The Myth of Renewable Energy 835
Harperdog writes to this "Excellent piece by Dawn Stover about what renewables can and can't do. The sun and wind may be practically inexhaustible, but 'renewable' energy isn't. Solar, wind, and geothermal power are not fundamentally different from other energy technologies that consume finite natural resources. Good reading for anyone who thinks they know how to combat climate change."
Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:1, Insightful)
Psychotic retard defies logic (Score:1, Insightful)
Claiming solar power isn't renewable because it requires water, you do realize the water used returns back to the earth once it is used right? That water is also renewable (as long as you don't pollute it while using it, you can use it forever). Will it maybe take 10% of the power generated to transport water, sure.. but that leaves us with 90% gains and full renew ability.
I'm not even going to bother refuted this ultra netcase's other bits, there is something mentally off with this idiot.
Hot tip: (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you know that things like coal and oil came from the capture and processing of Photons, just like wind/PV/hydro does?
Coal/Oil only seems cheap on a photon processed basis because Man didn't spend the effort and time converting biomass into the coal/oil.
So want to conserve energy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Only have one child.
RTFA and reached a conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
The author, by failing to mention the current oil-based energy strategy at all, while vilifying the alternative energy sources leaves the reader with a sense of, "the alternatives are bad, lets keep using the current infra until we come up with something better." Interestingly, nuclear energy is *not* mentioned either, positive or negative - it's completely omitted.
I'd not be surprised if the author was either a shill for the oil and gas companies or the nuclear energy affiliates.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just sucks to be you if you happen to live near a coal plant or an unsafe nuke plant.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:3, Insightful)
thermal plants have better efficiency than explosion engines in car.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost everything is renewable. It's the cost of renewing it.
I'm sure we could burn fossil fuels, capture the emissions from the air, send it to some plant, combine with energy and other things, and recreate the fossil fuel.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
600 acre-feet, WHAT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
So does drought and famine. Some parts of the world would likely become more habitable than they are now, but others would have water shortages and resulting famine.
But, then again, you're trolling so I doubt that it's going to make a difference.
Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a pretty awesome "new technology", and it was discovered a few thousand years ago -- it's called "humans not reproducing at a disgustingly unsustainable pace with the apparent goal of destroying the world as quickly as possible."
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real point is that we're fucked. Yes, fossil fuels and nuclear are worse, but wind/solar/biomass/geothermal won't save us either, for the same reasons. Although each individual installation may not be as environmentally or economically detrimental as a fossil fuel or nuclear installation, the fact that you have to have so many more "renewable" installations to meet the same energy needs counteracts that.
The takeaway from this article is that we have to change our energy needs and growth model. There's simply no way to continue down this path, no matter what "green" technologies are developed. Energy isn't free. Energy production has side-effects. The only real solution is to use less and less of it.
Er. Hmmm. (Score:4, Insightful)
Published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Can't see any agenda there...
She doesn't exactly cover herself in glory for facts, either. She doesn't appear to know what neodynium is used for (why, exactly, would you want magnets in a gearbox?). She (quite deliberately, I think) confuses consumable fuels with non-consumable equipment - a turbine may need 800 pounds of neodynium, but after 20 years of operation you've still got 800 pounds of neodynium. In fact the whole magnet is reusable as is. Today's largest wind machines are 10MW (in construction, anyway). 4.5 million of them would (on average, not peak capacity) provide the entire world's energy use - not sure where her need for an additional ~2 billion devices comes from.
Of course it's not infinite - nothing is (probably) but that's not really the claim, is it? The only sensible point made is that renewable sources require materials that are finite, but I think we knew that already.
The piece is arguing for (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution to the water energy problem is more energy, because energy can be used to get water. This, however, lowers the Life Cycle Output of the energy system. LCO or LCA is the expected usable energy out, divided by the expected usable energy used to create and run a system. So if a system produces 10 watts for every watt it takes to build, run, and dispose of it, then its LCA is 10. The 20th century got by on a miracle: namely petroleum has a high LCA, and its its own storage mechanism. Gasoline has great power to weight storage capacities with internal combustion. And internal combustion engines can be built of very cheap metals. There are many quandaries in replacing hydro-carbon energy, and the water energy trade off that the piece mentions is one of them, but it is one of scale. Once there is a large enough renewable base, then the low LCA that getting the water to run it has, is not a problem. It is at the beginning, when the return is eaten through by the water problem, because there are competing uses for water that have much higher economic returns in the short run, such as airconditioning and agriculture. None of these uses want to pay much higher rates for water so that people not yet born can have the advantages.
Where the article falls down is pressing an agenda, and making sloppy equivalences. The first is equating capital requirements with expendable requirements: we don't burn the rare earths we use in kinetic energy extraction – that is water, wind, and geothermal – and in fact, rare earths, are not, as a percentage of the earth's crust, all that rare. For example, wikipedia has this chart [wikipedia.org]. It shows that all of the Lanthanide rare earths, plus scandium and yttrium, are more common than either gold or silver, many are more common than tin, and some more common than lead. The problem with them is that they tend to be found near the Actinide rare earths, particularly Thorium. If you have seen a press for "Thorium reactors" it is because exploitation of rare earths leads to Thorium by product, and reactors which burn it would be fantastically profitable, for the people who sell the rare earths. In reality, they have the same problems, only more so, of actively cooled salt reactors. Namely, they work until they blow up. The Chinese dump their Thorium in a holding lack, which, should it break, would contaminate large areas of land and volumes of water.
Side note: how is it that a browser's spell check doesn't know Actinide?
But for all of that, rare earths are not burned, the way for example Lithuium is not burned in a battery and can be recycled. These are recyclable, which is different from consumable. Hence moving from consumption of hydrocarbons, which really are burned, to using rare earths in capital energy, is a positive step, and while the author of the paper implies that there would be rare earth shortages, the reality is that this is not the case, and substitutes in the form of ceramics and active magnets (See Rare Earth Prices Plunge as Manufacturers turn to substitutes [mining.com]
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument being made is that expensive and potentially hazardous materials are required to make wind turbines and solar panels.
Yes, I got that from the article too, that using current technologies for renewable energy we will be using, potentially, a lot of non-renewable resources. The whole fallacious article is about how current technologies, unimproved over years of research and development YET TO COME, will do these horrible awful things. Indeed they will, if newer and more efficient ways of providing two megawatts of wind power [greendiary.com] aren't found, or better than 30% efficiency from solar panels [amnh.org] and internal combustion engines, [energy.gov] or maybe even less expensive ways to get power from rivers and the ocean than big dams. [pelamiswave.com] So, yeah, if nothing advances and no further research is funded then this guy's fantasy world of doom will come to pass. Let's hope others aren't as narrow minded as the author seems to be and that we will have some tremendous breakthroughs in renewable energy technologies with continued funding.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bit of doomsaying more then anything else. Burning technologies (for large plants, talking around 200MW per boiler) have really advanced with modern automation. Did you know that one of the biggest annoyances when burning things, SO2 has been largely eliminated in most modern plants that burn... pretty much anything by extreme control over the burning process? In other words, you don't even need complex filters on those anymore, the advances in the burning process itself due to computerization have made processes much less harmful to environment. This is why we talk so much about CO2 and so little about other products of burners - when we used to talk about those other products all the time before. Because the new plant technologies have virtually eliminated most of those, and those that remain are usually rendered harmless by solidifying them on the plant and not allowing them to spread into environment.
Add to this the fact that we can in fact burn what we grow (biomass), then consider that nuclear is pretty efficient and safe and we have enough uranium and thorium for at least a millenium... we're not so fucked anymore. At least as long as we can develop fusion into workable system in a few hundred years. The only real problem that remains is upgrading the existing burner plants before they shit all over the environment with really toxic stuff (which is what is happening in China at the moment) as well as upgrading nuclear to more efficient and safe plants.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood this line of argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Coals plants also need to be built, they also need generators that require rare earth elements, they also need plenty of steel and concrete. And not only do they obviously spew shitloads of CO2, you also need to build the roads, railways or ships and ports to carry the coal around, as well as mine the damn thing.
So what is the argument? That since it's just merely much better, and not simply perfect, we should just give up on them?
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't even click on the link. But comparing a Hummer and a Prius is completely insane and can only lead to biaised results. ...
I mean, come on
I could compare my motorcycle to a Prius and deduce that the Prius is worse. Now, could I conclude that hybrids are worse than pure gasoline vehicles?
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like Nuclear Power, but it has a massive problem if it's poorly managed. Even just one cock-up can cause a major problem.
The fear is justified, since If I know anything about the Human Race, it's that we can grossly mismanage things.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power is the best intermediate solution. It's a finite resource, so the best we can do is to use it to buy some time until we develop effective renewable alternatives.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, the question is, are we ready to adapt to a more expensive, less available energy future? I suspect that we won't have a choice, but that people will cling to the old ways as desperately as people always have.
We already are doing that, in a small but increasing number of ways.
We insulate our houses, to save heating bills.
We look at the fuel economy when we're choosing a car.
We use energy saving lightbulbs.
We have showers instead of baths.
Really, I feel that if governments stopped striving to keep the cost of fossil fuel down, this natural adjustment would accelerate. Whether it's ways of reducing our energy usage, or better ways to get clean/renewable energy, or somewhere inbetween, I don't really mind.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the article glosses over the fact that far more of those expensive and [s]potential[/s] actually hazardous materials are required to make carbon and nuclear based power generating stations.
Unfortunate but not surprising in an article published by the Bulletin Of the Atomic Scientists.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
thermal plants have better efficiency than explosion engines in car.
Although the thermal plant might have more efficiency, depending on the level of NIMBY, the transmission losses and the overhead of maintaining base-load for the electric grid may make the actual net efficiency closer than anyone may like... Sadly, reality is a must-satisfy condition in this analysis...
And driving massive tanker trucks full of gasoline all over the the country, tearing up roads, to deliver fuel to gas stations is efficient?
Some notes about solar cells (Score:3, Insightful)
graphene - http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/carbon-based-solar-cells/ [alternativ...-news.info]
or carbon nanotubes - http://www.bitsofscience.org/solar-cell-carbon-nano-energy-3418/ [bitsofscience.org]
http://inhabitat.com/carbon-nanotubes-could-create-better-solar-cells/ [inhabitat.com]
The other technologies like wind turbines and those steaming solutions are just alternative green solutions to solar cells that are often cheaper. When the solar cells are going to continue to get cheaper like they are and no new alternative pops out, then they will probably be the prefferable choice of green energy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/20/solar-panel-price-drop [guardian.co.uk]
Their co-existence with new ways of storing electricity would make them even more practical.
New cheaper ways for making hydrogen:
http://www.gizmag.com/fukai-hydrogen-extraction-process/16674/
or carbon based supercapacitors?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110512150731.htm [sciencedaily.com]
My point is, that there are actually new advancements in every horizon, which make this article a bit outdated.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also much easier to verify that the filter/catalyzer is actually working when there aren't hundreds of millions of them to monitor.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you dreaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It has the smallest impact" ???
Fukushima and Tchernobyl come to mind of course. Do you realize that making an area like (40 miles)^2 unusable amounts to not a small cost on the economic point of view, or ruining the lives of 10'000's of displaced people is not a small nuisance?
Presently nuclear energy is the energy method having the largest impact in the far future (~100'000 years), as the nuclear wastes will require to be watched for a long time. Do you realize that such a timespan is comparable to the total time homo sapiens existed on Earth? (The salary of a single engineer over 100'000 yr corresponds already to the total building cost of a nuclear plant).
Can you imagine what will happen when the next global war occurs? And it will occur well before a century for sure. Each nuclear power plant will be an easy target, at the least a serious menace for those countries foolish enough to have forgot how stupid and nasty human beings may be.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all, since the other species take the best management decision they can given circumstances: do not go nucular.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the word you wanted looks more like "recycled". People don't just toss 99% recyclable $3000 batteries like they do with a pair of dead double-As.
A 67 Camaro is better than a Prius, even 44 years later it is still desirable, people will still fix them
A 67 Camaro gets 15MPG. A Prius gets 50MPG. After 10 years of typical (1k miles/month) use at today's gas prices ($3.50/gallon), keeping that "desirable" Camaro on the road will have cost you literally the price of a new Prius ($19600) more.
The word "better" can mean an awfully lot of different things to different people. I can't, however, find a way to use it to describe something more expensive, less safe, and with fewer features - Other than the dumb nostalgia of "I wanted one as a kid and can finally afford it 40 years later".
And for the record, I don't own a Prius. I most certainly will, however, as soon as my current car dies.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine, but nuclear is NOT environmentally neutral!! you forget that nuclear generate nuclear waste that take thousand of years to read safer levels and even in a mine are dangerous, water can enter, spread to the floor to the water fields and back to the human contact...
Also, a single big nuclear "leak" might produce more "pollution" than any of the other options... as history shows, nothing works without problems, accidents or evil doing can happen.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the fear and NIMBY are directly caused by the nuclear industry's crying of 'no-wolf' turning out to be untrue. Now they are crying 'no-wolf' again, and asking us to trust them. They have a credibility problem so sever it likely cannot be solved until the impacted generation passes on.
Re:Are you dreaming? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why should it surprise anybody that using things -- especially potentially dangerous things like nuclear reactors -- in ways that they were not designed to be used, causes problems?
That's like saying that running your car into a telephone pole can cause injury. Duh.
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:0, Insightful)
No, the word I was looking for was NOT recycled. It was the one I used, scrapped, as in, sold for scrap. Prius' will be scrapped in large numbers. Pieces here and there might be recycled in the process, as will be the steel, but the end product will require all the energy and a great portion of the materials to make another car. 67 Camaros (as an example, there are plenty of great cars that fit the bill) are generally not scrapped. Dreary eco-boxes are scrapped, I've been to enough scrap yards to see it in action.
I would never buy a Prius. It is one of the worst cars I have ever driven, numb steering, somewhat dangerous handling (low rolling resistance tires = low grip tires, affects both turning and stopping) no power, and one of the ugliest cars ever made. Aesthetically, dynamically, and environmentally, they're crap. Realistically, they will be scrapped. No one will want one in 20 years, there's zero desirability outside the "I appear green" reason. Plenty of cars get better gas mileage without the idiotic pitfalls and cost less. Most of them will end up in the scrap heap as well.
You can't find a reason someone would want a 67 Camaro rather than a Prius besides nostalgia? That's sad. You must really hate cars. Of course, you said you're buying a Prius, so I'm being redundant.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:4, Insightful)
Baselaod: the load you always produce (regardless of demand), basically the minimum power you feed into the grid. This has no "overhead". People who don't know what baseload is, just should stop using the word, like they should stop using words like "law of thermodynamics", kosher, halal etc.
A electric engine in a car has an efficiency of 95% - 99%.
Transmission losses in power grids are roughly 7% -8%.
A thermic power plant has an electric efficiency of roughly 42%.
Lets assume a battery charge station has an efficiency of 80%, then an electric car fed from a thermal power plant puts roughly 38% of the "thermal" energy produced in a power plant down on the road as traction.
Now, a combustion engines has an efficiency of roughy 20% (usually less). A car run by that has to take into account: minus transmission losses, catalyzer (yes, that one eats fuel, about 2% - 5% of your total fuel amount).
So bottom line with counting storage in the car and losses on the power grid an electric car is roughly twice as efficient than a car run on hydro carbones.
Soooooo how would look that if the power grid was fed with wind and solar power?
Suddenly the electric car is 4 to 5 times as efficient than a car burning gasoline. In fact it makes no sense to compare them anymore as the term "efficiency" becomes meaningless when you don't have to burn fuel.
Re:Are you dreaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to all those coal mines you don't see?
Re:Renewable or infinite? (Score:4, Insightful)
Analysis HAS been done. To use electric cars as an example, a well-to-wheels analysis using a mix of power sources, electric cars emit half or less CO2 per mile driven over gasoline powered cars. A good number to keep in mind is that just the refining of a gallon of gasoline uses a little over 7 kWh of energy... 7kWh can move even a mediocre electric car 20+ miles. Don't forget to include THAT in your efficiency calculation either!
=Smidge=