lights go out most nights leaving the players shivering in the dark because the colony uses solar and wind and will not import environmentally damaging batteries.

The core world may have gone of the green end in a few cases, no reason why your 2300 colonies have to follow.

In fact you can have examples of both ends of the argument, make the colonies even more unique.

 

[AndrewW]

In fact you can have examples of both ends of the argument, make the colonies even more unique.

Can even have multiple examples within the same colony, those that settled the Northern continent burn oil day and night and have the heavy industry, those on the Southern use solar, wind, biomass and so on. Guess which continent gets the tourists?

 

[Schütze]

in the name of efficiency .... why would all available sources of power not be harvested ? different purposes and scales make different sources viable in their own way

livestock might not be the most efficient food or power source but they can live off "waste land" vegetation and you can eat them .... and their waste is both fertiliser and a biogas feedstock

biofuels generated on a small scale can be made to work the same way .... an extra power (storage) source that then feeds into the biogas system

biogas might not be the main objective of a farm's composting/recycling system but why waste it ?

a windmill might not be the most efficient way to generate power or move water but it does work

hydrogen is not as energy dense as hydrocarbons but a fuelcell is a viable power (storage) system that goes a long way to solving the unreliabilty of "renewable" systems

the arguments relating to "green" industrial scale power are similar - if it (geothermal, tidal etc) is available nearby, why not use it as part of your overall colony infrastructure ?

 

[Lemnoc]

why would all available sources of power not be harvested ?

Although this is a wise question, the likely answer is, for the same reason all available sources of power are not harvested today: Some energy systems yield so much more power for the penny or farthing they just overwhelm the economics of other sources and systems.

I do imagine if we ever develop cheap, safe fusion power it will make our energy history as a species seem ridiculous. It will make the pursuit of other energy sources or systems seem naive.

 

[Colin]

On colony worlds with any sort of serious industry, base load power comes from either nuclear (fission or fusion) or orbital solar arrays. However, local power typically comes from local sources, which can be fuel cells and solar arrays, run-of-river hydro, or gas turbines running on natural gas produced by algae stacks, extracted from bogs, or from easily-accessible underground sources. Individual electric power for homesteads and farms comes from solar panels with high-density LMS batteries for long term storage. Most colony worlds do not have centralized power grids, and even if they did, most colonists would not want to be tied to them. It's one thing to take out a loan to build your own power system, and then pay it back, and quite another to be beholden to a central utility for the rest of the your life. The sort of people who emigrate are likely to prefer the former, or even take it further and do without until they can save the money themselves.

Damn, now I have to add a new chapter to Tools for Frontier Living...

 

[Imeanunoharm]

BUT conservation of resources, preparing for changes in global climate (natural ones not the whole man made CO2 panic) is important. ...

... all the Global warming idiots are making it worse by panicking over a fake problem while urging preparations for the wrong changes.

:lol: I love you guys. Can I ask what your job is? Your ignorance certainly suggests it isn't climate scientist. I dare say you're not even a scientist. Stick to your day job, and let the massive majority (something over 90%) of climate scientists that agree on anthropogenic induced climate change do theirs.

 

[Colin]

I would request that everyone tone down the politics in this thread. The whole point of a game is to have fun with it. If there is something in 2300 that interferes with you doing that, change it. This really isn't the place for a real-world debate on the science and politics of climate change. That really belongs somewhere else.

 

[Captain Jonah]

I would request that everyone tone down the politics in this thread. The whole point of a game is to have fun with it. If there is something in 2300 that interferes with you doing that, change it. This really isn't the place for a real-world debate on the science and politics of climate change. That really belongs somewhere else.

Noted.

I'll resist the urge to reply to the comment above you.

 

[Greg Smith]

why would all available sources of power not be harvested ?

Although this is a wise question, the likely answer is, for the same reason all available sources of power are not harvested today: Some energy systems yield so much more power for the penny or farthing they just overwhelm the economics of other sources and systems.

I do imagine if we ever develop cheap, safe fusion power it will make our energy history as a species seem ridiculous. It will make the pursuit of other energy sources or systems seem naive.

The problems include -

Investment - it costs a lot to invent and build machinery to harvest wind/wave/biogas. Even now a wave farms are still experimental. Once you have got it up and running, someone has to invest in manufacture.

Cost - even if it is clean and cheap, there is cost to building new power stations and running them. Until this is actually economic, no-one is going to build wave farms & wind farms. Government subsidies help with this.

Vested interests - existing producers who are doing quite nicely may be pretty resistant to change.

In a 2300 environment, it is likely that wind/wave/biogas are easily available technology. But it may be that the suppliers of energy cells offer cheap exclusive deals - knowing that they tie the whole colony into their product for decades to come, so more efficient forms of genetaion are less appealing.

Personally I can imagine the answers for one colony aren't the same for another.

 

[Imeanunoharm]

I would request that everyone tone down the politics in this thread. The whole point of a game is to have fun with it. If there is something in 2300 that interferes with you doing that, change it. This really isn't the place for a real-world debate on the science and politics of climate change. That really belongs somewhere else.

Naaaaaawwww, but mum, he started it!

Of course, you are entirely correct good sir.

I'll resist the urge to reply to the comment above you.

However there is of course an entire off topic forum if you wish to counter me. I for one look forward to more conspiracy theory derived hokum, and fossil fuel industry funded think-tank propaganda from another person not even trained in science*, nether-loan climate science. :roll:
*Note: Computer science doesn't count unless it specifically related to modelling.

 

[Jame Rowe]

On colony worlds with any sort of serious industry, base load power comes from either nuclear (fission or fusion) or orbital solar arrays. However, local power typically comes from local sources, which can be fuel cells and solar arrays, run-of-river hydro, or gas turbines running on natural gas produced by algae stacks, extracted from bogs, or from easily-accessible underground sources. Individual electric power for homesteads and farms comes from solar panels with high-density LMS batteries for long term storage. Most colony worlds do not have centralized power grids, and even if they did, most colonists would not want to be tied to them. It's one thing to take out a loan to build your own power system, and then pay it back, and quite another to be beholden to a central utility for the rest of the your life. The sort of people who emigrate are likely to prefer the former, or even take it further and do without until they can save the money themselves.

Damn, now I have to add a new chapter to Tools for Frontier Living...

As an aside, if you don't mind suggestions, I would suggest that NO 2300 AD colony world have a TL of less than 7, unless you're making an exception for a set of adventures. My reasoning is that the parent nations would want at least some in-colony industry or industrial supply for local needs, even if the colonial function would otherwise be non-industrial.

 

[Lemnoc]

I would suggest that NO 2300 AD colony world have a TL of less than 7, unless you're making an exception for a set of adventures. My reasoning is that the parent nations would want at least some in-colony industry or industrial supply for local needs, even if the colonial function would otherwise be non-industrial.

I would think so, too. Anything too primitive on a sketchy world and it would seem the sponsor would be running constant rescue missions... I guess those could be adventure hooks, but from the standpoint of logic, if you're going to establish a colony in a cosmo-political environment as competitive as 2300 seems, you're going to want them to succeed.

 

[Colin]

Ya know, when I requested that people stop with the political stuff, I actually meant "Stop". Not "Get in a final word, then stop" but just "Stop".

Please.

 

[Imeanunoharm]

Hey mum, I think you're on the wrong internet. You want that one over there, with the rainbows and unicorns. [/tequila] (If my tequila was schnapps, I'm sure it would have said, "ja vol mein capitan", but I digress )

Lighten up man. For internet forum climate politics side tracks, that exchange never even got to the chest inflating stage before a fireman, who (with all due respect is not a moderator or even the OP), admittedly and rightly, put the hose on it. If you read between the lines, my last comment as I moved out of the dousing was a request to move the discussion to a more appropriate forum (with added bait of course). Can I get a "We're all human hug" here? C'mon? Beer then?

 

[Jame Rowe]

Ya know, when I requested that people stop with the political stuff, I actually meant "Stop". Not "Get in a final word, then stop" but just "Stop".

Please.

If my comment was taken as political I apologize; I meant it merely as a thought on the game-world itself.

 

[Imeanunoharm]

You're all right my good man. His sensors were directed solely at us douchebags that concentrated only on real world issues, and not the game at hand. Carry on good sir! Bravo pip pip!

 

[rust]

A very interesting discussion, although I suspect that it is likely
to miss the point in most cases of colony worlds. The presence
of fossil fuels on a planet requires a rather specific development
of the planet's biosphere and geology, and I therefore doubt ve-
ry much that natural gas, oil or coal can be found at all or in sig-
nificant quantities on many of the colony worlds.