Somehow, 80% of renewable energy being good ol’ wood-burning doesn’t sound very “renewable” with the green-energy connotation the word has.
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Presuming that the wood is acquired from new-growth stocks that are properly husbanded, it’s the very definition of carbon neutral.
…except that the fuel used in planting, tending, harvesting, processing and sizing, transportation, stockout, reclaim, etc. quickly pushes them to be carbon-positive. If you include the impact of nitrogen in fertilizer (specifically, N2O) then the amount of carbon neutrality is not very attractive. In the studies I have been involved with I’ve been somewhat aghast at seeing “real” carbon neutrality numbers of as low as 25%, and in some cases 5-10%. I’ve even seen biomass projects where the carbon neutrality was -10%, which means it was worse off for the environment in every way from a GHG emissions standpoint. To quote Dean Martin, “like the fella once said, ain’t that a kick in the head?”
nods I was under the impression that there were biofuel sources that were net carbon sinks–is that not the case?
In considering the cycle, organic matter takes up carbon and hydrogen and other things to make a biofuel. Now some of the energy in the plant is from hydrogen bonds, but the rest is from carbon. There are fuels which can be net carbon sinks, but they’re difficult to find once you start adding up all the external factors. And they do add up pretty quickly. To be a net carbon sink, the hydrogen energy has to cover all of the energy needed to make the fuel (otherwise, you’re having to in effect use some carbon to cover the production energy). IIRC biodiesel may come close to being a net carbon sink, or else is a net carbon sink.
Of course the term net carbon sink is a misnomer by one measure - if you always burn as much carbon as is taken from the environment, you’re just moving carbon from one place to another. To truly “sink” it you need to remove it from the cycle, such as via carbonization, burial, transformation into something solid, etc.
The Union of Concerned Scientists have a nice page covering how biomass use can be beneficial or harmful depending on the specifics.
One point I have heard made is that switchgrass grown in marginal land leaves more in the ground than is harvested (albeit that eventually degrades too). Another point is that at least hypothetically it can be co-fired and coupled with carbon capture - so long as cost is no object. Another concept I have heard of but do not have enough knowledge about to comment too much on is a techinque aimed for the developing world of creating biochar.
The problem with switchgrass and other forms of cellulosic ethanol is that it takes a lot of energy to break down the cellulose, making it an inefficient energy source.
It’s not necessarily an insurmountable hurdle. At least one company is using genetic engineering to create a form of grass that uses sunlight to grow, then when it matures it changes and uses sunlight to break itself down into a form that is much less energy intensive to ‘harvest’ into ethanol.
I think there may be a future in ocean harvesting of biomass. Experiments with seeding algae blooms have been mixed, but if you can get that working you can create a hell of a lot of biomass. A single large algae bloom can contain as much carbon as the U.S. produces in several months. Of course, you still have the problem of the energy required to collect it and convert it into usable fuel. But another possibility might be to figure out how to increase the efficiency of sequestration - a certain percentage of the carbon in a bloom winds up sequestered in the ocean as calcium deposits, reefs, or clathrates. If that process could be tweaked even slightly to improve sequestration rates, it could be a big deal. A LOT of carbon moves through algae lifecycles.
The conversation here however is over using biomass for electricity generation, not to produce biofuel. Co-firing, etc. In terms of cellulosic ethanol btw there also is some cool work being done growing the enzymes to breakdown the cellulose in the plant needing just to be activated after harvest.
Oh, here is a linkee thing.
Yeah, definitely cool stuff.
I do think we’ll get breakthroughs in energy that will help us get off of fossil fuels in a cost-effective way. We just have to be patient and wait for the market to do its thing. I agree with you that carbon taxes would help the solutions along, but I don’t think they’re feasible in this environment, and finding the proper Pigouvian price for them is not an easy task.
But from where does that hope derive? People and bloggers can post Googled link after link, post study X by University A, and study Y by Government B, etc. Meanwhile, when we crunch the numbers on any new generation, without a carbon tax or other GHG emissions cost application, nothing, repeat, nothing competes against coal in the US, and most of the world. While new coal in the US is sort of moribund, I’m so busy working on plans for new coal power plants in Asia and Southeast Asia that I’m turning down work and working paid overtime (which for typically takes an act of God to get). For a 4 GW power plant block planned in one SE Asian country, no other fuel source came close to coal for affordability, even when we escalated out 50 years. As in, O&M costs of 61% the next-most expensive technology. The bank is saying “let’s see…the lowest capital cost, the least technology risk, no import restrictions, the least volatility in fuel supply, and the lowest O&M cost…why would we look at anything else?”
And carbon capture looks more and more like a pipe dream. I’ve been “involved” with several small projects, including that one which shall not be named, and I’m not seeing how it will ever be more than a curiosity. Maybe in 30 years a dozen units will have it in the US - meanwhile, the other 500 or so remaining won’t.
I think we’re going to be doomed. The average American is a selfish, spoiled, opposition-defiant ignoramus who wants cheap gas, giant SUVs, McMansions, mountains of disposable petrochemical-derived crap to go into the landfills as fast as they can use it, and they got a right to chicken done right, by the Baby Jesus. NO Party has the political will or strength to make the real change needed on energy and the environment. Individuals can scream bloody murder about how we’re heading for a crunch, and the rest of the US will be voting for whoever allows them to fill up their Chevy Subhuman for less than $50 a tank.
And the rest of the world is about as bad, barring a country here or there. So China is adding tons of windpower - big deal, when they finish getting that low-hanging fruit, the answer will have to be nuclear or coal. I’ve got GW after GW of coal projects to review at work right now. There’s a push within China to open up whole new fields of formerly “unrecoverable” coal via advanced cleaning methods and by using new mining techniques. India? Betting the farm on coal and absolutely unashamed of it. Africa gives me some hope, however; it has some intriguing possibilities for biomass and renewables for some large parts of it. I recently peer-reviewed a document put together by the U.N. which had some very intriguing things to say about Africa leading the way in some biomass rollout. I can’t vouch for everything they say, but what I could check on with my contacts over there seemed reasonable. And I’ve already worked on a major biomass project in Africa, which although it was canceled (due to German banks being unhappy about bailing out the PIGS…don’t ask), it showed that there was a major potential to supply one entire country with nearly 85% of its electricity with new, sustainable biomass. I wish I’d been able to move that project forward; it would have been cool.
Yeah these are opinion and anecdote. They’re not worth much, other than to give some background for why my hopeful optimism about renewable energy is slipping away. I’ve been in this business too long.
I have (limited) confidence that breakthroughs will happen because there are currently a large number of potential technologies that could eventually get us onto a more renewable energy mix. Most of these lines of research will fail to produce competitive commercial products, but I have hopes that something will break through.
In the solar field there is thin film solar, nanotube solar and nanotube batteries, a number of promising solar-thermal experiments, and efficiency gains in current solar technologies. There are genetic experiments with bugs that sequester carbon or break down cellulosic fiber. There’s ocean thermal, ocean wave power, underwater current turbines, and other experimental forms of energy. There are big investments being made in new types of nuclear fusion power.
Hyperion’s sealed nuclear thermal generators are very exciting, and are already in production. They have hundreds of orders for them. These things provide high quality, high density power 24/7.
On the infrastructure side, we’re coming up with better conductors and better batteries. Putting all this together could result in a tipping point for oil at least - especially if oil continues to increase in price.
I agree about coal - It’s so cheap and so plentiful that it’s hard to see it going away any time soon. Carbon capture is unworkable. So I don’t see coal going away or even significantly reducing its share of grid power. But I think it’s possible that more and more people will go partially ‘off-grid’, lowering the demand for coal. If we get cheap thin film solar that can be easily applied to a substrate that makes it strong and reliable, I can imagine solar shingles, solar house siding, solar medians on roads powering the road signals, etc. I could imagine windows that have solar blinds - pull the blinds down, and your windows become power generators. If solar material can be made at extremely low cost, we could see a lot of surface area being covered with it. Perhaps with technologies like that we’ll a major trend towards distributed power generation which will seriously reduce the need for more grid power.
I don’t know what the mix will be in the future, and I agree that it’s a daunting challenge - it’s hard to compete with the energy density of fossil fuels. But I also know there is big demand for alternatives and there is a huge and growing industry working feverishly to find solutions.
The only technological breakthrough I hold out any hope for is some kind of cheap solar electricity, either thin-film photovoltaic or thin film nantenna technology. We need to be able to print off gigawatts of solar film at fractions of a dollar per peak-watt of generation. It will probably come, but when?
Bug that sequester carbon (dioxide) are basically solar biomass - you need to put energy in to bind carbon dioxide into compounds, and that energy comes from photosynthesis.
I’m a big fan of ocean thermal, doubtful about wave, very doubtful about fusion in the near term. We need a viable alternative to building coal plants yesterday.
I don’t know if Hyperion will get licensed after Fukushima. It’s an interesting idea but I have a LOT of questions - is it passively safe? What happens if there’s a cooling failure or an internal equivalent of “plant blackout?” How many layers of defense are there in an emergency - proper ones, not just time-buying ones? If it self-scrams, how does it dump its decay heat?
Hyperion claims they have “hundreds” of orders? As in actual people with banker’s operating lines of credit have put down a deposit or signed a contract? And they’ve done all the pre-engineering, siting, permitting, etc. needed? Because an “order” doesn’t exist unless all those things are done. The last I heard they were still working on that demonstration site down South, and that no units were even close to shipping.
OK, I did some Gooooooogling, and found Bloomberg saying:
Quite honestly, that’s bullshit. I sincerely doubt a “purchase commitment” actually exists as I know a “purchase commitment” in the power industry. There is so much involved in even siting a gas turbine…oh shoot, I don’t have time to go through it. Suffice to say it can be reported all over that they have more than 150 purchase commitments if that makes the shareholders happy, and I won’t hold my breath.
Plus, we’re talking about what, 25MW electric from the plant? Even 200 orders is about 5,000 MW, which from what I’m reading online might not even be possible to do them all until 2020 or much later. That’s tiny compared to the growing energy demand.
And I still don’t think they have the security issue fully tackled. IIRC the NRC chief said that they were not going to give any breaks to Hyperion for being small, and that it would need the full-scale nuclear permitting process. They have a price tag of what, $25 to $50M depending on the design? I’ve known plants that almost hit that low-end just on the permitting, pre-engineering, feasibility studies, PUC reports, and legal battles.
And yes, the popular press, even the scientific press often reports “imminent breakthroughs” with breathless enthusiasm. I’ve not only been following the “imminent breakthroughs” for decades, I’ve been mis-quoted in the press myself. I know how the system works, and nowadays the quality of the research in the things which pop up in my Google alerts and even my $$$ paid subscriptions to daily journals is crap. Company A or University B reports “we did this with solar cells; cheap, limitless power is around the bend!” and a journalism major who received a C- in “Physics for Poets” (yes, an actual course journalists took at my University) writes it up as gospel. What I see is “what are the banks willing to back? What are people willing to sign actual contracts on? What are companies telling me ‘yes, we can build that?’” And sadly, very sadly, despite some promise through the 2002-2008 era, all I’m seeing is low-risk, tried-and-true, same-old, same-old, with that ever-present hobgoblin of “da economy” to blame.
Truth is the energy crisis and environmental crisis will probably solve themselves. We are above carrying capacity. Likely will readjust. Not saying the end is soon, or anything like that. It is a harsh reality. We currently cannot support the population we have without the consumption of resources.
We can delay the inevitable. How long can we really make it though. Burning is easy. If im cold, im going to burn a tree, not freeze to death. Such is the nature of the human condition. With scarce resources and easy ability to not “do the right thing” we will not do the right thing.
The only way that wind power or solar or gasification or nuclear energy will really take off is by necessity. When one resource is used up or becomes scarce (read expensive) other methods which require more work will become more feasible.
Sure, its great to say we should eat organic and all that, but the truth is, without genetically modified food 1/3 of the worlds population would starve.
Just because the world has so many odd billions living on it right now doesn’t mean it can support such a population at a steady state. Population must level off, and it will do so. When it does, it will be a time in which there is much more conflict and death. Famine, war and the whole like. If we make a billion babies a year, if the population is to stay the same, that means a billion must die. That means more war, more disease, more food shortage caused death. Maybe less births would help, but the math of it sucks.
I’m not saying I want it to happen, just saying that for the most part there is little that we can do. It will happen whether we use lightbulbs that are energy star approved or not.
Thought I’d bump this with another update on what the effects will be of Germany’s moving off of nuclear.
DSeid, are you imagining any aggressive move towards nuclear wouldn’t be fiercely and gluttonously dependent on subsidies, tax-breaks, loan guarantees, liability exclusions and gods knows what else to the tune of 100s of billions of dollars, and eventually trillions?
Please. Start slashing nuke’s budget, reflect a bit, and get back to us.
My positions have already been articulated. In this post I am not imagining anything. I am merely passing on information from the real world. In the real world Germany’s decision to move away from nuclear is resulting in significantly more CO2 emissions. That is just the reality, for whatever reasons.
Interpret that how you will. Place importance on those emissions or do not. Blame short sighted politicians or whatever. But that still is the result, in the real world.
http://www.alternet.org/story/150546/obama_team_is_oddly_quiet_about_evidence_that_renewable_energy_beats_nuclear_in_job_creation?akid=6817.52542.QwualV&rd=1&t=2
Renewable energy creates more jobs than nuke. Nuke needs the government to back the plants since while they are “perfectly safe”, no insurance company will sell them insurance. Therefore the tax payers have to do it.