frflyer

PUW: Progressive Energy Stocks Progress Toward Cleaner Energy

What will work is to put our efforts into solar and wind and other clean renewable energy. There will never be any fuel to explore for, mine, transport, store, smelt, modify for safe burning, burn or use for fission, or clean up the mess from.

As the following shows, we convert to clean energy with current technology.

www.setamericafree.org...
A Blueprint For U.S. Energy Security

And PV solar is within a few years of achieving grid parity. In fact, Nanosolar is probably already there.
"Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.
With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.
According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said."
from www.grinzo.com/energy/.../

Scientific American A Solar Grand Plan
www.sciam.com/article....
How solar thermal and concentrating solar plants in the southwest could power the whole country, using less land than now used for coal mining, 1% of our deserts.

The argument against solar and wind that rests on the supposed problem of intermittency or unsteadiness of their availability hasn't seemed to stopped the Danes.

"There are areas in Denmark and Germany who use more than 40 percent of their electricity from wind. From what I have read, they are less concerned about the intermittency than we are in the United States even though we aren't at 1 pecent yet. Why? Because we are told by the fossil fuel guys, hey, can't use wind, can't use solar, what about the intermittency. If wind gets up to 40 percent of the electricity we use and solar gets up to 40 of the electricity we use, the other percents of electricity we need can be made up from the fossil fuel plants that are still there. If they are run less at full power, they can last a long time. That can be your electricity `battery.'"

gristmill.grist.org/st.../...

Denmark gets 20% of it's energy from wind.

And it isn't stopping Abu Dubai

"Abu Dhabi is not content to just sell you the oil that fuels your SUV; now its going to sell you sunshine to keep your lights on and power your electric car when the internal combustion engine goes the way of the buggy whip. Masdar, the oil-rich emirate’s $15 billion renewable energy venture, and Spanish technology company Sener on Wednesday announced a joint venture called Torresol Energy to build large-scale solar power plants in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the United States." (specifically, the very same southwest where the SciAm article recommends that Americans build solar plants)

"The irony is too rich to leave unsaid: A leading oil producer invests billions in carbon-free energy while a leading consumer of fossil fuels - the United States - continues to subsidize Big Oil while offering only tepid support for green technology. It is inevitable that climate change will foster the rise of renewable energy - the only question is which countries and companies will profit from the new energy economics. It is entirely possible that the U.S. will trade energy dependence of one kind - on Middle East oil - for another - on Middle East and European solar technology - in the era of global warming. It’s no coincidence that most of the solar energy companies with contracts to build utility-scale power plants in California and the Southwest have overseas roots - Ausra hails from Australia, BrightSource was founded by American-Israeli pioneer Arnold Goldman, Solel is based in Israel and Abengoa is headquartered in Spain."

With as much public money as we spent over 35 years to build the high speed information highway, we could solve the energy problem in a simillar time frame.

PUW: Progressive Energy Stocks Progress Toward Cleaner Energy

" Most solar energy firms remain heavily reliant on government subsidies, and politicians may be less likely to dole out funding to such programs as budgets tighten and constituents cope with unemployment and high gas prices."

You must be kidding. Nuclear, and especially oil receive far more in subsidies than solar does. And coal is at least as much. The entire alternative energy proposal now in congress is for $6 billion for one yeard. That's for solar, wind, geothermal etc. Oil gets more than ten time that much all by itself.

www.setamericafree.org...
www.monitor.net/monito...
www.progress.org/2003/...
www.eoearth.org/articl...

And one estimate of all the hidden costs of oil is over $800 billion annually. That includes costs like $100 billion for military protection of oil shipments, health costs, environmental costs. It also adds $300 billion to our trade deficit.

Nuclear has big issues with water, the billions of gallons needed to cool the plants. Droughts in the southeast are threatening shutdowns of reactors, with one in Alabama already having been shut down briefly.

The Argonne National Lab says an airliner crashing into a reactor could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn't compromised

"The total of all oil-related external or “hidden” costs of $825 billion per year. This
total is nearly twice the figure authorized for the Department of Defense in 2006.
To put the figure in further perspective, it is equivalent to adding $8.35 to the price
of a gallon of gasoline refined from Persian Gulf oil. This would raise that figure to
$10.73, making the cost of filling the gasoline tank of a sedan $214.60, and of an
SUV $321.90."

"Federal subsidies to new nuclear power plants are likely between 4 and 8 cents per kWh (levelized), and could well be the determining factor driving the construction of new nuclear power plants. $9 billion per year in the U.S."

Nuclear doesn't make us energy independent.
""The United States and Russia signed a deal that will boost Russian uranium imports to supply the U.S. nuclear industry, the Commerce Department said Friday….
The new agreement permits Russia to supply 20 percent of US reactor fuel until 2020 and to supply the fuel for new reactors quota-free."

"So if, under a President McCain, we build a bunch of new nuclear reactors -- they could be fueled 100 percent by Russia.
I can almost hear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin saying, "Excellent." "
from: gristmill.grist.org/st...

We import a bigger percentage of our Uranium than our oil.

Nuclear is costlier and more time consuming than solar or wind to get up and running.

"Estimates of the cost to construct nuclear power plants are as high as $4,000 per kilowatt, as compared to about $1,400 per kilowatt for wind projects."

The nuclear industry isn't accountable for safety.

"The nuclear industry has long enjoyed limited liability for nuclear accidents under the Price-Anderson Act, which ensures that taxpayers, not industry, will pay for damages in the event of a serious accident."

Transporting nuclear waste from all over the country to Yucca Mt. Nevada is potentially dangerous, and expensive.

"Part of our electric rates go to payments to the federal Nuclear Waste Fund, which is intended to fund the construction of the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada and pay for transportation of waste to the proposed disposal site. To date, Wisconsin customers have paid about $600 million into this fund." That's just one state.

Dismantling old nuclear reactors is expensive.

"Nuclear plant owners are responsible for costs to dismantle retired units, dispose of waste, and decontaminate the site. Each unit has its own decommissioning trust fund, paid for by customers. Wisconsin ratepayers have spent $1.5 billion for the eventual decommissioning of the Point Beach, Kewaunee, and Genoa plants."
That's $500 million each.

www.cleanwisconsin.org...

"David Fleming, creator of the concept of Tradeable Energy Quotas and author of the forthcoming and rather wonderful “Lean Logic”, has just published The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy, which is a thorough demolition of the case for nuclear power being a solution to peak oil. and climate change. You can down load the pdf. for free here or you can order printed copies here. Like much of David’s writing, it patiently yet assertively builds its arguments, backed up by exhaustive research, to build a case against nuclear power that looks pretty much bulletproof to me." from
www.grinzo.com/energy/.../

transitionculture.org/.../
Link to The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy"

Ethanol: Three Developments to Watch

I fogot to add one of my sources

www.monitor.net/monito...

Ethanol: Three Developments to Watch

"The House approved $18 billion in new taxes on the largest oil companies"
This is a bold faced lie. It isn't new tax, but elimination of preferential tax breaks.


"The top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, which developed the tax proposals, he cited statistics that show that oil companies already pay more taxes than many other industries."
Here's another lie. Here's data from a 1995 study, has anything fundamentaly changed since then?

"According to estimates by
the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), federal
corporate income tax credits and deductions result in
an effective income tax rate of 11 percent for the oil
industry as compared to a non-oil industry average of
18 percent

The average effective tax rate on integrated
oil operations has fallen from 21.5 percent in
the early 1980s to only 8.7 percent in the 1990s (both
figures are significantly below the statutory rate of 35%."

from the same study, (note these aren't wartime figures)

"US Defense
Department spending allocated to safeguard the
world's petroleum resources total some $55 to $96.3
billion per year."

"Program subsidies that
support the extraction, production, and use of
petroleum and petroleum fuel products total $38 to
$114.6 billion each year."

"When you consider that researchers have
conclusively linked auto pollution to increased health
problems and mortality, the CTA report?s estimate of
$29.3 to $542.4 billion for the annual uncompensated
health costs associated with auto emissions may not
adequately reflect the value of lost or diminished human
life. "
and from a later study

"The total of all oil-related external or “hidden” costs of $825 billion per year. This
total is nearly twice the figure authorized for the Department of Defense in 2006."

"Based on the studies reviewed, our best-guess estimate of the subsidies received by petroleum each year is $84 billion per year"


www.setamericafree.org...

and from another study:
Citizens For Tax Justice Report

"The Bush administration, which claims to support free-market policies, may find it difficult to
oppose a proposal to stop using the tax code to subsidize large energy companies. This is
particularly true of the latest round of energy tax breaks, which were added in the Energy
Policy Act of 2005. These were so embarrassing that even President Bush (hardly an enemy of
Big Oil) opposed them and only signed them into law when it was clear that they were
necessary to get a bill passed through Congress"

"Tax subsidies do not end at the federal level. The fact that most state income taxes are based on oil firms' deflated federal tax bill results in undertaxation of $125 to $323 million per year. Many states also impose fuel taxes that are lower than regular sales taxes, amounting to a subsidy of $4.8 billion per year to gasoline retailers and users. New rules under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 are likely to provide the petroleum industry with additional tax subsidies of $2.07 billion per year. In total, annual tax breaks that support gasoline production and use amount to $9.1 to $17.8 billion. "

"Together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14. "
This was when gas was $1.20 a gallon or so

www.progress.org/2003/...


"To this base, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 added an additional $85 billion in subsidies over 10 years, according to consumer group Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS, 2005), and legislative activity to bring still more continues. Earth Track's preliminary subsidy estimates (Exhibit 2) for 2006 peg federal support at between $49 and $100 billion per year. This is well above the 2003 estimate. Neither the 2003 or the 2006 estimate includes credit subsidies to energy enterprises, which would boost the totals by a few billion dollars more."

www.earthtrack.net/ear...


"A number of other factors that in the past have helped to constrain spending have also weakened of late, and are likely contributors to the current spending challenges. For example, Presidential vetoes have historically played a role in curbing Congressional power. The current administration has used its veto only once -- less than any other President in the past 150 years. The Bush administration has vetoed no appropriation bills, in comparison to 6 for Ronald Reagan, 8 for George H.W. Bush, and 14 for Bill Clinton. (Kosar, 2006). Without actual vetos, there is also little threat of a veto to legislators. Both help to constrain spending."

"Growth in particular budget areas have been even higher. A survey of Highway Reauthorization bills, for example, showed an increase from 10 earmarks in 1982 to nearly 6,400 in 2005."


So now, what do you think is Really wrong with the U.S. economy?

And none of these costs reflect the cost of the war in Iraq. Add another $trillion and 4,000 American soldiers lives and maybe 200,000 Iraqi lives, and oil i kind of getting expensive, wouldn't you say?

And talking heads have the temerity to say solar is too expensive. Huh?