Anti-Fossil Fuel, Anti-Nuke People: What's the Solution to Our Energy Problem

Great Debates
81

So you don’t believe industries have fought innovation in the past to protect their own industries? If you do not know this about history there’s really nothing else I have to say.

Wow, you sure planted a smoking crater where that straw man used to stand. Darn. I wish I had been standing at least close enough to see the fireworks.

Ok and how much will be required to build the same amount of TW-equivalent in coal or nuclear power plants?

BTW, solar energy, to date, has been doubling in performance every year, creating its own version of Moore’s Law:
http://www.wfs.org/content/smaller-faster-cheaper-solar-powers-moores-law

As for the bases on the moon thing, that didn’t happen because we didn’t have the will.

82

If anything the opposite conspiracy theory seems more believable. That big green energy corporations engineered the Japanese nuclear melt down for their own profit. Shares of Vestas which were on a downward spiral until the nuke meltdown, did a complete turnaround because of the incident, and have since risen more than 30%. And in fact, all in all, the meltdown has been very positive for the Danish economy which has many green tech companies. Perhaps an investigation into the whereabouts of Danish special forces around the date of the quake would be in order.

83

WAM, I entirely support replacing the current nuclear stock with new nuclear as it ages out. My point has been that “new nuclear” will probably barely be able to keep up with that. I have stated explicitly that we handicap ourselves significantly if we do not do that.

Yes, if we do not build enough to replace aging plants then fossil fuel ones will increase. Initially those will be natural gas plants but that just kicks the can down the road a few more decades.

matt, the referenced DOE report is on line. Some interesting items:

The whole report makes an interesting read but that quote reveals some cherry picking bias by the author.

84

Oddly enough this is exactly where the buggy whip argument has merit. Fossil fuels are today’s buggy whip industry. Solar and renewable energy is the technology of tomorrow. As in tomorrow morning, practically speaking. Also look up “innovation inertia” and “entrenched industry” before you continue to make arguments like this.

However what I am about to tell you, I doubt will get much attention, because it is so fundamental to why you are so incredibly wrong here.

Essentially, these big fossil fuel corporations need to make a profit. When you have them out drilling for oil and getting Government subsidies to sell it at a huge markup to American drivers, there is a lot of profit there.

Still with me? Ok.

Now when you put solar on people’s roofs and companies like Toyota put out Priuses or companies like Tesla Motors puts out electric SUVs, this dramatically lowers the fossil fuel industry’s profits.

PREPOSTEROUS!!! Eh, nope. Because you cannot charge me for my use of the sun’s energy. Sunlight is free, and solar panels make free sunlight into free electricity. For a one-time charge of $X0,000 I get my electricity for free. And if I have an electric car, for which I paid a one-time charge of $Y0,000, I am no longer buying as much gasoline or any at all; and the electric utility company is making a mere pittance compared to what it was making before.

And solar panels double in efficiency every 2 years. This means it’s getting cheaper per kilowatt hour, and cheaper to produce.

Plus we now have technology to collect solar energy at night, and to store it well into the night.

So, back to your original argument: these big fossil fuel corporations fight the mass-adoption of solar energy and electric vehicles with their pro-fossil fuel propaganda because the mass-adoption of solar energy and electric vehicles would dramatically reduce profits for everyone, while practically securing America’s energy security into perpetuity.

Solar energy and electric cars almost eliminates the rule of scarcity across the energy equation, although you will pay a decreasingly hefty one-time cost to switch to solar power and electric cars.

I paid well over $30,000 for my solar setup, and quite a chunk for my 1999 RAV4-EV, which I am itching to replace with the upcoming Tesla model. I can tell you that my contribution to fossil fuel industry profits is quite NIL, except for my Chevy Equinox which is the most fuel efficient SUV currently in production (moreso than the Highlander Hybrid or the Escape Hybrid).

85

I kind of skimmed this thread, but I did not see anyone mention the distribution issues associated with wind power. The wind resources are frequently located in remote areas which means lots of new power lines have to be built increasing cost and giving folks another thing to be all NIMBY about. People want power lines near their homes about as much as they want nuclear power plants. Having to fight the PR and legal battles makes the cost of wind power even higher. I am not as familiar with solar power, but I expect some of the same issues would be present.

The end result is that I do not think you can have a meaningful discussion of the future of power without considering distribution issues as well.

86

Transmission has always been a part of the discussion. Don’t we all agree we’re going to have to spend a good chuck of change upgrading our power grid so it’s compatible with modern energy production?

Nuclear faces all the same distribution issues I think, and plugging a 5MW wind turbine into the grid is easier than plugging a 1000MW nuke plant into the grid, especially when you’re talking about the developing world that still has a lot of people without an electricity grid at all.

87

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Transmission has always been a part of the discussion. Don’t we all agree we’re going to have to spend a good chuck of change upgrading our power grid so it’s compatible with modern energy production?
[/QUOTE]

Actually, it’s usually glossed over (as it was here). To get power from remote locations back to the grid requires not only large investment but it’s going to necessitate a lot of loss if the location is really remote. That’s part of the problem with some of the west Texas wind plants…they are really remote. Putting wind mills out to sea (far enough out to catch the wind and not be a eye sore to the NIMBY crowd) is going to increase the problem.

Upgrading the grid in the way you seem to be implying would be even more money, of course, since currently the grid isn’t designed to store energy, merely balance load. It’s also got a lot of inherent loss in it, something that won’t be easy or cheap to ‘fix’.

Not unless you were planning to put your 1000 MW nuclear plant out in the middle of no where with no current grid access. Generally, one of the things you look at when building a conventional power plant (nuclear or other) is what it’s access to the grid is.

-XT

88

NIMBYism. It sucks, but it’s a fact of life. Last night I was reading about the pathetic state of wind power in good ol’ Wisconsin. Man, they’ve got some nut jobs in power there.

There was one article talking about this old coot living in the country near a wind turbine and this guy was rattling off every singe possible medical condition and symptom you could ever think up. His big thing was “shadowing” from the turbine scaring his chickens and driving him to the brink of insanity. Shadows scare chickens and then they all decide to eat their own eggs or something.

Of course, towards the end of the article it turns out this guy has been trying to get the wind company to buy him out the whole time. He lives on cheap land in a ramshackle old house raising chickens so of course the wants to get bought out for a “fair price.” Even before the wind turbine was built he couldn’t have given away his crap piece of land.

Texas has to deal with this in places. In Texas, if you’re a farmer or rancher, the wind company will lease the land from you which can easily mean thousands of dollars per year, which is far more than they were getting off their cattle or whatnot.

So, the neighbors see George making $3k/month off that wind turbine, and they aren’t getting any. All of a sudden the neighbors start developing mental and physical health problems. The ranchers who are getting paid, run out to their wind turbine every night and give it a great big hug and kiss. Funny how that works.

89

You mean other than cost and efficiency, right?

90

The concept that we have to have huge plants in remote locations is a flawed and obsolete model.

As I posted in the PIT, a proper method of energy generation can be a home or office building at a time. There are lots of people off the grid. There are many corporations that are slashing power use and replacing it with solar and wind. The Empire State Bldg. will be run 100 percent on wind power.
They do not rely on the old technology of coal ans nuclear. They embraced the future.

91

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
The concept that we have to have huge plants in remote locations is a flawed and obsolete model.
[/QUOTE]

So, ‘obsolete model’ means ‘economically cost effective’? :stuck_out_tongue: You do realize that trying to build a distributed power generation system costs a lot more than building a centralized one, right? What would it cost (leaving aside the materials you’d need) to put a wind turbine or solar panel on, say, 1/10th of the buildings in the US? How many wind turbines or solar panels would that be? There are 10’s or 100’s of millions of buildings in the US…and my own solar panels (which doesn’t even cover 20% of my needs btw, though gives me some good tax credits) costs $12k…USED…and I installed them myself, with the help of my dad and a EE friend of mine. Do…the…math…

Define ‘lots of people’. What standard of living are they getting ‘off the grid’? The one’s I know (and I know a few) lead very minimalist lifestyles (and are, frankly, a bit strange). Not something the average American (or European for that matter) is going to be happy with.

You said that in the Pit but have yet to provide a cite to put the statement in context. What will it cost? How long will it take to implement? What are it’s backups? How much for maintenance. And, the thing is, even if all is true and all exactly as you stated, you have to realize that not every place has the exact conditions that the Empire State Building has…right?

-XT

92

The building is going to buy power from a company that uses wind power to generate electricity. The building is not installing windmills or anything.

If this link is to be believed (I cannot access his cite) the Empire State building has a peak power draw of about 10 MW and they are trying to lower that down to about 6.2MW.

93

(missed edit window and wanted to add)

So, that would be about three 2.5MW turbines dedicated to the Empire State building (assuming they run at peak power all the time which we know they don’t).

There are around 5,500 highrise buildings in New York. Of course most are not as big as the Empire State building but if we only average 0.25 wind turbines per building that is 1,375 wind turbines for New York City alone (and we have not even counted residential or industry yet). How big is an average wind farm? 300 turbines maybe?

Somehow betting gonzo will not see the glaring problem.

94

Bit different than what he claimed, since he was saying that centralized power was out of date. :stuck_out_tongue: He was implying that they would build the things on the building itself, since his model seems to be a highly distributed one where every building would have the wind/solar it needs to be self sufficient…or something. That’s why it’s nice to see some context on what’s actually being proposed. Thanks for the cite!

Yeah, a 1,375 turbine wind farm would be the largest in the world to date…yet we’d need literally 10’s of thousands of plants that big just to get us to where nuclear is today. And that’s if they are running at peak efficiency all the time, which somehow seems unlikely to me.

-XT

95

From the article:

Wow, haven’t some of us been talking about efficiency, and getting blown off like it’s meaningless and “sure, if you like planet of the apes.”

For $20 million, you reduce energy use by 38 percent and save $4.4 million/year. It pays for itself in 4 and a half years. Since nuke is 20% of our electricity, it wipes out the need for nuke, and then takes another big chunk out of coal.

Sweet!

96

You are assuming that such efficiencies can be achieved everywhere. The Empire State Building was built in 1930. I imagine they had room for improvement. Willing to bet modern skyscrapers are built with an eye towards energy efficiency from the get-go.

And I have seen no one blow off working towards being more energy efficient. It is a great idea. It’s not going to get you close to where you want though in getting rid of nuclear energy short of some fantasy of an idealized, perfectly energy frugal society cropping up overnight. Energy use per person in the US has been steadily increasing since we started consuming electricity. Add in things like electric cars becoming ever more common and the demand will be greater still.

97

No, energy use per capita has been pretty flat for twenty years.

Interior space heating in both business and residential spaces is a huge source of waste, with lots of room for efficiency. Efficiency, as a science and industry, is really pretty young. We aren’t going to see increases in per capita energy use again, unless we become really wealthy and start making up reasons to squander it on our palaces, but I don’t see that happening widely.

98

Yes, exactly. So long as the fossils fuels are inexpensive (part of which is an illusion), the alternatives will seem expensive. The efficiency factor is simply a matter of cost. If solar cells were free, no one would care much about the inefficiency. Just as nobody cared much about the inefficiency of internal combustion engines when oil was as cheap as water.

99

Or, ya know, you could cite electricity usage since that is the topic at hand: Home - Data Commons

Sure looks like a general trend up to me for the last 50 years.

100

Okay you got me. From the year 2000 until the year 2007 our per capita electricity use ranged from 13,670 kWh to 13,638 kWh in '07.

Yeah, electricity use is skyrocketing. Fire up those nukes!