Study Claims Renewable Energy Could Wreck the Environment.

[NNadir]

I am not here to tell you that I agree with this study, but only that the study exists.

It may be right or it may be wrong. This is a news media report, in any case.

Renewable energy could wreck the environment, according to a study that examined how much land it would take to generate the renewable resources that would make a difference in the global energy system.

Building enough wind farms, damming adequate number of rivers and growing sufficient biomass to produce ample kilowatts to make a difference in meeting global energy demands would involve a huge invasion of nature, according to Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York.


Ausubel came to this conclusion by calculating the amount of energy that each renewable source can produce in terms of area of land disturbed.


“We looked at the different major alternatives for renewable energies and we measured for each of them and how much land it will rape,” Ausubel told LiveScience.

The results, published in the current issue of International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, paint a grim picture for the environment. For example, according to the study, in order to meet the 2005 electricity demand for the United States, an area the size of Texas would need to be covered with wind structures running round the clock to extract, store and transport the energy.


New York City would require the entire area of Connecticut to become a wind farm to fully power all its electrical equipment and gadgets...

...Other scientists are not on board with Ausubel’s analysis and say that his use of energy density—the amount of energy produced per each area of land—as the only metric may not be the correct way to calculate the impact of energy from renewable resources on the environment.


“In general, I would say his use of energy density just does not capture the entire scope of issues and capabilities for all the different resources,” said John A. Turner, a principal scientist at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who was not involved in the study...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070726/sc_livescience/studyrenewableenergynotgreen

In general the environmental impact of renewable energy other than hydroelectric is only marginally explored by experiment, since non-hydro renewables produce less than 2 exajoules of the 470 exajoules of energy now demanded. Some renewable forms of energy, like biofuels and trash burning and even wind have met resistance upon expansion toward a single exajoule.

[havocmom]

1. What it may wreck is the portfolios of a lot of very rich families

Oh, well...

[NNadir]

6. Bullshit. It is the poor who suffer from renewable fantasies, not the rich.

Maybe you haven't bothered to look at the prices of solar PV systems:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/

Maybe you haven't seen what biofuels are doing to food prices, or maybe you just couldn't care less.

Come back and tell me how much you care about the poor when you inform a mother working at minimum wage that you want to more than double her electricity bill because you have a dangerous fantasy.

Here's average delivered prices for existing electrical infrastructure, in case you don't even glance at the rates in your electrical bill because you couldn't care less:


http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat7p4.html


And while you're lecturing, why not head over to Cameroon and tell them how much money you're inclined to pay to restore the forests they burned for renewable fuel.

The "renewables will save us" conceit is so middle class, so indifferent to poverty, that the lack of shame is stunning.

[havocmom]

11. Communities can use wind with a lot less infrastructure

when they do it for themselves and not big businesses and investors

THAT works for the poor.

[LSK]

22. but Nuclear power plants are built for cheap right?

:rofl:

[NNadir]

27. Yes, in fact.

It is difficult to imagine a system that includes internal and external costs over a lifetime of use that is as cheap as nuclear energy.

If the external costs of coal were charged - as they should be - nuclear energy would easily be the cheapest form of energy on earth, by far. The vast majority of the costs of nuclear energy are up front capital costs, but once these costs are amortized, nuclear energy produces extraordinarily low cost energy. It does so while being the only exajoule scale form of energy that is capable of containing its used fuel within the grounds of the plants.

I very much doubt that you have any familiarity whatsoever with energy economics. As it happens the vast majority of nuclear power plants in the world are cash cows for their owners. They have extraordinarily low fuel costs and O&M costs.

Eighty five percent of American nuclear power plants produced fully loaded levelized busbar electricity at less than 7 cents per kw-hr, external costs included.

By contrast, the external cost of coal - the subsidy paid by destruction of the environment, human health, and climate change - is between 5 cents and 7 cents, and one needs to add the cost of the plant, the O&M, and the fuel on top of that.

(See figure 9: http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf) Personally I think that the cost of climate change has been under-estimated in this report.

Most anti-nukes have an understanding of economics that is at least as poor as their understanding of science. This is why they choose dumb giggling over actual analysis, because if you get past dumb giggling, the anti-nuke argument collapses in a cloud of coal soot. That's readily apparent.

What's really amusing is that antinukes couldn't care less about economics, since most of them are middle class brats who think that $30,000 solar PV systems producing power at more than 20 cents per kw-hr. are accessible for the majority of the world's population. It's not even close.

If you want to see how weak renewable's economics are check out this dubious thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=105080&mesg_id=105080

According to the OP - which is actually celebrating this dismal state of affairs - 83.2 mega"watts" were constructed for a cost of 787 million dollars. Now, these "watts" are actually available for about 1/4 of the time, since the capacity utilization of solar systems is lucky to get to 25%. Thus we have a cost of over $3,000,000,000 (three billion dollars) for the equivalent of an 83 MW continuous power plant. To equal a modern nuclear power plant with a 1500 MWe continuous output, a solar plant would cost more than $55 billion dollars - and that's not counting storage systems.

You couldn't care less about the economic implications of this reality.

[jpak]

32. Yep, po' folks can afford $6.8 billion reactors (the cost of the last one actually built in the US)

No one is building new nuclear plants in the US because they are too expensive.

and they would be even more expensive to operate if nuclear plant owners had to pay the full costs of disposing spent fuel.

and Po' Folks had to shell out $112 billion in stranded costs for 110 canceled US nuclear plants.

Nuclear power is *not* a good deal for po' folks (or rich folks for that matter)...

[TheWraith]

36. No, no one's building new nuclear plants because of shortsighted activists.

Nuclear power is and remains incredibly cheap, around 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, even with all costs factored in.

[losthills]

55. Fact:

Everywhere nuclear power has been implemented, citizen's electric bills have skyrocketed. It is the most expensive way to generate electricity.
Sorry for the reality check...

[Dead_Parrot]

58. Ahh, reality checks. Gotta love 'em

EU25 electricity prices for a regular household from http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006_MONTH_07/8-14072006-EN-AP1.PDF (pdf)

Denmark: renewable paradise, no nuclear: €23.62 per 100 kWh
Italy: no nuclear (apart from the imports): €21.08 per 100 kWh
Netherlands: nuclear phase out started, one station still going: €20.87 per 100 kWh

So how's life down there in nuke land?

France: 78% nuclear power, €12.05 per 100 kWh
Finland: 28% and building more, €10.78 per 100 kWh
and of course,
Lithuania: 83% nuclear power, €7.18 per 100 kWh

So yeah, apart form the fact that Lithuanian nuclear energy is less than one third the price of Danish wind energy, it's way more expensive.

[losthills]

62. Yeah reality.

You should check it out some time. It's pretty cool!

[TheWraith]

64. Talk about cognitive dissonance. NT

[Dead_Parrot]

66. Ahh, my mistake

I thought we were talking about the sort of reality other people can experience, not the one in your head.

[Dead_Parrot]

38. Watts Bar also produces over 30 PJ per year

To get that out of PV, you'd need to spend over $380 billion - and that's without the cost of storage, which I can't factor in the cost for because it doesn't actually exist.

That's cheaper how, exactly?

[phantom power]

39. Once you attain the enlightenment that baseload power is an illusion...

all things become possible, Padawan.

[jpak]

43. $380 billion????

The current price for PV modules is $4.78 per watt.

$380 billion would buy 78,500 MW of PV capacity at that price.

That's a lot of PV compared to Watts Bar (1138 MW)

Watts Bar produced 8.5 million MWh of electricity in 2003...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/wattsbar.html

Assuming 3 peak hours of sun a day, 78,500 MW of PV would produce 86 million MWh of electricity per year - substantially more than Watts Bar...

:evilgrin:

and the storage technologies *do* exist NaS batteries, flywheel systems, hydrogen tanks/fuel cells etc...

[Dead_Parrot]

44. In case you'd forgotten...

(Edit: My bad, I messed a decimal point - it's "only" 38 billion. :dunce:)

...actual large-scale installations come in at around $10/Watt when you've added in the labour, housings, electronics and other infrastructure. You keep posting about them, remember? Dig out some of those posts where they've included the price and the size, and do some division, I'm sure even your maths is up to that. Now, it might be that the PV companies are price-gouging, but I'll let you explain that one in your own time.

Or are you going to claim that, once manufactured, PV modules fly by magic to where they're needed and install themselves?

And if you're going to claim existing storage systems are sufficient, why not throw up some costs for storing, say, a mere 40TJ. That's about 12 hours worth of Watts bar, so it'll get you through the night if the wind's not blowing. You'll need a calculator. Or would you like me to do it?

[Dead_Parrot]

47. To answer my own question

The electrolyte for a VRB system to store 40TJ would cost $2,518,518,493.33 (approx. :freak:)

And I got the decimal point in the right place this time. :)

[YankeyMCC]

2. I can't speak to the acuracy of the figures but

I will agree that the future of humanity does not rely on renewable energy, nuclear energy or fossil fuels, the problem or challenge we must address is How we use energy, namely we must reduce our reliance on any of these, have diverse sources to address different needs and be better at deciding when and how much we should use to improve the quality of life of everyone.

[Summer93]

70. Thank you Yankee!

[jbonkowski]

3. There is some truth in there

Like with any technology, there can be smart ways to use renewable energy and dumb ways.

For instance, growing enough corn to create enough bio-diesel would wreck havoc on farmland and food supplies. We have to find a better source than corn, we also have to make the cars more efficient, and we have to find ways to reduce the amount of driving in cars.

Also, there are huge transmission losses when sending power over distances, so naturally a single wind farm, far from much of the country, would have to be huge to generate enough power. If the windmills are spread out, losing less power in transmission, and we also reduce our overall electricity consumption, then the impact on the environment is much less.

I think this guy is being intentionally obtuse. Who pays his salary?

jim

[Dogmudgeon]

5. "Who pays his salary?" -- what's that got to do with it?

Rockefeller U. Academic money. But I'm sure some someone will float a rumor that he's paid by Dick Cheney, The Evil Hillary, and NAMBLA.

--p!
The National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alikes

[skids]

50. Well I'm personally interested...

...in what it cost to get someone to pull a wind farm the size of texas out of their arse.

That had to hurt.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Most people ignore the enormity of the challenge

Nuclear or not, the demand for power already extracts a high immediate material price, completely aside from greenhouse gases and pollutants. Reading Socolow's work on "carbon wedges" is a sobering experience. A 2000x increase in solar PV is required to fill in ONE wedge. And unless the limits for toxic waste are made 100x more stringent, there will be considerable environmental damage.

A million windmills, to start. Fifteen hundred nuclear reactors for a wedge. Half a billion hectares of trees, 150 million Ha of specially-selected cropland. BIG numbers.

And still, a lot of people are going to react to this in a "tribal" way.

--p!

[The2ndWheel]

7. No kidding

We have to concentrate the energy for it to be useful to us(in the expansion and ascension of the human species sense of the word useful). We don't just want to keep the current levels of energy use, we want to increase it(not just for Americans, but for the other 6 billion+ people). As we increase the energy use, our society becomes more complex, and so we end up using more energy, because we come up with more things to do, stuff to use, etc. That becomes a "waste" of energy in some cases, but that's what you get with diversity. Then you need more energy to concentrate all the energy again. But the more energy you use, the more things you can do, and it just keeps going on like that.

Then there is the globally integrated world we're building towards, and so one size will have to fit all, since that's the most efficient way. Too much diversity in that aspect would cause too much wasted energy.

To think we won't continue to screw with the environment on ever larger scales is sort of silly. Well, we want to on ever larger scales at least. If we are able to accomplish that(continued growth), we can escape the environment(which is the goal), and in order to do so we must control it, thus killing it until it fits our needs, and only our needs. Any other way would be a waste of energy(in the expansion and ascension of the human species sense of the word waste).

We want to control the wind. We want to control sunlight. We want to control this and that aspect of everything. We want to control the breeding habits of not only our species, but every species. Then we have to use more energy to combat the consequences of our expanded energy use.

Maybe when we finally reach that point where our entire species is found in one Supreme Mind, and it's able to conduct the affairs of existence so completely as to render that exercise of power pointless, we won't wreck the environment anymore.

In the time between now and then though, we will have a bigger footprint on the planet if we want everyone to have everything. We still live in physical reality, with physical bodies, so we don't have much choice.

[Bread and Circus]

8. Title of article is very misleading and Ausubel is just disguising his pro-nuclear

stance in his "research". However, in the same article, 3 experts oppose Ausubel's views and pretty much shoot down his analysis. Any paper I've ever read in terms of the eco-footprint of renewables is nothing like Aususubel's. I think he's just massaging the numbers. However it is very true that renewable forms of energy would have a larger-land use footprint than nuclear by far (that is until a reactor has a meltdown like chernobyl and the fallout spreads via wind and rain for hundreds of miles (scores of thousands square miles). But like one of the experts wrote in that article, we would need less area than what we've already paved over in roads when it comes to farming renewable energy. Also, alot of the solar farms would be installed in deserts which are relatively barren to start with and I haven't read anywhere how that might destroy desert ecology (although it might).

I was just watching a wave power video yesterday that showed a guy who stated that 10 square miles of wave energy farming off the coast of California would supply enough electricity for California. Considering that's 1/10th of our population, the largest Agricultural state, and one of the richest states, that's pretty signficant.

The truth of the matter is that all human energy systems are going to have some kind of impact and that needs to be faced head on. We need to choose the least-bad ways to continue to grow our energy systems and make energy utilization more efficient.

I don't write nuclear off, like some do. I think it's going to take a combination of systems to make it work. However, in terms of long-term sustainability and wealth growth it's going to have to include solar, wave, wind, and river power to a larger % than ever before. Nukes will probably play a huge role for a long time coming as well.

But no matter what, oil and coal can't last forever. And with current nuclear technology, neither can nuclear.

The only thing that's going to last is the sun, like it or not.

P.S. I am not a big fan of biomass fuel at all. To me, it's kind of like making 3 right turns to take a left. It's being promoted because it will raise grain prices and helps idiot politicians like Hillary Clinton get elected.

P.S.P.S. The more I think about it, and the more I read Ausubel's other press releases, the more I feel he is utterly full of shit. He totally overstates wind power footprint. Any idiot with a pair of eyes can see that a 1.5 Megawatt mill (powering about 500 homes) takes up very little ground (believe it or not, most of the business end of a mill is in the air). Hell, there's a farm in upstate New York that's getting 5 mills alone = 7.5 megawatts = 2500 homes = 4500 hundred people. That's 5 times the size of the whole town in terms of population served, from one small farm. Also, as other experts point out, a mill's footprint is only about 5% of the area dedicated to the mill, and the other 95% can still be used for farming. I will grant that these big mills can look out of place and cast disruptive shadows in some spots but overall, 1.5 megawatts occupying a small plot of land and killing some birds is not a big deal compared to the overall environmentally positive benefit it adds.

[malakai2]

17. I couldn't read his paper because I don't have access

However, it's fairly intuitive.

Sure you can install a wind turbine with a 1.5 megawatt capacity, but it will only produce that load under a very specific set of circumstances. Drop the wind speed, increase the wind speed, vary the wind direction, and the power produced falls off, dramatically under common ranges of weather even in places like California, Texas, and the Dakotas. By the same token, a large PV array could have the capacity, under perfect conditions (noon, in the tropics, on a sunny day) to power the United States, but the power produced falls off precipitously as the sun approaches the horizon, or when there is substantial cloud cover, or as you near the poles.

So yeah, while the capacity under perfect conditions for these things might be what is reported in the news, actual power production is lower, often a lot lower. Which means that we'd need a lot more windmills or PV area to generate the real world power advertised in press releases. Which means, in both cases, a much larger surface area consumed by these technologies to produce electricity that still does not provide base load power in all weather conditions. Which means you wouldn't be altering the globe through pollution, you'd be altering it through development. I'm not convinced that's the answer...even if enough people were convinced, good luck finding enough material and base load energy to manufacture and site those millions of acres of windmills and PV arrays.

Of course, if we went with nuclear as the dominant power source now, we could stop or greatly reduce our use of coal, while also continuing R&D on renewables and battery technology so that at some point in my lifetime we can do without fossil fuels or nuclear. Yes, there is a very small chance of a catastrophic event with nuclear that harms many people. Just as there is CERTAINTY that the ongoing pollution generated by coal harms many people incrementally, in an ongoing fashion. It's kinda like a guy constantly fretting about being attacked by a shark on his annual visit to the coast, while not worrying at all about cancer or cirrhosis despite going to bars every weekend and smoking 3 packs a day.

[Bread and Circus]

21. Like I said before, most expert analysis I've read doesn't jive with Ausubel's or your analyses...

Neither does common sense.

But I will agree wind farms take up huge amounts of land. However, the land is either not being used already or it can serve for dual use. As for environmental impact I've read some windmill farms may actually drop wind speeds, which decreases soil erosion and takes dust out of the air. This may actually be beneficial.

Frankly, there's so much goddam energy in wind, solar, wave, ocean current, and rivers it's mind numbing to consider. And the really cool thing is that the sun's not going to get haywire for another couple billion years.

I will reiterate, it's going to be a combination of energy sources a long time into the future to get us to where we are going, good or bad.

Nuclear power is not a panacea and to act like it is... is well... just silly.

[malakai2]

46. Okay, so we view common sense differently

NNadir's been over this whole energy generation versus power production capacity thing many times, and just like the first time, it still gets to the heart of the problem...assuming we aren't willing to reduce overall energy demand. Good luck trying to build a wind farm or solar plant that can match the energy production of a coal or nuclear plant. Even better luck trying to to develop an energy storage mechanism at the renewable site so that your customers aren't left without electricity when the wind isn't blowing or the sky is overcast. Best of luck trying to do all of it without pricing most customers out of the electricity market entirely. While you're at it, try not to build over unsustainbly large areas of farmland, or destroy ecologies of large areas and subsequently lose valuable biodiversity. Come to think of it, when you start mining energy from natural systems, on the scale that would be necessary to supply the energy humans demand right now, try not to disrupt those systems fundamentally.

There is a need for large quantities of baseload energy, and because we know fossil fuels are a very bad choice for many reasons, that really only leaves fission as our option. Is there a risk of a disaster at a nuclear plant? Sure (assuming the Chernobyl design is still in use...ha!), just like if we keep on with the coal plants...except that where one is localized and subsides over decades or centuries, the other is global and defines epochs.

Unless, like I said, we reduce demand. Anybody here willing to tell the developing world that we won't allow them the per capita energy use to which we've become accustomed? Better yet, what are the odds we can convinced Americans to collectively give up their little energy-hogging toys...televisions, iPods, washers, dryers, microwaves, personal computers, work computers, multiple vehicles, lawnmowers, multiple cars (hell, cars for that matter), ATVs, and so on? Is it okay to price Americans out of electricity for the greater good...and what percentage of Americans without electricity is acceptable? Any ideas on what would be a fair and equitable way to reduce population, thereby lowering global energy demand? If we insist on doing the "renewables only, at any cost" thing right now, we will have to consider answers to those questions soon. If we insist on business as usual, we can look forward to abrupt climate change and all the wonderful misery it has to offer. If we relent on the reflexive "nukes are bad, umkay" reaction, and consider the costs and benefits realistically, we may be able to avert the problems associated with fossil fuels and fix the problems with renewables...assuming we aren't willing to reduce demand.

[Bread and Circus]

49. ducks in barrel...meet gun...

NNadir's been over this whole energy generation versus power production capacity thing many times, and just like the first time, it still gets to the heart of the problem...

Nnadir's not my daddy and he has zero credibility with me.

assuming we aren't willing to reduce overall energy demand.

We won't be reducing demand, it will go up by great magntitudes for a long time coming.

Good luck trying to build a wind farm or solar plant that can match the energy production of a coal or nuclear plant.

That's already been done and bigger ones are on the way. Try google.com to find out more. It's a really great search engine.

Even better luck trying to to develop an energy storage mechanism at the renewable site so that your customers aren't left without electricity when the wind isn't blowing or the sky is overcast.

Solar towers produce 24/7 energy, so will wave power, so will ocean current power. Also, wind and solar energy often coincide with peak demand. The grid we deal with now is an antiquated generally monodirectional piece of shit. A capacitated bidirectional grid will address some of what you are talking about. Furthermore, we are gonna build our windmills in windy areas and put our solar farms in sunny areas just to piss you nuclear folks off!!!

Best of luck trying to do all of it without pricing most customers out of the electricity market entirely.

I've seen forecasts to show that renewables will be competitive with conventional systems in the foreseeable future.

While you're at it, try not to build over unsustainbly large areas of farmland, or destroy ecologies of large areas and subsequently lose valuable biodiversity. Come to think of it, when you start mining energy from natural systems, on the scale that would be necessary to supply the energy humans demand right now, try not to disrupt those systems fundamentally.

You mean, don't pull a Chernobyl and spread nuclear fallout over tens of thousands of square miles irradiating children, plants, and wildlife alike to the point of causing long term cancer rates and birth defects to rise?

There is a need for large quantities of baseload energy, and because we know fossil fuels are a very bad choice for many reasons, that really only leaves fission as our option.

Says you, Nnadir, and everyone else who is financially and apparently religiously invested in nuclear power to the exclusion of considering all other options. Like I said before, I'm not going to drink the koolaid.

Is there a risk of a disaster at a nuclear plant?

Yes, or are you so omnicient that you can guarantee 100% there will never be another nuclear accident? Because I'm pretty sure what just happened in Japan might make you want to be careful about how much you are willing to put on the line.

Sure (assuming the Chernobyl design is still in use...ha!)

Yeah, Chernobyl and all those birth defects and cancer... that's just a joke....ha!

, just like if we keep on with the coal plants...except that where one is localized and subsides over decades or centuries, the other is global and defines epochs.

Uhh...English please...

Unless, like I said, we reduce demand. Anybody here willing to tell the developing world that we won't allow them the per capita energy use to which we've become accustomed?

Uh...I've addressed that earlier while I was loading the gun...

Better yet, what are the odds we can convinced Americans to collectively give up their little energy-hogging toys...televisions, iPods, washers, dryers, microwaves, personal computers, work computers, multiple vehicles, lawnmowers, multiple cars (hell, cars for that matter), ATVs, and so on?

Boy, you are so much better than all those energy hogging Americans. What a bunch of porky fatasses!!

Is it okay to price Americans out of electricity for the greater good...and what percentage of Americans without electricity is acceptable? Any ideas on what would be a fair and equitable way to reduce population, thereby lowering global energy demand? If we insist on doing the "renewables only, at any cost" thing right now, we will have to consider answers to those questions soon. If we insist on business as usual, we can look forward to abrupt climate change and all the wonderful misery it has to offer. If we relent on the reflexive "nukes are bad, umkay" reaction, and consider the costs and benefits realistically, we may be able to avert the problems associated with fossil fuels and fix the problems with renewables...assuming we aren't willing to reduce demand.

Ummm...how about the simple answer that nuclear energy is not an energy panacea, so quit being so gullible or willfully naive to think it will solve all our problems. Unlike you, Nnadir and a few others, I'm open to balanced multi-disciplinary solutions. What the fuck is the deal, did you guys all buy a bunch of nuclear stocks or own a Uranium mine?

[malakai2]

54. Stay away from carnies...

NNadir's been over this whole energy generation versus power production capacity thing many times, and just like the first time, it still gets to the heart of the problem...

Nnadir's not my daddy and he has zero credibility with me.

As long as you know what joules, megawatts, megawatt-hours, energy, and power are, I don't give a rat's ass whether you like the guy or not.

assuming we aren't willing to reduce overall energy demand.

We won't be reducing demand, it will go up by great magntitudes for a long time coming.

Yeah, I guess rhetorical devices went out of fashion before you decided to post. Nice pickup.

Good luck trying to build a wind farm or solar plant that can match the energy production of a coal or nuclear plant.

That's already been done and bigger ones are on the way. Try google.com to find out more. It's a really great search engine.

If you have particular projects in mind, by all means, find links and share them with everyone here. Some of us are apparently unaware of solar arrays and wind farms that cost-effectively generate stable baseloads to rival coal or nuclear plants.

Even better luck trying to to develop an energy storage mechanism at the renewable site so that your customers aren't left without electricity when the wind isn't blowing or the sky is overcast.

Solar towers produce 24/7 energy

Lots of those out there, huh? How many joules did they produce last year?

so will wave power

When? If scientific consensus is to be believed, we needed to do something about greenhouse emissions decades ago. We keep sitting around with our knees jerking one way or the other, and pretty soon it won't matter.

so will ocean current power

Again, when? There IS a lot of energy in these things, but to extract it on the scales we're talking about, in the timeframe we are talking about, at a steady rate so as not to disrupt consumers, is not realistic. Maybe someday, and breakthroughs do happen often enough, but so much of this isn't even close to the demonstration stage, there's no way it could be implemented in short order.

Also, wind and solar energy often coincide with peak demand.

I seem to recall a California heat wave that coincided with wind speeds below the generating threshold for a great number of the windmills out there. The part of South Dakota in which I live has been like that for the last week. I can reasonably foresee people at certain latitudes, after cheap oil and gas, who rely on electric heating, cursing their solar arrays as temperatures plunge and snow falls. Yes, as a supplemental power source for those who can afford it, under certain conditions, solar and wind make sense. As the backbone of the system, no way, not until efficiency goes way up and storage becomes easy, and even then we're talking about committing a huge area to energy production for current demand.

The grid we deal with now is an antiquated generally monodirectional piece of shit. A capacitated bidirectional grid will address some of what you are talking about.

To what will probably be a very small extent, absent major advances in batteries or flywheels. Then we'll still need to address transmission, because that aspect of the current system does not capably serve the needs of the population as it is distributed. We can either do that using established protocols for the plants we know how to build, or we can start building something totally new for technologies that are not mature enough to be relied upon heavily and hope that what we build will be useful when those technologies do mature.

Furthermore, we are gonna build our windmills in windy areas and put our solar farms in sunny areas just to piss you nuclear folks off!!!

So, you'll essentially give over huge swaths of the Rockies, Appalachians, and northern plains to power production, and much of the desert to solar production. I believe, from what I read in the abstract, that this is what the original paper was criticizing. Couple that scenario with giving the central and southern plains, the western Great Lakes, and much of the south over to biofuels production, and now all you have to do is find room for the people, the food production, the natural systems that offer services like flood protection, clean water, biodiversity reservoirs, and the like, and...we'll be more or less living in a factory that never meets its quota. Honestly, I don't care where you want to site the things, though rapidly losing the prairie pothole region sucks, if they can't offset coal or gas or oil now, then they are a potential future solution. We can't wait that long. We need a solution now.

Best of luck trying to do all of it without pricing most customers out of the electricity market entirely.

I've seen forecasts to show that renewables will be competitive with conventional systems in the foreseeable future.

I've seen some too. I've seen lots of rosy and not so rosy assessments of all sorts of things by industry, and in my experience, it breaks down like this: Rosy assessments that provide companies or industries leverage are hyped, not so rosy assessments do not see the light of day. I'd like to see a breakdown, cost per joule, in the absence of any Federal or state subsidy, along with year-to-year trends, that shows renewables on the verge of overtaking fossil fuels or nuclear. No frills, no "In just X more years, we'll be within Y margin of matching the generation capacity of Z." Notice we are talking actual energy output, not capacity rating.

While you're at it, try not to build over unsustainbly large areas of farmland, or destroy ecologies of large areas and subsequently lose valuable biodiversity. Come to think of it, when you start mining energy from natural systems, on the scale that would be necessary to supply the energy humans demand right now, try not to disrupt those systems fundamentally.

You mean, don't pull a Chernobyl and spread nuclear fallout over tens of thousands of square miles irradiating children, plants, and wildlife alike to the point of causing long term cancer rates and birth defects to rise?

Actually I was thinking more of the loss of farmland, thereby irretrievably foregoing crop production for current and future generations until such point as they see fit to tear the structures down, at which point entrenched energy interests might very well say no. Also about dams, the sort that eliminate food sources like salmon or sturgeon. Also about fundamentally altering energy transport mechanisms, which we seem to be doing just fine with our little coal-oil-gas terraforming experiment, and which we might just as well be doing when we try to extract several hundred exajoules of energy from ocean waves, ocean currents, air currents, and the like. Not nuclear of course, where the probability of an accident is an unacceptably high "not zero." I suppose the chronic health impacts of fossil fuel emissions, aside from climate forcing, are a lesser evil to you than that non-zero risk of a well-build, well-designed reactor (in other words, this isn't the Soviet Union of the Cold War era).

There is a need for large quantities of baseload energy, and because we know fossil fuels are a very bad choice for many reasons, that really only leaves fission as our option.

Says you, Nnadir, and everyone else who is financially and apparently religiously invested in nuclear power to the exclusion of considering all other options. Like I said before, I'm not going to drink the koolaid.

There isn't any koolaid here. We have: a technology in hand that generates most of our current baseload, but is forcing the climate to change, is subject to near-term depletion, causes a host of chronic health impacts (even death!) that we are trying to transition away from; a technology in hand that generates an appreciably proportion of our current baseload, will not force climate change, is subject to long-term depletion, poses a small real-world health risk (in other words, the number of actual injuries due to nuclear power, divided by the number of days of cumulative operation of all the nuclear reactors that have ever operated on earth...I think the ratio is actually lower than for fossil fuels), and forms stable waste products that can be stored safely away from humans and anything else they deem important; and a set of technologies that together seek to harvest abundant energy supplies, but that are still far away from providing appreciable portions of the global energy supply, are not terribly efficient, will require far more raw materials to construct per joule generated than other sources, and will be more expensive for the foreseeable future. The prudent course of action now is to take the safe bet, choose option 2 with the understanding that it's not perfect, and continue working on making option 3 a better option in the future. The prudent course of action now is not to gamble on option 3 being ready for implementation on a grand scale tomorrow, at least not without acknowledging the substantial risk of it not being ready, and leaving us with no options.

Is there a risk of a disaster at a nuclear plant?

Yes, or are you so omnicient that you can guarantee 100% there will never be another nuclear accident? Because I'm pretty sure what just happened in Japan might make you want to be careful about how much you are willing to put on the line.

Again with the rhetorical devices. I guess I'm going to have to stop doing that. Probability of disaster at a nuclear plant is not zero. Probability of no health effects from a coal plant in the airshed is also not zero. The actual risk of injury to individuals is I believe higher with reliance on fossil fuels than from nuclear, sorta like my example before about the guy worrying disproportionately about a shark attack on the one day out of the year he's at the beach, while not worrying at all about cancer or cirrhosis despite smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish. Any actuaries here who could point me in the right direction (fossil fuels versus nukes, not the sharks versus cigs and liquor, I don't want to know the answer to that one)?

Sure (assuming the Chernobyl design is still in use...ha!)

Yeah, Chernobyl and all those birth defects and cancer... that's just a joke....ha!

Ha! as in "The design and craftsmanship that wrought the Chernobyl disaster is so far removed from what Westinghouse and Areva and others are doing now, that I can probably add a ...ha! for sarcastic effect so that nobody misses the obvious"

, just like if we keep on with the coal plants...except that where one is localized and subsides over decades or centuries, the other is global and defines epochs.

Uhh...English please...

Chernobyl showered fallout over a large area, but quantifiable direct effects were confined to a relatively small area, and will subside with time, whereas continuing with fossil fuels (in other words, not outright replacing their share of the baseload right now) will give us abrupt global climate change of the sort that defines geologic eras, for example "Permian," or "Cretaceous."

Unless, like I said, we reduce demand. Anybody here willing to tell the developing world that we won't allow them the per capita energy use to which we've become accustomed?

Uh...I've addressed that earlier while I was loading the gun...

And it was rhetorical again, because we know that despite this being the best option of all, not wasting joules today so we can use them tomorrow, people will discard it and econ majors who wrote theses on game theory will have lots of empirical data to play with.

Better yet, what are the odds we can convinced Americans to collectively give up their little energy-hogging toys...televisions, iPods, washers, dryers, microwaves, personal computers, work computers, multiple vehicles, lawnmowers, multiple cars (hell, cars for that matter), ATVs, and so on?

Boy, you are so much better than all those energy hogging Americans. What a bunch of porky fatasses!!

Ever seen the per capita rate of energy consumption broken down by nations? It's embarrassing if you're an American at all concerned about social justice or ecology or...whatever it is that first brought you to this site.

Is it okay to price Americans out of electricity for the greater good...and what percentage of Americans without electricity is acceptable? Any ideas on what would be a fair and equitable way to reduce population, thereby lowering global energy demand? If we insist on doing the "renewables only, at any cost" thing right now, we will have to consider answers to those questions soon. If we insist on business as usual, we can look forward to abrupt climate change and all the wonderful misery it has to offer. If we relent on the reflexive "nukes are bad, umkay" reaction, and consider the costs and benefits realistically, we may be able to avert the problems associated with fossil fuels and fix the problems with renewables...assuming we aren't willing to reduce demand.

Ummm...how about the simple answer that nuclear energy is not an energy panacea, so quit being so gullible or willfully naive to think it will solve all our problems. Unlike you, Nnadir and a few others, I'm open to balanced multi-disciplinary solutions. What the fuck is the deal, did you guys all buy a bunch of nuclear stocks or own a Uranium mine?

You start by putting that gullible or naive bullshit away, and coming in without preconceptions about what is dangerous and what isn't. You ask, objectively, what is the problem, which in this case is that burning fossil fuels causes short- and long-term negative health effects, directly contributes to climate change, and are going to be limiting resources soon. You look for solutions to the problem, simply, how to replace energy generated by fossil fuels in a way that will be available soon enough to avoid a climate disaster or energy shortfall, without causing a shortage or other disaster in the process. Then you go and get objective data, looking at energy produced, not power capacity, by generation method. You develop alternative courses of action. You look at the positive and negative consequences of implementing each alternative, and make a decision that one has the most favorable balance of positive to negative consequences, preferably in both the short- and long-term. Then you implement the chosen alternative, adjusting as needed in the future. Do a NEPA analysis on a project with no easy solution sometime, it'll help get you in the right frame of mind.

[TheWraith]

34. Amen. The small risks of action are preferable to the known problems of inaction. NT

[TheWraith]

33. He's not the one massaging the numbers.

"I was just watching a wave power video yesterday that showed a guy who stated that 10 square miles of wave energy farming off the coast of California would supply enough electricity for California."

Not exactly. Sure, if we knew how to do that efficiently, it would work. But our capability for wave power generation is minimal at best. The largest and most efficient installation we've been able to set up is only 2.25 megawatts peak production. That's just shy of 20 gigawatt-hours per year, or about 0.00066% of the power California needs. The more optimistic projections suggest that the areas with the best waves, like the UK, could end up producing 5% of their electricity with wave power, but they're not talking about more than that for now.

"But no matter what, oil and coal can't last forever. And with current nuclear technology, neither can nuclear."

Well, neither will the sun, which is scheduled to go out in another 5 billion years or so. But for the forseeable future, I don't see why only having 200-400 years worth of fuel with conventional technology, ignoring the ability to filter uranium from seawater, would be a big roadblock.

[jpak]

9. Published in the International Journal of *Nuclear* Governance, Economy and Ecology

**yawn**

and nonsense

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/myths.html

Myth 1: Solar electricity cannot serve any significant fraction of U.S. or world electricity needs.

PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.

A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"—the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities—could supply 90% of America's current electricity.

These hypothetical cases emphasize that PV is not "area-impaired" in delivering electricity. The critical point is that PV does not have to compete with baseload power. Its strength is in providing electricity when and where energy is most limited and most expensive. It does not simply replace some fraction of generation. Rather, it displaces the right portion of the load, shaving peak demand during periods when energy is most constrained and expensive.

In the long run, the U.S. PV Industry Roadmap does expect PV to provide a "significant fraction of U.S. electricity needs." This adds up to at least 15% of new added electricity capacity in 2020, and then 10 years later, at least 10% of the nation's total electricity

<more>

edit: the above assumes PV modules with 10% conversion efficiencies. Most PV modules on the market today have efficienies of 10-22% and concentrating PV systems have efficiencies of 40% - this will dramatically reduce the area required for PV arrays...


Only 4% of the US would be required to produce 100% of the nation's electricity with wind turbines.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/states/alternatives/wind.cfm

<snip>

The wind energy resource in the United States is plentiful. Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, could supply more than 1.5 times the 1993 electricity consumption of the entire country.

<more>

again...**yawn**

[phantom power]

10. And you surely have a proposal for baseload power...

You know you want to tell us. Resistance is futile.

[jpak]

12. Baseload power is a consequence of electrical grids employing large centralized power plants

that cannot be operated to meet fluctuations in electrical demand.

A diverse portfolio of distributed renewable energy and storage systems coupled with a smart grid can supply power 24/7/365 and meet demand as it occurs...no "baseload" required.

[phantom power]

13. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.

Baseload power demand is an illusion?

Wow. And what is the sound of one hand clapping?

[GliderGuider]

14. I thought base load power was defined like this:

"Base load -- The minimum amount of electric power delivered or required over a given period of time at a steady rate."

Thus, base load power is not a consequence of the grid architecture, but rather a consequence of the electrical demand imposed on the grid.

The description you give is of a dynamically balanced generating capacity. Such a system could simulate the operation of a base load power plant as it's understood by the electrical industry, but the risk of falling below the base load requirement would be much higher than with a standard grid unless high levels of generating redundancy were incorporated. It also has the fundamental flaw, from a power engineering perspective, of having an inherently unpredictable ability to respond to peaks - again, unless large amounts of redundant capacity were engineered in. I don't know how much redundancy might be required, but my gut tells me we could need to over-engineer the system capacity by more than 100%. That would make it a poor investment proposition compared to a regular grid.

I'm not saying that smart grids aren't possible, just that I don't think they're the slam dunk you imply.

Can you point to an example of a successful commercial dynamic/smart grid, or is this still just a theoretical possibility?

[jpak]

19. Smart grids are under study and development and will be required to maintain grid reliability

www.climatesolutions.org/pubs/pdfs/PoweringtheSmartGrid.pdf

www.climatesolutions.org/Poised/PressRelease.pdf

www.gridwise.org/pdf/061017_SDSmartGridStudyFINAL.pdf

Smart grids and the American Way

http://www.memagazine.org/supparch/pemar04/smgrids/smgrids.html

The Aug. 14, 2003, blackout in the northeastern United States was not an isolated event. Slow response times of mechanical switches, lack of automated analysis of problems, and an inability to see the whole grid in real time are contributing to a noticeable increase in failures of the present electric grid. These problems have caused a noticeable increase in blackouts and brownouts since 1998.

The situation is not getting any better. The problems that have caused the recent spate of blackouts will propagate cascading failures of the grid more and more frequently, unless we create a more intelligent grid control system. The system must become automated, because decision speeds increasingly are becoming too fast for humans to manage.

This is a vital national security interest. If present trends continue, a blackout enveloping half the continent is not out of the question.

<snip>

Cutting-edge technologies will be required to create what we call the Smart Grid of the Future that can accommodate the additional power from massive, remote solar and wind farms. These sources are environmentally benign, but erratic and unpredictable in their generation capacity. In addition, large-scale storage of electricity to accommodate the erratic nature of such green power sources will be required in elevated reservoirs, in super-batteries, flywheels, and magnets, and in underground compressed air and natural gas caverns.

<more>

IBM's smart grid plans promise energy savings

http://green.itweek.co.uk/2007/04/ibms_smart_grid.html

IBM and US electricity provider CenterPoint joined forces this week to form a new coalition dedicated to accelerating the adoption of so called Smart Grid technologies capable of enhancing the reliability and efficiency of electricity networks and informing users how much power they are consuming.

Executives from the two companies said that the new coalition would provide a global forum for energy and technology providers to share knowledge and best practices, promote industry standards and undertake strategic pilot projects. They added that more utility and technology companies from the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific are expected to join the group in the next few months.

"The Intelligent Utility Network will transform the way power is delivered, managed and used," said Guido Bartels, General Manager, IBM Global Energy & Utilities Industry. "As the group grows to include other utility companies and partners, members will have unique opportunities to apply new ways of thinking, new technologies and management strategies."

The idea of a "smart" electricity grid capable of closely monitoring energy flow and usage across an entire network and potentially even providing broadband and power over the same wires has long been a goal of grid operators who see it as an ideal way of improving fault detection, better matching power supply to demand, providing new services to customers and ultimately developing a "self-healing grid".

<more>

and Supergrids will reduce the need for energy storage...

A Supergrid for Europe

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16595

Europe has big plans for greatly expanding its renewable energy sources, but there's a problem: weak connections between a patchwork of national power grids. The situation is particularly problematic for wind power, because smaller, isolated grids have more difficulty absorbing the variable power generated by wind farms.

Last month a Dublin-based wind-farm developer, Airtricity, and Swiss engineering giant ABB began promoting a bold solution to the continent's power grid bottlenecks: a European subsea supergrid running from Spain to the Baltic Sea, in which high-voltage DC power lines link national grids and deliver power from offshore wind farms. When the wind is blowing over a wind farm on the supergrid, the neighboring cables would carry its power where most needed. When the farms are still, the cables will serve a second role: opening up Europe's power markets to efficient energy trading.

The result would be a more integrated and thus more competitive European market, delivering power at lower prices. And it would enable Europe's grid to safely accommodate even more clean, but highly variable wind power. That accommodation will be needed because the European Union has set a target of 21 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and much of this will come from wind farms. "The primary benefit of the supergrid is that it aggregates wind power across geographically dispersed areas, and, by doing so, it smoothes the output of those wind farms," says Chris Veal, the Airtricity director promoting the supergrid. "If the wind isn't blowing in the Irish seas, it's likely to be blowing in the North Sea or the Baltic. The wind is always blowing somewhere."

By solving two problems at once -- interlinking grids and providing hookups for more offshore wind farms -- Veal thinks Airtricity has found a solution that's economically feasible. "It's something the market can do," he says.

<more>

[TheWraith]

37. You're not acknowledging the issue of baseload power.

No matter what you say about the grid, there's a minimum power requirement that you can't get rid of.

[jpak]

41. and renewables in that smart grid will always supply that minimum whatever it is

24/7/365

[TheWraith]

65. The only currently practical renewable that produces 24/7 is hydro power.

Possibly wave power as well, if that becomes more usable, but solar and wind are dependent on the right conditions, which cannot be guaranteed. Hence, you would need FAR more generating capacity than the baseload to even have a chance of maintaining minimum electrical supply. This means that the examples such as turning all of Connecticut into a wind farm to supply New York City are almost certainly optimistic.

[NNadir]

15. I guess the 23 Nobel Laureates associated with Rockefeller University are not scientists.

I mean, could you imagine, they publish in a peer reviewed journal that the anti-nuclear cult says contains the word (gasp) nuclear.

http://www.rockefeller.edu/awards/nobel/

It's always amusing how the religious get their dander up when their dogma is challenged.

Here is Doctor Ausbel's CV:

Jesse H. Ausubel joined the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1994 and serves as a Program Director. His areas of responsibility include assisting in the development of a major new observational program to census marine life, encouragement of the development of new professional master's degrees in the sciences, studies of higher education as an industry, use of the internet to create a new habit by participants of contributing to the recent historical record in science and engineering, and explorations of what may be known, unknown, and unknowable in diverse fields of research.

Concurrently, Mr. Ausubel is Director of the Program for the Human Environment and Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller University in New York City, where he has served on the faculty since 1989. The main themes of the Rockefeller research program are industrial ecology (the study of the network of all industrial processes as they may interact with each other and live off each other) and the long-term interactions of technology and the environment. Underlying the work are ongoing studies of the mathematics of growth and diffusion...

...From 1977-1988, Mr. Ausubel was associated with the National Academy complex in Washington DC, as a resident fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, then as a staff officer with the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and from 1983-1988 as Director of Programs for the National Academy of Engineering. Mr. Ausubel was one of the principal organizers of the first UN World Climate Conference (Geneva, 1979), an event which substantially elevated the global warming issue on scientific and political agendas. During 1979-1981 he led the Climate Task of the Resources and Environment Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, near Vienna, Austria, an East-West think-tank created by the U.S. and Soviet academies of sciences.

Mr. Ausubel has authored and edited more than 120 articles, reports, and books. He was the guest editor and lead author of the 1996 issue of Daedalus, "The Liberation of the Environment." He has published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, American Scientist, and The Sciences. Reports for which he was main author include Changing Climate (National Academy, 1983), the first comprehensive review of the greenhouse effect; and Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), the 1983 Research Council report originating the Global Change Program. For the NAE, he developed and oversaw studies on the performance of technology-intensive sectors of U.S. industry and on the diffusion and globalization of technology. Educated at Harvard and Columbia universities, Mr. Ausubel serves on several editorial boards, including The Journal of Industrial Ecology, and the Committee on Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations.

http://www.sloan.org/bios/ausubel.shtml

Here is his publication list:

http://phe.rockefeller.edu/jesse/JAbibliography.html

I know very little about Mr. Ausubel myself, of course, but I'm going to make a wild stab here and guess that Mr. Ausubel knows the difference between a peak watt and a joule, i.e., the difference between units of peak power and energy.

Any scientific study could be wrong of course, but I hardly believe that Mr. Ausubel is spoon fed his research by the nuclear industry.

Of course, you will suggest otherwise, just as creationists like to suggest that radioactive dating is <em>wrong</em> and is presented for ulterior secularist motives.

You are free, at any time, to publish a report challenging Dr. Ausubel's conclusion in any journal that will publish such a challenge to Dr. Ausubel's remarks.

In fact, though, I'm sure that challenges will appear in the literature. I certainly am not inclined to rely on your knowledge of science - knowing what it is - but that's how science works.

If you are here to assert that every word in International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology because the word "Nuclear" appears in the journal's title, you are free to advance your argument.

Some information about this new journal can be found here:

http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=118

Although it would seem that the editorial board is international, I'm sure that you will be able to publish a paper in some reputable journal proving that each member of the editorial board has little electrodes implanted in their brains that allow them to be controlled by Dick Cheney.

[jpak]

16. Ausebel is *wrong* and his peers have pointed out the flaws in his analysis

Others have *realistically* estimated the land area required for different renewable energy technologies and they do not come close to Ausebel's conclusions.

end of arguement...

[NNadir]

24. It's pretty funny how you want to end arguments with one sentence.

You have a rather inflated view of your statements, but this is hardly any kind of news.

Even though you seem to think that one sentence from you ends all debate, I'm inclined to argue that the matter requires some more examination, since there is no evidence that you are anything but clueless.

Your evocation of "others" is unreferenced, unimpressive, and represents yet another appeal to dogma.

In fact, the external cost of non-hydro renewable energy is largely unmeasured because non-hydro renewable energy, in spite of many decades of wishful thinking, has yet to produce 5 exajoules, never mind 500 exajoules.

I am willing to let the renewable experiment be pushed to its limits, by the way, but we're already seeing those limits with all the new whining and crying about biofuels - none of which originates with me by the way. So long as we monitor the environmental effects of biofuels carefully, I have no objection to them being tried out in appropriate places. A good place to start would be, of course, the existing agricultural states.

When, do you suppose, Iowa will stop using dangerous fossil fuels internally?

By the way, you may not be aware of this, but "estimations" are not experiments. We would all like to see a ten exajoule experiment with non-hydro renewables - I think I speak for everyone. There's no way that it could be as bad as the experiment with dangerous fossil fuels, even though I'm fully aware that you couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuels and what they do under the status quo.

Nevertheless all we ever seem to get, year after year, decade after decade is talk and promises about 2050. I do understand that you are having a lot of difficulty grasping the difference between energy and peak power - this has been consistent for years now - but can you tell us when you expect your renewable wonderland to reach ten exajoules in annual production?
You can't?

What a surprise!

It isn't 2049, is it?

[jpak]

28. Wind power *alone* will supply 3000 terawatt hours of electricity by 2020

http://www.erec-renewables.org/sources/wind.htm

1 terawatt hour = 3.6 x 10^15 joules.

3000 terawatt hours = 10.8 EJ

There's your experiment...

on edit: 425 TWh per year or 1.5 EJ/year by 2020 in Europe alone...

[Dead_Parrot]

31. That just leaves the other 98%, then

Since the EU's usage is http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jiec.2006.10.4.151?cookieSet=1&journalCode=jiec">80EJ/year, or 289,000 TWh by 2020. Assuming conservation offsets the increasing demand, that is.

Since wind is the only non-hydro renewable to produce any sort of significant energy, where you propose they get the 78.5EJ?

[jpak]

40. That's energy from all sources natural gas, gasoline, diesel, coal et al. - not just electricity

And wind is not the only non-hydro renewable to produce any significant energy in the EU...

Solar thermal installations in Europe were >2100 MWt in 2006 with 13,000 MWt total installed capacity producing 9,600 GWh of thermal energy each year.

EU solar thermal installations are growing at 47% per year.

There will be 1 m^2 of collector area per capita in the EU by 2020...that will be enough to supply a generous quantities of domestic hot water to every person in Europe.

www.estec2003.org/2007/download/press_release/PR_070619_mainstream_estec2007.pdf -

[Dead_Parrot]

42. OK, I accept the point of solar thermal

Lets assume that's another 5 EJ by 2020. So what? In case you haven't been paying attention, it's the emissions from natural gas, gasoline, diesel & coal that we need to get rid of. It makes no difference to the atmosphere whether a CO₂ molecule came from a grid power station, an off-grid cement factory or a bus in down town Saarbrücken, if it's extra CO₂ going into circulation we get fucked.

That we need to fix all those off-grid industrial processes and transport doesn't mean you can pretend they don't exist - it means we have to tackle them as well, which for things like ethanol production with a slightly wank EROEI means getting extra power generated.

Your hydrogen car isn't going to fuel itself, y'know.

[NNadir]

45. Oh. A link to an industry site. How charming.

If your soothsaying were correct that would be ten exajoules. Wow. And here were worrying about 120 exajoules worth of coal. I realize you couldn't care less how much energy is produced using coal, but still...

World energy demand is now 470 exajoules.

The average rate of increase of world energy demand - despite all of your blather about the wonders of conservation - has been about 9 exajoules per year.

Warning! Skill with arithmetic required to view the following spreadsheet! (The warning is apparently still necessary although I've linked it thousands of times now.)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablef1.xls

Thus we have out of your own mouth that your most vaunted form of renewable energy - wind power - will manage to displace 13 years from now, just about 1 year of the increase in energy demand.

Wow. How great! Our problems are solved.

I hope wind gets to 10 exajoules. I wouldn't object if it got to 50 exajoules. But I doubt it. I've heard thousands and thousands and thousands of similar empty promises over the last 30 years.

By the way - and I'm in no way surprised that you are totally unaware of this - a prediction about 2020 is not an experiment. Experimental analysis always involves events that have taken place in the past, not the events in the future.

I thought that this was still taught in high schools. Apparently it isn't.

[Bread and Circus]

23. 3 guys refuted him in the article you linked, we don't need to wait for a magical "counter-study"

Solar and wind farms are going up and you can't stop that Nnadir.

Crying about it is not going to help either, especially here on DU where 99.9999% of the world doesn't give a shit what we say (especially the big business guys that build the nuclear power plant and the solar/wind farms).

Furthermore, you aren't going to convince folks here that nuclear energy is the only way to go, considering how toxic radioactive waste is.

You are figuratively and literally fighting windmills.

Also, Ausubel is a pro-nuke guy who acts like Nukes are a panacea to our energy ills, he destroys his credibility right there. There's guys with just as good CV's that say he's full of horseshit, so pick who you are gonna believe. :D

[NNadir]

25. Really? Please give the scientific references for their reports?

I haven't seen the "just as good CV's."

In any case, saying that someone has no credibility because he is "pro-nuke" assumes, doesn't it, that you have credibility.

Nuclear energy is the largest form of greenhouse free form of primary energy. It's three times as large as it's nearest competitor, hydro, and 15 times as large as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass burning, garbage burning and tidal <em>combined</em>.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table15.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

I can't wait for your next lecture at the JPak School of Economics, Ecology and Arithmetic on "Credibility and the Environment." I'm sure it will be a great lecture, widely attended by luminaries from all over the world.

[Bread and Circus]

48. I'm sorry it angers you so that we won't succumb to your brainwashing

and drink the nuclear koolaid.

Again, I'm waiting to see some of your publications, seeing as how you act like you are such the scientist. I've asked for them before but I never received a reply.

I read the article you linked and 3 experts basically denounced your Nuke expert. Like I said before, it's all who you want to believe but at any rate you acting like Nuclear power is a panacea is a fucking joke and you acting like convincing us that solar panels and wind power is "going to wreck the environment" is a bigger fucking joke.

By the way, your magic study isn't new, this dude has been saying the same shit on the internet for a while now, he sounds like a broken record and a crybaby who can't get his rattle soon enough.

Thank god for jpak because he seems to have a lot more patience to deal with all the bullshit that gets slung around here.

[LSK]

20. exactly, who benefits from this study should be the question

[damntexdem]

18. Great! Start down here with Texas! No big loss to the nation, and its environment is already shot.

And before endorsing raising plants as biofuel, let's first start recycling waste as biofuels.

[Dead_Parrot]

26. Last I looked, the environment's wrecked already.

At least with non-fossil power sources, you get to chose which bits you fuck up.

There is no such thing as risk free energy, y'know. ;)

[HamdenRice]

29. Here's where the fallacy comes in

If the report were about housing, it could read something like: it would take an area twice the size of California to house all Americans!!!! scarrryyyy!

What it isn't saying is that much of the area required could be in already used space. If every home in New York State had a solar panel roof, then we would probably be near our Connecticut size solar area requirement, but we wouldn't experience it as an invasion into nature. Similarly building wind turbines on existing corn and wheat farms means that new Texas sized areas are not colonized for windmills.

[TheWraith]

35. They didn't say New York State. They said New York CITY. And with wind, not solar.

To supply enough power for the entire State of New York using solar panels, you would need FAR more than the area of CT. Wind is much more power-dense than solar, and even then you're talking about massive areas.

Second, since when have environmentalists been for paving over all of the wide open spaces and putting up towers everywhere? More to the point, you're still talking about large areas of land taken over to provide power. It doesn't change the overall number if you spread it out.

[depakid]

30. What I see here is basically a problem of scale

and the bottom line on that is that no amount of renewables is going to power industrial society as we know it- particularly in the US.

Nuclear plus renewables isn't going to do it either, btw.

Contraction and relocalization will inexorably become a fact of life over the next 2 decades, probably aided by economic crashes and demand destruction.

[philb]

51. There appears to be enough ocean power potential to serve most coastal areas

according to EPRI, ocean power in U.S. will soon be competitive with conventional power sources. Pilot projects are looking very good.

Likewise solar PV prices are coming down, with concentrator lens, multi-junction technology, nanotechnology, new organic collection materials leading to higher efficiencies and lower prices.

[Bread and Circus]

52. NO, there is only nuclear power to solve all problems.

Please don't think outside of the nuclear box or you will be terminated.

[Nihil]

60. Philb has it right: "There appears to be enough ocean power potential" ...

... and it is freely available just as soon as you put your duck (or
whatever technology you prefer) into the water.

I agree that it is all there, waiting in the big blue (or green/brown
depending where you live) for the "no compromise" team to lap it up
while they're closing down the coal-fired stations for the planet.

I strongly suggest that all of the "absolutely no never zero nuclear power"
brigade move down to the coast and start taking advantage of all that free
energy - not only for the sake of their own argument but from the selfish
point of view too ... their migration to the coast / from the grid will
benefit the me & planet by reducing the demand for coal-fired electricity
and thus reducing the pollution generated every day that they stay in their
current location. Kick the Kennedy clan out of the way if you need to as,
unlike them, at least you will be living true to your words.

Do it.

Please, please, please move *right* to the coast (to reduce losses from
over-land transmission). It would give you an unmissable opportunity to
brush up on your swimming too.

[Bread and Circus]

61. Your attempt at sarcasm is pretty weak.

[Nihil]

79. So was your attempt to sound intelligent.

:P

[Bread and Circus]

53. One more thing before I go to bed, the article doesn't seem to have a link the actual study

in question.

Maybe I'm missing it but I've looked several times, clicked what hyperlinks were there, but to date, nothing that I could actually follow up on.

Need some help here.

[Dead_Parrot]

57. If you have €30 to burn...

go to http://inderscience.metapress.com/app/home/main.asp?referrer=default and search for "Renewable and nuclear heresies" which is the actual paper title.

Me, I think I can live without, to be honest. :)

[losthills]

56. Actually,

the real beauty of Wind and Solar power is that they don't have to be used as massive "power plants." They can be dispersed throughout communities, and once installed expense electricity for free with very little maintenance.

They can be used to break up "the grid," free us from dependence on utility companies, and give us true energy independence.

I guess that is incredibly scary to some people...

[Nihil]

59. Well done, that's the first smart thing you've said ...

... except for the last sentence of course :P

> the real beauty of Wind and Solar power is that they don't have to be
> used as massive "power plants." They can be dispersed throughout
> communities ...

Note though that this will only work as long as said communities are
already dependent upon restricted power resources as if they are just
burning up the existing grid cables by demanding more & more, there
is no point in wasting wind/PV resources on them.

[NNadir]

63. Really? How many "off grid" people are there?

Ten million?

One hundred million?

Actually, I think there are billions of people who live off grid.

Here's a picture of some:



As for first world countries, I really, really, really, really, really don't see any evidence of the grand renewable off grid revolution for the socialist-iiberationist-libertarian-back-to-the-pastoral revolutionary people's struggle taking hold.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table62.xls

In fact, world solar capacity is about 1000 MW peak per year. One can drive across the midwest and see hundreds of abandoned cowboy windmills from the 19th century.

I'm sure your off grid home is wonderful though.

[losthills]

67. "The Grid"

is an antique construct that is not capable of meeting the energy needs of the future without destroying our environment. It's a relic of the past, and should be broken up and turned over communities, cities and regions to redesign to meet their own specific needs. Renewables are the way we will meet our energy needs in the future, and that future can begin as soon as we determine to throw the power companies off our backs. It's already beginning. These are exciting times we live in with tremendous opportunities for redesigning our future.

Every day we are hearing of great new ideas and breakthroughs. The main obstacle at this point is the marriage of money and politics in our country. As long as the Exxons and Haliburtons are allowed to stand behind the throne, it will be dificult to make real progress. The important first step in acheiving a sane energy future is reclaiming our democracy.

So let's get to work!

[razzleberry]

68. the non-grid strategy is working world wide

(applies to most of the world, does not include,
US Can EU Aus NZ JP , and other primitive places)

the non grid approach, using neighborhood diesel generators,
to supply power, seems to be working

[phantom power]

69. If by "working" you mean "accelerating climate change with CO2"

[NNadir]

71. What would you call "work?" Let me guess...

...the recitation of a long list of platitudes.

You write:

Every day we are hearing of great new ideas and breakthroughs. The main obstacle at this point is the marriage of money and politics in our country.

Is that supposed to mean something?

The "grid" is a relic in your imagination maybe, but not in reality, as the figures I provided show.

Once again the question was "how many people live off grid?"

I guess you don't have any idea.

Energy is a serious matter, very serious.

A part of the equation is involved with desperate poverty.

One might rephrase my question thusly: "How many people who are not desperately impoverished live off grid?"

Frankly I couldn't care less. It's trivial and that's all I need to know.

[losthills]

72. Let's examine Mr. Nadir's post,

because it deserves to be challenged.

He posts a picture of some starving people in (I suppose) Africa receiving food aid and states that there are billions of people living off the grid, and that is an example of their plight.

Well, how would he rectify this situation and get power to them, so that they can begin to participate in the modern world? Spend billions upon billions of dollars constructing nuclear power plants hundreds or thousands of miles away, installing millions of power poles and thousands of miles of wire to get them power. A project that would take decades to complete, and when completed would require more millions per year to operate, including the environmental devastation of uranium mining and the hazards of periodic decommissioning and storing nuclear waste. A project that is so expensive that it will probably never happen unless their government has nuclear weapons aspirations.

Or: with a small loan from the world bank, or a grant from a Western Government or NGO, they could have a small array of wind turbines and photo-voltaics and have power within weeks. Power that would free and low maintainence for generations.

Which is the more rational solution?

As for the Cowboy Windmill comment-- I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean, but those old windmills are an example of practical and intelligent technology. I would say,"How do you know that they're abandoned?" If they are, it probably has something to do with the cattle market. We have them around here where I live that have been in use for generations, pumping water day and night with very low maintainence, totally free. Actually, people are still installing new once and refurbishing old ones because they make good sense, and would make good sense for the people in Dr. Joules' picture. Or, today, a cowboy might elect to install a small solar panel with an electric pump and acheive the same result-- free, dependable operation for years on end.

Solar and wind power are free, they don't pollute, don't require attacking the landscape with fossil fuel devouring machines to provide them with fuel, and don't require paying monthly bills to a power company.

The Grid is a dinosaur whose day is coming to a close. Let's bid it a fond farewell and not look back...

[Dogmudgeon]

73. Not to interrupt ...

I don't want to interrupt your challenge of NNadir, but there is something that has to be asked, and it applies to ALL methods of power generation, sparing none.

How is ANY method of producing energy "FREE"?

Most of us are familiar with the head of the old AEC and his incautious statement that nuclear energy would be "too cheap to meter". It is repeated by several hundreds, if not thousands, of websites, books, and articles, usually with glee.

Yet there is a parallel series of statements -- that energy from the sun, the wind, and the tides, are free.

They are no more "free" than energy from nuclear fission. All energy must be captured or exploited through some technology. That is where the difficulties start.

The main point of economic contention is which technologies can be used most cost-effectively. It ought to be possible to figure out which costs how much, even though wind power generation is new, and solar power generation is in extremely limited use.

You have often presented a picture of nuclear energy technology being beyond the capability of modern society. Yet the building of some half-million to one million aerogenerators -- high-tech windmills -- per year indefinitely, or increasing semiconductor manufacturing 1000- or 2000-fold, are themselves daunting projects.

There ought to be one common, agreed-upon method by which to evaluate energy generation.

Although I am usually only identified as being a proponent of nuclear energy, my concern is universal. "Free energy" is impossible on any level if only because energy is work. Atoms may decay and the sun may shine without human bidding, but the work of moving matter is still done. I am painfully aware that there is no "free" anything. The proper context for this should be: which methods are the least expensive and most beneficial?

If you want to answer this by yourself, or if you and NNadir wish to pursue it as part of your dialog, I would appreciate it. I see this argument made every day, even by a few pro-nuclearists, but it is basic to all energy issues.

--p!

[Kolesar]

74. 1 kW/m^2 of energy comes in through my south windows

We can figure that all homes have windows somewhere. So we ought to locate them in the correct location and get heat for no additional cost. Now back to the grid.

[losthills]

76. Great point!

And we have understood this since the seventies, ans yet we allow home builders to crank out thousands of homes per year that are uninhabitable unless they have heat pumps going all winter and air conditioners going all summer. We are dupes and fools to allow this.

Jimmy Carter put a passive solat hot water system on the White House and Ray Gun famously took it down. If all homes built since then were required by law to have passive hot water think of how far along we would be by now.

And it's time to do that now. It is time for laws that will force home builders and automakers to move forward. And it's time to elect representatives who will pass those laws...

[NNadir]

81. Rebuilding a hundred million houses is free?

Sigh...

You guys really, really, really couldn't get more pathetic.

By the way, did you ever hear of something called summer? In many parts of the world, especially after the accumulation of dangerous fossil fuel waste that has been indiscrimately dumped in the atmosphere, this thing called summer leads to increased energy demands.

I know, I know...you're talking about modern thermal windows that darken in warm temperatures, blah, blah, blah.

In fact, this may also come as a surprise, the "all new stuff" approach has a profound environmental cost. Have you ever seen what the typical contractor drives?

[Name removed]

85. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[phantom power]

86. Yes, we never give you guys a break, asking you to explain who pays...

It's a conspiracy.

[Kolesar]

89. I didn't ask for your opinion...eom

[phantom power]

96. And yet I don't need your permission, because this is a *forum*.

Kind of like how you get to express your opinions wherever and whenever you choose, without requiring my permission, or anybody else's.

If that's truly getting on your nerves, perhaps you are looking for some other kind of venue besides a forum.

[Kolesar]

99. Your posts have nothing to do with windows or thermal mass...eom

[losthills]

75. You are correct

that no method of producing energy is free.

What I was saying, and have been saying is that with wind and solar the energy source is free. You could say the same for geothermal and wave power, but they are not really up and running. You can also include hydroelectric, but it involves great expense and environmental degradation to implement.

Wind and solar power are easy and cost effective to implement, cheap and easy to maintain, and after the expense of installing the system they run for free because the energy source is free.

With oil, coal, so-called bio-fuels and nuclear power, the energy source is very expensive. That is why the corporations spend billions lobbying our governments to favor those options and that is why they are the least logical options for us lowly citizens.

Oil, coal, and uranium fired systems are the most expensive to build, the most expensive to operate and once they are set up the energy companies get to keep selling you fuel for them, forever, at greast cost to the environment.

Solar energy is free. Wind energy is free. Once a system is set up there is no cost for fuel and very little maintainence. And they don't require building huge power plants and stringing millions of miles of wires all over the landscape.

Solar and wind power are the two proven and fully functional cost effective and non-polluting power sources that we have in our hands today...

[razzleberry]

77. tell that to Denmark

tell that to the Danes,
who pay the world's highest rate for

-----> FREE <--- electricity

[Bread and Circus]

78. This is the key phrase no one here should ever forget:

Oil, coal, and uranium fired systems are the most expensive to build, the most expensive to operate and once they are set up the energy companies get to keep selling you fuel for them, forever, at greast cost to the environment.

I bolded the part I want to emphasize.

One of the main fundamental problems I have with nuclear power is that it always will be a top-down imperial form of energy, making citizens slaves to the power company.

By researching better and better forms of wind and solar technology, it decentralizes energy production a bit so individuals, small towns, farms, and small companies can be part of the energy production making it more egalitarian. People can use the energy they produce (capture) or sell it off. If not that, they can rent land and this helps small communities. as well. Also, technology starved placed of the world that have lots of land would be better served by wind and solar because it is scaleable and relatively low tech compared to nuclear.

Nuclear will probably always play some role, but it's not the panacea the nuclear diehards act like it is. Nuclear has had 40 years plus to dominate and it's been on the wane because it just doesn't deliver like the nuclear diehards here act like it does.

As for nuclear being green, I have a good ecologist PhD friend who told me that the construction, operation, and decommission of a nuclear power plant is not very environmentally friendly at all when you consider the materials that go into it and it's construction. Over a lifetime, he says it's not much better than a coal plant.

[phantom power]

82. And you are planning to buy your solar panels and wind turbines from Amish craftsmen?

If solar and wind aren't already "top-down" and "imperial" (which is very debatable, if you consider just who is actually manufacturing these things) it's only because they don't yet represent an important fraction of anybody's energy budget. Furthermore, nobody installs solar or wind without having equivalent backup. Because they have to. Ergo, solar and wind do not have "veto" power on anybody's energy.

[Kolesar]

87. ^--The pronuclear lobby responds with another deflection--^

think you are pretty cute, don't you?

[phantom power]

90. If my snark is too distracting, you could focus on my content:

The hardware for harvesting solar and wind will be made by big, powerful corporations. It already is, and that will only become more true, the bigger the industry gets.

In a hypothetical future where important chunks of our energy come from solar/wind (I doubt that future, but for the sake of the argument), these big and powerful solar/wind corporations will have just as much power (no less, no more) over energy users (which is to say, "everybody") as the corporations that currently provide most of our energy: Big Fossil, the nuclear-providing corporations, etc. It may even turn out to be the same companies, especially if these current companies are smart enough to realize that they are in the business of providing energy, not fossil fuels.

But either way, we will be forced to purchase our power-harvesting hardware from companies, and so they will have the same kind of power over economics, geopolitics, etc.

Notice that the above argument gives you a leg up by implicitly buying into your assumption that this power-harvesting hardware will be somehow owned by many localized entities: individuals, towns, etc. There isn't any reason to assume that, since economies of scale apply to wind and solar generation as a business model: it's more cost-effective to own/operate large, centralized solar/wind farms, just as it's more cost effective to own/operate large coal-plants, or large hydro plants, or large nuclear plants.

You can already see this happening. The biggest new chunks of solar/wind energy are not owned by individuals or townships. They are being built as large, centralized generating stations. To whatever extent solar and wind become significant energy players, you can expect this trend to continue.

I should note that I don't personally see this as an inherently bad thing. But for good or ill, that is how the reality of it would play out.

[Bread and Circus]

92. I'm honestly starting to believe these guys are getting paid for lobbying...

because I can't think of any other reason their near religious zealotry for all things nuclear has them in a such a rabid state all the time.

They shoot anything down if it somehow portends to delay their fantasy of an all nuclear society.

It's fucking pathetic to be honest.

[phantom power]

93. The other reason you're searching for is that your arguments aren't convincing.

However, if it soothes your ego to imagine that I'm tenacious because I'm some sort of nuke-lobby Hessian, indulge yourself.

[Name removed]

94. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Kolesar]

95. It used to be that I could visit E&E forum and chat about policy and technology

Now it is that any discussion is fair game to turn into some geo-political street fight. There are Africans for props and snippets from past E&E threads thrown at my head like ballistic beer bottles.

I had a routine where I was only coming in to E&E occasionally. My trips to DU were focused on the headlines and the two interest forums I frequent. I would go days without visiting E&E. Now it is becoming that I don't want to come here.

I don't remember this forum having a lot of deleted posts in the past, either. I remember a new moderator taking over the E&E forum and us joking about them not having to do a lot of work. Those days are gone.

[Bread and Circus]

97. I know what you mean. I came here to get away from political flame wars...

and to hopefully learn stuff from people that may have more time than me to research some of these issues. Instead it seems like it is a food fight between the nuclear fanbois and the wind power treehuggers. I've become irked to the point of becoming part of the food fight because I'm sick of people getting shat upon just because the found a positive bit in the news about solar or wind energy.

If some positive news in the nuclear field comes up, then I'd love to read about it from that sector. However, that's not what is happening here. What's happening is that non-nuclear renewables are receiving a ground swell of support in the industry, set to possibly take off and thus many here are excited to share this info. Then the nukies come by and tell us how fucking stupid we are and how naive we are because we apparently can't grasp the concept of an exajoule.

[Kolesar]

100. NegativeNancy advocates for nuclear on dailykos.com, but without the sarcastic thread titles

Decorum at www.dailykos.com would not accomodate that.

[NNadir]

80. A small loan, eh?

You do realize of course, that solar electricity is prohibitively expensive in the first world, including the United States.

It is not now, and never has been FREE. The idea that it is FREE is nonsense, which is why you REFUSE to answer the question, how many "off grid" people there are in the US who do not look like the people in my picture.

In fact, the third world couldn't care less about your poor understanding of economics and indifference to the plight of the "off grid" citizens there.

Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Namibia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Chile, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia are all considering new nuclear capacity.

Why are these countries all considering nuclear energy?

Maybe they know things about their countries about which you couldn't care less. It has something to do with cost in fact. This may come as a total surprise to you, but the average African can't afford $30,000 worth of solar cells and $15,000 worth of batteries.

By the way, if you're speaking of speed, it has taken all these cool renewable sources you blab about more than 50 years to reach less than two exajoules of energy. In the same 50 years, nuclear energy went from essentially zero exajoules to 30 exajoules.


If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[jpak]

84. Hundreds of thousands of po' folks in developing countries use 10-50 watt PV systems

that do not cost $45,000 (with the batteries).

I've posted those articles many times for those who were interested in the truth...

[Kolesar]

88. I met an Ohioan who gets by with 180W of photovoltaics, battery &no grid connection

He manages his energy usage by not having a lot of appliances. He doesn't spend his day with his chunk in a chair bitching up flame wars on the internet.

[phantom power]

91. I don't understand posts like this one.

I can relate to this man's lifestyle choices. I expect everybody is headed in his lifestyle direction. Involuntarily, probably, but regardless.

But if your point is to hold this guy up as an example that I'm supposed to follow, I can only ask "what are you waiting for?"

Put down your computer, stop wasting your time on our nasty, nasty "flame wars" and live a happier reduced-appliance lifestyle.

[Kolesar]

98. This may come as a total surprise to you, but the average African can't afford $30,000 worth of sola

solar cells and $15,000 worth of batteries.

What a bogus misdirection. Nobody is trying to sell the "average African" $30,000 worth of solar cells and $15,000 worth of batteries.

[losthills]

101. You are living in the past.

Solar systems are affordable now, and easy to set up. Ditto for home wind turbines.

For people who are building homes a mile or so from the last power pole, the cost of installing a renewable system compares very favorably to paying edison to run a line to them. And the concept of never having an electric bill ever again tips the balance. I know several people in my area who have done this, and more who are thinking about it. They usually will have a propane fueled generator for back-up, and they always say, "but I never use it." Yeah, they cost a few thousand to set up, but as with electric cars, the cost would come down as more people bought into it.

And once the system is installed it is free to operate, because solar energy and wind energy are free.

Solar energy and wind energy are free, and if you place any value on environmental impact they win over everything else no matter what the dollar cost...

[jpak]

83. In fact, world solar thermal capacity is >77,000 MWt

PV capacity is >6000 MWe

Solar thermal electric is ~500 MWe

Global wind capacity is 74,000 MWe

and if one drives across the Midwest today, one would see large (1-2 MWe) wind turbines under development in large 100-200 MW wind farms.

Not yer Grampa's "cowboy windmills"....