In his column about alternatives to both nuclear and coal energy, I’m a bit disappointed in Cecil. He looks at one chemistry professor’s paper that’s five years old (a long time given steady developments in this field), and only lists the smaller energy ways of biomass, wind and hyrdoelectric.
Please pay special attention to the map of how big in total size the covered area would be compared to total desert area.
Obviously, Desertec is aimed mostly for Europe because of proximity; but the US could satisfy a big chunk of their energy demands by using the technology in their own desert. Outside Las Vegas there’s still lots of sand, and the Gambler mafia doesn’t need it all to bury their bodies.
(Could we please also dispense with the usual hypocrisy of wailing about “oh noes the beautiful nature of desert will be destroyed if every inch of desert is covered with panels”, because the same people who complain don’t give a shit about the ecology of the desert when it concerns the incredible waste of energy and water by cities like Las Vegas; and because nobody is suggesting covering every square inch, since that isn’t necessary).
Obviously, people want power even when the sun goes down - although most energy use, factories, offices and AC, occur during normal working = daylight hours - and that’s where existing hydroelectric (the US did build a lot of dams during the last big recession to make work; updating the infrastructure to share power across the continent and installing the new parabol solar would similarly give work to many unemployed now) and new wind farms on the coast come in.
It’s also quite possible to use excess solar electricity produced during the day to split water into hydrogen and burn the hydrogen at night; or to pump water up an elevation and let it fall to drive a dynamo at night.
So why did Cecil not discuss a workable alternative?
I’m not sure Cecil did enough research on this one. I agree with the OP - one paper from 2006? come on! And his numbers are entirely at odds with others. For example, civil and environmental engineering professor and director of the Stanford atmosphere/energy program, Mark Jacobson estimates 40-85 TW of wind power available in “readily accessible locations” - that’s 20-40 times what Nocera estimates (Jacobson estimates 1700 TW total world-wide - most of it not easily accessible). Jacobson also comes up with 580 TW of easily accessible solar (out of 6500 TW total on the planet).
I also agree with J-Bag. For one thing, Cecil doesn’t even mention geothermal, which also has a lot of potential (just ask Iceland, which is 100% powered by geothermal - an extreme case, granted :)), and requires no more land or infrastructure than a run-of-the mill power-plant (in fact, one innovative carbon-footprint reduction idea being pushed by some folks is to convert some existing plants to geothermal, drilling under their current plant base for the heat source, and turning off the oil/gas/coal tap).
To go further with the idea of using existing land/infrastructure, distributing power generation to every home and building (using solar and/or wind and/or geo) would make use of existing space, rather than requiring huge mega wind- or solar-farms, and also remove the problem of transmission.
What about tidal power? Offshore wind-farms? Space-based solar? His thinking seemed a bit more narrow than usual on this subject…
While we’re at it, here’s another interesting spin on the subject (could probably start a whole 'nother thread on this topic):
NYTimes: U.S. Is Falling Behind in the Business of ‘Green’: http://nyti.ms/iiZgBs
I see a lot of poo-poohers on here saying that ‘alternatives’ can never amount to more than 2-3% of demand. What about Spain? Apparently on a good day they get better than half their power from wind and hydropower. In 2008 no less.
I was going to mention that, as well. Being on the coast, I hear a lot of pie-in-the-sky stuff about tidal power, and it is rather limited, but there’s no reason it can’t contribute.
But I can’t refute the master when I’m just sitting back surprised that my one little comment got noticed!
Yes, but what is it on an average day? Or a bad one? And on what timescale are the fluctuations, and how long does it take to spin up or down the rest of the generating capability to compensate? And can the rest of the world expect similar performance, or is Spain just extraordinarily well-suited for wind power?
I’m as big on wind power as anyone, but you can’t take a single isolated number like that as meaning much of anything.
EDIT: And since you’re specifying “wind and hydropower”, it should be mentioned that hydro is already so mainstream that it’s not really considered “alternative”. Hydro’s green, and great in many other ways as well, but it’s already close to saturated. There’s room to expand a little, but not very much.
All right Chronos, that was a terrible answer. I don’t know how Spain compares to the rest of the world in terms of alternative energy potential (though compared to the US, I can point out that Spain commands .35% of the world’s surface area, while the US controls 6.5%, suggesting we have some space for these projects).
As for spinning up and down conventional generation to pick up the slack from flagging wind and solar farms, I don’t know about that either. However, my non-expert opinion is that batteries are going to become far more prevalent when dealing with ‘alternative’ energy sources. When the breeze slows I expect a 50 or 500kwh municipal battery will pick up the slack and smooth out these transition times. I expect auto and home batteries will contribute.
The big dispute is with Cecil’s estimates of the potential of alternatives- people seem to be saying he’s lowballing it. He doesn’t go into detail into massive solar efforts that can be undertaken in the future, but he did leave open the possibility that the solution lies there- his expert seems to think so. Yes, mega projects in the Sahara, the Mojave, and elsewhere in time could provide huge amounts of power. If solar panels/films become cheap enough, rooftop and auto-top systems could also be huge for no other reason than the footprint has already been committed to.
Still, I might as well admit that I think Cecil is right- we are going to have to use all sources of power. At least for now. Alternatives do supply a tiny fraction of the world’s power at present, and constructing mega-projects will take massive investments of time, energy and resources. Hopefully we don’t doom ourselves to extinction via global warming before we get there.
Is it just me, or does using a nuclear reaction to heat water to turn a turbine seem a little 19th century? We’re splitting the atom here. Could we not come up with a more direct way of harnessing this energy? I’m no nuclear scientist, and maybe this is nothing more than a pipe dream, but it just seems that there would have to be a more efficient way of turning nuclear fission into electricity than using technology that is, on the face of it, twice as old as nuclear fission itself.
There are other ways, some of them arguably more “direct”, but they’re not nearly as efficient. And if you’re going to wonder about new technology using older technologies, has it ever occurred to you that our cars still use wheels? I mean, that’s one of the oldest technologies there is! Surely we’ve found something better by now.
Hi- i’m posting this in two threads that are related. Solar, geothermal, wind and small hydropower done with sensitivity to wildlife and the local environment are where we need to focus for the future… that along with learning to live more sustainably through measures like buying local foods and products, growing our own, supporting local businesses, etc.
Nuclear power is the worst possible solution to our energy crisis and there are many reasons why. While the nuclear power energy pays off scientists to sell us propaganda about its virtues, we are intentionally being protected from the true facts. Nuclear power is one of the largest threats facing life on this planet. Please educate yourself by doing in an indepth search on this topic. Renewable energy is what we need to be investing all our energy and money in. The technology for renewables is growing aggressively and many European countries are currently in the forefront in developing this. Grassroots efforts in the U.S. are growing, as well, as more people are educating themselves. We need to develop renewables and at the same time, learn how to use less. The following sources are good places to begin by first acquainting yourself with the truth about nuclear:
Problem is, when I DO do an in-depth search on the topic of nuclear energy, I end up coming to the opposite conclusion as yourself.
I do wonder why nuclear power is so monstrously scary to so many people, though. Is it because the first “nuclear” thing most people learn about as kids is the atomic bomb?
while nuclear power rarely screws up (and when it does, it’s because of things outside of its design intent) it does leave a big mess that’s hard to clean up. IMO the biggest problem with nuclear power, at least in this country, is that all of our reactors are of designs which are long obsolete.
