Will Wind Power Change Earth's Climate? 883
lommer writes "The Globe and Mail is currently running an article on a recent wind power study. A group of Canadian and American scientists has modelled the effects of introducing massive amounts of wind farms into North America and have come up with surprising results. While still having only 1/5th the impact of fossil fuels, wind power will still adjust the earth's climate with the equatorial regions warmed while the arctic grows colder. Could this be a boon for the nuclear lobby, or is this just further evidence for a diversified power-generating system?"
How will it affect anything? (Score:1, Interesting)
Wouldn't that be a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having stood next to one of these things (Score:5, Interesting)
- how big it was (huge!)
- how noisy it was (I sort of thought it'd be silent; not sure why...)
- how still the air was immediately below it, even though the windmill itself was turning at a moderate rate
Quite an amazing piece of gear; if you ever get the chance to get up close to one, take it.
Why is there an assumption... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. OK, so a few species will go extinct. But who's to say that some species won't flourish as a result. The ecosystem will be different, but it won't necessarily be worse. The ecosystem will adapt.
I think it's safe to say that the poisons introduced by fossil fuel burning have a net negative effect. But wind farms? I mean, solve the bird blender problem and what's the harm otherwise?
I also wonder what effect huge solar farms would have on the ecosystem. Extracting energy from sunlight that would normally heat the crust of the earth might also have an interesting impact. But again, I don't think we should automatically assume that change is bad.
conservation, conservation, conservation (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the Prof in charge of the camp did some calculations showing that at the rate of growth for demand for electrical power, in order to switch to Nuclear, we would have to make enough plants so that no person in the Continental US would be father than 100 miles from one (don't remember all of the constraints - perhaps it was BS).
Anyway, if we use less power ( more efficient windows, LCD displays rather than monitors - the basics), we need less power, and we can cause less environmental impact for the same level of "goodness" of power benefits. Of course, we need to make some capital investments to get the same "goodness" with less power.
("goodness" in the Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" sense).
Let's face it... (Score:3, Interesting)
No matter what we try and harvest as an energy source, we're always going to screw up this planet in some way.
Of course, that is until the invention of Mr. Fusion [sergioleone.net]!
Course, on the other hand, since we're already warming up the planet with global warming, perhaps we can use this "side effect" of Wind Energy to balance the equation!
Deforestation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Newton's laws can't be repealed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Probably not gonna be significant... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
It might reverse something else (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be considerably more difficult to do this for Antarctica because of the lack of land in the vicinity. Perhaps this is how Seasteads will come to the extreme southern oceans: not for the sake of freedom, but to put enormous wind farms there to keep the ice cap from turning all our favorite coasts into coral reef habitat.
The technology is there (Score:2, Interesting)
The two main problems:
1) Cost. A full set of solar panels can cost in the tens of thousands. At Berkeley recently, they invented cells that are paper thin (and consequently cheap) but they have yet to hit the market (that I know of). Wind mills aren't cheap either, and neither are the batteries to store all that juice.
2) Complexity: Setting up and maintaining an alternative energy source system is not a trivial matter. Not only does it require some electrical knowledge, but set-up also needs substantial physical labor. Most people are not willing/unable to do so.
in order for these technologies to succeed, it simply needs to get cheaper, simpler, and more importantly there needs to be businesses specifically supporting installation and maintanance.
How many windmills? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article also didnt mention how many turbines will it take to cool the arctic and warm the south. Millions?
I believe 10,000 turbines are sufficient to power all Canadian homes and businesses, and will produce far less 'local' temp difference than all Canadian nuclear power plants.
Re:Kyoto (Score:1, Interesting)
Does your data really say that?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Help me out here...
The issue is not the magnitude of energy coming from the sun. I'm not sure anyone would believe that doesn't dwarf all of the energy we consume. The issue is NET magnitude of energy coming from the sun MINUS that the earth naturally dissipates into space.
Unfortunately, that data is a lot harder to get, because it can't be measured as an individual component, only as part of the larger earth system.
We can tell from past (ice & rock) records that these numbers are reasonably in balance (since the earth's temperature doesn't change all that much), but do you have any data pointing to the tipping point? For example, it would be fascinating to know just how much extra heat the few hundred PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere is capturing and how that compares to our energy usage of 17x10^12 watts. Without such data, the significance of 17x10^12 watts of extra power cannot be reliably determined.
Re:How will it affect anything? (Score:1, Interesting)
NO! That is NOT what they are saying. This is important:
Burning fossil fuel warms the climate.
Wind farms may change the climate, causing some local areas to be warmer, but other areas to be colder. But it does not appear to warm the climate on a global basis.
The worst effects of global warming, such as rising sea levels, will not be caused by wind farms.
Another important distiction is that CO2 induced global warming is accumulative. It gets worse and worse each year as the CO2 builds up. That does not happen with wind farms. For a given number of windmills, the effect will be the same each year.
Building windmills has about as much effect on the climate as planting tall trees.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it is wise to take these with grains of salt, particularly when they are based on computer simulations that haven't necessarily been correlated with reality extensively.
Re:Jousting at windmills (Score:1, Interesting)
The think is we already get power from nuclear, we just need wind, solar and hydro to cover what we are using in fossil fuels.
The one problem is cars, but combine ethanol or biodiesl hybrids and you don't have a massive drain on the grid when people get home at 5pm and plug in their cars.
All I see on slashdot are knee-jerk reactions against anything that isn't nuclear like advocating a good engineering solution is somehow a filthy hippy thing to do (and like being a hippy is somehow worse than being an oil support).
FURTHER, if we are going to talk about "proper accounting" where all aspects of a given energy source are considered (i.e. in proper accounting oil base price is increased by environmental risk). Then in proper accounting alternative energy such as solar and wind relaxes our reliance on government. This, I would have thought, would appeal to slashdotters.
As much as having 20 more nuclear plants would be nice for science. EVEN IF the solar/wind way was less efficient, it would also create a larger number of communities who would be less reliant on corporations and government. I know there are a lot of libertarians here, and libertarian leaning people. Just consider the ramifications of a decentralised grid on society re: corporations, re: government re: in times of war or other disasters. It's a good thing. It's good engineering to have a more decentralised system (down to houses producing electricity).
ALSO, speaking of unaccounted costs, we would also further the common man's understanding of science/electricity if everyone had to understand a bit more about how they were generating power into the grid too. AND another side benefit is that our limited nuclear materials aren't wasted in a domestic market (and potentially abused by dodgy waste disposal schemes ppl and terrorists) and are used in space technologies. I would prefer to see wind on the ground and nuclear being used in space missions where solar will no suffice than see us use up all our nuclear when we don't have to.
PLUS, IF wind is as important as this study claims, perhaps the different weather we see these days is a function of logging rather than Carbon emissions (although logging contributes to the carbon problem). And as other posters have pointed out, the effects they discribe are a REVERSAL. So even if the study is true, deploying this on a medium scale will probably be a good thing.
Stop the knee-jerk cheering of nuclear, and weigh the options properly. Remember we need to use nuclear for other things, rockets for one and deep space power where solar won't work being two things. AND there are many benefits of a decentralised grid from a engineering and social perspective.
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2, Interesting)
What you see happening is that there is a finite resources for doing studies. Universities don't have unlimited funds and they have to pick and choose who to spend it on. Global Warming is a hotbutton issue and the people that tend to get the funding are the ones that tend to agree with the current status que in the scientific community.
You should learn to question people and what they say, and question the motivation behind the funding of various studies.
Also realise that the majority of the time the majority of scientists are wrong. It's just the way it is, anytime in history this is true. Statisticly speaking the more scientists agree on something the more likely it is incorrect or misleading.
Purely statisticly, of course.
Hell even look at the scientific method, is one of the ways to prove a theory is just to make sure that most people agree with you? Of course not.
Look at the models and theories of tempurature change from just 10 years ago. Look at the graphs from 1994 and see what they told you the tempurature was going to be in 2004. They are almost all completely incorrect. In another 10 years I'll still be correct.
I mean it's not insanity. Nobody dissagrees that global warming isn't happening. The sun output and activity IS increasing. Any astronomer can tell you that. Those all are measurable facts.
You know how it goes. The majority of the time the simpliest answer is the more correct.
Just think about it objectively for more then 10 seconds. Which do you think is more likely:
1. Fact: The sun's activity is increasing. Fact: The tempurature is rising on earth with a direct correlation to sun spot activity. Conclusion: the likely reason that the tempurature is increasing slightly is because the sun activity is increasing slightly.
or
2. Fact: The sun's activity is increasing. Fact: The tempurature is... blahblahbal.. conclusion: the likely reason the tempurature of the earth is rising is thru a complex and so far mysterious interaction of gasses high up in atmosphere caused by SUVs, Coal burning plants, and underarm spray deoderant.
Also look towards the fact that the earth, whithin the past 3000-5000 years have experiance much more drastic changes in average tempurature in most areas then what is happenning in the past 150 or so. And we did not have coal burning plants back them, or the population.
So if the Earth's tempurature shows drastic change without any human activity, then why is it most logical answer now?
We can wait a while before we start to panic (Score:2, Interesting)
Canada's largest single-site wind farm . . . there was THREE of em in that picture. Seriously, I think it would be absolutely great if we actually started using a non-carbon energy source to the extent that we had to worry about climatological effects. I live in the mid-west and I often drive past a few of them passing through Omaha. Now, I'm guessing, I'm in the minority of people who actually have them nearby and see them. We have a while to go before we really have to start worrying about this so I say hoo-rah to wind power for now.
there are MUCH worse effects... (Score:2, Interesting)
I invite any meterologist here to confirm (or debunk if you can) this microclimate effect-which isn't all that "micro" in a lot of areas.
The real bottom line is--we are humans, we got a right to live and BE human.
Yes, our lives will cause some disturbance to "the planet". SO WHAT? The best we can do is a compromise, live as humans with our eletricity but be smart about it.
If you can get your power by a combo of big climate change + big pollution,(we burn crap now, remember greenhouse gasses and pollutants that get into the air and soil and water? And all that heat we make with the electricty produced, it gets turned into that after doing our stuff we want it to do) goes OUTSIDE eventually causing e-vile climate change or we get the electric power we want by noticeable but much less severe climate change and much less the pollution.
Hmm, lemme cogitate on that... I say it's a no brainer, I vote "get the electricity but do it smarter with less planetary FUBAR and less pollution".
Put a few million more rust belt workers back to work manufacturing. Put another million more installers and maintenance techs to work. There, gimme my props, I helped solve "outsourcing" and "job creation" to a big degree as well.
It's a win/win/win for wind
Wind gennys are not that hard, they are big electric motors with propellers on them basically. That's it. Nothing magical about it. The tech has been around a long time. We had a thriving wind electric generation business in the early 1900s in this nation. We can build these things and they work. You can make them from tiny (I own a 300 watter you can easily hold in one hand) all the way to humongous, each one able to power hundreds of average homes. Right now it's in the low single digits of total electric production in the US, but it IS there, it is roughly equivalent to "linux on the desktop" with deployment (kinda sorta). And if you look at the graphs, it's climbing outtasight.
IMO, good deal, more power!
To space! (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus we might annoy some aliens they come here and either A)Tell us to stop, we do, we become friends B)We die, the enviroment is saved!
Re:Nucular (Score:4, Interesting)
There are also methods to process the waste to reduce the halflife of it. Worse case senario? Bury it along an subduction fault, and let tectonic forces carry it into the mantle. My personal favorite? Bury it all, and set up a geothermal powerplant on the site.
There are alot of nuclear waste options out there that need more research and better public understanding.
--Cam
Re:Probably a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
You articulated exactly what I was thinking, and almost anything I say would be redundant. I think this would actually be a good thing, because, [as you mentioned] the artic is warming at an alarming rate, and I think we should do anything we can to cool it back down to prevent massive flooding from melting icecaps.
People forget the heat waste problems of nuclear plants. Lake Ontario has 3 nuclear power plants and, If I remember correctly, they raise the temperature of the lake by a couple of degrees. That might not seem significant but the increased evaporation rates from the extra heat may be to blame for the increased percipitation rates around the lake.
Somewhat useless endeavor... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Probably a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, the study by Dr. Roy (NYT.com) was modelling the effect of turbines that looked like the propellers on airplanes. You can see that this design inherently mixes more air vertically (due to turbulence at the tips) than a more modern design where the airfoils are bowed and connected to a vertical axis.(sort of like this--> (|) ) Sadly, this design is an even better self-serve quisinart for birds than the propeller design.
The implications of Dr. Roy's (who was a graduate student of one of the authors of the paper reported on in the G&M )research are not as important on a planet-wide scale, but it shows windfarms can have a really surpisingly large effect on local climate.
This could be a real hurdle to the adoption of wind power on a large scale, since wind farms often try to rent space from farm farms. If there's anything a farmer won't go for, it's got to be renting field space to something that's going to alter the climate of his farm.
Re:Probably not gonna be significant... (Score:3, Interesting)
>no, 100% efficient windfarms would convert 100% of energy taken from the air into electrical energy.
I'd (nitpickily) disagree. A 100% efficient turbine would convert 100% of the energy taken from the air into electrical energy.
But the power input into a wind farm is the total kinetic energy of the wind moving past it. A 100% efficient farm would convert 100% of that energy.
(Of course, you could never do that even theoretically, because you can't have stationary air -- you have to let the slow air out of the way so more fast air can come in and be slowed down.)
- Peter
Re:Probably not gonna be significant... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I can't argue that coal pollution also has effects on the environment. Who's to say which is worse, I cannot. Certainly to someone living near the coal plant, inhaling the smoke is worse than for someone living far away in Greenland. Conversely, that Greenlandian would be more affected by possibly reduced gulf/jet streams than the person living by the coal plant in a temperate clime.
2. As I said in the original post, the wind is constantly 'pushing' against the force of the back-EMF of the turbine/generator. If the wind didn't apply any force against the blade then the power produced would violate 1st law of thermodynamics.
Windmills will extract MW's of power from the wind. Please quantify the energy absorption rate of a building, or an entire city. Wind blows around buildings, not so around turbines.
3. At least you made no effort to justify your attempted 'estimates' of 1000 trees per windmill in terms of frictional shear losses. Also guessing out of my ass I think you might be close here, maybe a little closer to 10000 trees per windmill, though.
4. I've responded elsewhere on that issue. Basically after each successive row of windmills, the resultant wind will rarefy somewhat. So for many windmills downwind, they will have at least some effect on the streamlines well above their height. How much I don't know.
Is this bad or good news? (Score:2, Interesting)
While I would generally aggree that _any_ man-made change in the environment should be considered as potentially dangerous, is this an example where we could off-set some of the otehr damage we have done?
In particular, if global warming is going to have such a disasterous affect on the poles (warming) and wind power could potenially cool the poles, then maybe wind power should be encouraged even more strongly.
Additionally, realistically, how much power could we generate using wind power? The paper reports on the affect of 10% of power from wind power, but I doubt we could reach that level within the next 25 years.
Call me a cynic, but I think this is probably yet another too-narrow focused report.... possibly playing into the pro-nuclear lobby's hands.
Too bad.
You are probably right. (Score:2, Interesting)
The exact mechanism for this is unclear, but the scientists believe it may have to do with the disruption of the flow of heat from the equator to the poles.
Now, if one performs an experiment and has unpredicted results, it's understandable. But if you run a simulation and can't explain the results, something is probably wrong. Even if usual suspicions towards such complicated simulations are put aside, it still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Re:Probably not gonna be significant... (Score:1, Interesting)
In Denmark ("Nordic countries"), we're pretty lucky if we even get an inch of snow for chrismas. It's simply too hot.
Re:Probably not gonna be significant... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Probably a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
People forget the heat waste problems of nuclear plants. Lake Ontario has 3 nuclear power plants and, If I remember correctly, they raise the temperature of the lake by a couple of degrees. That might not seem significant but the increased evaporation rates from the extra heat may be to blame for the increased percipitation rates around the lake.
Considering they have only measured percipitation over the last century, how do you know that the level have increased? Maybe the century experienced some leaner years.
Re:Newton's laws can't be repealed (Score:3, Interesting)
And I believe that statement is not the actual scenario. If it was, we would long since have been toasted, say about 4.5 billion years ago because this planet started out far hotter then than it is now.
It's interesting that you referenced the period 4.5 billion years ago, because it just so happens to be related to my minor critique of your assessment.
Around 4.5 billion years ago is when scientists have determined life began. This phenomenon is something you should consider in your evaluation of the conservation of energy from the sun. A negligible few organisms aside, nearly every form of the life on this planet relies either directly or indirectly on energy derived from the sun. To put this in perspective, try to imagine the sum of the energy is being converted in every one of the thousands of chemical reactions going on in every cell of every organism on the planet. Now add to that the energy stored within every complex molecule in every one of said cells. This large amount of energy being stored/converted that we've hypothesized all comes from the sun and, yet, isn't found in the form of heat (yet anyway) or reflected via light.
I would imagine that any real assessment (and, don't get me wrong, I'm not really holding your post to that standard) of the Earth's net energy values would have to account for the amount of energy absorbtion from life itself.
-Grym
Re:Jousting at windmills (Score:3, Interesting)
Exponentially thinner. Ignoring your arbitrary 100 km number, ever notice the way passenger jets that only go up 10 km max need to maintain a pressurized cabin, or how black the sky looks from that meager altitude? Most of the air we as humans on the surface worry about is far closer to the surface than you imply, and most weather paterns we see are brought about by differences in surface temperature.
"A windmill doesn't keep air from flowing even at the surface, it just slows it and disturbs it a little. Kind of like a tree. Are trees bad, too?"
Trees aren't designed to slow down the air as much as possible.
"There is just no way we could build enough windmills to affect the Earth's climate."
People say the same about burning fossil fuels.
"Even if you could affect climate that way, who knows what other factors would show up to change the result?"
You're assuming those other factors would be positive.
"Taking energy out of the air doesn't destroy the energy - it just moves it."
It moves it out of the air, in which it would affect weather.
"It'll get released into the atmosphere as heat somewhere else, eventually."
Localized convection currents aren't the same thing as global weather paterns. Instead of having a whole bunch of air moving from here to there, you'd be replacing it with random miniscule updrafts that would likely be too small to measure. The only way these windmills would have negligible effect on weather is if all the electricity from the windmills went towards powering fans pointed in the direction of the original air current, and even then you'll have to deal with transmission losses and inefficiencies in the electric motors.
Re:I'm sorry (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No, even fusion isn't FREE (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been arguing this with my 'environmentally concious' friends for 20 years.
The microclimate effects are the real worm in the windpower apple. Any place you've got topography concentrating wind into a stream, say through a mountain pass (simple example) you've got an attractive spot for a wind farm. These 'streams' are usually quite limited in vertical extant but have a major impact on local weather 'downstream'. Read parents reference on vertical mixing and remember all that stuff you read about 'fluidic computers' and pneumatic controls. Take 10-20% of the energy out of one of these 'streams' and you may well end up turning an arable valley into a desert.
The worm, is that the most attractive locations for wind farms are the same locations that cause the greatest impact on climate.
windpower != dependence (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I'm Off Grid [greenbits.com] and loosely affiliated with an Alternative Energy Resource Site [reresource.org] (btw, we could use some help !)
Also, I have designed and constructed a 2.4 KW Windmill [fieldlines.com]
unlikely claim (Score:3, Interesting)
It's obvious that a wind-generator slows down the passing air, i.e. makes the wind weaker. Afterall it has to take the energy it delivers from somewhere.
What is pretty hard to believe is that wind-generators are in any way special in this sense.
When we remove forest, and replace it with cropland, we take away a lot of wind-braking. A forest is a more efficient brake for the lower air than any conceivable windmill-density. And we have removed a *LOT* of forest the last few hundred years.
To make this plausible they would have to argue that the net sum of human activites act more to erect brakes for the wind than it does to remove them. This seems a pretty unreasonable conclusion on the face of it. And like they say, extreme claims require extreme evidence.
Re:Some depressing math.. hope you like windmills (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/severn_ba
Basically it comes out as one single barrage can generate 5% of the UK's energy, or that the alternative scheme of multiple tidal lagoons in the same area could generate 7% of the UK's energy.
Re:Comparing on that basis... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well done, you've just made a short-term-PV-skeptic a bit more optimistic. ;-)
--
Re:No magic bullet to generate power yet. (Score:2, Interesting)
Of the ones on your list, this is still the least evil, and least intractible. Right now, to meet the USA's energy needs it would at least 15 *trillion* dollars to set up enough photo-electric collectors. This is about 1.5 times the USA's annual GDP, [293027571 * 37800 / 10^12 = 11.07 trillion dollars ] and so, is a tad expensive, though when one considers that most people own houses with mortgages that far exceed their annual personal incomes, not totally out of line.
Still with a combined 10X improvement in photo electricity (cost and efficiency) and/or conservation, it becomes a no-brainer (modulo the environmental effects of solar energy taking heat from the ground, but we can always add some CO2 to the atomosphere if we cool the planet down too much).
Calculations for those interested (I am assuming centralized solar plants in the deserts of the USA):
http://www.jc-solarhomes.com/solar_energy_facts.ht m
[jc-solarhomes.com]
says each square metre can receives
1 KW hr per hr. Assume 20% efficiency for photovoltaics. So 0.2 KW hr per hr per metre.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001729.html [infoplease.com] says a kw hour is 3412 BTUs, so photo voltaics produce 0.2 * 3412 = 682.4 BTU/hr per square metre.
http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1. html [usgs.gov]
says the 1998 U.S. energy consumption was about 94 quadrillion BTUs.
Assuming 8 * 365 hours of decent sunshine in the desert year around, and round 94 up to 100,
that's 100 * 10^15 / (8 * 365 ) = 34 * 10^12 BTUs/sunshine hour.
(34 * 10^12 ) / (682.4 ) = 49 * 10^9 square metres = 49 * 10^9 / 10^6 = 49000 square kilometres = 223 KM by 223 KM or 140 miles by 140 miles for a single central power plant.
http://store.yahoo.com/sancor/50w.html [yahoo.com] will sell you a 502mm x 939mm for $519, or 519 / (502 * 939) * 1000000 = $1101 per sq metre. Let's be hopeful that in quantity, wholesale lots, we could buy this for $300 per sq metre. So 49 * 10^9 * 300 = 14.7 trillion dollars.
Re:windpower != dependence (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, it has much more to do with NIMBYers trying to come with an reason to oppose windmills that doesn't sound as selfish as "it might slightly affect the view from my beach house." That being said, a proliferation of windmills across the windswept farmlands of places like Montana is probably a more practical starting point.
Re:Nucular (Score:3, Interesting)
Kintanon
Re:Some depressing math.. hope you like windmills (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheap oil and gas have been like winning the lottery--we got many hundreds of thousands of years worth of solar energy inputs concentrated into a convenient portable form. The problem is, like most lottery winners, we have wasted most of our bonanza and will end up overextended and in debt.
The days of oil are coming to an end much more quickly than is generally acknowledged. Many petroleum geologists expect the peak of oil production to occur within the next 3-5 years (even BP has recently announced [peakoil.com] that they think oil will peak between 2010 and 2020). From that day on, the amount available for use goes down every year forever. That has incredible consequences for a species that has let its population expand to meet its available food (that is, oil) supply and which has invested nearly all of its energy windfall into building infrastructure and systems that cannot operate without cheap and plentiful oil.
Feel free to continue the futile debate about how to match our lottery-winnings-level energy usage, but when you are done why don't you turn to something more real and pressing--how do we restructure our industrial society to operate on one half or one quarter of the energy we use now and maintain food, housing, fresh water, transportation, safety and any kind of economic livelihood for the 6.4 billion people now living?
This process starts soon--possibly before your cell phone contract expires. And the most likely first effect is an economic meltdown that will leave us hard pressed to finance and build any significant numbers of the energy replacement "alternatives" so vociferously touted here.
It is not to say that we shouldn't be looking at the next alternatives, but we need to set the parameters of the design--what is the best way to start making the transition from systems that depend on fading inherited oil wealth and build ones that can run on yearly energy income.