nakedjaybird

The Truth About Fossil Fuels and Renewable Energy (Part II)

Joe et.al: normally, one thinks and writes according to his worldview.

So, instead of arguing and debating the use of fossil fuels any longer, be they nat gas, coal, oil, shale, sands, etc., let's just explore, dig, process and burn all of them until they no longer exist - then we don't have to discuss them any longer - and tell China and India and the rest of the world the same thing.

Problem solved!!!

Smart Grid: Powering Us Out of Recession

Mark and Pacman: Mark first: the utility that lost $640,000 of revenue during the 8 hour outage PLUS $64,000 of labor cost is a $700,000 round trip, NOT YOUR $6.4 MILLION. Your aritematic is illogical.

The driver(s) for the smart grid is not only first preventing power plant outages where and whenever the cause is downstream of the power plant; but, secondly preventing user downtime while a generating source is down, which provides a double whammy revenue increase for the utilities that continue to provide elsewhere the lost power AND, of course, to the end user that doesn't experience the shutdown (in your case, some other utility gains $640,000 of revenue; which should be a real driver for utilities to upgrade, while endusers lose nothing with no interruptions, being a good secondary causes to upgrade).

pacman - most nuc plants in operation are forever being upgraded and many are obtaining 60 year extentions to 40 year liacenses.

As for uranium shortages, most "spent" fuel in storage remains to be about 80% "unspent". Commedrcial nuclear fuel is "retired" at about the 20% burnup level. So, all the spent fuel storage throughout the US is a uranium gold mine, so to speak.

I wonder how many lives would have been lost over the years due to severe winters and hot summers had we not had nuclear power? Your arguments suck.

Italy Joins the Nuclear Thaw

Fred - now you have me worried. Which side of the coin are you on??

Italy Joins the Nuclear Thaw

Aqua - your Scientific American article referenced did not include the cost of exploration and drilling for the geothermal sources, nor operating and mainteneace costs w.r.t. length of life (1/2 that for coal, as stated), so the total capital cost and/or fanancing must be doubled at a minimum to compare to coal, and then you have to take the 1.9 cents/kwh subsidy out.

After all that, then one must consider how the capital equipment/construction market will price their capital/services to the ultimate buyer/operator for the equivalent of 40 nuclear power plants that operate 60-80% of the time while contending with very dirty corroded pipes, etc. to provide power at cost plus a little reasonable profit to the ultimate energy user.

I'm not worried about cooling the earth.

I am worried about smart madison avenue marketing pricing geothermal generating facilities such that ultimately there will be no favorable ecconomic benefit for the final power producer to provide electricity to the final user at a price below what can be provided from coal, oil, gas, nuclear, solar PV, wind, etc.

Why? Because they are in cahoots (called collusion) to survive, maximize their margins and keep a relatively equivalent energy price based on BTU content to the final market user.

That's one reason electric transportation has not beaten fossil fuel transportation for 40 years. We are still waiting for the two energy cost lines to cross and those with the power are continuing to prevent that from happening (in the US).

To actually lower their prices of capital and also provide means to provide cheap power to the final user would cause "unfair" competition, and someone would have to go out of business: like coal, oil, and gas as it costs them more and more to explore, dig, drill, or mine their energy source, process, transport, reclemate, reduced subsidies for R&D, depletion, etc., etc.

My goodness: solar PV with no moving parts, no energy cost and avaiable forever, simple in not near zero maintenance, and on and on..... that with some energy storage capability for production/load leveling is a no brainer.

I'd go for geothermal near Yellowstone. Where it's at the surface. And when you have to explore and drill; I'd go solar and wind. As we entered exploration and drilling time is the time when we should have stopped focusing on oil and gas, not to mention when we could no longer put coal in a bucket at the surface.

We have very workable alternatives. Even growing wood. Or growing biofuels. Very replaceable. But we have to get rid of ultimate market pricing and do real cost pricing. Including life-time cost analysis. And yes, some buggy whips are going to go out of business. That's capitalism. And yes, WITHOUT GREED.

Italy Joins the Nuclear Thaw

aquaculture - geothermal is cheaper than coal until it is market priced!

Italy Joins the Nuclear Thaw

PS - Fred: to be clear, I hate regulation; but I hate legalized theft more.

Italy Joins the Nuclear Thaw

Well done Fred.

Two points:

1) market-based pricing may seem fair, but it can be very dishonest and play right into the hands of the greedy-powerful to decieve and wrongfully steal, legally.

Cost-based pricing, which normally determines whether or not to be in a business, goes against the grain of economists and Main Street generally, and Wall Street and Madison Avenue for sure, along with the normal, lost, fallen human being; it is no longer a barter situation of one man's days work traded for another. Can you imagine how many YEARS a plumber would have to work for any wall street player for one HOURS worth of financial advice?? Stupid.

Cost-based pricing is the only legitiment basis for real competition. Market-based pricing to assess your competitive position is eventually foolishness.

Market-based pricing is generally greed-based legalized theft by those that have the power to pull it off.

Hence, also, your faulty argument about the BTU content equivalent price of gas to oil, regardless of it's source, availability, or ease of availability, etc.

Maybe gas or any energy should not be based on the value of it's BTU content, but the cost to provide it to customers plus a reasonable profit to stay in business, which does not have to be regulated as long as it's reasonable and is not theft or rape, and the honest-abe business(man) is also satisfied about it's fair practices. This sounds too polyanna and simplistic and naive, right?

Well, free solar and wind energy will eventually have a problem competing because the market will not permit the generating equipment be priced for installations based on cost of generation, especially with fuel costs at zero!! The greedy businessmen selling generating equipment will sell their equipment based on market priced energy. Hence, the price of capital remains a barrier to entry. Sad? Greedy? Depends on which side of the coin you represent. You can talk about Adam Smith, free-enterprise, real capitalism, etc., or you can talk about greed, punishing power, etc., (and then ultimately, regulation!)

Sadly, hydroelectric power produced at a couple tenths of a cent/kwh is sold at a punishing public-raping price of 7 cents/kwh. Deregulated/"Regulated... legalized theft!!

2)And that introduces the 2nd point: Regulation and/or Deregulation.

ATT was broken-up; a regulated monopoly guaranteed a 10% profit; but they kept adding so much unecessary cost to their basis [without any real competition], that they finally had to be destroyed due to poor regulation; yes, poor regulation. Dysfunctional. And there was also viable competition as proven elsewhere. Now, look how the ATT pieces regrouped after they shed the proven-without-any-dou... cost elements.

Deregulation at it's best is real competition.

Regulation at it's best is where there should not be unfair practices due to lack of competition or no desire or need for competion.

Today, some deregulation is working because real regulation is dysfuntional. We do not have clear thinking regulators. And much deregulation is really not working because of legalized theft.

What we have is collusion right before our eyes. And your BTU based energy pricing is exactly that: COLLUSION. So is the mythical practice of "you have to pay a lot to get the best".

Partial deregulation has provided benefit to consumers in some industries (Regulation and/or Deregulation should always be based on consumer benefit, not just the performance of the entity). It seemed to work w.r.t. the airlines, which is not a basic need and therefore competition is effective. Banks???? Look what happended.

For energy, a basic need, deregulation of utilities (which were created for providing power to it's local resisdents, and initially, by the local residents), seems foolish. As does market based pricing of energy.

Right-thinking, clear-headed regulation is a necessity, for the benefit of the consumer; greedy, powerful, capitalistic business be damned. And of course I am not talking about welfare. Just basic, unencoumbered, cost-based pricing for basic needs.

Yes, that wipes out all high and excessive CEO pay, bonuses, parachutes, stadium seats, counntryclub memberships, any "marketing" expenses (why are they necessary if the people created the entity for their own use, there is no competition required or called for, and certainly no selling of anything due.

And yes, regulation should wipe out market-based pricing of energy for the benefit of the people.