frflyer

Alternative Energy's Sunny Outlook

Chris B

If anything you are being too kind to fossil fuel and nuclear power, as they both have more problems and hidden costs than you list. Like the absurd subsidies oil has gotten for 90 years, the impacts from coal mining, the danger of nuclear power leading to nuclear weapons, nuclear's long lead time to build new plants, etc.

The long lead times for new coal nuclear plants favor solar and wind, which are much quicker to build.

"The time to plan and construct a coal-fired power plant without CCS equipment is generally 5–8 yr. CCS technology would be added during this period. The development time is another 1–3 yr. Thus, the total planning-to-operation time for a standard coal plant with CCS is estimated to be 6–11 yr. If the coal-CCS plant is an IGCC plant, the time may be longer since none has been built to date."

"..... based on the most optimistic future projections of nuclear power construction times of 4–5 yr5 and those times based on historic data,64 we assume future construction times due to nuclear power plants as 4–9 yr. Thus, the overall time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant ranges from 10–19 yr."

"The median construction time for reactors in the US built since 1970 is 9 yr."

"For CSP, the construction time is similar to that of a wind farm. For example, Nevada Solar One required about 1.5 yr for construction. Similarly, an ethanol refinery requires about 1.5 yr to construct. We assume a range in both cases of 1–2 yr. We also assume the development time is the same as that for a wind farm, 1–3 yr. Thus, the overall planning-to-operation time for a CSP plant or ethanol refinery is 2–5 yr. We assume the same time range for tidal, wave, and solar-PV power plants."

www.rsc.org/delivery/_...

Wind power maybe should be given more credit for it's low cost and low environmental impact.

"Wind power's ecological footprint is so small — a million times smaller than ethanol's — that if all the cars driven in the United States were battery-electric, they could be fueled by wind turbines whose total land footprint, not counting spacing in between, takes up less than 1.2 square miles, Stanford University environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson found."

"To fuel the same number of battery-electric vehicles with cellulose ethanol would require an amount of land equivalent to eight Californias – literally a million times more land and equivalent to the amount of land harvested in the U.S. in 2003."

solveclimate.com/blog/...

"Currently, wind power – at 7 cents per kilowatt hour – is half as expensive as new nuclear power, which costs 14 to 15 cents per kilowatt hour. The cost of nuclear power continues to increase while solar electricity -- currently at around 20 cents per kilowatt hour dramatically decreasing; Dr. Arjun Makhijani of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) predicts that in a few years, solar and uranium electricity will cost the same amount per kilowatt hour.13 Lovins calculates that efficiency is seven to ten times more cost effective than nuclear power at reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

www.beyondnuclear.org/

We are often told that we should look to France as an example of the success of nuclear power.

"France's decision to reprocess reactor fuel has contaminated the seas as far as the Artic Circle and may have led to leukemia clusters near the reprocessing plant. Its decision to try breeder reactors was an expensive failure. Its plutonium fuel program has not reduced its surplus stockpile of plutonium which is calculated at greater than 80 metric tons sitting in tens of thousands of vulnerable containers and with no disposal option. France has no radioactive waste repository."

"In the summer of 2008, France experienced a cascade of accidents at its nuclear facilities. While leaks and spills, including uranium that contaminated groundwater, caused a ban on drinking and bathing and local vintners to change the labels on their bottles, Areva downplayed the gravity of the releases. But the black summer of radioactive leaks and spills shed doubt on the nuclear industry's - and in particular Areva's - ability to uphold fundamental safety standards according to an article in the International Herald Tribune."

"A new video - Everything you always wanted to know about nuclear power...but were afraid to ask - found on the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility Web site, debunks various nuclear myths including the notion that France "recycles" its radioactive waste. "
view here:
www.everythingnuclear....

"Read here about Areva's 40-year uranium mining track record in the Niger and support the collective"Areva Shall Not Make the Law in Niger" of which Beyond Nuclear is a member."
www.beyondnuclear.org/...

Survey Says Alt Energy to Outperform Market, Storage Stocks to Lead

toobad41

I don't think others need me to point out how absurd your statement is. You just go on believing that solar and wind are just pie and the sky while the world leaves you behind.

Wind power in the U.S. grew by 8 GW last year with 4 GW just in the last three months.
U.S. wind power capacity grew to over 25 GW last year for a 50% growth rate. Wind can now power over 7 million homes.

Wind now employs 85,000 people with year over year growth of 70%. These rates of growth will accelerate in the coming years.

I think the media underplays renewable energy and repeats half truths that are fed to it by the massive propaganda campaign funded by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.
They continually repeat statements like that renewable energy needs subsidies to compete, or that it's too intermittent, forgettting or not knowing that fossil fuels are more heavily subsidized.
You're right, they look for stories, stories of controversy, whether such controversy is real or not, like over global warming science.

Charles

Yes we need the technology to balance the grid but we have a ways to go before that's a big problem. According to John Peterson, who writes about energy storage here, Denmark is now having an issue with this, but they have 20% wind power. We only have 2% of capacity.
It is much less an issue with solar, since solar naturally puts out the most energy when demand it highest. And solar thermal with heat storage doesn't have any issue with energy storage as it has it's own storage and its much much cheaper to store heat than electricity.

Ferdinand
Coal is dead. Gebby is right. So called "clean coal" will be too expensive to compete with solar and wind. And the technology is at least a decade away. In ten years or less, solar thermal will be providing base load power at 5-8 cents/kWh. Coal with CCS technology will be at least 15 cents/kWh.
Wind is already much cheaper than that.

Alternative Energy Industry Outlook

The story about solar cells needing to be recycled was mostly pointing out that the computer and semiconductor industries were slow to deal with similar issues, and the suggestion was that the solar industry not make the same mistake, and should nip the problem in the bud by setting up programs for recycling now.
Not a game stopper or huge problem.

As far as the topic of land for wind and solar, I think this is a red herring. For example, the land used for crops for biofuel can produce something like 10,000 to 18,000 miles per acre of fuel.
Wind can produce 180,000 miles per acre of electricity assuming electric cars or plug ins. Solar can produce 2 million miles per acre.
Wind turbine farms don't actually use most of the land where they are sited. They need to be spread out so each turbine has clean air flow. I think the numbers I saw was about 2.5% of the land they are sited on. This means they can coexist with agriculture.
Large Solar thermal projects are more densely packed on the land than wind, which partially explains why solar can produce so much per acre. The huge tracts of land needed have to be put in perspective. It's said that these plants could power the whole country, using less land than now used for coal mining and coal power plants. And look what coal does to the land.

Study Shows Ethanol Energy Efficiency Is Growing

My source for the $84 billion in oil subsidies and tax credits comes from www.setamericafree.org...

The reason these numbers are not well known is that it takes a Sherlock Holmes to uncover all the tax credits and subsidies that oil and gas have received over so many years, often tucked into bills as earmarks.
I did make a mistake about getting rid of subsidies. I wasn't so much thinking about ethanol. It was just my reaction to the often heard complaints that say "oh but solar and wind can't survive without subsidies". So, I mispoke. I'm not a big advocate of ethanol unless it proves to be economical and environmentally makes sense.

Study Shows Ethanol Energy Efficiency Is Growing

Calls to get rid of subsidies for renewable energy are rediculous when we are giving $84 billion annually in tax credits and subsidies to big oil. Nuclear and coal are also heavily subsidized.

Nuclear power is the worst choice. Please read the pdf The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy. Please read what cleanwisconsin.org has to say about nuclear power. It as many problems than oil has. In a dangerous world with terrorists and rogue nations, the last thing we need is to build thousands of nuclear power plants all over the world, further spreading the availability of fissionable material. Look at the angst over Iran's pursuit of supposedly peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Argonne national labs says that an airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn't compromised. Think the twin towers was bad?
Nuclear power plants need billions of gallons of water each to cool. Each reactor will cost over $500 billion to clean up and dismantle when it is used up. Each reactor's share of Yucca mountain storage is $200 million.
The entire process of aquiring uranium has a huge carbon footprint and is generally very dirty. Nuclear power takes much longer to get up and running than solar and wind. Nuclear plants cost three times as much to build per kilowatt than wind farms. If you read the proposals by T Boone Pickens and setamericafree.org and the proposal published in Scientific American called A Solar Grand Plan, you will see that we could easily have 80% of our grid powered by solar and wind by 2050.
We are being dis-informed about the potential of these renewable sources. Don't believe the lies.

Majority of Americans Support Ethanol

Some one mentioned mandating flex fuels.
What would have a bigger positive impact, would be mandating plug in hybrid cars. They don't have the range limitation of an all electric, so people would buy them.
The average American driver would get 100mpg overall, since they would do all or nearly all their local driving, such as commuting, on battery power. 40-60 miles per day. Most people would end up doing 60% of their driving on battery power. To learn more, see. www.pluginpartners.org/

Majority of Americans Support Ethanol

paulk8756
You don't get it. It is the current economic policies and the current energy policies, namely, addiction to oil $$, which are devestating the economy. Oil is killing our economy. The annual hidden costs of oil are, by one estimate, over $800 billion just in the U.S. This year, it's adding close to that amount to our trade deficit. At $60 bbl oil, it was over $300 billion. Add wars in the mideast, which are obviously about oil, to a large extent. Our annual military costs of protecting oil shipments are $100 billion, war or not. And it is destroying our ecosystems, which is in fact much more important than the economic dangers.


A recent scientific study estimates that we have lost 25% of our biodiversity in 35 years. That would be alarming if it was 1% of biodiverstiy in 350 years. Every ecosytem on earth is in danger. Do you not understand that there is no issue as important to man's well being and survival? Do you not understand that we are an interdependent part of the general ecosystem? Without a healthy environment, we are doomed. Period.

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?