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Obstacles Facing US Wind Energy
Posted by Gail the Actuary on January 20, 2012 - 4:31pm
In the United States, we have been working on scaling up wind energy but not getting very far. In 2010, wind energy supplied only 2.3% of electricity purchased.
Such slow progress seems strange for a product that seems to have such great promise. It can reduce CO2 emissions. It doesn’t require fuel. It is at least partly US made. It seems to have promise for protecting against rising fossil fuel prices.
In this post, I discuss a few of the obstacles facing wind energy in the United States and their implications for the expansion of wind energy.
Obstacle 1: Wind energy is dependent on large subsidies.
According to the EIA’s report, Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010, wind energy received subsidies of $4.986 billion from the federal government for Fiscal Year 2010. This amount is equal to approximately half the cost of new wind power installed during that period. State and local subsidies would be in addition. (The US Wind Energy Association shows that 6034 megawatts of new capacity was installed between October 1, 2009 and September 30, 2010, so the subsidy per megawatt was $826,318. This compares to an average cost per megawatt of about $1.4 million, excluding construction and connection costs.)
Wind energy’s largest subsidy, the Production Tax Credit, is set to expire on December 31, 2012, unless Congress acts to extend it, so there is now a big rush to get orders filled before that date. A study by Navigant Consulting forecasts a large drop in wind investment, if the Production Tax Credit is not extended (Figure 2).
Needless to say, the US Federal Government is not flush with money for subsidies, so there is the possibility that subsidies will not be renewed or will be cut back.
Obstacle 2: Wind energy is more variable than electricity produced by fossil fuels and by nuclear energy.
Wind blows when it chooses, which is often not when it is needed most. In theory, this problem could be resolved with robust long-distance transmission of electricity and with adequate electrical storage, but in the US, these are not available. Bill Richardson, energy secretary under Bill Clinton has said, “We’re a superpower with a Third World grid.” This means that even in locations where wind energy makes up a relatively large share of the fuel mix, other types of generations must be available to supply almost the full level of demand, if the wind is not blowing.
As a result, the role of wind energy is fairly limited. What wind energy does is permit electricity generating plants, particularly those fueled by natural gas, to use less fuel. Consequently, the price of wind energy tends to compete with the price of fuel, rather than with the wholesale price of electricity.
Chis Namoviz, who is in charge of renewable energy forecasting at the EIA, explained this to me in an e-mail in 2009:
Because of its relatively low “capacity value” (a result of usually not blowing very regularly during peak load hours), wind largely competes as a “fuel saver” resource, and can generally be compared against the fuel cost of what ever mix of fuel it is displacing (whether from existing capacity or from alternative investments in future capacity). In the U.S., this is typically some mix of relatively inexpensive coal and somewhat expensive natural gas, depending on the location of the wind plant, and the resulting seasonal/daily wind and load profiles . . .[Note from Gail: Natural gas is now cheaper than when this statement was made.]
We can see the result of this situation in Figure 3, from Annual Report on U. S. Wind Power Installation, Cost, and Performance Trends: 2007. The price of wind generation tends to trade a below the wholesale band for other types of wind generation, more at the price of the fuel that is saved (frequently natural gas) than at the usual wholesale price.
This lower price for wind-generated electricity helps explain some of the need for subsidies.
A related issue is the confusion caused by a comparison of the “levelized cost of wind” with the levelized cost of other types of generation, such as is shown in Figure 4 by the US Energy Information Administration.
Because wind acts as a fuel-saver, Figure 4 represents an “apples to oranges” comparison, if one makes the standard comparison of amounts in the last column. Instead, since wind energy only replaces fuel, what needs to be compared is:
- “Total System Levelized Cost” for wind relative to
- “Variable O&M (including fuel)” for other sources of production
In Figure 4, the Total System Levelized Cost of Wind is 97.0, and of Wind-Offshore is 243.2. These might be compared with the Variable O&M (including fuel) of coal (Advanced coal is 25.7) or of natural gas (Conventional Combined Cycle is 45.6), for example. On this basis, wind energy comes out badly, and is one reason it requires such high subsides.
Another related issue is that a person would normally want to substitute a less-scarce fuel for a more scarce fuel, but to some extent this works in reverse for wind power. At least some petroleum is used in manufacturing, transporting, installing, and maintaining wind turbines, but the energy that is provided as an output is mostly replacing natural gas, and perhaps some coal. Coal and natural gas are much cheaper (and more abundant) than oil, so even a small input/output substitution in this direction can quickly hurt the economics of the process.
While one intent of wind energy was to protect against rising fossil fuel prices, in the US those prices are not rising evenly. Oil is particularly high priced, but it is not oil that is being saved, it is other fuels.
Obstacle 3: Natural gas is now very cheap in the US, and there is a huge amount of natural gas generating capacity already built.
Since wind energy tends to compete with the cost of fossil fuels used to produce electricity (mostly natural gas and coal in the US), a low price for natural gas is a problem because even greater subsidies will be required for wind energy to be competitive.
Furthermore, natural gas generating capacity is no issue, because a great deal of natural gas generating capacity has been added in recent years.
Obstacle 4: In the US, we do not have an electrical grid that can provide very much long distance transport of electricity, and there are several reasons why changing this situation is very difficult.
Growth in wind energy requires very good long distance transmission capability, partly because wind resources are often located a long way from prospective users, and partly because the variable nature of wind can be “evened out” if wind energy is shared over a large area. Unfortunately, the US electrical system has grown up under a system where each locality has been expected to generate its own electricity. Under such a system, electrical transmission from city to city was originally designed to handle only occasional emergencies, and thus is very limited. I have written more about US electrical grid issues in The US Electrical Grid: Will it Be Our Undoing? and Upgrading the Grid – Many Pluses but Some Minuses Too.
The way the US electric transmission system was set up produces many anomalies. Electrical rates vary greatly from state to state. We needlessly burn large amounts of oil transporting coal to where it will be burned for electricity, rather than burning it near where the coal is mined, and then transporting the electric power over transmission lines. Nuclear-fueled power plants are sometimes located near large cities.
The problem is very difficult to fix for many reasons. Any improvement in electric transmission would tend to even out electricity rates, but this would be to the detriment of customers who currently have low electric rates. To the extent that new transmission costs more, and these higher costs are charged back in electric rates, such a change could result in higher electricity costs for more than half of the population–something most politicians would find unacceptable.
If better transmission were readily available and free, no one would want to build a power plant in their back yard, making it even harder to site new power plants than it is now.
Another issue is that a good mechanism for paying for the installation and maintenance of new long distance transmission lines has not been established. Under current procedures, a determination must be made as to which electric generating companies will benefit from new transmission lines, and the costs allocated among the beneficiaries. The government in the past has not funded long distance electrical transmission. No one really “owns” the long distance lines.
The only partial fix I can see would be to create a separate organization to build and maintain a few new long-distance transmission lines. Wind energy and other users seeking to use these lines would be charged for the use of these lines, similar to a toll road. It might be possible that more coal fired-power plants would be built near these lines, because wind usage by itself could not support these lines. Even this arrangement would likely require a change to current laws. The net effect might be more CO2, rather than less.
The cost of long distance electric transmission is likely to be fairly high–at least several cents per kWh, for wind energy transported over long distances. Over time, the price can be expected to rise as the price of oil rises. Some maintenance may become very difficult, such as that currently done by helicopters in remote locations.
Obstacle 5: A high proportion of funding for wind energy is up front.
Oil, coal, and gas all started out as fairly high EROEI investments, and much of the investment took place as the fuel was extracted. In such a situation, the investments threw off a high level of profit which could be used to fund further investment.
Fossil fuels are gradually shifting away from this model, with higher up front investment, and lower profit available to fund further investment. Wind turbines represent the extreme end of this continuum with most of the investment up front, and the return trailing many years behind.
As a result of this shift in timing, it is becoming more difficult to fund projects with huge up-front investment. In the “good old days,” we had the low price of fossil fuels which made other investments easier to afford. We also could count on a being always able to add more debt, but we are reaching limits on sustainable debt. I wrote two posts on The Link Between Peak Oil and Peak Debt (Part 1 and Part 2). More recently, I talked about how Net Savings is dropping dramatically in the US, so that non-debt sources of funding are also disappearing.
The net of all of this is that if we are reaching limits with respect to finite resources, it is going to be increasingly difficult to fund projects that require large up-front investment and provide a return later. We will likely have to give up some investments we really need (such as replacing worn out roads, pipelines, and school buildings) in order to ramp up investments in projects that require large front-end funding, like wind turbines.
Obstacle 6: Adding wind energy to the electric grid adds complexity which may be difficult to manage with declining resources.
The job of balancing supply with electrical demand and keeping all sources of electricity “in synch” becomes more difficult, as more variable sources of supply come on line. While it is theoretically possible to find technical solutions to these issues, it is not clear that we will in practice.
Furthermore, one approach that is being tried in order to avoid the cost of adding new electricity generating capacity and new electric transmission is to use the Smart Grid to help limit demand when at times when demand would normally be high, such as when temperatures are high or low. In the words of Smart Grid R & D: 2010-2014 Draft 2, “Smart grid can improve asset utilization and thereby avoid the need for new capacity.“
The expected effect of avoiding new capacity is that components are operated at closer to maximum capacity. Since adding new capacity is avoided, assets will over time tend to be older as well. While theoretically everything should go well, operating older units at closer to their theoretical capacity adds stresses to the system. Because of these factors, Smart Grid enhancements add efficiency to the system, but may reduce resilience.
According to the same report, the Smart Grid is being built as it is being planned. The amount of funding is not clear; costs must be recovered from customers based on cost recovery laws which vary by state. There are a huge number of details that need to worked out, such as necessary cyber security measures. It would be easier to rest easy if the Smart Grid had all been planned out in advance, tested on a small scale and pre-funded.
The grid with the new enhancements will work until at some point it doesn’t work–for example, an unplanned event causes a major failure within the system, or a needed system upgrade is too expensive to afford, or a replacement part from overseas is unavailable. Hopefully, failures of this type will be temporary and local, but if resources are limited, the time may come when the high cost of maintaining the system becomes unsustainable.
Further Thoughts about Wind Energy
I have not been able to touch on more than a few issues in this post.
One of the big issues with wind is that hopes have been raised for its widespread use, without really working through feasibility issues. If we are already having trouble with the electrical grid not being able to accept more wind energy in popular wind-generating areas when wind energy constitutes only 2.3% of total electricity supply, then wind energy is going to be difficult to scale up quickly. The issues I point out in this article suggest that the cost problem is still large, and the fixes needed to add long-distance transmission are likely to make the cost problem even worse.
The government needs to be able to show it is “doing something” about our energy problem, so it makes statements such as “Wind generation added 30% of all US generating capacity in 2007.” (See Figure 5 above.) Few people are energy literate enough to realize that even this progress is very slow, because relatively little new capacity is added in a year, and because wind, with its low-capacity factor, requires a disproportionate share of total new generation capacity, to make much progress. If wind turbines have an average life of 20-30 years, and other types of generation last for 40+ years, this will also affect the amount of new generation needed for wind, compared to other units.
It is easy for readers to become confused, when confronted with the many technology possibilities available, when they don’t understand the time, cost, and scale involved. Dr. Robert Hirsch, in the January 9, 2012, issue of the ASPO-USA Peak Oil Review writes:
The foregoing are realities that many people fail to understand, which means that they can be trapped into advocating energy changes that are not practical in the short term. Examples of some of the current common traps: 1) Assuming that wind and solar systems – electricity producers – can be a near-term solution to high gasoline prices; 2) Assuming that natural gas from shale is a near-term solution to our dependence on foreign oil; 3) Assuming that wind and solar can be a near-term means to lower the emissions from vehicles now powered by oil products; etc.
If transitions to new energy sources and new technologies could be made cheaply and quickly, then many options that appear to be feasible in fact would have a reasonable chance of working out. But there is another issue as well. Based on technology today, we need fossil fuels to make wind energy, and we need fossil fuels to transport wind turbines to the locations where they are to be installed. We also need fossil fuels to repair wind turbines and to maintain transmission lines. So wind energy and other proposed replacements for fossil fuels are deeply imbedded in the fossil fuel system, and dependent on it.
I expect that at some point grid problems will become overwhelming, so at least the long-distance portion of the grid will be lost. It is possible that adding more wind energy to the grid will make that date come sooner, rather than later, because of the complexity issues I mentioned. Unless the limiting factor on the life of the electric grid is the amount of coal and natural gas available, and wind energy somehow delays running out of these, I have a hard time seeing how wind energy will make the electric grid last longer.
There are so many obstacles for wind to overcome in the US that I am not sure that we should even try to push for higher wind penetration levels. The only exception might be in areas where wind energy is cheap to produce and the grid can readily accept the electricity.
Since the world is finite, there is a good chance that at some point we are going to have to get along with less electricity as well as less oil. Instead of focusing on delaying the inevitable, perhaps we should start thinking about preparing people for simpler lives that use less energy of all types. Such an approach might solve multiple problems at once–too much CO2, too little oil, and too little capital to tackle all the problems that need to be tackled at once.
This post originally appeared on Our Finite World.
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This, of course, is the key to the future. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people today don't know that a simple life can be just as rewarding (and in some ways more rewarding) as the complexity they have in their lives now. However, it's only we older people who know this is true.
Further, people today would see the simpler life as a "giving up" rather than going back as we oldsters would. It would be nice were society to accomplish this shift voluntarily but it will most likely be forced upon it kicking and screaming.
Todd
Couldn't agree more! +10
Quiet succinct this post... its as thou the point keeps getting refined in the art of this blogging do da
Most of these obstacles are about the inability to finance outside of the markets perceived notion of time vs depletion.
supply and investment is determined in the relative instant not the projected endowment/extraction rate
There in lies the problem of renegotiating with the electorate/masses some new narrative of what constitutes the good life. And we are all back to those discussions about the human condition we had with those guys like Nate Hagens.
in essence there are 2 further generalised obstacles
1. Market functioning
2. Human behaviour and acceptance re-conditioning
obstacle 2 is deceptive IMO because it seems daunting to the extreme yet history shows how readily populations can be herded into new behaviour surprisingly quickly.
obstacle 1 is about political will and or catalyzing events.... you just mandate a smart grid or what ever set of nuts and bolts you need.
Well, I'm not sure of the assumptions behind your shorthand, but history shows all sorts of competing truths, and human behavior will certainly also change with the real environmental factors that are changing, no less than our behavior is affected by manipulations and herding.
In fact, I think the effectiveness of herding is itself overestimated, while we see a bunch of it today made possible by the clever application of lots of cheap energy.
One factor that might make this coming transition a bit different is that even with lower availability of power, we now have many layers of legacy communications equipment and techniques, and it might be a lot harder to keep the public from communicating and coordinating than it has been in the past.
yeah the amount of control the state has may be tempered by technology in the hands of the masses but perhaps society is bit more willing a participant than we care to remember.
the USA... the USA mind, has implemented functional wage and price controls during war.
I wouldn't write off the public just yet. But yes it will be different especially in the USA which could Balkanise. incredible uncertainty. The thing that stands out for me recently is how willing the political classes were to bury the hatchet over TARP 1 given it ran counter to everyones constituency. Also how willing the public were in accepting it! extraordinary. Largly I suspect because they didn't understand it.
In Europe we have just appointed new heads of states off hand. Bring on the technocrats. No one said a thing!
the point is not that the measures taken were effective [I think not] but rather they were taken at all. Political stagnation is the door to radical change. If a system is inflexible then the only change available is a break in continuity. Things can change real fast and in unexpected ways.
Willing to concede its not all good.
And what is your argument against the obvious retort ?
(which is "you first" in case someone has doubts about that)
None of the people here seem willing to give up a luxury like internet or regular new laptops. Or anything else for that matter. None. Great place to start.
+10 too.
Although it is heartening that some of the young people I teach seem to be shifting their material expectations: fewer own or want to ever own cars, they don't expect a single, full-time job (but what to be proficient at many skills), they seem to get the "buy local or bye bye local" idea and practice it while also just doing well with less stuff, avoid air travel and generally stay put more than students of 15 years ago, etc. Maybe they're harbingers.
The simpler life may seem like a sacrifice. Sometimes it is. But often it has embedded benefits.
Of course, the root of sacrifice is "to make sacred." Maybe us old folks would have better luck using that notion rather than talking about going back? The outcome might be the same but maybe there'd be less kicking and screaming?
-Ray
I have a lot of doubt about the concept of staying put even without air travel as an option... Look Ma! No planes or ICEs needed!
I think many more young and old people should become skilled in the art of sailing!
Might be right. I didn't mean to suggest that these young folks don't travel at all. But they do seem satisfied with a settled-in-place notion (ala Sharon Astyk's new book) combined with what seems like occasional walkabouts.
Add in some sailing and it brings to mind Le Guin's book Always coming home.
They certainly seem to crave less of the mobility (e.g., major travel every month, move every few years) that my generation of engineers and academics pursued.
-Ray
I think thats going too far. Far more so than using less, what we need to face, is using whats available, when it is available, which will translate into making hay when the sun shines -or the wind blows, not when we feel like it.
EOS,
I'm not quite sure what your point is but let me say this: Being satisfied with a simple life requires a different philosophy - not using less. The philosophy of my youth is/was different than society's today. I didn't have a lot of toys but living in the country my folks bought me traps for my trap line. My buddy and I would hitchhike to the Saturday kiddy movie (we were about 8 when we started) that cost a dime. No one worried about "bad" people. But otherwise, we didn't go to movies. We didn't eat out either. Our appliances consisted of a stove, refrigerator, toaster and a radio.
As an adult I've lived almost 40 years in the real boondocks. (I'm 73 and in those years I've only lived 22 in what would be called suburban or urban areas.) Besides the usual country stuff like cutting wood and gardening, my "fun" thing is to feed the wild turkeys. We don't go to movies and stopped getting broadcast TV years and years ago. We don't go on vacations. We just hang around home and enjoy the beauty of life.
When I was a kid, the adults would sit on the porch in the glider (remember those?) in the evening and talk now and then. I wonder how well that would go over today.
Todd
Todd,
I'm thinking the main issue is palatability of the transition to low resource usage. Marketability of lifestyle change is the issue. We could in fact build out renewables to provide gross energy comparable to today. But, lacking very robust energy storage infrastructure, that means that we would no longer have a load following power system, but that our usage would have to follow supply. For both businesses and individuals that represents a substantial paradigm shift. I.E. you can have power tools, but you can only use them when the weather has been favorable to power generation. That means you have to plan on selecting your activities based upon external influences, rather than simply internal ones.
EOS
Seems like what small scale agriculture has been doing since its start. And maybe a great deal of other human behavior (e.g., sailing, winter/rainy season travel, outdoor crafts). Maybe humans are pre-familiarized with the behavior patterns involved?
Maybe a bit hopeful. Although you're certainly right that it isn't the industrial paradigm and a substantial transition is (over)due.
-Ray
EOS,
Ok, I got ya. It's kind of funny but lots of people face a "fluid future" frequently. I'll start with me. I live in the mountains and the issue in winter is whether I should run the 4x4 (with chains which take a lot of time to put on) up and down our mile long private road to "make tracks" and whether to take my wife's car down to the county road and park it there since it is plowed now and then. Too early and I waste gas and time and if my tracks turn to ice we can't get my wife's car down regardless of the county road. Too late with the truck and we're snowed in, which could be weeks (the longest was three weeks). To me, that's life...go with the flow.
But others, like farmers, face uncertainty all the time. Should I wait to plow down and blah, blah, blah. Should I cut the hay before the storm... And, in foreign countries, power can be a crap shoot.
So, I understand what you are saying but it's not the end of the world if your perspective is different.
Todd
Todd,
I'm with you. Used to live somewhat that way (the decision to leave wasn't really voluntary). The issue is that 90+% of our population is hopelessly spoiled by the industrial paradigm. They won't give it up without causing trouble. And we have no shortage of wannabe megaomaniacs to harvest their anger/frustration. So I figure, we gotta provide some sort of less shocking pathway for them -for our own protection!
Yes on that less shocking pathway. The "well fed neighbor" notion is as much about our well-being as theirs.
-Ray
Solar panels won't be great for lighting, unless there are batteries. A person would still need candles or something of that sort.
I don't see engines of any sort working very well on power that flickers. Heating elements might be OK, but then direct sunlight would work a whole lot more efficiently for providing the heat (solar thermal).
Given LEDs, which depending upon your needs might require from 1 to 50watts, battery storage (for lighting only), should be cheap and easy.
I don't see cost as the obstacle. I see getting all of the materials together that are necessary for manufacture and production as more of a problem.
Sigh.
Look, it's nice to dream, but here in reality the acquisition of 'more'; going forward not back, is basic to humanity. The cave man that settled for 'this is enough for a good life' ended up with his women stolen, land appropriated and acting as a slave for the one who said 'I want more'.
Really, it's NEVER going to happen.
Abiotic Oil is a more likely scenario.
More than that, if you try to promote 'you need less' as the solution to peak oil you will only attract those that already have those thoughts (eg humanity's losers). The winners have got where they are, with more, by not following that idea - and they are in charge.
You do much better to say "this is the threat that's coming round the corner, most people don't realise, but this is how you get ahead of the game and end up with even MORE come the crash".
Sorry, but that's the brutal truth.
One of the best posts I have seen. Unless you have some dream about how it will go or other bias, this is simply what is happening.
You might hope for better, you might dream of different, you can perhaps even develop an alternative for you and those close. But the great bulk of society is going to take this path.
Our whole culture is set up for growth and more. Every one successful in cultural terms, everyone in charge, all the people who motivate the bulk of the rest just as you said got it by wanting more and getting more. That is how you gain or lose status in current culture. Did you get more or not?
This baby is going down only when the wheels fall off. I think our best hope is technological advancement keeping us ahead or at least allowing a gentle decline. I am not optimistic. But until the stops are hit, this merry go around is not stopping.
I think this is pretty much the way it has been since the stone age. We started killing off whole species of animals back then. We learned to use fire. We also learned to use tools of various sorts. Humans grew in numbers as we killed off the competition, or made domesticated animals out of some. It is really hard to even think about going backward.
This is the assumption, universal in many circles, that the complexity of human experience and existence can be boiled down to a notion of 'homo economicus'--that the beginning and end of what it means to be human is that we are all greedy little @ssholes always on the make to increase our own little pile to the detriment of someone else's.
I won't deny that this is an aspect of human experience, but it is not its totality.
But the assumption that all human emotions and values can be reduced to one--greed--is a central (generally unexamined) assumption of most mainstream economics and is now a dominant part of global society, but it is more virulent in some places than others.
But the faster we start walking away from it, the better. We have to redefine greed as greed--a disgusting and shamefully selfish human impulse than must be monitored and limited rather than trumpeted and celebrated.
Telling people they can become rich by anticipating the inevitable changes coming down the pike may motivate some people to do some useful things, but by and large it is giving up the war in order to win very small battles. As long as the majority of the populace is devoted to the idea of getting rich quick, we are all most certainly sunk.
We have to start taking on this toxic meme head on.
At this very late date, there is little to lose.
You translate "want more" to "greed". I guess you agree that there is some material resource level that it is reasonable for a person to want for himself and his family without it being greed? If so, what is that level in GDP/capita and in kilowatt/capita?
The world average GDP and energy per capita is at the level of Mexico's. The World population is going to grow from 7 billion to 10 billion, so just to keep the per-capita levels stable, the average needs to fall 30% from the level of Mexico. This takes us to level of Colombia.
If we need to halve the total energy and GDP of the world until 2050, we need to equalize countries' GDPs per capita and all settle for half the level of Colombia. Then we're down to El Salvador and Swaziland. (Worse, actually, if you consider that a higher proportion of the 10 billion will be resource demanding adults and seniors.)
Are average citizens of these last countries greedy when they want to improve the material standards for themselves? If not, the solution is not "monitoring and limiting" greed.
"The World population is going to grow from 7 billion to 10 billion, so just to keep the per-capita levels stable, the average needs to fall 30% ..."
I think you meant 'to keep the absolute levels stable'.
Yes.
One of the necessary components of a solution is "monitoring and limiting" greed. Especially when it concerns certain very wealthy players. Its only a part of the solution, which requires multiple parts. Any part, in isolation is insufficient, but if we rejected each part of the solution because it couldn't solve the whole problem, we wouldn't have a change of solving it.
Obviously another part of the solution, is pushing renewables as far as they can go. Not likely sufficient, in isolation from other needed changes, but needed as part of an overall package.
EOS
There's a fascinating logic that emerges in behavior change research. I think it might fit well how you framed our social and physical responses to energy descent.
No intervention alone is sufficient, none are necessary, yet all are useful. Only a few are easily manipulated and even fewer lend themselves to a top-down approach.
-Ray
I wouldn't say none are necessary. There might be some that are useful but not absolutely necessary. But given that it is almost certain our response will undershoot, I'd support any that move us in the right direction.
I don't think so, really. At least not more than is done today. But let's not dwell on that. The original argument here concerned all people. Dobhoi, for instance, wrote:
My argument is simply that humanity will need more energy and a higher world GDP than it has today, and that this need is real and not shallow greed.
I'd say your argument is based on a false premise and a poor metric to boot. GDP?! Really now! Humanity will NEED more energy?!
My argument, based on hard empirical data from multiple scientific sources, is that humanity is due for a major contraction!
Whether that happens more or less sustainably is yet to be seen. The last thing humanity needs is MORE ENERGY!
Just look what we've done with what we have had until now. Recently I have lambasted those that are still pushing the 'GROWTH' meme, let me now also say that what you are saying is indeed tantamount to shallow, shortsighted greed! Shame on you sir!
Could you please elaborate? (I didn't find anything concrete and tangible in your comment to respond to.)
Humanity is in ecological overshoot. The scientific evidence from multiple disciplines is beyond overwhelming.
You can deny reality if you wish but it won't change it!
http://dieoff.org/page15.htm
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/
http://www.energybulletin.net/taxonomy/term/62
The return of "The Limits to Growth"
Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
Well Fred,
Don't forget how Naomi Klein has already posited that 'we have already won the argument, maybe we don't need to worry about convincing the other side for the time being..' (my words, not hers..)
http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate?page=0,1
Maybe if the die is truly cast, all that we need to do now is to define our next jobs and get to work. Truth will out for the rest eventually.. and probably fairly soon.
Bob
Economists of all stripes understand that we need very little of what Naomi calls for to combat AGW. We need only high carbon taxes (and lowered taxes on work for balance) to drastically lower our carbon footprint. This would be very much business as usual. The transport and logistics sector would look a bit different afterwards, but in the big scheme of things, this wouldn't be very dramatic, nor leftist.
Let me rephrase that for you jeppen.
Economists of all stripes understand very little of what we actually need, period!
All current economic models have proven to be a dismal failure in providing any kind of sustainable environment.
Without a sustainable environment we have nothing! Trying to maintain 'Business as Usual' is the very last thing we need right now.
If you can show me how 'Business as Usual' can repair what we have damaged, I might change my tune!
I think you understand too little of what economists understand to make that judgement.
A model that isn't used can't provide anything. Pigovian taxes work, but only if they are applied.
On the contrary. It is exactly what we need. It has worked wonders up to now, and will keep doing so with little modification.
Time repairs damage in nature. BAU is needed to enable us to stop doing more damage than what is repaired.
"It has worked wonders up to now, "
It's simply astonishing that you can say that. The state of the ecology, and what global capitalism has merrily done with it and continues to.. seems to be Greek to you. Or Irish, or perhaps Italian.
Wonders never cease!
Sure, and the computer industry hasn't worked wonders, cause look at all the poor people wasting time with WoW, or look at all computer viruses there are out there. It seems to me that the upside dominates. A lot.
AFAIK, the single largest improvement for European environment was the fall of communism and the demise of its unfiltered, wasteful industry. It seems capitalism generates enough wealth to allow for both a good life and environmental regulation. Failure to internalize environmental costs in the setup of capitalism is a political failure, not a failure of capitalism.
The concentrated wealth generated by capitalism is dominating the politics. It is a failure of capitalism.
HOLY SMOKES BATMAN!! If ever there was a statement that could be declared to be 'FRACTALLY WRONG' that is it!
From the macro to micro and vice versa, no matter where and at what resolution we examine your statement it is WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! What truly boggles my mind is that you just don't see it! The fact that there are so many people who think like you do makes me wonder about our chances for meaningful change before it is too late!
...makes me wonder about our chances for meaningful change before it is too late!
Sorry Fred, our chances for meaningful change before it is too late are essentially zero. No wondering about it. It's already too late. That doesn't mean I won't keep trying to prove myself wrong by working for change, but I don't expect it to happen in this society.
When so many people are true believers in "If BAU caused our problems, more BAU will solve them." then it's over. The problems we create will just keep getting worse.
"The chief cause of problems is solutions." Eric Sevareid
"Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking which created them." Albert Einstein
"Because of this lack of forethought and vision, almost every technological "solution" created a new set of problems which it was assumed would be solved by further advances in technology." Robert Riversong, pioneer in super-insulated and passive solar construction, an instructor in building science and hygro-thermal engineering, a philosopher, wilderness guide and rites-of-passage facilitator.
Yes, I'm pretty much of the same opinion!
However I think this poem applies to our current predicament as much as to an individual's personal death...
I will continue to rage against our refusal to admit change is necessary!
Not a bad passtime as long as it doesn't get in the way of your own preparedness... that's kinda how I look at my participation on here. That, and I sometimes learn things, which actually makes it time well spent. But hey, rage away.
I sometimes think some of the best knowledge prep is done not talking about the need for self-sufficiency (which I've learned freaks Brooklyn hipsters out) but instead in the guise of "hey! this is how we pour concrete and run wire for solar, in case you wanted to do it at Burning Man! And look, bee hives! And the apple trees we've been pruning... what's more locavore than that?" It's the taoist approach.
No one is going to actively prepare for the end of Wii's, Iphones, and the China supply chain... but they can learn things by accident.
jokuhl,
I tend to agree that we will probably see some radical paradigm shifting. It may indeed be in the guise of some form of revolution. I also doubt we shall have to wait a very long time to see this happen. Probably less than a decade or so. However whatever 'WING' it ends up being called is for me pretty much a moot point. It's already underway, gaining momentum as we speak and doubt that it can be stopped!
Hang on tight!
Fred
So, let's agree we're in overshoot AND we need more. Thus, the only option seems to be to employ tech that gives us more while doing less damage. This may sound harder than it is, since such technology is readily available to us.
Wind is one of these technologies. Due to intermittence, it needs to be interconnected over wide areas and overbuilt, and it also needs subsidies or stiff carbon taxes to compete with fossils. But that doesn't mean wind is out of reach, economically. The extra cost is quite bearable.
"So, let's agree we're in overshoot AND we need more."
It is humans' failure/inability to recognize this conundrum that got us into overshoot; our 'need' for more versus planetary limits. So keep squeezing folks.....
You guys seem to ignore your opponents' arguments? We need not go up against planetary limits if we use the best available technology and methods.
I'm not ignoring your arguments, jep, I'm questioning their validity. IMO, it's a classic case of wanting your cake and eating it too.
"We need not go up against planetary limits if we use the best available technology and methods." (??!!)
I suppose this is where we differ. I posit that we ARE up against planetary limits, much harder than the vast majority admits, or is even aware of, though many are certainly suffering the symptoms. It matters little that this isn't evident in your little world. I'm looking out at a lovely, mostly pristine mountain landscape as I type, I have adopted renewables and sustainability strategies far beyond what most folks here have (or ever will), and it would be easy for me to fall into a technucopian dream of saving/raising everyone's standard of living, maintaining BAU in some sense, while repairing the damage we've done. This would require a strong denial of the fact that we've squandered irreplacable endowments, maxed out our sources and sinks, artificially reinforced this process for decades, and we have far too many humans "needing" too much stuff.
I'm all for promoting certain renewables such as wind and solar, not because it will save our society as it is, but because it may help some folks get through the bottleneck we face. Rather than promoting growth, we need to manage contraction, and our skills and stories need to reflect that. For me, this is a fundamental truth.
I'd like to discuss this with you, and even FMagyar, but you don't provide any basis for discussion. Not a shred of quantitative measures, just a lot of emotional and irrational denials.
Contraction is unsellable and unmanageable in most of the world. We (globally) can only care enough for the environment if we're not desperate, i.e. if we have a higher standard of living than is the current world average. Doom can only be averted through growth.
And to top that off you claim over and over that we do not provide a shred of quantitative measures!
jeppen this discussion isn't about 'caring' for the environment! If you think of me as someone who falls into the idealistic hippie tree hugger category, you couldn't possibly be more wrong. I base my entire argument on science, the scientific method, and the overwhelming empirical evidence.
At least watch this video:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/video_overshoot_ex...
This view is based on extensive evidence form multiple scientific disciplines!
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/methodology/
You have said "evidence from multiple scientific disciplines" three times now, but you provide nothing. The video was insultingly shallow and said basically nothing.
I've delved deeply into the foundations of ecological footprint studies and understand them fairly well. One thing I've found that sans carbon, we'd not be in overshoot according to the studies I've seen. And we can shrink carbon use through quite simple methods. And the other components of our footprint we can (and must) mitigate as well with better technology and methodology.
Did you even bother to read the methodology on which the graphic of the video is based?! The video is merely a visual representation of the data! I have in the past given you numerous links to scientific papers.
I'm pretty sure I have linked this site before it contains plenty of information and links to other resources:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html
http://www.mendeley.com/research/refining-ecological-footprint/
The science is irrefutable and I have given you plenty of links where you can get access to the research and the data.
You can't say I have provided nothing of substance. Please do some reading and then come back to the table!
Why don't you read some of E.O Wilson's books and scientific papers for starters or better yet contact him direct he is known to respond and answer layman's questions.
As I said, let's accept that we're into overshoot and that we need more (a bigger economy). So, we agreed on overshoot, but didn't agree on "more". Thus it is strange that you just argue about the overshoot. In Sweden, we call this "smashing in an open door".
Again, we need more (and I've explained why) and we need to use markets, technology and simple regulation to make this happen while lowering our ecological footprint. It may fail, but it is humanity's only hope.
Out of interest, when technology saves the day at the last minute and we can go on growing, what do we do when the "limit" is reached again? You see even if you lower the ecological effects of each person, our population and "needs" will eventually bring us right back to where we were. Only with a bigger population and any outstanding issues and negative effects from the original technology breakthrough and rollout.
It doesn't seem like hope, it seems more like making a robot that can kick an ever-growing can down the road because the can is now too big for us to do it.
Nations have collapsed before, it's not exactly brilliant for those involved, but the fact that people survive shows that growth is in no way a "need". It's just something that happens for a while before collapse happens.
There is no real aggregate limit, just specific problems. If we internalize costs correctly, we always strike the correct balance.
Depends on the definition of "need". I think we'll only be able to shepherd the Earth long-term if we fulfill "needs" that are over and above the current average GDP per capita. If we don't grow economically, we'll keep putting priority on short-term "needs" and ravage the environment to get there.
And that my dear friends is where at the must fundamental of levels physicists and economists part company! Unfortunately for the economists, physics trumps economics every time!
Fred out!
There are very real limits. These "specific problems" you talk about are the symptoms of these underlying limits.
Economic growth is based on greater inputs than outputs. When that changes, economies shrink or stabilise. The longer you put it off and force growth, the worse it is.
Your suggestion of "more tech" would actually make things worse in the long run.
Real limits, yes. Aggregate limits, no.
I don't understand this claim. Greater how?
I fail to see how. Greater efficiency will give us greater output for the same input, whatever that is. Also, there is the aspect of time. Stats are improving. The world is getting more democratic, fertility rates are dropping.
Sorry, i just mean that EROI must be greater than 1. Actually thats not true, in order to grow, you must put in more energy than before.
At first. But then over time Jevons paradox kicks in. The problem is not the tech itself. It is that the tech is used as an excuse not to fix/balance the underlying problem and often adds new problems. I'll give you an example.
Problem: Not enough food to feed population. Easy Solution, improve food outputs at the expense of soil quality.
Result - Larger population because now there is food again.
Later Result when drought occurs: Large scale famine because now:
a) There are more people, and
b) The lower soil quality meant that the harvest did worse than normal in the drought conditions.
Tech solution : Fertilizer and all its problems and costs... But the soil is still bad and the population is still growing as BAU is continuing and everything is fine again. Technology has saved us!
Stats are improving and that would solve the problem, but they have to improve in time to be useful and we have problems now. Population growth has to literally go negative, not just slow down.
We may just have to agree to disagree. This is after all my opinion.
Yes, we'll have to agree to disagree. Perhaps a climate tipping point will kill us off, but I think we have a good chance to pull through even with a 10 billion population.
This is very well put. But I think that what is different 'this time' is the question of what happens to carbon emissions and ecologies in the case of a global civilization collapse. I see no guarantee that environmental damage won't get (temporarily) worse, or much worse, with potentially billions of desperate people possessing the ability to consume the planet's biomass (in the case of fossil fuel shortages). IOW, while I don't agree at all with jeppen's way of putting, it is not entirely unreasonable to say that we 'need' much of the world population's standard of living to rise in order to actually reduce ecological damage. (And I'll just further note that this is not the same thing as saying that energy consumption per capita 'needs' to rise to North American or European levels.)
But we, (excepting a few more aware parts of the world), aren't doing that. And time is running out, yet the forces of obstruction are not close to being defeated.
I agree. But a stiff global carbon tax is within the realm of possibilities. Powering down is not. Population control is not. Settling for the material standard of El Salvador is not. I think a focus on carbon would help, while a split over impossibilities such as powering down, population control, fundamentally changed economic systems and so on is unhelpful.
But a stiff global carbon tax is within the realm of possibilities.
Considering such is 70% waste - why should it be supported?
Population control is not
Pandemics and war are traditional methods.
I don't understand your 70% waste comment. Please elaborate. (The carbon tax is supposed to internalize costs, and if so will yield a better global economic result.)
And now you have understanding:
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/12/08/uk-report-just-30-of-carbo...
I was not talking of cap-and-trade. I was talking about a far more efficient tax.
And how does the source of the tax money comes from when the issue is how it is being spent?
70% waste is unacceptable.
I agree government spending is relatively inefficient. So don't spend the revenues, just lower other taxes to make the total reform revenue neutral.
Are you clear on the difference between cap-and-trade and a carbon or fuel tax?
Cap-and-trade requires complex trading systems. A simple carbon tax or fuel tax does not.
I think this little to and fro is missing one of the main points of my original post - the idea of selling 'less' as viable is wrong.
Look at it like this:
"Buy these new improved sausages; now with more offal and fine crushed bone. It's the lips that make them so tasty, and you can be guaranteed that 30% of the water that we pump into them will evaporate in the pan."
Think that's going to get them rushing off the shelves? Instead you'll get the message:
"Buy these new improved apple and walnut sausages. Pump and juicy with only the finest pork to sizzle in the pan on a lazy Sunday morning."
Either way what arrives on your plate is the same thing - but one you'll buy, and one will repulse you.
FMagyar, you are saying that people are going to have to accept 'less' and that by actively telling them this, it's all going to work out because they will realise you are telling the truth and accept it. This isn't going to happen.
Rather, if you have been trying this tactic, failing, and the decline starts happening, what they will do is take from their fellow man, their neighbours, anyone, to maintain what they have. It will not be going gentle into that good night, it will be TEOTWAWKI collapse.
Looking at this from a very practical standpoint; what is going to happen first is commuter car journeys are going to be hit as available oil imports decrease. The reaction of those commuters is going to be to complain, to queue (probably with engines on) for hours for fuel, to steal from others tanks - all to get 50miles across town to a job they hate, but which is their only means of support in a recession hit world.
If you come along at that point with a message of transition you are likely to end up dangling from a lamppost.
If instead you come along with a service for companies, helping them arrange ridesharing groups to reduce costs, guarantee fuel for those that take part, and ramp up working from home solutions for the company - you'll get them to welcome you with open arms - selling "less time wasted in the commute, worktime in your shorts, less stress".
On a broader scale, we have a potential series of different destinations we can aim to reach on the other side of the peak oil decline and the climate change runaway. The one that you promote is not going to be accepted as a valid aim point for 90-95% of the population - you cannot aim to get there from here, even if it might be somewhere you end up. Kind of like Slough.
Better to come up with a valid, achievable, 'more' solution that reduces liquid energy and resource use - probably by emphasising online solutions and local 'village' tribes. You can construct viable solutions that you can also sell that can then get movement in the right direction.
That's preferable to banging you head against a brick wall in the certain knowledge that eventually you'll break through, honest.
A very difficult sell indeed, especially given our current society's state of mind due mainly to having been brainwashed by Madison avenue to want more, more, more! As for being wrong? I beg to differ. Where is Nate Hagens, with his concept of longage of expectations, when you need him? >;^)
Also, please see Todd's comment up thread and my response to it.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8806#comment-865492
But going a bit further let's take a deeper look at why selling 'less' is so difficult under our current capitalistic system even though greed is actually anathema to basic human nature. BTW if I could go back in time and stop one person dead in his tracks it would be Eduard Bernays, who I think is almost single handedly responsible for our present predicament http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0OrT-8gXMs
http://www.workers.org/2006/us/greedy-0223/
I'm afraid I have chosen to ignore most of the arguments he engages in. They are based on such different basic assumptions, that I'm of the opinion that there's very little such conversations can hope to accomplish for the time being.. while I did respond to that little
"It has worked wonders up to now, "
moment back there. It's the logic of..
'The beatings will continue until Morale Improves.' Since the beatings have clearly worked wonders so far..
'If we keep digging, we'll eventually find the Mountaintop. Look at all the other stuff we've found by digging! I KNOW it's in here someplace..'
I don't mind you dismissing me in "your" forum, but I think you'll find that you, in turn, will be dismissed by the larger human community if you go out there and refuse to acknowledge the benefits of modern, capitalistic society. It's not only material abundance such as delicious food from all over the world, nice clothes, housing and so on. It's also long lives, excellent health care and modern medicine, a wealth of knowledge and education, means of communication and transport that allows people to connect all over the world and all of that. And last but not the least, we have managed to overcome a lot of the environmental problems we have created along the way. Deny all this at your peril.
I frequently acknowledge the upsides of our modern developments, and regularly point to what I hope are the appropriate and balanced uses of these tools, but do not ignore the disasters that have come along hand in hand with our mechanization, automation, powergrabbing and money-changing.
Much of the wealth of modern industrialized nations is sitting squarely on the backs of colonialized people and denuded natural resources. Once a spot is depleted, we pick up our machines and find another one. The technologies that are supposedly helping us LIVE efficiently and comfortably are also frequently tools that are able to KILL things most efficiently and unobtrusively. Tools to communicate are used to manipulate and misinform, and Economic Hit Men are actively combing the planet, stealing candy from babies.
There are programs that need to grow and be nourished.. but the economic principles as they stand today do not. They need fundamental reform.
You're right, 'smaller' doesn't sell.. but it doesn't have to. The tides don't go out because of market pressures.
In the drumbeats, I've been asked not to argue against leftist rants, so I'll just mention that I don't agree at all.
I'm curious: roughly how many heating degree days do you have there in the pristine mountains? Many BAU city folk see ~4000 HDD south of ~New Jersey, but up in the mountains of (say) New England double that (>8000 HDD ) is common.
Annual HDD is 4308 per CLRsearch.com (Western North Carolina, 2400 feet)
jeppen, I begin to detect the slightest of cracks in your adherence to what has been till now a completely untenable position on your part.
You are 100% correct in finally admitting that we are in overshoot! You still fail to understand two fundamental points, which are at the root of our very deep disagreement!
First, the impossibility of obtaining 'MORE'! There is absolutely nothing available that will equal let alone provide 'MORE' energy than what we have had access to by using fossil fuels.
And second, your continued insistence that we NEED more! No we do not! We need LESS! What we need is a radical change in our expectations. The hardest part of this is that most people really don't have a clue as to what it is that we really need. Hint, less material things, more community, friends, and caring for each other, less greed, less me, me,me!
Who knows, maybe at some point you will actually come around.
I accepted that mostly for the sake of argument. If I challenge to much in a single thread, moderators seems to hate me.
Let's investigate that claim. Global GDP is some $60e12. Let's say it's reasonable to devote 10% to energy procurement. At $2e3 per KW, that amount of money (10%) suffice to install 3e9 KW = 3 TW wind per year. Assuming a life of 20 years, we could have 60 TW of wind running, or 20 TW average. Global primary energy consumption is on the order of 15 TW average, of much lower quality than electricity. So your claim is obviously false.
You didn't reply to my argument concerning average levels in different countries and in the world as a whole, and I guess that was because you had no good answer. We do need more. Americans may need less, but on average, we humans need more.
That doesn't suffice. Again, it isn't about greed.
You will, if you live long enough. Time will provide proof.
The issue isn't whether if all humans suddenly had a Damascene conversion, we could make a rapid conversion to cleantech. The issue, is -other than for a few small sized communities, refusing to do that. We've dithered for decades, and show no evidence that we are going to change in time.
We (as a species), will probably come through a very chaotic and unpleasant transition with some sort of technological civilization intact. And there will still be a biosphere of sorts, but many species will be missing, and some environments badly damaged. And many humans will suffer greatly during that transition. But, with any luck, the best and most sustainable of our practices and technologies will come through on the other end. So I think in term of building up cleantech stuff, we should just soldier on. The more we do the less chaotic and painful that transition will be. But, don't live off the false hope that we can stave it off. We've waited too long for that.
You are referring to a very large scale build out of wind power around the world. There are a limited number of sites where existing high voltage power lines, existing roads (or rails) and commercially viable wind sites intersect. They are the low hanging fruit for wind energy. I seriously doubt there are enough of these ideal sites to generate 60 TW from wind with a capacity factor of 1/3. Your suggested build-out would require wind farms to be located in remote locations. The expense of building long power lines, long roads and building towns to support workers in locations that are ideal for wind but less than ideal for human habitation would cost much more than $2000 / kW. Your 20 TW of average power is not 20 TW of continuous power. Storage would have to be integrated into this scheme, and the existing pumped hydro around the world is insufficient. Is there enough neodymium for the magnets in this proposed build-out? If not, the efficiency of the wind turbines would decrease making the capacity factor decline. Perhaps you are anticipating further technological developments, such as 400 meter long blades transported by aircraft or assembled on site.
An approximate, back-of-the-envelope calculation does not make FMagyar's claim obviously false.
Neodymium is not required, there are new ferrites that can be used.
NAOM
Heck, no permanent magnets of any kind are *required* to build a generator, induction still works, if a little less efficiently.
True, but I was noting it against the comment about reduced efficiency. The ferrites can keep the efficiency up though, as you point out, they are not essential if you can live with lower efficiency.
NAOM
I don't believe in storage. I think we should overbuild wind somewhat, do long distance interconnects and do some DSM. We can complete that with some hydro and natural gas.
I would say we need less than 10 TW electric to match 15 TW mostly thermal energy, so there is ample room for doing the mitigations above, which are mostly cheap. Thus I think my back-of-the-envelope calculation is sufficient to prove FMagyars claim wrong.
(Also, I think breeder nuclear is more practical, but let's not go there.)
Well if you were replacing 15TW consumption of primary hydrocarbon energy with electric then 5TW is more like it without the thermodymanic loss in transportation of electricity production. Less than that if all current combustion space/water heating is replaced w/ 4:1 COP heat pumps. Then there's enough slop over time to cut consumption in half again with efficiency gains. But of course a fair chunk of that energy consumption is not hydrocarbon, it is already electric nuclear, hydro, or wind (e.g. US is ~17% non-fossil, France is 50+% non-fossil) which does not need to be replaced with wind/solar any time soon, if ever.
This would only be true if all energy consumption went to mechanical or electric uses. But probably between a third and half of all primary energy is used directly for heat, either for human cooking or comfort or for industrial processes. So there's roughly 5-7TW you can't reduce at all, and Jeppen is more or less in the ballpark. Maybe its 8TW if we insist. Hard to measure precisely on a global scale.
between a third and half of all primary energy is used directly for heat, either for human cooking or comfort or for industrial processes.
But that can be reduced by a factor of 3: Heat pumps for space heat, microwaves & induction for cooking, more efficient industrial processes.
Exactly. Heat pumps at 3 or 4:1, then a great deal of the low grade heat rejected from heat engine electric production is usable for space heating in cogeneration / district heat schemes. Low grade heat is also relatively easy to store. Add in efficiency improvements with today's tech (LED lighting, super insulated structures, etc) and I suspect the world could be run otherwise as is for 1-2TW.
Most residential/commercial direct heat requirements are low grade and can be provided by heat pumps (with roughly the same 1/3rd reduction) if they need to be supplied by electricity.
Demand side management for wind turbines might be a bit tricky. Wind can be calm for weeks and vary seasonally. Demand that can adapt is limited. Solar is more predictable (there is power every day) and can be overbuilt locally. Wind power has a role, but its penetration needs to be limited to something between 20% and 40%. Since Denmark has the greatest penetration at ~21% in 2010 (World Energy Report 2010 (PDF warning) page 10), they are the ones to watch.
I was firmly in your camp for several years regarding wind, as some regulars here may be able to testify, if they remember. Then a few months ago I got hold of hourly data on Sweden's wind production and electricity demand over entire years. I experimented with that data in Excel (very easy) and found that if you scale wind to produce 100% of yearly demand, it will in fact cover some 74% of hourly demand, while 26% is wasted/stranded as it is produced when there is not sufficient demand. To me, that's moderate overbuild and a much higher penetration (74%) than I believed feasible. Sweden is not that big, so the geographical distribution is not extreme and could be improved upon. And there is not much DSM here either.
My conclusion is that likely 80% wind is fully possible and reasonably economical, and that the rest can be covered by hydro and NG for a very low carbon footprint of electricity. You do need subsidies to get there, however, or stiff carbon taxes.
Sweden has an enormous amount of hydro capacity for its size. I don't think anyone disputes that wind can work to the extent that it's backed up by hydro, but most regions don't have that option, to that degree.
As I said, overbuild wind by building 100%. 26% won't be matched to demand, so is wasted. 74% is pretty good, regardless of hydro resources. I'm sure the remaining 26% can be filled by DSM, longer transmission, gas, hydro and so on.
Was that the 2010 data?
If you have the time, you might try modelling DSM by putting in formulas to: reduce consumption by, say, 15% when wind production is below demand and increase consumption by, say, 10% when wind production is above demand.
I'd be curious to see how the 74%/26% change.
Global Wind Energy Council: Sweeden:
Assuming this is name plate capacity, 540 TWh/year = 62 GW capacity, or 13 GW actual production with a capacity factor of 21%.
In 2010, Sweden generated 3.5 TWh from wind and had an installed capacity of 1.6 GW in 2009 and 2.2 GW in 2010. The estimated actual capacity factor is:
3.5 TWh / (((2.2 GW + 1.6 GW)/2) * 8766 h = 21%.
According to Wiki: Electricity sector in Sweden, Sweden consumed 147 TWh of electricity in 2010 = 17 GW.
Because all the best wind sites will be used first, the capacity factor would likely decrease with a full scale build-out. Because the estimate is technical potential, I doubt the ultimately recoverable resource could rise to meet Sweden's demand in 2010. Their published goal is 30 TWh by 2020 or 20% of their electrical power demand. Maybe I misunderstand what my source means by technical capacity, but I am still doubtful about the ability to do 100% build-outs.
If Sweden uses 147 TWh/year, that's only 27% of the potential wind generation of 540TWh/year.
A TWh is a TWh - capacity factors don't apply.
I grant you that I am not sure of the meaning of technical potential as it applies to wind energy. It does not sound like technical annual average wind energy. I interpreted it as wind turbines spaced 1 rotor diameter apart everywhere in the country with at least commercial grade wind and the wind is blowing at a speed to run every turbine at their rated capacity for a year, then the technical potential is achieved. In reality, wind would not cooperate and wind farms would not be placed in cities, preserves and places that are too rugged to access. The smallest term in that group seemed to be the capacity factor that relates the name plate capacity of a wind turbine to its average power output, so I applied it.
Renewable Energy Technical Potential Toolkit explains that technical potential for wind power already includes the capacity factor. Therefore scaling Sweden's wind power to 100% of electricity production is plausible.
Thanks for the toolkit link.
Sounds good.
True, but storage like load becomes easier if its separated by energy quality. If all low grade energy the space heating/cooling and water heating storage needs are addressed with simple underground hot/cold water storage, the high grade energy that must be produced by pumped storage (or synthesized chemical energy) is reduced dramatically, perhaps by half. A 20e6 M^3 body of water that swings 50C holds holds a TWh, so a few multiples of that stores more than a little outage time.
Gail's statement about the cost of electric transmission lines, "at least several cents per kWh, for wind energy transported over long distances", is a bit vague. I found some cost estimates in American Electric Power: Transmission Facts (PDF warning) on page 1:
Question 11 on page 3 gives the power carrying capacity of the transmission lines:
I can not think of any way to estimate the length of transmission lines needed for a global build out of 60 TW of wind power. Placing 765 kV AC transmission lines over 36,000 miles of freight rail tracks in the U.S. would cost up to $144 billion and would only deliver gigawatts of power according to the second table. Assuming the average distance traveled by the power is 550 miles:
(36000 mi / 550 mi * 1.5 GW = ~98 GW
98 GW (rated power) of wind turbines costing $2000 / kW would cost ~$200 billion. By this calculation the power lines would increase the cost by 72%. The price tag would increase to 17% of world GDP just to move the power 550 miles on average. Using transmission lines to move electricity around on continental scales to smooth out variation in wind generation, appears to be an expensive proposition.
Another issue I see from question 7 is that a 765 kV transmission line requires a right-of-way with a width of 200 feet, but, if I remember correctly, the transcontinental railroad right-of-ways are usually 100 feet wide.
For long distance transmission the better solution is DC rather than AC.
NAOM
Keep in mind that only balancing amounts would need to be moved between markets. This would only be a small % of total demand.
Has the 'Green Freedom'(TM)(Patent Pending) concept, published in November 2007 by Dr. F. Jeffrey Martin and Dr. William L. Kubic, Jr., both from LANL, progressed any further than the publishing of the research paper?
http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf
Yes. An agreement was signed 10/13/11 to build a demonstration plant at the University of Texas in Odessa to be run by students.
There is also a 4/23/08 presentation at the 2008 LSU energy conference, and a brief critique from 1/4/10 at Revisiting Green Freedom.
The latter ends with the statement:
RDY,
Thank you for posting these links and keeping us updated.
University of Texas at the Permian Basin (UTPB) is also working the H3TR (High-Temperature Test and Teaching Reactor).
The proposed Green Freedom test plant site is adjacent to the H3TR site.
UTPB envisions powering the Green Freedom test plant, at some point, with H3TR, I believe.
The proponents state that the Green Freedom process can produce gasoline at $5.00/gallon retail consumer cost (U.S.), with an uncertainty of +/- 30%.
They further envision that various potentially feasible process improvements could drive the retail price of GF-produced gasoline as low as $3.90/gallon.
I suppose this is where the estimate of as low as $2,50/gallon comes from in the following article:
http://www.oaoa.com/articles/project-73924-odc-green.html
I think the author of this article (the one linked directly above this sentence) is carrying forward the +/- 30% uncertainty and applying it to the estimated low case of the $3.90/gallon retail 'middle case'.
I have learned from experience being involved with large project management that cost estimates, especially from the project/process/etc. designers, are usually optimistic.
In my opinion, the long pole in the Green freedom tent is the nuclear reactors, and not so much the chemical processes involved in mining the atmospheric CO2 and combining it with other elements/chemicals to produce methanol, then gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, etc.
The number of 160-acre Green Freedom plants necessary to serve all current demand for U.S. liquid fuels, according to the LSU presentation, is ~ 910. However, the authors content that a build rate of ~ 11/year would suffice to keep the amount of imported fuel at current levels (the difference being depletion of U.S. oil reserves...I do not think Canadian reserves were part of this equation, which is fine...they are Canadian reserves).
I would have to go back an check the paper to see if these Green Freedom plants, each currently estimated with a $5B price tag (that seems low to me, just for the two APS-1000s alone), would produce any surplus electricity for the grid, or whether all output (thermal [steam] and trons are consumed in the liquid fuel production process.
By my crude math, if we wanted, in the U.S., to employ 'Green Freedom' plants for all of our liquid fuel needs, and also build modern Generation 3 or 3+ nukes to replace our current nuke plants and further, to produce 80% of our electrical needs, such as is done in France, we would need a build-out of some 2200 APS-1000-equivalent nuclear reactors (~ 400 to provide ~ 80% of our electricity needs, and ~1800 at two per each of the ~ 900 Green Freedom liquid fuel plants).
Those numbers are certainly sobering.
Although this concept requires no Unobtanium or Warp Drive, the scale of the logistical/engineering issues is huge.
Some issues:
Do we have enough Uranium for this idea writ large?
How do we deal with the waste streams?
How do we properly mitigate the risks of nuclear plant accidents/incidents that produce radioactive release/contamination.
Some responses I can envision being proffered include breeder reactors and/or Thorium reactors, but these have unknowns and issues of their own, and each of these approaches would require significant RDT&E investments in money, skills, raw m,materials, and time before being ready for large-scale implementation, which in itself would require an even larger investment in the previously enumerated resources.
I hate to use this metaphor, but a 'Manhattan Project/Apollo Moon Shot' level-of effort project on steroids would seem to be required at this point...it would be a 'bet the farm' kind of thing.
And even given that this tech-'solution' works, I recall that the Limits-To_Growth authors ran cases in 'World3' where energy supply was set to 'magic',...all the energy required was provided Deux ex Machina-style, and the World 3 parameters crashed anyway after various delays, non of which were measured in centuries! Seems that pollution eventually overwhelms the system.
In the end, human population reduction seems essential/necessary.
Edit:
I would find it fascinating if the TOD editors/site managers were to invite the authors of the 'Green Freedom' concept to present a keypost on TOD.
At least this concept is closer to reality than LENR/Cold Fusion, or Hot Fusion, for that matter.
The authors could benefit from promotion of their ideas, as well as benefit from the comments and questions from the TOD readership.
The 'Green Freedom' concept is at least as plausible, perhaps more so, then a massive deployment of Space-Based Power Satellites (although I really wish the reverse case was true, as SBSPS would not have the nuclear accident/incident/waste stream issues that come with a huge nuclear fission build-out.
The contact info for the 'Green Freedom' authors (from their paper linked in my OP on this thread on this topic:
Dr. F. Jeffrey Martin
Senior Advisor
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
505-665-6744
Fax: 505-665-1586
jmartin@lanl.gov
Dr. William L. Kubic, Jr.
Technical Staff Member
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
505-665-9199
Fax: 505-665-1586
wkubic@lanl.gov
Heis:
The chemistry part seems plausible. For instance I exchanged emails with a guy who wants to do windfuels -use stranded wind (available when production exceeds transmission capability), plus captured CO2 to make fuel. And I believe the navy is exploring Nuke electricty plus seawater to make jet fuel at sea. It certainly sounds as if other sorts of energy can be utilized to create liquid fuels. Presumably the Nuke part isn't necessary, although substituting (say) solar PV might not be as cost effective, as the conversion plant (which I presume is capital intensive) would sit idle much of the time. Of course getting the price down to an acceptable level, well that will take some development won't it. But at least if we play our cards right, we could have enough liquid fuels and hydrocarbon chemical feedstock for specialty uses (like long range -but costly air travel). Of course that will only work if population is controlled and other stresses on the global environment are also reduced to within tolerable limits.
eos,
I agree that it appears plausible.
Was the fellow you emailed 'Stranded Wind' who used to post on TOD (maybe he/she still does under a different moniker)?
IIRC, he advocated producing ammonia using otherwise 'stranded' wind power....therefore addressing the issues of having too much wind at some times, not enough at others, and the issue of long-distance electricity transmission.
Of course there are the expected conversion losses from one form of energy to another, but using lower system efficiency approaches seems to be the way of things in our future, once we have sufficiently depleted our treasure trove of stored sunshine.
Of course, the ~2200 nuclear plants for the ~900 Green Energy plants and others for electricity to provide the U.S. with its current consumption (WHat about the entire World??) would be reduced in number if electricity and liquid fuels were priced higher, promoting efficiency and doing less with less (sorry Garp, it is inevitable...although I agree that a marketing strategy will be the soft sell/soft lie approach).
You can do it with wind and solar PV. What makes nuclear shine here is that you can use its high temperature process heat directly in electrolysis and chemical processes. This lowers cost.
dohboi,
But how to converse with replicators of this meme? Maybe fully play it out in a thought experiment.
If human nature were limited to self-centered, short-term gain maximizing, if this were the dominant, universal, foundational pattern, then why don’t all societies eventually end up like the Ik of Uganda? Tainter’s description of the Ik fits well the meme’s assumption (The Collapse of Complex Societies, Pp. 17-18, 19, 210). Yet even the meme propagators must recoil at the thought of such a society, or at least notice that such societies are not pervasive.
Furthermore, even when societies have collapsed into extreme simplicity, chaos, or worse, complex societies have reappeared, repeatedly, often nearby (see Schwartz & Nichols (2006) After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies or Tainter’s description of China’s dynastic cycle). Certainly, nature's capacity to provision us also must be restored if depleted by the process of collapse (Carter & Dale (1975) Topsoil and Civilization). But the evidence of societal regeneration suggests that human nature contains multiple counter-balancing tendencies (including what Erik Erikson calls generativity, otherwise, once an Ik always an Ik).
There are individuals in any society who eventually come to specialize in being ”greedy little @ssholes.” In fact, the tendency to specialize in this pattern may have co-evolved with a variety of other specializations (e.g., generativity), and together they enhanced group resilience.
A plurality of inherited inclinations seems to better fit the evidence. This must frustrate those of us who want to claim that a single pattern of human nature dominates and/or is foundational.
-Ray
Dohboi,
You are building a strawman. Wanting 'more' doesn't equate to 'homo economicus' and simple greed. Take onboard the ideas of Dawkins "Blind Watchmaker", we can achieve 'more' via variety of avenues, some of which appear altruistic. In the end it still ends up being 'more', even if its 'I feel better about myself by helping people'. Few help people to feel worse about themselves - there has to be a net win for the individual, in their own head.
You then go on to say 'we start walking away from it'. Fact is, we aren't walking away from wanting more, ever. Not in the majority we aren't - its pathological to 'humanity'.
Thus, to 'win' in this argument, you can't couch it as "making do with less". Rather you have to 'sell' the upside; the win, the 'more'. And the predominate way of doing that is to sell robustness against risk (once you have first convinced them of the risk). For those with money, power and position, its benefiting from the change. Those are the avenues which can work.
There are a few toxic memes in the peak oil arena. Two of the main ones are this 'you'll have to make do with less'; and the 'pastoral idyll' idea of your own little subsistence farm. Sooner they are dropped, sooner we can move on to something that might work.
Fine, if that's how you want to play it, then: Less is More, so the Less you have, the More you have, now Be Happy!
garyp
Sigh is right.
You've provided a concise editorial. Here's mine, less concise.
That humans are driven to seek ever MORE, while considering only short-term outcomes and individual gain is indisputable. But for us to say that our species has only this one motive or behavioral trajectory is incorrect. The brain is more plastic and behavior more responsive than such a statement allows.
There is no scientific basis for us taking a narrow view of human nature. Nonetheless, it’s become an internet meme.
The issue is not whether human nature leads only to sustainable or unsustainable outcomes; we are capable of both, neither is inevitable. What we are challenged with is specifying the conditions under which humans behave more reasonably. Recent behavioral science has opened up a toolbox beyond our dreams of a generation ago. The trick is for us not to just grab our one favorite tool.
-Ray
RDY.
Thanks, good stuff.
The key is to find ways that enhance our cooperative and future-concerning selfs, more than the other. Culture has a lot of influence on the outcome.
But, how many of the people who best understand that toolbox, are working for the big money interests. I fear that the pyschological marketting skills of the big corps are outstripping the efforts of the rest of us.
If we are going to have any hope of keeping civilization going and mitigating climate change we are going to need rapid build wind and solar. For my part, I believe Gail's article to be informative, but far too negative regarding wind's prospects. These are primarily common materials which are easy and economical to scale. The primary obstacle, as with solar, at this point is political. The US is the grips of a fossil-fuel backed lobby that has been successful in cornering the market on energy for many, many years. And this stranglehold makes it very difficult for alternative energy to develop.
That said, things are moving despite this negative environment.
The US doubled its solar energy capacity in 2011 to 4 Gigawatts.
The US added 4 GW of wind energy capacity in 2011 bringing the US wind total to 44 GW.
That's 48GW wind and solar installed and 6 GW wind and solar added this year. The new wind and solar capacity added this year is greater than all other energy sources except natural gas.
The US also now consumes more renewable energy in total than Nuclear energy http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/08/renewable-energy-usage-surpasses-nuc...
And all this is happening despite the fact that the fossil fuel industry receives five times the level of federal subsidies as renewable alternatives.
The Midwest's Wind Power Hub
Capturing The Wind
"There are so many obstacles for wind to overcome in the US that I am not sure that we should even try to push for higher wind penetration levels. The only exception might be in areas where wind energy is cheap to produce and the grid can readily accept the electricity."
I've generally been an advocate for local solutions. Attempts to maintain the hugely complex, widely deployed grid systems will be unsustainable, IMO....
"Since the world is finite, there is a good chance that at some point we are going to have to get along with less electricity as well as less oil. Instead of focusing on delaying the inevitable, perhaps we should start thinking about preparing people for simpler lives that use less energy of all types. Such an approach might solve multiple problems at once–too much CO2, too little oil, and too little capital to tackle all the problems that need to be tackled at once."
The first laws of renewables have always been efficiency first and powering down, the ideas that a growth-based, BAU/Jevons scenario doesn't allow for. Any gains in efficiency will quickly be sucked up by the capitalist, energy-slurping monster. Only increased cost due to availability seems to affect consumption levels.
Regarding CO2:
The primary reason that intermittent sources such as wind and solar do little to reduce emissions is the balancing requirements, primarily provided by fossil fuel plants. If the balancing could be provided by other means, this would change, though the costs while having to compete with dirt(y) cheap coal and natural gas, will make development and wide deployment of such systems unacceptable. We've waited too long it seems.
Power down,,, keep it local.
The load itself is far more variable moment to moment than the output of the typical wind farm, and is addressed without significantly changing overall production efficiency via a number of methods like pumped storage, demand management, load following baseload, etc. The idea that wind contribution is somehow cancelled out by variability and thus significantly driving down overall system efficiency is nonsense that is unfortunately enjoying extended life by repeating that Bentek silliness from blog to blog.
Sources?
I've long been a proponent of wind and other renewables, and expected that further development of such would include load balancing schemes partnered with installations of wind, etc., and at current levels of production I don't see it as an issue. A more massive build out of wind will require further development of such schemes, along with society-wide support, something I see as lagging.
My primary hope for wind and solar is environmental; displacing fossil fuels and fission. It is evident that this isn't occurring fast enough. This is why I focus on reducing my local carbon footprint, while the rest of society bickers about half-measures and attempts to 'painlessly' fuel further growth. Rather than adapting to renewables, we seem to be intent on adapting renewables to our current system. Expectations need to change dramatically.
I can join you on displacing fossil, not fission, as I think wind + backup/storage will eat up to much land in trying displace fission.
What's fast enough? Coal, the dirtiest source, is being displaced almost 10% per decade* by gas, wind, nuclear up rate, whatever. Non-fossil (nuclear,hydro, other renewable) is almost a third of generation now and growing, if slowly. Meanwhile US energy per capita consumption (along w/ CO2 emissions) has been falling 0.4% per year since 1973, and 1.5% per year since 2000.
* http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/excel/epmxlfile1_1.xls
When a society is deep into massive overshoot....not nearly fast enough. Bailing out the Titanic with teacups we are.
I'm not getting this 10% displacement per decade from that link. what am I doing wrong? what is displacement as you define it?
Divide the coal production kWh by the total kWh, each year.
Per EIA:
Coal generation, percentage:
1997: 52.8%
1998: 51.8%
2010: 45.0%
2011: 43.1%
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8806#comment-865570
odd take on the data as coals absolute use globally is increasing and static in the US which suggests that large wedge while a decreasing percentage of the total is just being added too... largely I suspect by unconventional oil and NG.
thats a odd way of looking at the data. which is US centric and undeservingly so.
Yes coal is increasing globally. I didn't have any 'take' on the US coal-electric data; it is what it is. Why are numbers 'odd'?
Look, that's simply not true, US coal electricity generation is not static even in terms of absolute usage. US electric generation of kWhs from coal is lower today (1782TWh) than it was in 1997 (1845TWh). And that's only the electricity; the actual coal burned is down further because the plants have become more efficient and cleaner over time, allowing them to produce more electricity from a given amount of coal, meaning actual CO2 and other emissions decrease faster than the decline in coal electricity production. On top of all that, absolute per capita consumption has declined faster still since population continues to increase in the US unlike several other developed nations (e.g. Japan, S. Korea, etc), mainly from immigration.
US centric??? The title of this article is "Obstacles Facing US Wind Energy" and even if it were not, analysis of US energy data is instructive as the US is at least headed in the right direction, in my view, on coal (less) and wind (more) use.
I would have said there had been a 3.5% drop in coal burned rather than a 10% decline in a sector's percentage for the total consumption all sectors over the decade
YMMV
Sure, fair enough. There was a slow increase in US coal consumption 2000-2007, though I show a 7.6% decline from the peak in 2007 (1045 mtons) to 2011 (965 mtons) for coal consumption by US electric generation.*
The interesting question for me is what can the data tells us about what is likely to happen going forward? On that point, the decade long 10% decline relative to other sources is instructive about likely future behavior, which is that when a utility decides to build new capacity, gas, wind, hydro, or nuclear uprates are preferred to coal. This means it is likely, over time, that coal plants as they retire will continue to be replaced by these other sources, reducing emissions along the way.
*http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/chap2.pdf
I think wind + backup/storage will eat up to much land in trying displace fission.
At least when a wind machine fails - the land is not un-useable for generations.
And land under a wind turbine can be used for things.
But do show this "eating" up you claim happens.
At 2.3% penetration this isn't an issue. Later on (or in areas with much higher local wind/solar it becomes an issue). The latest GE NG turbine is designed for rapdid ramp up/down situations -and high efficiency as well. So as older power plants are replaced, the diffiuclty of finding balancing generation should drop as well. This is much more an issue of deliberate misinformation by fossil fuel interests, then a hard to surmount technical issue. We also have some other dispatchable supply, such as hydro, and should be able to obtain dispatchable demand (freezer, AC, Aluminum smelters, etc), at relatively low cost.
The big issue for wind in the US versus say Europe where the penetration level is an order of magnitude greater is politics, and its dominance by big money fossil fuel interests. This is exacerbated by the strong disinformation industry in the US.
Reading that "Wind Energy" article, which is based on the facts as measured in the field, not on assumptions, it becomes clear:
Grid-scale wind energy is little other than electrical garbage that profits promoters and gladdens legislators, but that utilities have to clean up at their own cost.
Wind energy balancing plants, usually consisting of quick-ramping gas turbines or hydro plants, are required to ramp down when wind energy surges and ramp up when wind energy ebbs
This isn't true. Demand Side Management is very effective, and far cheaper.
It's cheapness is it's flaw: utilities don't get paid for efficiency, they get paid for building stuff, like peak generation.
That can change, as it did in California.
Here in Alberta we have quite a lot of wind power, and there are investors ready to build more if the infrastructure is put in place to handle it. However, the biggest problems are the NIMBY's (Not In My Back Yard) and BANANA's (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody) who are blocking new transmission lines to balance the system.
The problem is that the wind generation capacity is in Southern Alberta, near the Montana border, and most of the population is in the middle of the province, far away from the border. (This makes Alberta different from most Canadian provinces, where the population is clustered near the US border.)
In addition, there are huge oil sands plants in Northern Alberta which are capable of generation a huge surplus of electricity as a by-product of their main business of producing oil for the US. (Most people are unaware that oil sands plants can do this.) These are also far away from population centers, in the other direction.
As far as dealing with the troughs in wind generation, Alberta has quite a large amount of natural gas all over the place, huge NG storage capability, and NG peaking units could kick in to balance the load as required. Peaking units generate expensive power, though.
The fundamental problem is that the companies are unable to build the transmission lines to balance this system across the province because the NIMBY's and BANANA's don't want it done, They will come up with all kinds of reasons why not, most of them based on "I don't want no stinkin' power lines; We should hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' instead."
As a result, electricity prices are skyrocketing because the utilities plan to shut down the old coal-burning power plants because of greenhouse gas concerns, and they are not doing maintenance on them. This causes reliability problems. At the moment prices are sky-high because three major power plants have tripped off-line, and they are having to buy electricity from adjacent provinces, which have supply problems of their own, and on NG peaking units, which are not designed to generate base load power.
The price increases could be avoided by just ignoring the NIMBY's and BANANA's and building all the necessary transmission lines regardless of their objections. Then the investors could put up their wind turbines, the oil sands plants could contribute a lot to base load, the NG peaking units could handle the dips in wind speed, and everybody would be happy except the NIMBY's and BANANA's
I think that there is an issue beyond initially building all of these lines. They also have to be maintained. I am willing to bet that in Alberta, there are not going to be roads near some of them. They will have to be maintained by helicopter.
In the US, it takes 10 years to get new power lines put up in many places, because of NIMBY issues and all of the regulatory hurdles. If new lines are not in place until 2022, are we really going to be able to maintain them very well for, say, the next 40 or 50 years, starting in 2022? Maybe Alberta with its oil will be able to, but the rest of the world will find this task difficult.
They will maintain power lines by helicopter, if they absolutely have to, but in general they can manage to put in a 4WD road underneath the power line which is negotiable by most 4WD vehicles most of the time. If a 4x4 can't handle it, they have some tracked vehicles that can drive through swamps and swim across rivers if they have to.
I remember the first time I took my old 4x4 (which was brand new at the time) out on a hydroline access road. I dropped one of the front wheels into a mudhole that was deeper than the wheel was tall, and bent the skid plate under the engine. Fortunately, it managed to crawl out on its own (it still had traction on the other three wheels) and the only damage was to the skid plate. There was only one other 4x4 on the road, but it was stuck, so I rescued the passengers and took them out to the nearest town.
I am waiting for electric 4WD vehicles.
There's no great challenge making an EV with motors driving the other pair of wheels.. I know you're being a little silly, but you make it sound like some kind of hurdle, which it is not.
It's also not useful to suggest that we'll have NO liquid fuels around, in order to power certain, high-value operations. As our corn farmers and woodsmen tell us regularly, there are all sorts of Non-petrol ways to power up an ICE vehicle.. it just boosts the operating costs.
Wait no longer...ask and ye shall receive...Diesel-electric, at least one model with a large capacity for acceleration surges...pure EV fro vehicles such as this is a bit of a stretch...maybe with one of those neat little 'nuclear batteries'...
http://www.oshkoshdefense.com/products/12/hemtt-a3-diesel-electric
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/08/10/oshkosh-shows-diesel-electric-tru...
Moving pictures tell the tale...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAqxJkwKMRA
Here are some great slides with pics and specs for you gearheads:
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2007power/NDIARegency/Wed/Session14presnasrCopy...
- 100-120kw of exportable AC power
- Climbs steep inclines
- Definitely both 'on-road' and 'off-road'
- Big payloads
- Air-transportable by C-130
- Rugged...can take a beating...some models armored and with ballistic glass
- Numerous configurations for different tasks
- Prototype used for Hurricane Katrina relief support
- American-made
When I read, "air tranportable" that did it for me. Military spec equals massive price tag.
"Everything is air-dropable at least once" [Schlock Mercenary]
It seems to be an article of faith (for want of a better term) for Gail that since maintainence equipment is currently powered by Oil, it must always be, or not at all. She has consistently ignored the obvious that ground vehicles can be powered from any number of sources (Oil, Ammonia, woodchips from the growth cut down under the lines, etc), and helicopters similarly so (although probably not steam-powered, although that would be Way Cool in a Steampunk kind of way :D ).
Maintainence vehicles are also replaced regularly, so the fleet turnover is much quicker than the general public fleet, and any 'new' power sources can be rapidly incorporated into the fleet.
Or batteries 10 years hence? Primary batteries such as LiSOCl are now 760 Wh/kg, 2.7 MJ/kg, or 100kg of battery for 300 miles of range.
http://www.saftbatteries.com/Technologies_Lithium_LiSOCl2_303/Default.aspx
It seems to me that tools for servicing windfarms could be overwhelmingly electrically powered, (with fuel backup not being at all unthinkable, of course) .. and as another thread below was pointing towards, access to some such farms at least could be with electric rail, or even some kind of electric vehicles that run on electric catenarys (should you use catenary's in a coalmine, I wonder?) along the routing of the power-lines that come from the windfarm.. once again, providing power along the transmission and transportation line at the same time, theoretically offering more options for both access and power to be able to work on maintaining access and power..
Utilities like the idea of "eating their own cooking". Here's an electric utility boom lift. Here's a consortium of utilities considering a bulk purchase of plug-ins (and a good article). Here's an individual utility buying electric cars. Similarly, utilities are buying hybrid bucket trucks and digger derricks. Here's a large commitment by two major utilities .
I think it's a widespread misconception that low-efficiency peaking units are used to balance wind-variability.
Instead of using peaker-plants it's much smarter to install efficient but flexible steam- and gas (STEG) units like the Siemens SCC5-4000F STEG plant. Such systems operate close to 60% efficiency and don't mind being shutdown and restarted often. Perfect for balancing intermittent wind to provide reliable power while saving fuel.
I don't think they are particularly inefficient, it is that they are designed for intermittent operation. The units I have seen are basically jet engines designed for jumbo jets. They just hook them up to a generator, feed in natural gas, and away they go.
Almost every old gas plant I used to work at seems to have a brand-new gas turbine power plant sitting next to it these days. They're cheap to build, but expensive to operate.
If you want base load generation, then you need a power plant designed for that purpose.
I have seen comments about the difference between gas plants intended to operate as base load and the gas turbine jet engine type. Is there a good analysis that has been done with respect to the comparative efficiency and the impact on emissions of using the two different types (including the additional ramp up/ ramp down issue)? I would think emissions would be pretty much of a non-issue, because natural gas is low emission to begin with.
Those are very nice units all right. The problem is that they are new units, and utilities are very reluctant to add new capacity at a time when demand is actually shrinking. So when mandated RE portfolio standards force them to accept whatever the wind farms happen to deliver, the units that are switched on and off to deal with variability do end up mostly being the old inefficient peaking units. It's a genuine problem.
I think that one of the mis-estimatations a while back was that electrical demand would continue to grow rapidly (2% per year, IIRC). It hasn't. I think there are a few reasons:
1. A constriction on oil supply (i. e. high oil prices) tends to constrict the whole economy. What happens is that there is less business activity and people move in with relatives. The country uses less oil, but it uses less electricity as well.
2. People are becoming aware of CO2 issues, and are making switches to more efficient light bulbs and turning their heat down.
3. Industry has tended to move abroad, because of cheaper labor costs. With less industry here, we need less electricity.
Plans were made for adding wind/solar to meet the needed new electrical supply, thinking that it would be needed in addition to existing supply. This growth didn't really materialize in many places. So it can happen that old units are used to balance new wind, since these are what is available and not needed for other purposes. If there had been more growth in demand, new natural gas balancing units would have been added.
How about this scenario:
People get more aware and concerned what we do to the ecosystem and switch from old dirty fuel providers to more clean ones. In Western-Europe an example could be switching from RWE (brown coal amongst other things) to Eneco (primarily green-e reseller, operator of wind turbines and biomass). Eneco needs more generation capability and balancing for it's growing wind portfolio, hence the new efficient and flexible STEG. This means, assuming total demand remains the same, that RWE must produce less power and the whole mix becomes a bit less dirty, perhaps even closes an old plant.
As I said earlier in this thread: old inefficient peaking units (Open Cycle Gas systems) are not used to deal with wind variability, this is a long standing misconception. I have this information (warning: Dutch!) from Dr. Bart Ummels who promoted on the subject of integrating wind in the existing electricity ecosystem.
I would add to your list, the fact that wind turbines have always been notoriously finicky, needing constant attention. It is hard to imagine fixing and maintaining the ginormous turbines that are built in the high-energy economy of the day, in a future with less available energy, any more than it is to imagine how to maintain a nuclear facility.
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
Curious comment. Turbines are usually serviced for one day once a year (and long term availability factor for wind turbines in The Netherlands is about 98%). This doesn't fit with your 'needing constant attention'. On the other hand I have never seen a traditional power plant without a permanent staff of engineers for maintenance.
Wind technology is a rapidly moving target, so it is easy to find numbers that support your argument. Detractors merely need to cherrypick data from obsolete models, and act like poor results are a law of nature. Supporters can look at the specs of next gen systems, and claim everything is great.
Excellent comment. O&M is higher per megawatthour for existing installed wind turbines than for most other technologies (primarily due to scale), however, it is reasonable for the bulk of the existing plant (the stuff built in the past 5 years), and gets even lower as average turbine size goes up.
At one point, I had data on frequency of repairs. I ran out of time/space for this issue, though. There are all kinds of details--what kinds of repairs--does it require a major shutdown, or can the problem be fixed simply.
Going forward, I think availability of replacement parts will be an issue. Some repairs (especially off-shore) are now done by helicopter. These will also be an issue.
In trying to figure out percentage of capacity in use, one issue I ran across is that there is an attrition problem (not terrible, but there). The EIA gives available capacity, but if you add new capacity to last year's capacity, it is higher than actual current capacity, because of attrition. Evidently, some wind turbines have been eliminated from the denominator, when the usual capacity factors are calculated.
Even a single, small wind turbine can ignite quite a lot of determined opposition.
No Union Beach Wind Turbine!
The 85 ton turbine needs road permits from several municipalities. They will have a very hard time getting them. There are bridges that would need to be shored up in order to let the load pass.
The bridge shoring up needs to be included as part of the wind turbine cost, and also be considered in EROEI studies. I don't think it usually is.
..or alternately, the bridge shoring up and all other access costs need to be added to the viability of a given location as a place able to economically support a community.
Part of the re-eval that has to be done is to recognize that some places are not viable.. while a robust access to a renewable energy supply might quickly tip that formula back into the positive again.
Wind Turbines don't have to be multi-ton 300 foot systems in order to be valid contributors, either. Many far-flung communities will certainly retain their viability after the fuel deliveries are gone, by communally supporting a number of turbines that are small enough for a group of people to raise, lower and repair without trucks or helicopters.
If wind is to be a major supplier, the WTs will have to be both very large, and located where the wind resource is best. Typically that means up on top of hilltops. In any case, I think wind is incompatible with even moderate population density. We currently insist of restricting access for a multiple of the blade diameter, because of safety/liability reasons. We can't plant these babies in the middle of towns, but must put them out in the boonies.
I disagree as to the size. In this case bigger is better (i.e. more output per dollar cost). Small communities may get a break, by buying used small and midsized turbines. But new made from scratch WTs need to be large to be competitive. The land limit is currently set (I am told), by the ability to transport blades on roads.
I agree with enemy of state. Small wind turbines don't work (at least for electricity generation--they seem to for pumping of water). I sponsored a guest post in 2010: Real world test of small wind turbines.
According to that article:
Low height is also a real problem for wind turbines. They really need to be up high, preferably on a hill.
Yair...with all respect Gail. The folks who tested those new fangled turbines are reinventing the wheel. It's all been done. Dunlite wind generators were very commom in western Qld up untill the mid sixtys and were only phased out when the stations went to 240v.
http://www.linux-host.org/energy/swind.htm
They came out in the 'thirtys and were simple, built like a brick outhouse and we used to lower ours down for service every Christmas if it needed it or not.
The thirty two volts (with batteries) provided lighting for the home stead and power for the washing machine and iron. Back up was by way of a three hp diesel if there hadn't been any wind.
Cheers.
32 seems to be a bit of an odd voltage. Any reason for it?
NAOM
Same standard for much of the Midwest, as I recall. The WinChargers were wired for 32, but also down to 6v and now getting re-mfg'd to 110 and other ratings.
Here's a catalog of rigs for sale.. http://www.wincharger.com/suppliers/index.htm
One sampling of a supplier making repl. wooden blades for different power configurations..
.. good job for a little shop!
I was curious as to the odd number, unless it gets regulated to 24V, as it is about 14.5 cells worth, just seems strange to me and I was wondering the reasoning behind it. Unfortunately wind is a non-starter here. Typical wind speeds are 5-10 mph though, if we get some exciting weather, we could get 100mph gusts but that is rare. Mount high and you are going to collect most of your electricity through very big sparks that will do things no good. Solar OTOH...
NAOM
I recall hearing that 2v cells were the norm, and you'd patch together a bay of I suppose 16 cells, or possibly less to get the advantage of the nominal vs peak voltages of the supply (mill) and the storage (batt) systems..
.. Didn't see any other explanations, but on a different facet of wind, just ran across this story I hadn't seen yet. (towards the bottom of the page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wind_power
The 32V was using 16 2V lead-acid cells. That's a nominal 2V that will rise when being charged. It would be up to about 38V when just finishing a full charge.
Ah, thanks guys I see where it is coming from now, using nominal 2V rather than the actual 2.2 V per cell.
NAOM
Small wind turbines don't work (at least for electricity generation)...
...this, despite much evidence to the contrary. We've been over this before Gail. Many of these old Jacobs units are still in service:
Yair...Almost identical to the Australian experience with small-scale wind as outlined in my post up-thread.
I get quite annoyed when I see references to small wind units not being viable or reliable. As I said it's all been done and in a suitable area a Wincharger or a Dunlite would be valuable back up to PV...on the other hand I have seen several "state of the art" units that only lasted for a few years.
And yes the old batteries were two volt glass cells. Why there were sixteen eludes me. In most districts there was a bloke who would come out to the station and recondition batteries by replacing and refurbishing the plates. It was not uncommon for these old style battery banks to have a life of close to twenty years.
What some folks don't realise is that just a little bit of electricity can make a huge difference to quality of life. As I mentioned the early plants provided lighting (the luxury of a bedside light switch is unimaginable if you have never had it) and power to run a washing machine and iron...a huge improvement for the women who untill then had but the washing board or the wood fired boiler for providing agitation to get the crud out of the work clothes.
Ironing was by way of flat irons heated on the stove top or petrol burning units of which the later ones (I think put out by Coleman) were really pretty good...once the ladies had conquered the fear of the older ones that were prety tempremental and could flare up some thing shocking and burn down the house.
By the 'sixties The Lister Start-o-matic became pretty much the norm. They were usualy four to eight Kva and would start as soon as a load (I think a hundred watts) was applied to the circuit.
On most stations the boss's bedside light initiated the start but us ringers in the quarters only got a seventy five watt bulb so we could'nt start the engine and wake up the boss at night.
On a slightly different tack...about a little bit of energy and electricity being quality of life thing.
In the early 'seventies I did a stint in PNG on a 'dozer putting tracks into remote villages with no access at all by road. Kerosene for lighting was carried in by women in four gallon drums slung in baskets supported by straps across their foreheads.
The most precious commodity though were 'C' or 'D' cells for the 'shootlamps' ie torches and for the various duty free cassette music players that were flooding onto the market...imagine what difference a bit of PV would have (and hopefully is) making to those folks.
Incidently the fuel for the little 'dozer came in a drum at a time slung under a M.A.S.H era chopper.
Cheers.
Great stuff, Scrub!
Jacobs also produced or marketed a line of accessories for use with their wind gennys. From the link, above:
We need to get back to this and soon.
NAOM
I have one in my recreational boat, it's not big (only 100 or 150 liters, I forget) has a small freezer section that can hold only one American sized steak and runs on a 12V SLA battery backed-up by a 100W solar panel with battery charger. Very efficient.
12v -24v DC refrigerators and freezers have been around for a while. Some friends have had their Sunfrost RF-16 for years running off of two 100 watt PV panels for years and swear by it. Sundanzer is another brand.
What is critical is getting the ones sold in supermarkets up to theses sort of insulation capabilities and dual powered.
NAOM
I read an article, a while back, about reconditioning and refurbishing those glass cells. Checking gravities, swapping plates etc. 20 year life, shows how far we have come when we have to change things every 2 years. If there was more small scale generation, wind or solar, there would be less need for the big new grid systems to support wind towers.
NAOM
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Nickel-Iron_Battery
for an attempt and DIY long term storage.
Interesting, thanks for the link. I wonder how it will work out.
NAOM
Small wrld. In the 90's, my father, a Civil Engineer, put in a medium-scale Hydro system for a few villages in the PNG Highlands.
Yair...Bellistner that's interesting
I could always see the potential for small hydro up in those mountains. Springs were a constant problem. It was strange to see beautiful fresh water bubbling out of the ground when you were tipping big guleys over the side that bounced a thousand feet before they disappeared into the clouds.
Cheers.
I get quite annoyed when I see references to small wind units not being viable or reliable.
If a choice is no electrical power or some via a small wind unit, I'll take the small wind unit. And so would you.
Small wind turbines don't work (at least for electricity generation)..
..this, despite much evidence to the contrary. We've been over this before Gail. Many of these old Jacobs units are still in service
I think there are two elements of truth here...
Small wind turbines *can* work - as the Jacobs, Dunlite, Bergey etc have shown..
But, part of the problem today is there are many people/companies hawking all sorts of small wind turbines that *don't* work, or not very well - the Energy Ball, any number of small VAWT's, and other new ones appearing every month. That article Gail linked to was a real world test that showed many small turbines fail to live up to their hype - and this is true.
Part of the problem is the lack of standard measuring rules for their rated outputs, so their are all sorts of confusing claims out there. The first step needed is for the US EPA, or DoE, or someone, to institute a standard test protocol, and any turbines to be sold must be certified to such protocol. These standards exist for cars, engines, generators, so there is no reason it can be done for small wind turbines.
As an example of a company making small turbines today that may prove to be of similar quality to Jacobs, Dunlite etc, and who I would trust with their data and performance claims, I offer Raum Energy, with their turbines designed and built in the sunny and breezy province of Saskatchewan.
1.5kW model on left, 3kW "downwind" model on the right (about $8k). If they can survive Sk winter storms, they can survive just about anything.
I always give Gail a hard time when she makes blanket statements like this. She also said upthread that PV isn't good for lighting without having batteries. So get batteries.
Homepower publishes a small wind turbine Buyers Guide every couple of years with a lot of good info. As you mentioned, they recommend the beefy, tried and true brands, steering folks away from newfangled models until they've been well tested in the field.
Swept area is the first indicator of production ability. Makers who claim high output from smaller units are likely beefing up their numbers, not their wind generators.
The local Costco sold small wind turbines for a while. The design was suitable for 20-30 mph winds, though I would say that 30 was needed for good production. Our typical wind-speeds are 5-10 mph with short periods of 15 on a good day. On a bad day, tropical storm gusts or large amounts of directly and rapidly delivered electricity. Not exactly the right tool for the job. They don't seem to sell them any more.
NAOM
Other costs to be included might be the legal/PR staff and government adminstration expenses associated with the approval processes.
Add in a penalty for impairment of property values within earshot or sightline of the turbines and many locations would not be economic.
Thanks for introducing the concept of viewing wind as a “fuel saver” resource. This angle was new to me and at first thought this seems to "explain" the role of windpower quite well. Food for thought.
When I first heard the term fuel-saver, it immediately sounded like a good explanation for what I was seeing. For example, I would often hear (when gas prices were high), that wind was being built there, because with subsidies, it was lower cost than gas prices.
So if the public accepts a small increase in electricity price then wind (and perhaps solar) could do well reducing fuel consumption of (the good engineered and flexible) ff plants.
Then it's a matter of priorities: absolute lowest cost vs sustainability, quality of life (e.g. air quality), reduced dependence on (foreign) fuels etc. It's a shame that abosolute lowest cost seems to win the argument most of the time.
The operation of wind turbines doesn't have anything to do with reducing dependence on foreign fuels, in the US (except perhaps Hawaii, where oil is burned). The fuels we burn for electricity are coal and natural gas, and they are pretty much US produced. Wind turbines are made with foreign parts, especially gear boxes. These have to be replaced fairly often (every five years ?), so wind turbines have their own "foreign" issue.
I am not sure the operation of wind turbines has anything to do with sustainability, either. The wind turbines need the fossil fuel system in order for them to continue to be maintained. They won't last any longer than any other part of the electrical system. In fact, their nominal life expectancy is shorter than that of fossil fuel plants. Wind turbines supposedly last 20-25 years or 20-30 years, depending on who is making the estimate. We have coal and gas plants double those ages.
Air quality is definitely an issue with coal (especially if it does not have proper scrubbers). It is much less of an issue with natural gas, I believe.
That really is a canard. For one with EROEI of thirty or so, it doesn't matter much. Secondly we use liquid fuels for those purposes because it is currently cheap and convenient. As liquid fuels become scarcer and more expensive, other methods will come to the fore. But, that is a slow longterm process, plenty of time to work that out (which we will be doing anyway, because so much else depends on it).
It is not just the wind turbines that need to be maintained. It is the transmission lines that need to be maintained, and the roads leading to the transmission lines. It helps to have workers who can get to work, and who are properly trained as well. All of this uses up oil. It is also harder to plan out, than just maintaining a few wind turbines.
EROEI is most helpful in describing the situation when it is oil to oil, or natural gas to natural gas. Here we are replacing what is currently very cheap natural gas with some mixture of fossil fuels, and this mixture includes some oil. It is hard to make the cost comparison come out as well.
Yes, I very much disagree with her on this one too, and have commented on the subject before. We had transmission lines before we had helicopters or line trucks, anyway.
"The operation of wind turbines doesn't have anything to do with reducing dependence on foreign fuels, in the US"
Maybe not in the US, but there is a large world outside. Here in The Netherlands coal is imported out of Chile and South Africa.
"We have coal and gas plants double those ages."
With every nut and bolt replaced a few times in the meantime.
"I am not sure the operation of wind turbines has anything to do with sustainability, either. "
Ok, fair enough. What is, in your opinion?
An example of something that is sustainable is building wind mills that we can in fact replace piece by piece, built with local materials. These will be smaller, and pump water or mill grain, rather than making electricity.
One guest post I sponsored was Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills.
"These will be smaller, and pump water or mill grain, rather than making electricity." What makes you think the small handbuilt mills don't provide electricity? You say this over and over, and it's simply incorrect.
Small Wind certainly does work, and it ALSO works making electricity, just as much as it can be applied to direct mechanical tasks. These small generators surely don't have the efficiencies of the Great Turbines that are hundreds of feet in the air, but they can produce useful current flow at pretty much any scale you can imagine, and can do so WITHOUT the dependence of a Petro fuels infrastructure and economy that the massive ones seem to have today.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/kamwamba-windmill/
This guy built one from pure scraps and some bike parts in Africa, and it allowed him to have some lighting and phone charging and more. Dead simple, and didn't require road maintenance, financing or helicopters or any type of Grid Infrastructure to develop it. Soon, he'd built three of them, seeing what potential they held..
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.shtml
These guys build them from the scraps a few rungs higher on the industrial charts, but still represent ways for people to access REAL ELECTRICITY without a large or continuous supply of 'Maintenance Petroleum', and this is being replicated on every continent.
And THIS Guy, Hugh Piggott, in the outer reaches of Scotland has trained and inspired thousands to build their own small wind setups, hosting from beyond the grid..
http://www.scoraigwind.com/Scoraig/index.htm
Small Wind DOES work, and as the Grid totters, it will be what's working harder and harder for those who used to just watch the Utility Meter Spin.
PS.. and it looks like the Community Windpower projects on the Maine Islands have been installing the Thermal Storage systems to help capture excess winds, just as Paul in Halifax has mentioned for N.S. .. http://www.pressherald.com/news/excess-wind-power-finds-home-on-maine-is...
.. and directly offsetting three different liquid fuels.
Yup, here's a company that I think has the right idea with micro wind turbine generation.
http://www.motorwavegroup.com/new/motorwind/
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with this company
I mean, I can see why all this 'small stuff', combined with the efficiency hit they take for lack of stature, swept area and all that makes these numerous small to medium permutations of windpower seem like they can't be validated in the face of 'Serious Windpower' for people who are constantly in the world of 'real money' and big stuff, but especially when Gail is painting a picture of pretty serious collapse, it's hard to connect her insistence that wind only works in the Mega Scale with a world that is headed for such a hardcore haircut, and will increasingly HAVE TO depend on smaller and more nimble choices.
Maybe this really illustrates just the drastic shift in viewpoints that has to be undergone by any of us who is from a world where some of these things are both unthinkable and unmentionable..
And that, my friend, in a nutshell is precisely what keeps me up at night! Especially when I want to be able to open wide the eyes of my family, my close friends and those that I love!
As you probably already know I'm a vocal proponent of small scale off grid solar and wind power generation. I'm all about trying to convince people that we need radical paradigm shifting away from how we live at present. Which as I have discovered the hard way, at times appears to be, an insurmountable task...
It all seems quite insane when one has adapted to living on a mostly solar budget. Over a billion tons of coal burned annually in the US alone....It makes me want a big T-Bone for dinner for some reason.
Maybe you can light your T-bone dinner with a soil lamp >;^)
http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/future-perfect-batteries-powered-mud/
If you happen to need a few tons of recycled zinc and copper, let me know, I can easily provide that!
Gail, I agree.
Best hopes for applying technologies in a smart way.
Yes styno and enough local coal to run them There are still 5,000 million tons of coal under the Peel that has not been touched.
Could you expand on that? What is the Peel?
Beautiful area in The Netherlands. Sits on top of a lot of coal (hope it stays there).
The marginal BTU of natural gas is imported in the U.S.
Several US nuclear power plants were shut down in their 20's because the cost of repairs or replacements of major components made them uneconomic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Nuclear_Power_Station
for an example.
"Several" of a fleet of a hundred? Not too bad. Btw, the reason given in wikipedia, that steam generators for $435 million for 15 years of remaining license, would not pay for themselves, is nonsense. The math is easy, given 80% capacity factor:
$435e6/(1040e3*2*24*365*15*0.8) = 0.2 cents per kWh.
Even if you add interest, that's a slam dunk.
$435 million for 2*1040 MW for 15 years is nothing. You'd need a $10 billion investment to generate the same amount of energy from wind.
$435 million for 2*1040 MW for 15 years is nothing. You'd need a $10 billion investment to generate the same amount of energy from wind.
Are these numbers adjusted for inflation?
No, that is left as an exercise to the reader.
Lots of interesting issues on use of wind energy to work though in this article. Most of them are resolvable with a little higher commitment to public works than most Americans support the moment, although we've been though these issues many times. But the ending left me annoyed:
This depends entirely on what future you are working toward. Gail seems to expect a pretty complete collapse of industrial civilization in the next decade or so. In that case, clearly building wind turbines and a long range grid doesn't make sense. But this assumption is not clearly stated in the article. If you instead note that the doomers have been very consistently wrong in their 10 year predictions, giving us reason to suspect that they are too pessimistic in their 50-100 year predictions, then you come up with completely different conclusions. If we do maintain modest levels of industrialization, then the societies that have established a large renewable energy base to use to build more renewable energy systems will be huge winners in 100 years. The society that has wind turbines spread through their agricultural areas will be able to produce food at rates far beyond what the manual and animal labor farms will produce. OK, they only have power when the wind blow. Sounds like a winner if the other option is never having power. Point is that the doomer notion that we should stop building renewable energy because it can't maintain business as usual is quite irrational unless you assume complete collapse in the very near future.
The financial system is one major issue. Things will hang together as long as the financial system holds together, IMO, but high oil prices are putting great stress on it. Southern Europe would still be growing, and there would be much less of a Euro problem, if oil prices were low.
Humans have managed to expand their influence for 200,000+ years. If you look at the past, you might say that of course, another 200,000 years of growth is likely to be possible. There are limits, though, and we are reaching them in many ways. The financial system is the way that in many ways merges these limits. It is what is under stress now.
You are right, though. A major collapse in the next ten years seems fairly likely. Planning for how to live after that collapse would seem to make more sense than simply claiming that we can invest a few billion dollars more in scheme A, B, or C, and somehow avoid the many limits we are reaching in many ways.
I am not really into gloom and doom forecasts, but these are a couple of posts I have written recently discussing the future:
Where do continued high oil prices lead us?
Are we reaching limits to growth?
Most of the barriers you outline would disappear if the financial underpinnings where rearranged into a more rational form. In a way all the problems are subsets of this one.
I am not without hope on this collapse thing as I suspect extreme action will be taken if needs be [hopefully not something stupid like nuclear war].
Politicians will just do it if they have too.
not going to be a smooth transition me thinks. If there is some sort of collapse it will generate a vacuum of power and ideas.
Perhaps [spit-balling here]It would be prudent to have firm responses and policy initiatives "modeled up" for the political class to reach to in an emergency. This entails influence and access prior to "the event" so as to be on hand. Having something branded as a solution for WTSHTF rather than just avoiding the situation is maybe where we should be looking too?
it also requires any ideas to be expressed from the stand point of "crisis start-up".
It's all gone bad but "mr president we have this plan"
Other more palatable scenarios avoidance mitigation and the like can be pushed in tandem with the evolving situation, but they just seem to get the short thrift [you never know].
Politics
some sort of firm doomsday guidebook for world leaders
See Singularity > Climate Change > Peak Oil > Financial Crisis .
A piece I largely agree with.
It is an interesting article.
The many comments are thought-provoking; the commenter do a fine job at pointing out the error bars/potential variances in the underlying assumptions, and how these potential variances could affect the article's predictions.
"Obstacle 3: Natural gas ..." may be an obstacle to wind, but it is also an obstacle to coal which has a much heavier footprint. Some other trends to bear in mind on US electrical generation (EIA):
Coal generation, percentage:
1997: 52.8%
1998: 51.8%
2010: 45.0%
2011: 43.1%
All fossil fuel sources, percentage:
1997: 69.1%
2011: 67.7%
All non-fossil sources, percentage:
1997: 30.4%
2011: 31.5%
All 'other renewable' (not nuclear or hydro) sources, percentage:
1997: 2.2%
2010: 3.9%
2011: 4.6%
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/excel/epmxlfile1_1.xls
And meanwhile solar generation, small as it is, continues to double output every two years and has been doing so for the last 10-12 years. At that rate solar generation won't be small for much longer.
Except that in the US, it doubled in 2011, and is expected to double again in 2012. Nothing like a near collapse in the cost of something to spur consumption of it.
is that true?
sounds promising
Sort of. US manufacturers sued China in the fall of 2011, claiming that they were dumping solar panels here, at far below their cost. The International Trade Commission panel unanimously agreed. According to the linked article:
Meanwhile, several US solar panel manufacturers have gone bankrupt. The best known is Solyndra, a recipient of loan guarantees by the federal government.
So I wouldn't count on the great deals necessarily continuing.
Yes. There certainly is uncertainty about how this will go down. There is also a similar action regarding dumping of windtower supports. Personally, I don't think "dumping" is necessarily a crime. The market is oversupplied, and that means goods can only clear the market at a price below cost. [Although it is clear the Chinese manufacturers have some advantages the other countries -including I think India, don't have, such as most importantly access to cheap and plentiful government loans]. I hope things don't get too messy. Clearly what is good for the installers, and what is good for the manufacturers are in conflict!
so globally the import of panels in the USA offsets deployment elsewhere. So what is the reality for global growth? The original 2 year doubling time?
Globally, it may be close to flat 2011 and 2012. The current fast growers US and China are growing from a small base. Generally the doubling time has been more like two years, and its probably slower now due to the little depression.
Above you said solar generation output would double. Now your are saying the (global?) installation rate will be flat. You went from talking about one thing to talking about another.
mididoctors, to answer your question, it is quite possible that US solar generation will double over the next couple years. But the next doubling is less likely to occur so quickly if the yearly installation rate stays relatively flat, which also seems likely.
I don't expect it will be sustained. mainly we are just buying stuff that became (artifically?) cheap because the primary customers in Europe have cut back, and the industry has major overcapacity issues. If plans come to fruition, China will raidly surpass us in PV installation rate. Even at our high growthrate, the Germans are still installing at four times the rate we are (more than ten times per capita!). So we would need several years at this rate to catch up.
"Nothing like a near collapse in the cost of something to spur consumption of it."
I can vouch for the price collapse part of it. You should see this year's capital budget compared to last year's. (ow!)
Also, as the price of poly silicon stays around $30/kg, the price of silicon PV will also be dropping to the $0.70 watt level of the thin-film products. They will have to drop margins as well, as they are still 6% less efficient than silicon cells.
Which has an interesting side effect; the mounts are becoming a larger share of the installation. If the mounts are the limiting cost, then you want the best cells you can get, which will hurt not just the thinfilm vendors, but also the directional solidification (multi-crystal) silicon producers too.
Yes, panel/inverter prices are starting to squeeze balance-of-plant (which is good, since they haven't seen very sharp competition until now given the domination of installed price by panel cost). All-in-all the declining subsidy approach appears to be working in doing what it was intended to do, although I still think we could have done it less expensively.
One of the big semiconductor guys is planning to come into the market. Their plan is to slash margins drastically. They are used to tight margins from their other business so plan to do the same. I think the plan was 5% instead of 30% but reports aren't always up to snuff.
NAOM
"Which has an interesting side effect; the mounts are becoming a larger share of the installation."
Tell me about it. My latest installation was about 50:50 PV-panel cost vs other materials (mounts, cables, connectors, inverter).
Perhaps so, but the installed price will not fall nearly so fast or so low, hence the importance of efficiency improvements so that less installation is required for a given load.
At absolute best, given theoretical limits, we can hope for maybe a halving of the number of PV panels in a non-tracker installation, compared to now. That does not save much on BOS, especially since the electrical inter-tie costs are in no way reduced by increasing sunlight conversion efficiency. At a certain point, the cost becomes dominated by the electrical inter-tie and the labor to accomplish that. We are already pretty close to that point. Of a super- competitive $3/W cost of installed PV, I bet at most $1 can be squeezed out of the ~$2 for panel, racking, and inverters. The other $1 or more is labor and overhead. Overhead is probably the easiest to cut, at the cost of customer service and industry stability. Profit margins for installers are already too small to shrink that much. For residential work at $4-8/W that additional cost is all going to additional management and organization that is necessary to handle the everyday craziness of the residential market.
For some reason installed costs are much lower in Germany than in the US. I'm not sure why, my best guesses are that in the US we are paying for salespeople whereas in Germany the stuff sells itself due to the FIT, and that there is more management and warehousing overhead with the way we do things here. If PV panels really get cheap enough to sell themselves then small contractors with no sales operation can get in the game and more of the overhead costs can be taken out.
While I'm not in the day-to-day mix on this, my impression from the jobs my Dad has done as a small installer, is that the racking had a lot of fat in it. On the biggest job he's done (120kW DC), I suspect that if the project hadn't been a gravy train (fully funded via incentives), he could have squeezed 50% out of the racking cost without doing more than a couple hours of design/purchasing to source job shop rather than brand-name supply. It might have been less grief than he had with the brand-name fastener design (took them 3 tries to get it right). Of course, he is uniquely situated in that he probably has 20-odd job shops as customers who would be happy to get the work, and happy to give him a factory-direct price (since they know his relationship with the other shops and they can use the goodwill the next time he quotes a project for them). It cost dramatically less to do the structural calcs, source the structural metalwork, and install it to beef up the warehouse roof trusses, than it did to buy the racking. If we were to do a project for some of our ag customers, they'd do the racking themselves for about half the cost Dad could source it for.
My impression as a utility engineer reviewing interconnection applications is that most installers are clowns, meaning there is a lot of waste in their sales, design, and install labor.
B (Ben?) I always appreciate your comments., coming as they do from an actual electrical engineer in the electricity business.
I would agree that it seems there are many "soft" costs in solar that could be reduced. One of the biggest problems I see is the obesession with roof tops. In urban areas there may be little choice, but where there is a choice, I think the rooftops are often the worst place to go.
For a good example of a farmer built system, take a look at Gary Reysa's one on
Build It Solar.
He now has an update on solar installed costs (for home sized systems)
His system was a ground mount, not a roof mount, and the amount of "racking" he had to buy came to $750 for his 2.3kW system. So, I'm guessing that the 50% reduction is pretty much representing the labour cost, and costs differences for doing roof v ground mount. That $8k saving is an eye watering amount!
it seems to me, that in most cases, subsidies are contributing to bloated installation charges rather than decreasing installed costs.
I note that Home Depot have started selling solar kits, I'd like to see these stores really promote this - anyone who can build a pergola can build a system like Gary's. When people can point out that all the equip is less than half of an installer's quote, then we might see installed prices coming down.
I might also add it seems in a lot of cases that it is older/retired people getting these systems, where DIY is mostly not an option, and the installers know that. It would be much better, IMO, if they gave the money to their son/daughter's families, for them to do a solar system, where DIY is an option. It always seems that seniors get hosed in these schemes...
I think your wrong. Rooftops have the advantage of already being built, often at an appropriate angle. They have the advantage of being less shaded, by trees or other buildings that may be around, than the ground is. There is no need to pour concrete or to dig trenches, so the materials and labor involved in rooftop installation is usually less. The cost of roofmounts is generally lower: the source you link to agrees.
Obviously details will vary greatly with every particular situation. If you don't have an adequate roof then ground is the way to go. But the focus on rooftops is not an 'obsession', it is practically and financially advantageous in most cases.
You need to add to this $276 for mount lumber, mount hardware, and concrete. Also his wooden mount will probably last half as long as the panels, whereas galvinized steel, while costing perhaps twice as much, would last probably twice as long. So there is extra labor in getting the full life out of the system which lowers ROI and EROEI.
As mentioned the ground mount actually makes it more expensive. The %50 reduction comes partly from labor, but more from eliminating an installer's sales and marketing, management, office rental, warehousing and inventory, insurance, customer service, etc.. And, almost forgot, profit. The DIYer is providing all those things himself.
The disadvantage of roof-mount (generally outweighed by the advantages) is potentially having to remove the system for roof replacement, and having to keep the system lightweight. My ag buddies would have used salvage drill steel with fiberglass wrap for the supports if they went ground-mount. I think they would have ended up on the roof of a shade structure after considering the alternatives.
There are numerous drawbacks of (residential) rooftop installations;
- many roof tops are not the optimum angle or orientation
-there are safety issues with working on rooftops, especially as roof angles get towards optimum for northern areas of 40+deg. This prevents the use of lower paid and trained installers = more expensive.
-mounts penetrate the roofing, requiring careful waterproofing
-Wind uplift loading can be increased by panels
-many houses have trees that (often deciduous) that were placed specifically to shade part of the roof (usually the south facing part) in summer. some installers have demanded removal of such trees, so their system gets max production, leaving the owners with increased a/c loads!
-It is much harder to clean rooftop panels than ground mount, so most homeowners don't
-With ground mount, it is possible to adjust the angle seasonally, if desired.
-Groundmount can get increased winter production from snow reflection.
-If the roof is nearing repalcement (i.e. within ten years) then the system either needs to be removed and remounted, or thge roof gets repalced before it needs to be. Either one is unnecessary expense.
Now, all that said, often the rooftop is the only choice, so the owner lives with all these drawbacks.
In the case of Gary at Build it solar - and there is no one who knows DIY solar better than he does, if he built it ground mount, we can be sure that was the cheapest way to go. Admittedly he has plenty of land area, but I'll bet he couldn't have built it on his roof faster or cheaper.
I think his wooden mount will last just fine - pressure treated wood outdoors, and above ground? No problem. Even in a wetter climate (like here on the BC coast, pressure treated railings etc last 30yrs. Very few roofs go longer than that. When replacement of the structure is required, panels can be removed one at a time, and timbers replaced. And it can be done, easily, by the owner. The same ca not be said of a roof system - it would almost certainly need a professional to do that. He could have built it in galv too, but he chose not to, for whatever reasons, maybe aesthetics, but I'll bet the lumber was cheaper.
More expensive? When he saved 50%? How do you get that? It made it cheaper because it brought it within the realm of a DIYer. Even if using an installer to mount the panels and connect etc, and DIYer could build his groundmount frame and then have the installer do the rest. Should be cheaper, but the installers would likely just pocket the difference.
I expect the lifetime performance of gary's system, will be greater, and his costs were certainly lower. Bringing these systems with the realms of DIY'ers is the only way installation costs will come down
In 30 years, being able to replace the rails with something simple like timber may be a big advantage.
NAOM
Yes, but these drawbacks do not necessarily outweigh the extra cost of a groundmount, even when a groundmount is an option (which it isn't for most people in the US).
Many are just fine.
This is both not as important nor as simple as you make it out. Ground mounts require different skills than roofmounts (more skills actually). Installers who want to do both have to hire regular employees who can do both. It is only on larger jobs that temps are hired and that an advantage can be gained by hiring lower paid workers. The larger jobs tend to be groundmounts anyway. It is really not the case that installers can improve their business model by doing groundmounts instead of roofmounts. The sensible thing is simply go with the best option that is available at each site one has a contract for.
When installers do dozens of penetrations each week it goes like clockwork. It comes down to using proper materials, and the materials for roofs are still cheaper than ground mount materials.
In hurricane country, this might increase cost per watt by a couple pennies.
Again, rooftops generally have the advantage of having less shading because of their height. And if there are trees on the property, that reduces ground mount options as well. I have done hundreds of installs and can remember one case where a tree was cut down.
True, but also groundmounts tend to get dustier faster due to proximity to the ground. In climates that get enough yearly rain the importance of cleaning can be overrated.
Integrating seasonal adjustability usually increases racking cost per watt. But it can be done on flat roofs if desired.
Roofmounts are also able to get this.
That's true.
Yes, and this is true most of the time. Most people in this country live in suburbs or cities that do not have much land for a groundmount. If there are trees around then the roof is usually the only place that is not shaded. Rural folks who can place their ground mount on the south side of the trees around their house are really a pretty small minority of the US population. Your argument is all very well for people who own an acre or so of land, but for most people in this country it is simply not applicable.
Oh jeeze, read the link you posted. He saved 52% off what it would have cost to higher an installer at average costs (of roof and ground), not %50 over DIYing on his roof. And he agrees that roofmounts are generally cheaper, and implies he could have saved even more money with a roofmount.
Maybe in BC 30 years is about the upper bound. Here in California it is more like the median average. Roof lifetimes depend hugely on climate. In any case I trust galvanized steel to last longer than pressure treated wood in any climate.
The systems already are within the realm of the DIYer, as Gary's article proves. It is not cost that keeps solar out of the realm of a DIYer, it is electrical knowledge and skills that even many avid DIYers don't have. Not to mention time and lifestyle: DIYers are certain type of person. What keeps Gary's cost out of the range of most people is that most people are not capable of being solar DIYers.
The notion that DIYers who are learning to do solar the first time will routinely get better production than professionals who do it everyday for a living strains credulity. More than likely they will probably do just as well on average. The lifetime of Gary's system will not be greater than that of a similar groundmount installed by a professional installer. As I said, it might be worse because he used less durable materials. And again, he is among a minority of property owners for whom a groundmount is a good option. Whether it is a good option really comes down to site specifics, and DIYing is a separate issue.
Really this whole argument is ridiculous. It is the contingent details of any given property which determine whether a groundmount or a roof mount is more advantageous. You shouldn't be trying to make a blanket argument that groundmounts are a better option (nor am I making the opposite argument).
How would you treat an area that might get hurricane force winds every 20 or 30 or 40 years with only light wind the rest of the time?
We have dry season from October to June, I can assure you roofs get very dusty very fast.
Which would be cheaper, adjustable or some more panels to compensate?
Concrete should last a good bit more.
I guess its horses for courses. Different installations in different areas have different issues that require different solutions. A one size fits all approach seems doomed to failure.
NAOM
Yep, I think this is spot on on all points. I just self installed my own ground mount system and I wish I'd just roof mounted it. At this point, I could have more than made up the energy by adding a few more panels. Instead I was using a backhoe, mixing concrete, truing 10 foot sched 40 pipe, and running underground lines. It was a good education for me having done lots of roof mounts, and the lesson learned was don't. I also can seasonally adjust my panel angle, but so far it's been at latitude, which is the angle it would be at if it were on my roof. I also finally got the fact that the amount of tree coverage when the sun is at latitude plus 22 degrees is virtually nil, so I would have been dealing with maybe 2-3 months a year of partial tree coverage. I think the ground mount option is going to go the way of tracking - in theory optimal, in reality just not worth it.
My argument wasn't totally against groundmounts, although you gave a pretty comprehensive list of what adds up to the extra cost and trouble. I think that the main factors that favor a groundmount are simply if the roof is not big enough for the system desired, together with a suitably unshaded groundmount location. If the system is large enough then the trouble of doing underground runs is a smaller fraction of the overall work and seems more acceptable. Some property owners have the right circumstances, but most don't.
I think the sweet spot is MW-scale 480V on urban (close to substation) warehouse or big-box roofs in load dominated areas of the grid, at about 20-40% distribution penetration (one or two installs per distribution circuit). Done right, the (utility-side) electrical interconnect cost is roughly 'nil (you don't even need a new distribution transformer and service panel), you have no customer side high voltage system, you get most of the economy of scale, and you aren't using any land. You don't pick a warehouse where you have to do more than very minor structural improvements to the roof. I can also see doing this on south facing dairy freestall shades (pitched) without racking. I've seen some pretty sweet ground-mount installs in desert trailer parks, and on farms, too, but in general I think the land use and transmission requirements of ground-mount utility scale PV tend to be a bad idea for the slight increase in production available from optimum siting.
Because of the land cost/availability, virtually all projects larger than 2MW and ground mounted in SoCal are applying in areas which are sparsely populated and/or already generation dominated, which cause grid losses and grid thermal overload issues rather than reducing them as DG ideally should.
All of the few residential systems Dad has installed (as learning projects and favors, he hates residential) were for people in their 50-60's. All but one system were single-year payback after incentives. The 'gee-wow' system included re-roofing a tile roofed house (re-roof previously needed) so that panels were flush mount with the surrounding tiles, and roof loads were reduced; that one also included battery backup, an automatic transfer switch, a propane backup generator, and solar thermal for domestic hot water and pool heat. This one was on the home of the same party whose 120kw commericial install was fully covered by incentives within the first year.
Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes (and thus perhaps no new property taxes). Add no transmission losses compared to utility scale on the higher end multiple megawatt scale. Large commercial has to be the sweet spot.
I think the sweet spot you describe can easily extend down to about 100kW.
I agree that racking systems are inefficient and could be improved and reduced in cost. But racking is still a small percentage of the cost per watt of installations, in the neighborhood of 30-50 cents per watt. We are unlikely to see cost reductions of more than 20 cents or so per watt for installed systems by improving racking.
I agree. 20-30 cents is the most I can imagine squeezing out of 30-50 cent racking supply (the numbers I had in mind for my father's project, incidentally, were 40 cents, with 50% savings easily available if he wanted to take on personal responsibility for yet another aspect of what was his first modern grid-connected PV project). The risk-reward wasn't worth it prospectively on the first project, although I think he changed his mind retrospectively after dealing with the racking company. Then there is racking assembly and panel installation labor.
That's ~true based on PV efficiency, but neglects what might be done with concentrators which leaves open 10-100X reductions in installed PV, if not installed concentrator area. I gather you had that in mind when you added the modifier 'non-tracker', but the the forthcoming luminescent concentrators don't require track.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_photovoltaics#Luminescent_sola...
He's talking about reducing installation costs by reducing the physical scale of the panels to be installed. Increasing it with concentrators is actually going backward on that objective.
I understand, but concentrators don't necessarily mean going backwards in installation cost: i) polished reflective or luminescent light guide surfaces could be manufactured and installed in very large sections, where as PV cell and module build ups are limited in panel size to about what we see now, else we have entire panel power drop due to partial shadowing, or unusable voltages, etc; ii) the cost savings in concentrator area vs PV can be spent in much higher efficiency, wide bandwidth PV at the point of concentration (say satellite PV grade), shrinking the entire installation size for a given desired power output.
Not that this is all available now, but the topic of the moment are the limits of what might be done.
I can imagine subarray level (not necessarily strings) physical groups of panels, preassembled on racking, delivered to the site on flatbed boomtruck, and lifted into place, with clip-together DC wiring, beating onsite assembly for cost, on the same model as custom building truss assembly/supply. It'd take some volume to make it worthwhile, though.
Besides what benamery said, the wikipedia article itself says that overall efficiency of LSC would be about 20%, or in other words, no improvement over Sunpower silicon cells. For a technology that is yet to be commercialized.
I added 'non-tracker' because when you start considering trackers you are no longer comparing apples to apples, due to a number of factors. But trackers have not been that popular in the PV industry, and I believe that's because they do not actually decrease LCOE.
Eh? Not in the wiki article I linked. Luminescent doesn't convert photons to electrons, it merely guides them. In that manner they're similar to pure reflectors though instead of bouncing photons they guide then along the surface. Conversion (of the concentrated light) is still left to photo-voltaic cells as before. Again tracking is not required.
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=21179
The revenge of Albert Bartlett in renewables! I like it! With crude oil supply flat, how many doublings will it take before renewables overpower all other forms of power? It is a bit disturbing that either A) Albert's concept is so quickly abandoned or B) how it isn't being applied to renewables growth with the same enthusiasm as it was to oil.
If capacity continues to double every two years, solar peak output would match worldwide electric consumption in 10-11 years. Then if some kind of storage tech becomes available, average solar output would match global electric consumption in 16 years. Similarly in 18-20 years solar average output would match today's world wide energy consumption of all kinds - electric, transportation, heat, etc (7-16TW).
problem solved [just kidding]
Yeah, amazing we worry about this stuff at all sometimes.
This will only happen if the solar cost in $/w falls below other sources. Right now (very roughly) we've got a 1/3 industrial, 1/3 commercial and 1/3 residential power mix, and a great deal of the commercial and residential is in dense areas without enough roof to power the structure. So the breakeven considerations for a residential or commercial is often different due to subsidies, which often don't exist at the industrial level.
Wind power in its current ugly form is a white elephant and when the time comes to scrap them it will be a God send.
If you have to live near them, you hate them.
Solar power has many advantages.
...and I think wind turbines are elegant, graceful works of art, rotating in the breeze; a triumph of form and design. I suppose you would rather live downwind of a coal or nuke plant with their giant cooling towers and smoke stacks.
In our area there has been much resistance to PV installations as being unsightly, spoiling the view. NIMBYs, all.
A lot of that is "eye of the beholder". But its also due to the advances in the technology. I commute through a wind farm, with WTs from first generation to nearly brand new. The latest stuff, is indeed elegant. The first generation stuff is unsightly junk. The inbetween stuff, is in between, not as ugly, but I could still see people hatting it -especially because the ground density of turbines was so high. The modern ones are sparsely placed, and don't dominate the view the way hundreds of older smaller turbines did.
Carbon taxes and rises in the gas price will favour some wind energy in the generation mix. A metric sometimes used to compare all-gas to the wind-gas combination is cost-of-CO2-avoided. That is (additional cost)/(CO2 saved). The additional cost includes not only inefficient fuel use but doubled up capital investment since you have two kinds of power plants, gas and wind, one of which may be near idle at any given time. Cost of CO2 avoided may work out at $40-$200 per tonne whereas the CO2 tax to start in Australia in July will be $23 per tonne. Wind advocates say this justifies subsidies.
Nonetheless I think we should drop tax credits, capital grants, renewable portfolio standards, green certificates, feed in tariffs and so forth and rely more on carbon taxes. On top of that the price of natural gas will increase when the fracking bonanza subsides and millions of trucks start using it instead of diesel. Then if the economy can afford it we'll build more wind farms as a fuel saver. However absent subsidies and quotas things may be quiet for a decade or so.
Boof,
Your perspective makes a lot of sense to me, but carbon taxes are a very hard sell politically in the US. Without predictable carbon taxes, subsidies are one of the best available ways to keep people preparing for the future energy system we need rather than simply using what is cheapest at the moment. Another decade of minimal renewable installation like 1995-2005 would make the post-fossil fuel future much more painful in my opinion.
When they talk about the "cost of CO2 avoided," the thing that bothers me is that it is really the "CO2 related to natural gas which will be burned later rather than now," unless there is a crash ahead, which causes us to stop burning fossil fuels altogether.
If there isn't a crash ahead, then it seems like we fall back to Plan B --wind allows the natural gas we have to last longer. If we still burn the same amount, anyhow, just spread over a few more years, does that really change anything? Is there a point to the big credit CO2 credit then?
The follow-on question is how can we use already built windpower when gas is depleted? I suspect we will have burned most of the high EROEI gas by 2050, despite claims of centuries of reserves. Then we'll have to work on energy storage for wind power or maybe load following nukes. If we burn all the cheap gas sooner then the problem is brought forward but we don't get the wind build in the meanwhile.
As to political acceptance of CO2 taxes or cap-and-trade even the present schemes are half-hearted. I suspect the Australian carbon tax starting July will have been watered down by December. Despite increases in welfare and tax deductions there are going to be major shocks to household and business power bills. If anything the carbon tax should be $40 not $23 so windpower won't need subsidies. With weak or nonexistent carbon taxes we'll be in carbon freefall with unpredictable outcomes.
"how can we use already built windpower when gas is depleted?"
Well, we go only a little back into human history: use it when it's available
Perhaps that's the clue.
Design cute looking wind turbines for community acceptance - I certainly wouldn't object to one of those in my backyard ;-)
Perhaps it's revealing that when these windmills were industrial scale in The Netherlands a few hundred years ago these ALSO attracted protests. NIMBY has been here for a long time.
As technology is widely visible public acceptance goes slowly from resistance to acceptance to loving it.
I bet that in 100 years modern turbines are considered beautiful too.
Is there really so much difference between:
And:
That the former is considered beautiful and the latter ugly?
No problem, just paint them in black and make them thicker. The swamp is a little bit hard to scale, everglades is of course available but it is a severe restriction on available locations.
Swamp? You're calling a marvel of late-1600 engineering called a "ring canal" (in Dutch: boezem) a swamp? Really??
Man, people don't have respect for human enginuity anymore...
AARGH!!!
For the record, the Everglades is a river! As an ecosystem, it is as far away from being a swamp as can possibly be! It ain't called the RIVER of grass for nuthin, ya know!
I happen to be a resident of South Florida and a lover of the Everglades >;^)
Styno,
What you have linked to is the kind of wind mill that is truly renewable. It is used for pumping water, not for generating electricity. It can last and work almost forever, without natural gas for balancing. I am doubtful that the big wind turbines, used to make electricity, are anywhere as resilient. They need replacement parts from overseas; they need big equipment to maintain them; they need balancing from natural gas. There is a huge difference between a product of today's industrial age, which is not likely to last indefinitely, and a hand-crafted machine that can be repaired by local craftsmen.
Gail,
The wooden mills are great (AND they can be hooked up for electricity, if one wanted to), but here is a page full of the classic Winchargers, to show a level of electrical generation that has also been designed to last, and offers a durable electricity supply in a form that 'the little guys' can service and support.
Even recasting the core parts isn't beyond the community or county shop's potential.
http://www.wincharger.com/gallery/restored/index.htm
..from 150w up to it seems 4kw for this type of mill.
Thanks!
Again, we are dosed with typical American Provincialism.
"Our grid is a third-world construct in the sole Super Power"
Really?
Sole Super Power?
Humph!
The political spectrum is full of triumphalism as each candidate seeks to outdo the others in..... "attacking Iran" while.....
The infrastructure of the country crumbles....
Would seem appropriate for our commentator to address the items necessary for US Wind to become 46% of total power output ala Spain and Portugal....
Not to mention the considerable % of power production in Spain from Solar...
Did you know... Spain is Bankrupt! How can Bankrupt Spain do what solvent USA cannot?? Could it be...
Leadership from cojones? instead of Cerebellum?
It's about time we stopped handwringing and started turning and burning... to get a rock solid grid and renewables producing the bulk of our power...
It's about time this website and the resources of it were directed in that direction.
For more info concerning Moraine Power's Solution to these problems go to our website:
www.morainepower.com
Regards,
INDY
I few comments.
First, I work as an electrical engineer at a pump hydro storage plant in New York State for the New York Power Authority. One thing we do is deal with variability - we can ramp units at 320 MW in 8 minutes, which allows us to level wind if we were tasked with doing that (wind is currently required to have storage to not ramp within 15 minutes). One economic problem with our facility is that gas fired turbines can also do the same thing, so our time shifting arbitrage scheme is in trouble (we need to buy power at roughly 1.3 times what we sell it at in order to make a profit). Dealing with variability is not that much of an issue now, and won't be in the future as long as the supply of gas holds out. Pump hydro can also be expanded if there is political will. Gas does not necessarily need to be used for bulk power - it could be reserved for leveling. OTOH, we're about to decommission 2 nukes in this part of the grid in the near future (Vermont Yankee and Indian Pt) and both will be replaced with gas, so the price at least up here is not likely to stay low for long.
Second, more than half of the power used in New York is produced downstate, and our power sources come from as far away as Quebec, right now. That's about 1000 miles. 5-10 GW is sent towards NYC on a very hot day.
Third, we own long distance bulk transmission lines, and all of them are owned by someone. Tomorrow I'm traveling to the section of 345kV line we run that connects the east and west sides of the Hudson River. We're paid by NYISO (the New York Independent System Operator) for this. We're also involved in trying to build a very large high voltage DC line under the Hudson to NYC... this may or may not turn out to be technically feasible, but NYC is driving this.
Fourth, most of the onland wind capacity in New York was in fact built along bulk transmission lines, great distances from the urban areas where it is consumed. There are a bunch of wind plants in the area of Marcy NY, where our 765kV and 345kV lines meet up, specifically because it is a major node in the bulk transmission network.
Fifth, our organization just replaced a fossil plant (Polletti) in NYC with a gas fired turbine - a lot of gas is being brought on to replace coal, especially in urban areas.
Sixth, one of the things I learned from the GE wind energy people who did a guest lecture at my grad level power class at RPI was that wind has a roughly 18 month time from planning to producing power - that's far faster than any other type other than perhaps gas, which can get done in a few years. The technology is also maturing rapidly, and the 4th gen turbines are very different from even what was state of the art in 2006.
Overall, I don't agree with most of the pessimism here, though I agree there is plenty of risk. I think most of the problems are political ones - for example closing down nukes and replacing with gas, run off of hydrofracking.
Thanks.
One of the problems our politics has imposed is variable enthusiasm/support. Depending upon whether the party that likes/hates renewables has a majority, its either feast or famine. Well the famines, drive corporations out of business (or overseas), and the trained personell go elsewhere. Thats pretty much why so much wind tech is imported, we made the political/economic environment hostile, just when the industry (we largely pioneered) was about to take off. Some of it has come back, but we are still playing catchup.
If I were starting a career in renwables, the most important career step I could take would be to emmigrate!
Although, given where wind is being adopted, I see a decent chance of Congressional bipartisanship on this issue.
EzRndm. What is the energy loss on your pump hydro storage plant please? For example, if wind power went in at 9 cents/kWh, what price would it come out at?
I've seen numbers quoted at 80% efficiency for pumping and generating, so that would give: 1.2*1.2* $0.09 = $0.13 per kWh. Still very cheap in the grand scheme of things if you ask me.
Generating efficiency is MUCH higher than pumping efficiency.
We need 1.3 times the energy to pump what we produce... in other words we need 130 MWhrs to store 100 MWhrs of power. Our breakeven would be say 13 cents. But the nature of the NYISO market is such that if we were needed to get power balance with load, we'd make the market and would probably bid in at $130 MWh (in emergency standby mode we've been paid as much as $1700 MWh but that's typically when other producers have won a bid and then failed to start up). There's also some other weird layers of regulations involved (New York zones electricity to account for the cost of transmission - it's much cheaper at the sources than down in NYC.) But roughly speaking, if we got wind from along route 20 at 9 cents (I'm not sure what the bulk power cost is) we could already be profitable to customers in NYC, assuming we weren't undercut by gas.
Well, solar can certainly happen faster than that.
not quite sure, but I think there is a big error in the analysis at the beginning. The subsidies that are payed are in large part production tax credits which are aid over a 10 year life (and thus it is wrong to divide by only a certain year's new install when calculating the subsidy per MW when those subsidies acutally belong to a bunch of older MWs...). Many projects used an option in the recent past to not take the 10 year PTC (at I think 2.2 USD cent / kWh) but a 30% of investment cost up front subsidy, that also makes it hard to calculate properly.
Regardless of the exact specifics, the simple subsidy/MW installed in that time frame is very flawed!
Furthermore, lots of other things that are not properly researched but unfortuntely I have no time to go into them now, maybe later.
Someone asked about this issue on Our Finite World as well. The issue is that to really get the "right" answer, a person needs to set up a long term model, and see how much more would be paid out in the future, to be added to what has already been given in subsidies, and then assign amounts to the year generation was installed. The subsidies that are shown for Fiscal Year 2010 relate to a significant extent to past years, when there was less wind generation. If the same ratios hold in the future, subsidies can be expected to grow greatly in the future. Theoretically, a person could put together a model of how this all works out. The logical expectation is that the subsidy ratio would be quite a bit higher than I calculated, if it were modeled out, and the current mechanisms not changed.
What I did was compare the subsidies that the government calculates were given in FY 2010, and compare them to new wind generation in FY 2010. This seemed to me to be a conservative approach. This is what I said was something like half the cost of new generation.
Another calculation I did (not in the post), was to compare the amount of the subsidies paid in FY 2010 to the amount of electricity generated by wind in 2010. This came out to $55.73 per MWh. The average US retail price of electricity for that period was $98.3 per MWh. So the subsidy came to about 57% of the average retail price of electricity during that period. (Much more compared to the average wholesale price of electricity)
A person could also compare the amount of the subsidy during FY 2010 to the savings to the utilities in not having to purchase as much natural gas. The cost of natural gas saved was about $3.7 billion (assuming the savings was all natural gas, and not coal or hydroelectric). The amount of the subsidies in FY 2010 was $4.986 billon. So the ratio of subsidies to savings on natural gas costs was about 135%.
actually, Gail, it is very easy.
of the USD 1,178 tax expenditures, I would say 95%= related to PTCs of older projects, so that needs to be taken out of the calculation. The report says as much on page xii
that leaves the USD 3,556 as the main subsidy for those turbines installed in the relevant time period as pratically all projects used the ITC option and not PTC.
That also makes your point of the greatly growing subsidies in the future flawed, again, as much is said in the report on page xii and xv.
your calcutaion of USD 55 per MWh also seems high (because of the above error). The ITC should roughly correspond to the PTC which is 2.2 cent per kWh but at once (so essentially more per kWh but only for that year and never again). By mixing old PTCs projects (which are alot more MW / MWh than the new install of that one year) plus the one off ITC of that year you get to that huge number.
How did you calculate the amount of gas saved? There are too many variables to honestly do this. Some things to consider, the gas will be saved for the next at least 20 years each year and you don't know the gas price at that time or the efficiency of gas plants at that time. And again, you used the wrong subsidy amount in relation to new build. Again, read xii and xv and think about it.
2010 is an extraordinay year because the subidy system was changed from a 10 year drawn out program (PTC) to a one off programm (ITC). That needs to be properly integrated into your analysis
wookoo, thank God you showed up. I knew intuitively that those numbers from Gail were way off, but had no clue as to the why and how.
Maybe, after a period of time, wind power might prove viable. I won't rule it out, but I don't like what I see at the present time.
CO2 at 295 ppm is the standard for gas absorbed in the atmosphere established in 1895. The count is at 391.80 ppm, so you can tax only the 99 ppm from man's contribution.
At 141 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, plants begin to die, so an optimum plus 30 percent is going to be beneficial to the growth of the flora.
Nothing wrong with global warming and I am all for it. More potential for land for commercial agriculture in more northern regions, southern in the southern hemisphere.
All of the CO2 that was in the atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution was replaced long ago from the coal burned back then. There is no natural CO2 left from before that time.
The carbiniferous period, when plant life was abundant beyond all imagination, had CO2 levels 10 to 20 times current levels. All long before mankind had any influence on CO2 emissions.
What we contribute is a pittance compared to what is there.
Global warming is a good thing.
The Chinese had a system of natural gas distribution in 2000 BCE. The population was believed to be 300 million. Natural gas is plentiful. It is called 'natural gas' for a reason. Nobody has to do a thing to create it, you just have to harness it.
posts like these are the #1 reason TOD needs a to add up/down vote capacity with a auto-threshold to the comments system.
to the content of the comment: LOL, do you think TOD readers were born yesterday? I mean I agree that the carboniferous was great, except for the Dimetrodon Grandis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dimetrodon.jpg
I too would support global warming, if it weren't for ol' Grandis - the risk is too great.
An interesting point of view, though poorly supported. Links?
"Nothing wrong with global warming and I am all for it. More potential for land for commercial agriculture in more northern regions, southern in the southern hemisphere."
Yeah, the billion or so folks displaced by sea level rise and drought can all move to Manitoba, Siberia and Patagonia. I'm sure they'll be welcome there. Meantime, we can use all of the extra oil tankers as floating storage :-0
/sarc
"Nothing wrong with global warming and I am all for it. More potential for land for commercial agriculture in more northern regions..."
Indeed, the Canadian shield holds out great agricultural promise!
Canadian Shield
Haha, rock in the North, oceans with slivers of land in the South. Yeah, more land for commercial agriculture under global warming is a good joke.
Which plant life?
Evolved under what conditions?
Some plants like more CO2 (to a degree), but others aren't affected or are negatively affected.
Some of the plants that like more CO2 are called weeds.
All plants need more water when it's hotter.
Warmer temps mean trouble for many plants, like fruit trees that need winter chill.
Some adverse effects of more CO2 and higher temps are noted here:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/...
The chief obstacle to Wind Power is UTILITIES. As I mentioned once before, the chief consideration in selecting any energy source is Jobs per KWh.
The Earth is in a constant state of thermal disequilibrium. Therefore, there will always be wind, it's just a matter of location and elevation. Yes, Wind is sporadic, but so are fossil fuels, if you extend the timeline far out enough.
The potential of Wind Power in the US is staggering. It's just a matter of determination to make it a reality.
How about if we just install stationary bicycles hooked up to generators, and pay people to pedal them, if we really want high jobs per KWh. That will generate a huge number of jobs, but not much power relative to what the people have to eat to generate the power.
Clearly this won't work though. A government can print paper money, but the money won't be worth much, unless there is enough electrical output to create goods and services which will pay the people generating the power. This is the fallacy of the "just pick the source with the highest jobs" idea. With wind power, the highest jobs ratio would relate to wind turbines with the highest frequency of repair. Would that make any sense?
wind power pollutes too
http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl3/green-wind-pollution.html
wind power - or a corrupt officialdom that refuses to protect the Chinese people from cheap and cheating businessmen-politicians?
(the article of lewrockwell - a conspiracy site - is about Chinese pollution from mining/processing rare earth elements).
I think all you have to say these days is that natural gas is killing wind since natural gas is so amazingly cheap right now. The only thing keeping wind alive right now is renewable energy quotas. Wind has got to be a brutal business at the moment.
Solar as the advantage that people can do it on their roof-tops.
At the moment its great. Customers are rushing to get WTs installed before the PTC expires. If it expires than the painfull crash will be upon us. Sort of like being a programmer in 1999 and getting lucrative Y2K contracts.
Yes. People can choose solar, even if TPTB hasn't helped to made it the best rational choice. But, the biggest growth in PV is for utility scale plants, these are several times greater in volume (of panels) than residential roofs. So the REAL market growth requires continued utility buildout. At least the solar PTC isn't currently in danger. Hopefully prices can be driven low enough, that it won't be dependent on subsidies.
How do you reach that conclusion given the figure presented in the article?
So, in 2010 wind provided 2.3% of U.S. electrical energy, and in 1998 that number was less than 0.1%, and in 2007 it was 0.8%. For the trailing 12 months ending in September 2011, the number was 2.7% (per EIA) There were projects under construction equal to 20% of existing installations at that time, so 3.25% is a conservative estimate (doesn't account for capacity growth during the 12 month window) for future penetration assuming constant consumption and ZERO new projects.
Subsidies: The current subsidy structure is very cost-inefficient from a federal taxpayer standpoint, it would be better to provide federal low-interest loans. Most of the current subsidy goes to financiers (and is 'needed' only because of intentional market structure). This is pretty similar to the old college loan structure prior to the Democratic reforms a few years ago. It would be better yet to use the Bureau of Reclamation to construct government owned wind. However, that said, there are good arguments that wind is less subsidized than fossil fuels in many respects.
Turbine prices are elevated well above cost, but falling in the U.S. market, this is also due primarily to market structure.
Wind variability:this is the primary limit on wind penetration above 20% or so (which is close to plug and play below that level). This is not an issue in most locales in the U.S. at the present time since almost no significant changes are necessary from present operation at present penetration levels.
Natural gas is cheap and excess natural gas capacity exists: Due to RPS, this is irrelevant in many states, as wind only needs to be the cheapest renewable to get built, not the cheapest power source on a given day. That's good because we have no national strategic gas production reserve, we import gas, gas production is currently selling below (all-in) cost in many fields, and (medium-term) gas production is likely to drop, spiking prices. We have so much gas-fired capacity for two reasons: conversion of old oil-fired plants, and construction of merchant plants by folks aiming for a high short term ROR rather than long-term cost restraint (this was a failure of utility regulation and politics to protect consumers).
Transmission: Local grid upgrades (not just gen-tie lines) are often needed for all new generation, not just wind. Long-distance EHV transmission is not typically needed unless local wind is built out and regional export is desirable. Intra-regional transmission is typically the hold-up for wind (for instance from West Texas to population centers in East Texas or from Tehachapi to the LA basin). Again, this tends to be a market structure problem first, and a licensing/timeline problem next, but not a cost problem ultimately.
High upfront cost: This is a feature, not a bug, given current low interest rates. The current cost to borrow for the Fed's is effectively zero. With Federal financing, wind would pay itself off quite quickly.
Wind's complexity: Is overstated.
Summary of barriers: Wind costs too much. This is primarily due to market structure rather than an intrinsic property of wind, although technological progress may make wind intrinsically cheap enough that structursl problems will be irrelevant. With intelligent policy, wind will continue to grow as a fraction of energy production in the U.S. and actually reduce the cost of power from future paths absent renewables.
Most cost analysis assume fuel costs will remain the same. Also they assume fuel costs aren't affected by a decision to build renewables. But having more renewables means lower average fuel demand, which assuming scarcity, means future fuel prices will also be lower. But, these are hard to quantify, so they are usually ignored.
While in theory this is true, surely the amount of NG being displaced by wind, as proportion of total NG consumption, is minimal. The current depressed price is driven by over production, and the imminent operation of several LNG export terminals will start to soak that up.
Wind was 2.3% of electricity production, and let's call NG at about 23% (and rising), so wind displaced, at most, 10% of NG consumption, and even less if we included some displacment of hydro.
Then add in that elec production is less one third of NG consumption in the US [EIA,] , and the displacement of NG is about 3%.
So while you are correct that it will reduce demand, I'd say the demand reduction is,. and will remain, insignificant.
It is interesting to note from that EIA data that while elec consumption of NG has risen 26% from 2005-2010, the fastest growing section was NG as vehicle fuel, which has risen 34% in the last five years. Though, at 0.1% of total NG, it also, is, insignificant....
I think we are discussing wind going from roughly 2.7% to maybe 20-30%. Then the savings become significant, if not game changing.
Well, IF wind can get to that level, then yes, the savings are significant. However, we are looking at a *long* time for US wind to get to anything close to that level - during which time many other things can and will change. My guess is that both wind and NG will continue to increase their share of elec generation for the next few decades. The only thing that can really change that is a big buildout of nuclear, and I can't see that happening.
Ethanol, and oil sands, and declining coal consumption are all pushing the other way (increased natural gas consumption), of course.
Something to keep in mind is that price moves at the margin, so relatively small percentage changes in consumption/supply may cause major price changes. For instance, the 'glut' in gas supply in the U.S. represents only ~6% YOY increase in gross withdrawals for September 2011 YTD (and imports are down by about half of that). "Small" things like ethanol and wind represent major forcings of natural gas prices, in my estimation.
Efficient coal-fired generation requires at least four components in addition to the power station(s) proper: coal, water, personnel, and transmission systems to the demand centers. You've brought up the last one, but it's not the critical issue in the US system as a whole. Roughly 40% of coal burned for electricity in the US today comes from three counties in NE Wyoming; so we're talking about the concept of having hundreds of power stations operating close to the Powder River basin.
The idea that that number of power stations could have been built and operated in Wyoming and the power transmitted to the eastern demand centers is, well, silly. The region where the coal is produced lacks water. Xcel Energy added a single new 750MW coal unit in Colorado, with similar climate and water laws; it took years for them to acquire the necessary water rights to assure an adequate supply of cooling water. Air-cooled condensers are possible, but construction costs rise and the overall efficiency of the power plant drops significantly.
The only possible source of sufficient water near the Wyoming coal is the Missouri River across eastern Montana and the Dakotas, where the Corps of Engineers has built several big dams/reservoirs (the rights to use that water is largely held by agricultural interests, but assume that you could buy it from them). Imagine a string of hundreds of power plants across South Dakota along the river. Now look at a map, and the recent Census trends, and ask where the tens of thousands of support personnel and their families and all the people that would be needed to provide the infrastructure we take for granted (like, say, a choice of orthodontists for the kids) would live. The Great Plains are in a decades-long population decline; you're talking about building entire new cities.
To access adequate water to provide cooling for hundreds of power plants, and to access population centers sufficient to support the personnel to operate those plants, geography (and western water law) dictates that coal to be used on that scale gets shipped east, the bulk of it at least across the Great Plains (500 miles) and more likely across the Mississippi (800 miles). The amount of Western coal currently burned in the East simply can't be burned in the West in order to provide electricity for the East, no matter what kind of transmission system you build.
Plus, the majority of coal-fired generation was constructed when the majority of coal production WAS East of the Mississippi. In 1975 only 17% of U.S. coal production was West of the Mississippi. The proportion didn't hit 50% until 1999. In contrast, 73% of coal generation was built before 1980. Also, most coal generation was constructed before emissions requirements. This gave Powder River coal an edge when sulfur emissions became a concern, because PRB coal allowed continued operation without capital investment for emissions controls. In other words, a decision wasn't made to build coal plants near loads and THEN ship coal, coal plants existed where they were originally built 'near' load and coal, and decisions have since been made to shift coal sources over time (due to lower sulfur and lower coal price). The cost of capital of new minemouth coal plants and new electric transmission dwarfs the costs of fuel transport. The rail system had excess capacity until very recently, the price of coal transport per ton-mile was drifting down until about a decade ago (when the railroads got leverage due to the protracted high price of natural gas, which lasted until a couple years ago).
Indeed. The rapid growth of Wyoming coal mining and the railroads' ability to move it all was one of the unexpected surprises that came out of the SO2 reduction requirements in the 1990s. Wonder what impact the new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will have on such, if the Supreme Court allows it to go into effect this time? Not clear to me that changing to more low-sulfur coal will be enough this time.
I've been playing with the EIA's power generation by-state-by-source data, comparing the states that make up the Western Interconnect with those of the rest of the country (not a straight-up comparison, as the dividing line between the Interconnects doesn't follow state borders exactly). Still, surprising to see the differences. If coal is a "problem", it's a much bigger problem, in both relative and absolute terms, outside of the 11 western states. Even after you allow for the difference in total populations. Interesting to note that the CSAPR has zero impact in the Western.
Mike C.
I agree that water is a significant issue for power plants, so you may very well be right.
I understand that there is the theoretical possibility of "dry cooling," but that dry cooling is expensive and makes the process less efficient, so it is little used. I wonder how the cost of transporting coal across the country compares to the cost of using dry cooling instead of the standard cooling approaches. I am sure that this depends on the price of oil and the distance. It seems like at today's high oil prices, it might make sense to "run the numbers" and see whether long-distance transport makes sense or long-distance transmission lines. Of course, if railroad transport is available and the transmission lines are not, this may decide the question.
Yes, it would make sense. That's something I don't think you ever did before you started making this argument a couple years ago. And while you look at price, you might want to include energy and CO2 emissions, for perspective.
Class 1 railroads had 480 revenue ton-miles of freight moved per gallon of diesel fuel burned in 2009. 92.5% of ton-miles of U.S. coal freight moved by rail in 2007 (an additional 3.3% of ton-miles were multi-mode with rail being one of the modes). The average trip distance for coal by rail was 428 miles (yes, some trips are longer than average). 428/480 = 0.89 gallons of diesel burned per trip-ton of coal moved. There are roughly 17 million BTU in a ton of Powder River coal (which is a lower value than the average for U.S. coal). There are roughly 130,000 BTU in a gallon of diesel. Less than 1% of the energy contained in U.S. coal is consumed in rail transport of coal in the U.S. Even for a tiny fraction of VERY long rail trips, the energy consumed is less than 5%. If the diesel used in moving coal is of concern it would be dramatically cheaper to convert the existing locomotives to LNG than to spend any money building coal plants or transmission to move generation closer to mines. Rail, including all loads, uses about 1% of U.S. petroleum consumption. Oh, as noted the average BTU of coal is higher than used in the analysis, the carload weight of coal is higher than railroad average (to the extent that aluminum cars are built to increase net loads), and most coal moves in unit trains, therefore the fuel efficiency per ton-mile is also likely higher for coal.
Here's an experimental cooling method which would reduce losses from dry-cooling while maintaining zero cooling water consumption.
http://my.epri.com/docs/Environment/Edited_EERC_Dry_Cooling_Webcast.pdf
Note that due to the Coastal Commission, most of CA's coastal thermal power plants (some of which date to before WWII) will be required to give up their existing once-thru cooling on a relatively short timeline, probably in favor of dry cooling or closure.
The fundamental parameters would seem to be: (1) the power plants exist, and are where they are; (2) demonstrably, the rail capacity to move the coal already exists; and (3) the transmission system does not exist, particularly between the three regional interconnects. If you were going to go to the trouble to move the power plants, you'd want to think very carefully about alternatives to coal: you'll probably only get one chance at such a sweeping change.
If you're determined to go after the diesel that gets burned moving coal, Alan Drake described a more feasible alternative a few years ago in a piece at TOD: electrified freight rail. Alan estimates electrifying 36,000 miles of the rail system would cover 80% of the tonnage. Covering 80% of the coal tonnage, particularly the West-to-East transfers, could almost certainly be done with far fewer miles. A USDOT map makes it obvious where to start: those big fat tracks down the eastern side of Wyoming and across Nebraska are the Powder River basin coal.
Knowing where western coal comes from, electrification of a small number of routes would get a lot of the ton-miles: PRB to Omaha, PRB to Kansas City, Omaha to Chigaco, Kansas City to St. Louis, PRB to Cheyenne, Salt Lake City to Cheyenne, Cheyenne to Omaha, and Cheyenne to Dallas.
You can burn 85% LNG in existing loco engines, with minor modifications, without harming their ability to run 100% diesel, and using an existing LNG tanker car as a tender. You'd get 85% reduction in diesel consumption, and lower emissions, and longer engine life, and lower fuel cost, with almost no capital investment. I would be very interested in a railroad guy's perspective on why they haven't already done this.
About half of the 'coal network' (~2900km total) in Queensland (recently privatised) is electrified (25kVa). The Hunter Valley in NSW steadfastly refuses to do so.
Gail has made this statement about needlessly transporting coal a couple times, even though I and (IIRC) a couple others have done the math and shown that the losses from transmission would roughly equal the energy costs of locomotive diesel fuel, and that CO2 emissions would likely be worse. (And nevermind the costs of rejiggering the system, or that railroads already exist and will always be there because they also exist for other purposes.) Gail is often not very good at listening to such responses.
NOOP
I see similar arguments lately that factor in electron transmission losses but inexplicably set aside losses from transporting fuel molecules, i.e. mass, and chemical manipulation. Does the above hold when including the well-to-end use transport costs of diesel fuel? I doubt it: refining (~10%?), construction of transportation tankers, spillage and evaporation, transport cost itself.
For financial costs, yes that stuff is included, because all those costs are included in the price that railroads pay for diesel fuel.
For actual energy, and CO2 emissions, I guess the answer would be, no, energy and emissions from well-to-enduse would need to be considered and added. I didn't do that the last time I ran the numbers. But the energy costs of transporting the diesel fuel to railroad facilities would be a pretty tiny portion of the energy in the diesel fuel itself, I think.
The last time I ran the numbers was on a thread here a long time ago, but I'm not going to find that right now, or do it again. It was similar to what benamery came up with upthread; diesel energy is less than %1 of the coal energy transported, but with electric transmission (HVDC) you'd lose 3%. Feel free to take a stab.
The biggest issue is right at the top of the list. There would be no industrial wind energy industry without large taxpayer subsidies. If those end, investment will dry up. Why? Because wind power makes no economic sense at this time given the current state of the technology.
Massive private investment will be required to build out the grid and infrastructure needed to take wind power to the next level. We simply don't have the public funds available to do that and the government does a horrible job of managing projects like that anyway. As there is no business case for proceeding in the private sector, we can pretty much forget it. The case for solar is even worse.
Intermittent supplies are basically useless. The amount of additional investment required to either back them up or store the energy in some fashion takes a bad business case and makes it even worse. We are sitting on tons of coal and natural gas. We have nuclear and hydro as well. We don't need inferior alternatives for sources we already have in ample supply.
The biggest challenge going forward is getting reliable, cheap crude or substituting THAT with something else. Generating electricity is not an issue for us, especially if we get the EPA the hell out of the way.
Yeah..... we don't need no EPA...
Your picture is representative of a strawman argument. I never said we didn't need the EPA, but clearly in recent years they have gone overboard. Air quality in the US has been steadily improving for 40 years. Emissions are down nearly 70% in that time. The consensus goals of the environmental movement were met long ago.
That's like saying that seatbelt use is up, traffic deaths are down, so we don't need seatbelt laws or enforcement anymore.
"The consensus goals of the environmental movement were met long ago."
You're kidding, right? TVA was issued a compliance order in 1999 which it appealed. It wasn't settled until April 2011. 12 freaking years... Long ago?
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/caa/tvacoal-fired.ht...
Similar compliance/enforcement actions are still ongoing. Meantime, we in the Smokey Mountains have been issued consumption warnings (mercury) about eating the fish from our lakes,,, and I don't even buy your filthy grid power.
Did you mean to say 'If we just get the EPA out of the way of Hell..' ?
You can do away with the EPA but you can't hide from us, because we will still be watching! We have our own electricity generating capability and we will continue shinning a light on you!
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll225/Fmagyar/NOEPA.jpg
In the longer term, NG and even coal will be depleted.
This raises the question: What will society use for electricity after NG and coal are depleted?
Waiting until need is not a logical approach...there has to be sufficient lead-time to develop and build out other sources of electricity.
As far as cost, two notes:
1. Government investment is required to develop new technologies, with sufficient lead-time to replace depleted coal and NG...the market does not inherently have the 'insight mechanisms' to plan and invest in new technologies with sufficient lead-time to avoid a gap. Comparisons to times past where one energy technology replaced another are likely invalid, given the record-high human population and energy dependency. One idea for some of the funding is to reduce military-industrial-spy agency complex expenditures and divert some of this to a cogent national energy strategy.
2. Electricity customers will have to adapt to much higher-priced energy. Free-marketeers (and everyone else) should have no problem signing off on this idea...it is logical that, as electricity production and distribution become more expensive due to declining NG and coal, that consumers pay the price to cover costs (including continuing investments in repair and replacement), with a reasonable profit included to boot. Higher costs will undoubtedly drive changes in demand, due to adopting higher efficiency appliances, more insulation, etc. and by doing less with less. We will have to adopt to reality...any fantasies of government price supports to subsidize profligate energy use (that would be today's level in the U.S.) would clearly be Marxist and thus unacceptable :)
I am not sure how well-traveled you are, but my government duties have taken me to other countries where I lived firsthand the consequences of not having an EPA...gotta love blowing my nose and having my snot be black with particulate pollution. Many places outside the U.S. I have been with a coast don't allow or discourage people, especially tourists, from cavorting in the waters...not cool to swim with the raw sewage.
And I don't imaging you would want another Love Canal behind your house, either.
1. That isn't true. The private sector always has sufficient incentives to bring new ideas to the marketplace but they need to make economic sense. For example, the advances in computer technology have been spurred by market competition, not central planning from government. Long before we ever run out of hydrocarbons (if that even happens) utilities will be substituting other sources for those that are being depleted. They want to stay in business.
2. Should prices go up of course consumers will respond. If utilities begin to lose money because of decreased demand, they will do what is necessary to bring costs down again. This process has happened over and over again for 100's of years with every product under the sun, energy is no different. What we shouldn't be doing is forcing prices up artificially through foolish government policies to favor inferior alternatives like wind and solar. Mis-allocation of resources is not the answer to any problem.
I am not saying we should be "rid of the EPA". I am saying they have gone too far. As I mentioned above, air quality has been improving steadily for decades. The battle has been won. Causing energy shortages due to irresponsible government policies comes with an entirely new set of risks that are just as severe or more so than air pollution and/or climate change.
I disagree with your assertion that the 'battle has been won' for clean air.
I don't know where you live, or how much you have traveled, but I have seen and continue to see air pollution in the U.S. in many many places.
I can see the sicken green-yellow-grey pollution layers over Albuquerque's South Valley every day. I see the same pollution layers, but much worse, in Maryland and Pennsylvania when the roads snake up and over the mountains, you can see it a eye-level and look down upon it.
I have seen it in LA, Chicago, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and too may other places to list.
Then there are the things one doesn't see, such as heavy metal dust from coal power plant stacks...
You didn't mention clean water. Let me guess, you consider the 'battle won' in the U.S. for clean water.
Why don't you come to Albuquerque and clean up the at least several million gallons of jet fuel which has leaked from pipes under the local DoD/DOE base and which is slowly spreading towards the nearest city wells? ...which the MIC has been dragging its feet over since the whistle was first blown circa 1997. And that is with the current state of the EPA and associated regulatory agencies...I would hate to think what people would get away with if their was significantly relaxed standards and enforcement.
What would improving air quality in all our coal-fired pants cost us? A cent or two more per KwH?
Plenty worth it to me.
Go to any of the many locales around the World where you blow your nose and your snot is black from particulate pollution, and where you can't swim in the oceans or lakes due to the raw sewage.
I am not saying we go all totalitarian in some foolish attempt to eliminate all pollutants, but I am not for going down the steep slippery slope of neutering our environmental regulations and the agencies which monitor the environment and enforce compliance.
What percentage of infrastructure in the U.S. was built without public support via funding, subsidy or guarantee via rate regulation? Roads? Airports? Railroads? Electric Transmission? Gas/Oil Pipelines? Water supply? Wastewater treatment? Refineries? Truly private infrastructure funding is virtually non-existent. Most cases of 'private' infrastructure are/were actually public concessions.
First of all, there are plenty of boondoggles within the list of infrastructure items you listed there. We are losing billions on passenger rail every year and we have had transportation projects like the "Big Dig" that were a complete waste of money. So not everything government decides to build is a good idea. Plenty of airports were overbuilt too. They were funded with pork barrel money.
There are so many private infrastructure projects they are too numerous to mention. The power grid is one of them. Power plants have not been something in which taxpayer dollars are used directly to build. The reason being the utility companies recoup the cost through the paying customers. Yes, there have been government incentives like the Rural Electrification Program but those should have been phased out years ago.
Wind and solar are a solution looking for a problem. We are not lacking supplies of coal, NG, hydro or nuclear. The only reason those are being suppressed is because of idiotic green policies. Germany has spent 100 billion on solar and get only 3% of their electricity from it. They could have built 2 nuke plants for 1/2 of that and gotten more energy much more reliably. Instead they have foolishly decided to dismantle their nuclear plants. They will change their mind. They have figured out that solar provides no usable energy for days on end during the German winter season! Shocker.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,809439,00.html
too numerous to mention.
Mention some. It was not hard for benamery21 to come up with a list off the top of his head.
Airports? Railroads? Electric Transmission? Gas/Oil Pipelines? Water supply? Wastewater treatment? Refineries?
Ah, methinks the TOD moderator would not appreciate nor permit the response I would like to give to that particular comment! So let me just say that it merits about a hundred thousand negative points >:-(
I work for an investor owned regulated electric utility. I explicitly included our economic model in the category which is not truly private infrastructure. The state decides how much we can charge and what we can build, and guarantees us a rate of return on our investment.
From Kroyall's link:
PV panels output about 1/4 of their sunny day power on a cloudy day. The percentage can be less with very dark rain clouds, but such clouds are uncommon everywhere I have ever lived.
Nowhere in this article does the author state the actual power output of Germany's PV systems. It states 20 GW of installed capacity while Solar power in Germany (Wiki) has a referenced table showing Germany had an installed PV capacity of 24.8 GW at the end of 2011 (presumably rated power of PV panels). According to German solar power output up 60 pct in 2011 (Reuters, Dec. 29, 2011), German PV produced 18 billion kWh in 2011, or 3.2% of the total. With a capacity of 7.5 GW installed in 2011 and 3 GW installed in December 2011, I estimate Germany's average capacity factor at:
(18 billion kWh/yr) / [((24.8 GW - (7.5 GW - 3 GW) / 2) - 3 GW) * 24 hr/day * 365.24 day/yr * 1,000,000 kW/GW] = (18 billion kWh/yr) / (171 billion kWh/yr) = 10.5%
For comparison the annual capacity factor of my PV system is about 19% at a more southerly latitude.
Because China is flooding the market with underpriced PV panels, there is no surprise that German manufacturers of PV panels are having problems. Subsidies have not made German manufacturers lethargic.
The German subsidy for PV is designed to reduce as the targeted goal of 66 GW of capacity is approached.
Germany does not have much coal and natural gas left. PV allows them to generate some power locally rather than import fossil fuels which would be bad economically and environmentally for them. As for the U.S. coal and NG look good if you ignore the pollution and environmental damage and externalize the costs onto future generations. U.S. natural gas production is probably close to peaking which would make the U.S. dependent on foreign supplies. The world might be 3 decades away from peaking in NG production. Because it takes time to build out an alternative energy system, building it proactively is wise. Since NG is used to make many things, it is best to save it for the more important uses such as fertalizer and plastic. There is little U.S. hydroelectric power remaining that could be developed. The U.S. has pretty much reached the maximum with that. Pumped hydro could be developed as a storage system. Nuclear looks good if you ignore the subsidies (Obama's loan guarantees), pollution (leaks, spills, venting), toxic waste (that will likely be managed by government at tax payer's expense instead of customer's), the Price-Anderson Act which externalizes the cost of a major accident onto the victims and the risk of a core meltdown like in Fukushima, Japan. Supply is not the only factor to consider. Wind and solar mitigate other problems.
Where do you get that notion?
http://38.96.246.204/forecasts/steo/tables/?tableNumber=15#startcode=2005
http://www.naturalgas.org/images/resources_clip_image002.jpg
Energy Export Databrowser shows a longer term view of U.S. natural gas production.
How Much Natural Gas Do We Have to Replace Gasoline?, TOD, Posted by Robert Rapier on July 30, 2009
Don’t count on natural gas to solve US energy problem, TOD, Gail the Actuary on February 18, 2011
Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?, TOD, Richard Heinberg, May 16, 2011.
TOD has made me pessimistic about optimistic EIA projections.
Well, heck, Gail and Heinberg would make you pessimistic about anything - they seem sure that no good can come, whatever.
Eh? I asked what was the basis for the comment, "U.S. natural gas production is probably close to peaking which would make the U.S. dependent on foreign supplies." The first link based on BP data counters that notion: showing US production up ~5 bcf/day 2005-2010 to 60 bcf/day, just as the EIA and Natural Gas association links did that I provided. BTW, US production in the last quarter of 2011 hit 67 bcf/day, so that the US has overtaken Russia and for the last couple years is the largest NG producer in the world.*
Those other TOD links generally argue that natural gas won't solve all energy problems like transportation and replacing coal, i.e. gas is no panacea. Fine. However, they either grant (as far as I can see) that US natural gas production is predicted to increase for years, or offer "what if the predictions are wrong?" pessimism's.
*
http://38.96.246.204/forecasts/steo/tables/pdf/5atab.pdf
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/re...
The recent uptick in U.S. natural gas production is from expensive horizontal drilling and fracing while the retail price remains low. I think this is an unstable market condition, a bubble, that will eventually pop. You and the EIA seem to think the production will continue to increase for decades. My TOD links all refer to an insufficient reserve of natural gas in the U.S. to continue at our current rate of consumption for decades. Absent geopolitics shutting down wells, the industry can not produce natural gas at the maximum rate until the last gas molecule is extracted. Production will peak much earlier. The increasing cost, increasing depth of wells and high drilling rig count all suggest an approaching peak to me. Projections made on the rising edge of a bubble are always optimistic.
Perhaps the most recent TOD article about natural gas makes it clearer:
With Gas So Cheap and Well Drilling Down, Why is Gas Production so High?, David Hughes, January 26, 2012
My opinion is that there is not one single solution or technology that will solve the problems. Instead we will have a tool box of solutions that are appropriate for different areas of the country. In this case, Wind is useful only if it can be gotten to where folks live and work. One overlooked solution is rail electrification. Using a national transcontinental electrification ( remember the great northern was electrified in the 1920's) we can cut down on land transport costs, even out intermittancy and also have a little left over( sometimes a lot) to ship to cities along the rail routes. This is I think one of the reasons that MidAmerica holdings is owned by the same outfit that happens to own a railroad called the Burlington Northern that happens to be located in Omaha( Berkshire Hathaway). At the very least the rail right of ways can be used to support transmission efforts nationwide( regardless of generating source).
So you heard it here first folks-use the electrification of rail lines to also carry surplus wind power.
Very good suggestion!
Not the first time it's been expressed, I'm afraid, but as far as I can tell, it's a very reasonable structural approach, nonetheless.
'Alan from big easy' is an ongoing proponent of Rail Electrification, and has shared that passion here regularly, and he and I and others have talked about ways to tie in the Electrified Rail Corridors with long-distance transmission systems, which could have the compounding benefit of enabling more resilient Grid and Railway Maintenance through the use of electrified and hybrid-powered rail-borne equipment to assure ongoing access to both, vital (and presumably well duplicated/paralled) networks.
Bob
Here is Alan Drake's idea for electrifying the long distance rail lines in the U.S.:
Multiple Birds – One Silver BB: A synergistic set of solutions to multiple issues focused on Electrified Railroads, The Oil Drum, Alan Drake, July 15, 2008.
It is a way to create a U.S. continental electrical interconnect that can be serviced by rail. It avoids some of the issues Gail mentions.
I suppose a politically divided country cannot come up with big, bold plans for the future, as Eisenhower did when he launched the interstate highway system.
I was struck recently by the route map for the Keystone XL pipeline, which runs right down through the region holding the greatest wind energy resources. We should be considering construction of a new-technology superconducting electric power corridor alongside Keystone as part of a 21st century grid rebuild. An east-west corridor could come later.
A north-south conduit could tap not only wind, but mine-site coalfired power, with the CO2 used for natural gas and oil extraction in the high plains. I'm no fan of coal as it is currently hauled on railroads and burned, but Western coal is certainly more eco-friendly than mountaintop removal of high-sulfur coal from Appalachia. (I've toured restored coal extraction sites in eastern Montana and you can't tell we were there.)
The tremendous wind resource in places like Wyoming paired with gas turbine demand plants can combine to make something close to base load. And cryogenic transmission goes a long way toward eliminating the distance leeches.
Sure it's expensive, but amortized over a century, not so much.
But, sad to say, we have no Eisenhower around today.
No Ike, and we now have El Rushbaugh and Fox News et al.
Even with an modern-day Ike (shorthand in this conversation for wise leader willing to lead the making of long-term investments)he (or she) would be shouted down by the Malkins, the Palins, the Becks, and on and on, as they would characterize any joint/common use of our resources for any end as 'Marxism/Socialism'.
Excepting, of course, any amount of military expenditures for any purpose, with practically zero oversight. We must 'support the troops'.
We, I was a troop, and still roll in those circles, and I am here to tell everyone that our U.S. national security starts at home..not with limitless unchecked domestic wiretapping and police brutality, but with a cogent national energy strategy, national heathcare, etc.
OF course, the interstate highway system was justified for national defense, and promoted by a SecDef who previously was the CEO of GM...
This was an interesting point made in a drumbeat link this morning..
http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=2041&first=3876&end=3875
I see numerous examples of places where Windpowered Electricity is directly offsetting Liquid Fuel use. The challenges of maintenance and creating replacement parts don't seem like absolute dead-ends after Oil to me. As the US sees transport costs adjusting to the new energy realities, we will very likely see a resurgence in heavy industry stateside, while Ocean Transport is not particularly brittle in terms of Petrol Cost or Dependency, either. Ships can return in varying degrees to windpower, of course, and great Construction Cranes can use Electricity, Steam, Biodiesel.. any number of power-sources we have learned to use over the decades.. it all hangs heavily off of Crude right now, as the legacy Brute in the club, but that doesn't mean it always has to fit into that same lineup.
There are various examples of military and other government installations adopting wind and solar energy:
http://www.eastriver.coop/energy/renewable/wind.htm [scroll about halfway down to see the two 1.3 MW wind turbines feeding power to Minot AFB, ND]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellis_Solar_Power_Plant
http://www.albuquerque.va.gov/pressreleases/VA_Awards_Solar_Project_at_A...
Just three examples, there are others.
With 50 000 coal-fired power plants operating worldwide, it is going to take time to replace what they supply. It won't happen over night and it will probably take a couple of hundred years to get them replaced. They'll burn a lot of coal in the meantime. Quantify the future CO2 added and you can tax it now to finance solar, wind, hydro, and maybe some safe nuclear to soa.
Present day denuding of the forests in China, Africa, and South America are contributing to the CO2 increases too. Time to stop that, pronto.
One good thing about wind towers, they resemble Easter Island statues. Get enough of them, it'll look like Easter Island the world over. There has got to be another way other than wind towers to produce usable energy from wind. Wind towers are a waste. In the long haul, they're not any better than any of the rest of it. Just another future mess to clean up with no resources to do it. Easter Island statues here we come.
Fossil fuels we have, for now. Hydro, solar, and trains full of Wyoming coal, one after another, if you have seen them, you'll know, hauling coal to Winnipeg. Coal is king because it is an energy source at the right price, pure and simple. It works, does the job, what have you.
A lot of land between the Parklands in Manitoba to Saskatoon over to Edmunton across to Grand Prairie up to the Peace River Valley on up to the Yukon that is severely under-utilized for agricultural purposes. Canada should be making that land pay better. It would be better to develop the land for more intensified ag than developing the oil sands. Food is more important.
The richest black earth I've ever seen was near Grand Prairie in Alberta. Canada should grow more food, it has great potential for that. Timber lands that are untouched in northern British Columbia will probably never be cut.
Canada's natural resources are there in massive quantities, especially the land. It could produce enough to feed the entire world.
The entire place is all Yukon gold.
Time to ramble.
Ward,
One considerable difference between Wind Turbines and Stone Heads, is that the larger utility scale turbines are known to return their invested energy back into the society in a matter of some 9 months, and then keep on giving.. they DO offer a good bit more than Tribal Bragging Rights, and perhaps some level of spiritual nourishment for some..
Coal May be King, but reducing the Halls of the Mountain Kings to rubble in order to get it is a lot more like building the Stone Heads than is erecting a bunch of towers that really don't NEED a great future investment in cleanup and remediation. Those Steel Towers will eventually bring themselves down.. just stand clear.
Bob
You could always use the wind energy to pump water by using the wind tower as a very large pump. It'd probably be about as efficient if you have a water reservoir of some kind up high and you could probably build it anywhere you could cheaply corral a bunch of water 'uphill'. I believe it would be more consistant than directly producing power as it'd likely work in a greater range of wind speeds and the actual mechanical parts are relatively simpler and require no rare materials to make.
Um... global warming should reduce energy demand.
I can't understand why anyone would oppose global warming, especially if the oil is going to be gone in 30 years or so.
Seems counter-intuitive to want to reduce emissions to control global warming. To reduce pollutants, yes, but I am still all for global warming.
A summer of 1816 re-visited would be grim. You'll starve. The weather wasn't warm enough to grow crops. Lakes froze in June in Pennsylvania. Farmers in the Northeast moved to Kansas.
http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/2010/03/22/the-year-without-a-summer/
In the past three years, two have had the coolest Junes I have ever witnessed. The summers have been absent of temperatures above the 100 degree mark except for a few times. Not the normal. When I am standing outside in June donning a winter coat, something is wrong. The summer of 1988 had temperatures in the shade of 108. I am actually worried we're in a cooling period, to tell you the truth. Chaiten erupting in 2008 is probably the culprit.
Ward,
One of the most common predictions made by climate scientists is that the weather will simply show far more extremes, which seems to have been borne out already to a degree. A lot of people and other life is lost in extreme weather, AND we end up spending a lot of emergency power dealing with it as well.
Who in their right mind would encourage that?
"Warming" sure makes it sound nice and cozy. That's not what it means.
Ofcourse oil is not the only thing that worries the scientists who know how GHG's work. NG and coal are two other big players, especially coal. And if you really want to play with human extinction riks then devise a method of harvesting methane hydrates from the bottom of continental shelves. There is more carbon stored in methane hydrate as there is in ff.
But I guess, because it has been warmer outside your window at one point, we don't have to worry about global warming.
You might be interested in e.g. this research about a possible new cooling period of which the co-author Dr. Luke Skinner says:
Regarding the eruption regarding Chaiten in 2008 being the 'probable' cause of the purported current cooling period, as you claim, do you have any evidence? A link to an attribution study perhaps?
"Greenhouse operators, (tomatoes for example), boost CO2 to 1000ppm; more than double what our air is now. If it didn't raise their bottom line they wouldn't do it. GEOCARB III shows that our planet is at a LOW point of CO2 concentration - plants first evolved here with MUCH higher concentrations, over 10X what it is now. CO2 has been steadily increasing for hundreds of years. Temperature has NOT - it's been going up and down. The computer model predictions made by IPCC and James Hanson eight years ago were wrong - there has been no significant warming in the last ten years and their most conservative prediction was for warming over ~1C. Arctic sea ice is back to a 1980's level and the rate of sea level rise has SLOWED down totally the OPPOSITE of what snake oil salesman Al Gore hoodwinked everyone into believing. No scientific proof exists to link CO2 as a major contributor to earth's climate so how can our puny addition of 4 or 5% be any real factor? Stop the $5 billion / year government handouts/mandates to study/fix the 'problem' and only THEN will the 'problem' go away."
http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse?id=dn11655&page=4
Actually it is very basic to show that without the greenhouse effect the Earth's average surface temperature would be 33 degrees C lower. That is first year college physics. CO2 accounts for about a 5th of the greenhouse effect, or 7 deg C.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-climate-change/
An increase from 320ppm in 1960 to 390ppm today is an increase of more than 21%. That's not even going back to the start of the industrial revolution.
[edit]
That 'Do the Math' blog was useful to me to follow the 'big-block' back of the envelope math behind the assertions of global warming.
Thanks!
Your welcome.
Yes, exactly so. Many pieces of global energy flow are basic physics. The high albedo of white surfaces such as clouds is also basic physics, but that doesn't mean anyone accurately understands their contribution to climate.
I think what is not understood so well is the process of cloud formation and therefore how much the albedo effect will change in a hotter world. (Climate scientists will say they can make accurate models of it. We'll see, I guess.) I think the effect of albedo on actual surface temperatures is relatively well understood, although I don't know how precisely it is measured.
What is irksome about comments like wardpierce is that they essentially deny that anyone knows anything about anything. It's ironic that he can use the acronym 'CO2', since what he says amounts to denying that we even know what carbon dioxide is.
I know I am a minnow in shark infested waters here.
I know that everyone here is well-informed and more informed, higher levels of education and so on than I am. No one person is capable of knowing everything, that I know. That's not the issue.
CO2 is necessary for plants to live, without it, they die. They stop growing at 200 ppm, optimum growth at 300 ppm. There's the standard. Controlled atmosphere experiments on plants have been around a long time with nutrient deficient symptoms data collected. CO2 deprived plants die. It won't be able to make its food.
CO2 as 'food for plants', not really. To survive, absolutely.
Weeds are in the soil and will never be eliminated. Take it from me, I've seen plenty. If you want to see a biomass increase in size like no other, weeds win the day. All you can do is either use a chemical or use tillage equipment, you're not going to get rid of them. Just when you think you have control over a few 'noxious' species, along comes a weather situation where the weeds come back like never before. It is a ghastly phenomenon sometimes, this old life we have.
They're like wind towers, they need to be uprooted and discarded.
I am all for solar, hydro, fossil fuels *we're toast without them, we need them*, and especially wind. They all need to be developed extensively.
However, wind towers are a mistake. I suppose there is too much invested in the the industry so wind towers will blossom. It becomes its own monster, incorrigibly corrupt to boot.
Like Sigmund Freud said when he first laid eyes on New York City: A giant mistake.
That's what wind towers are.
It's too bad it has to be that way.
So without anything to backup your claims you lump together C3 and C4 plants, ignore the fact that plants (and the animals who feed of them!) are still around even after 10s of thousands of years of 200ppm (or less) CO2 during the various glacial periods? How can plants survive, much less even feed all other living creatures, when they stop growing at 200ppm?
Even if your claim of 'optimal growth at 300ppm' is correct, then we are trying way to hard to achieve optimum growth. Heck, we achieved that pretty much before we started burning fossil fuels with pre-industrial levels of 280ppm.
Please allow me to rephrase and condense your post so that is much more true today and for the future: Water (at the right amount and time) is necessary for plants to live, without it they die.
https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/fileadmin/einrichtungen/hebrew-university/L...
Plants without water is an easier fix than plants with too much water, if you have ever had to experience the consequences of both, too little water is preferred to too much water. Too much and you have crop failure that will almost make you bawl. It is staring you in the face. It will make a knot in your stomach.
Nothing grows or even germinates with too much water, no matter what you do, except for the weeds, of course. What you have to do to make it work you never thought that you would ever have to do what you had to do to make it work. Weeds thrive under those conditions and you're beset with a double whammy. Not good. You have no crop and all weeds and you can't believe what has happened because 10 days earlier, everything was fine.
I'll take a drought any day than too much water. Deluges of rain, super-saturated soil, low soil temperature and you are looking at complete disaster.
Unbelievable, to say the least, to get something to survive. It is grim and bleak, but, you do what has to be done to make it work because if it doesn't it will be worse than bad.
The weeds were the most problematic.
An experience you'll never forget and one you don't want to re-live. You live and learn.
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/evidence-var-corrRSCb.pdf
Calculated average of 299 ppm
Well, I can see how you became so confused about plants, CO2 and climate. The second link is written by Ernst-Georg Beck a well known contrarian, founder of astroturf organisation EIKE which is a subsidiary of CFACT. It is not peer-reviewed and is mostly referencing to his own work published in Energy&Environment, a know entity that is politically motivated and performs pal-review. I mean, this guy is seriously claiming that in the 19th century CO2 levels were above 400ppm! This is so far into lala-land one has to wonder whether to laugh out loud or to be sad. Anyway, others have ripped it pretty much into schreds already.
The first paper describes that at elevated CO2 level (500ppm) barley recovers quicker from a 13-day drought then at normal CO2 levels. It also says that barley protein increases at high CO2 levels if the plant is well watered. This is nice ofcourse as long as the climate is behaving normally under such high CO2 levels but we're already seeing many signs that this isn't going to be the case. Unfortunately the study doesn't say anything about the effects of higher temperatures expected at those CO2 levels nor prolonged droughts nor influence of pests nor competition from weeds because the experiment was performed in labconditions. So this study doesn't actually say much about the results results in a real 500ppm world without controlled conditions.
Then there are other studies that e.g. show that nutritional value of rice and wheat are negatively effected by higher CO2 levels and that soybeans become more susceptibele to pests. Other plants show higher cyanide contents which make them less suitable as food. Some of these many studies are linked here.
It is understandable to have complete skepticism with the second link.
The one interesting year was 1942, the reason for providing the link.
Suffice it to say a ready reservoir of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is necessary. Too much is deadly. The example is Lake Nyos in Africa that formed a huge bubble of carbon dioxide and killed people, livestock and animals in the area for miles around.
4000 ppm will be fatal.
Ok. I agree that 4000ppm will be fatal. Either CO2 poisoning or runaway greenhouse effect, doesn't matter. Dead = dead.
But even in pre-industrial times there was a ready reservoir of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.
For CO2 poisoning, you need 10,000 ppm or more, AFAIK.
The whole discussion is counting angels on the head of a pin, in either case.
We cannot know that drastically increasing carbon in the atmosphere, far beyond any ecosystem that modern life-forms and ecosystems have developed in, is not going to tip any of a pile of delicate balances to cascade us into an unsurvivable situation.
We're playing with fire, and still arguing over who gets to hold the most matches..
Fact Sheet: Carbon Dioxide in Greenhouses
Growers optimize the climate in their greenhouses in many ways, especially temperature and humidity. Note plate 5 in your link; the large thermal storage (cooling) tank. That's how we moderate temps in our house, but try doing that with a planet. That said, I expect that flora will respond better to increased co2 than most fauna.
The CO2 is plant food argument as an excuse to continue emitting CO2 in the atmosphere is flawed on so many levels, it's astonishing.
Contrary to greenhouses most lands used for growing food isn't a controlled environment. There is little to no control over how little (drought) or how abundant water (floods) is available to the crop at the right time. Increasing the temperature (by increasing the GHG content) is expected to result in an increased water cycle (stronger droughts, heavier rainfall when it rains). Plants need enough water, but not too much and at the right time. These constraints now determine where crops are grown now. In a warming world neither place nor time of rain are expected to remain the same. In short: risk of crop failure due to drought or flooding rises. The US has seen major examples for such events last year, it ain't pretty.
But assuming areas where rain is moderate and on time then increased CO2 levels can increase growth of certain crops. Not all of them though, as it depends on the chemical method incorporated by the plant for photosynthesis. Weeds are among the beneficiary in high CO2 regimes.
Higher growth doesn't mean higher nutritional content. In contrary for some crops the nutritional value drops while biomass increases (So if someone uses the 'increased biomass' canard ask them about nutritional value).
Higher CO2 levels also cause changes in the plant's defenses against diseases and pests because they create less toxins to fend off these pests which leads to reduced production.
As a result of our activities other wastes besides CO2 are also produced like ozone. Some of them are known to be toxic to plants, like ozone.
So, aside from greenhouse controlled environments and specific crops, increased CO2 levels pose serious risks to our food supply from a whole range of vectors. So it comes down to the amount of risk you're willing to take with our food supply. Co2 is plant food? If only it were so simple...
CO2 is necessary for plant growth - if there isn't enough, they won't grow at all. The optimum level is much higher than current atmospheric levels of about 360 ppm, which is why greenhouse owners like to increase it to 1000 ppm or even 1600 ppm. All things being equal it increases plant productivity by about 50%. The main constraint is cost of generating the CO2. The upper limit for CO2 in greenhouses is quite high, 5000 ppm or so, and that's because the workers start to have problems breathing, not so much the plants.
For most of the world's existence, atmospheric CO2 levels have been much higher than today. When the dinosaurs were around, it was about 2,000 ppm and at times it has reached 7,000 ppm. Pre-industrial levels of about 280 ppm were probably some kind of record low in the global history.
In the pre-Cambrian prior to 600 million years ago, it was probably a lot higher than a few thousand ppm - but there were no plants around at the time. The evolution of plants is the main reason that atmospheric CO2 levels are as low as they are today, and oxygen levels are as high.
RMG, please, have you read any of what I wrote? Will you please read some of the literature given in the link I provided? CO2 is plant food is a red herring as it 'forgets' all other parameters influencing plant-wellbeing.
The 'CO2 is plant food crock' ignores nutrients and water supply. It ignores the difference between C3 and C4 types of plants. It ignores the increase in pests susceptibility of plants. It ignores the fact that nutritional value (unless you like to digest woody stems and leaves) not always increases and may even decrease. It ignores that more CO2 generally leads to higher temperatures which is not always beneficial for plants. It ignores that precipitation regimes shift under climate change. Etc. The 'CO2 is plant food crock' ignores that the planet is not a controlled greenhouse.
Also, can you explain what the fact -that there have been much higher CO2 levels in the past- has to do with our current very rapid increase CO2 and our dependence on agriculture? The existence of such periods in the distant past certainly are not a secret, but I like to know what you think is the relevance and impacts today.
And I also wonder if you have thought of 'the other problem', about the effects of high levels of atmospheric CO2 on the ocean, particularly on coral reefs, krill and other ecosystems that feed a large portion of mankind. Again, studies show that these effects are not positive on a whole.
This is well put. The real question is not whether some form of life on earth will continue to exist if we dump all the FF carbon into the atmosphere and change the climate. Some form of life will probably make it through. The question is whether we humans will be able to hack it. See: Odds of Cooking the Grandkids. The question is even more paramount if we change the climate at a faster rate than evolving organisms have ever before experienced.
No, I didn't say that CO2 is a "plant food", that is, as you said, a Red Herring.
What I said is that CO2 is necessary for plants to grow. If you put them in a CO2-free atmosphere, they'll die. Plants inhale CO2 and exhale O2, which is very useful from our perspective since we need O2 to survive. We do the opposite, we inhale O2 and exhale CO2, which the plants need to survive.
This is why people talk to their plants. It's not that they can hear what you say, it's because you breath CO2 on them, which gives them more CO2 to grow with. It's not just an urban myth that talking to your plants makes them grow better.
The point I made was that commercial greenhouse owners like to increase the level of CO2 to at least three times the ambient air levels because it improves plant growth - on average by about 50%. The obvious conclusion is that on average, all things being equal, and within limits, plants grow better if there is more CO2 in the air.
I also pointed out that CO2 levels have been much, much higher in the past - around 7,000 ppm during the Cambrian Age and 2,000 ppm when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The dinosaurs didn't seem to mind, and it was certainly a very lush and green period in the Earth's history. Human beings don't start to have problems until around 5,000 ppm. I don't know about coral reefs and krill, but since they were around when the dinosaurs were here, I don't see why they would have a problem, either.
Agreed. But what is the relevance of a CO2 free atmosphere to earth? Even in pre-industrial times there was 280ppm and plants didn't die of CO2 starvation.
Agreed, some plants in greenhouses grow better in high CO2 levels. But as a whole things aren't as simple as that. As I said earlier -and provided evidence for-; The earth climate isn't a greenhouse. In high-CO2 environments not all plants benefit, some plants gain more mass but less nutritional value, some plants are vulnerable to pests, some develop higher toxic contents and climate may not develop in a benificiary way for agriculture. Again, please read some of the studies I linked.
Yes. And? That was 500 million years ago, what is the relevance to today?
I think you've got that mixed-up a little bit. The dinosaurs lived when CO2 levels were around 350-500ppm and became extinct during the K-T event during which CO2 levels rose to more then 2000ppm.
There is a big difference in oceanic chemistry and species evolution when CO2 levels change very slowly over timescales of millions of years to high values (as it did during the Cambrian) and when CO2 levels change thousands of times faster like they do now. The ocean doesn't have time to buffer and compensate for high atmosferic CO2 levels this time which causes e.g. aragonite levels to plummet. Also, many species -if not most- alive today in the oceans have never in their evolutionary development experienced CO2 levels likely seen by the end of this century. I would recommend you start reading a bit about ocean chemistry (acidification).
But what is the relevance of a CO2 free atmosphere to earth? Even in pre-industrial times there was 280ppm and plants didn't die of CO2 starvation.
I believe that 200 ppm is considered a low limit for plant growth. However, there's some dispute whether in pre-industrial levels it was as low as 280 ppm. Scientists started testing the atmospheric CO2 levels during the 1800s, and readings ranged from 250 to 500 ppm. The 280 number was achieved by throwing out all the high readings on the grounds that they must be wrong, and that's not valid data selection.
I think you've got that mixed-up a little bit. The dinosaurs lived when CO2 levels were around 350-500ppm and became extinct during the K-T event during which CO2 levels rose to more then 2000ppm.
It only fell to that level toward the end of the age of dinosaurs, and it is interesting that the number of dinosaurs seems to have fallen as well. During most of their reign, CO2 levels were much higher than today.
Dinosaur
You are ofcourse entitled to your beliefs, however I note that during glacial periods CO2 levels regularly dropped below 200 ppm for thousands of years and plants (and animals and humans who live off the plants) are still around.
Well, in any scientific field there are some disputes. Some even now still claim the earth is flat. Again, one has to look at the whole body of evidence, the multiple lines of evidence. It shows pre-industrial levels were at approx. 280ppm and didn't vary more then 10ppm over the holocene until we started burning fossil fuels.
Yes, chemical testing in e.g. central-Paris revealed CO2 levels in that range. These levels are similar to today's ground readings in heavilly populated or industrialized areas and are very localized. All grand claims based on early chemical measurement lead back to Ernst-Georg Beck whom I discussed somewhere else in this thread.
Stomata density too is not only controlled by CO2 levels but water availability as well and shows very large error bars. Scientists are primarily measuring CO2 on isolated remote mountains and using trapped air bubbles in remote ice sheets for a reason you know...
I also would like to know what process could be responsible for changing atmospheric CO2 from ~500ppm during the 1800s to the very accurately measured CO2 levels of 315 ppm by Charles Keeling in 1960 and why we don't see any such large variability since 1960 except for a steady increase of atmospheric CO2 as a result of FF burning. This paper from 1978 by Keeling give an interesting account of early accurate CO2 measurement.
Please provide a link to backup this claim of invalid data selection. I've already seen way too much in this discussion to accept any big claim from you without solid backup.
Regarding your dinosaur link to Wikipedia, I think you forgot to quote two important parts of that section:
First: Please allow me to add a citation:
Only three times higher CO2 levels at it's peak and large associated climate shifts. Hmm.
Second: Apparently (who would have thought of that?) animals evolve to cope with their environment. Current CO2 levels are the highest in ~800ky and by the end of this century levels will be higher then the past 65 million years. As I said earlier, many species will be extremely rapidly confronted with CO2 levels higher than anywhere in their evolution, this is especially a challenge for marine life that uses external calcious skeletons. Way to fast to adopt via evolution, biologists warn.
Some pretty big gaping holes in this analysis. It's pretty darn hard to compare on level terms 2.5% penetration of wind over last 10 years (3-4 years with any significant subsidies in play) with a 60 year track record for nuclear (reaching only 20%), and 111 years for fossil fuels (counting from GE's first alternating coal power plant in Ehrenfeld, PA). Let's not leave out US overall energy demand has been flat, if not declining in many regions. We could compare wind to the cheapest and most polluting of energy resources and get absolutely no-where (except the fantasy land of neo-Friedmanesque free markets, which have never existed for energy, and unloading ALL externalized costs on the general public and governments). Many studies have suggested wind can get to 20% (or the same share as nuclear) with nothing new under the sun (just the same old outdated transmission lines, zero storage, and a very small amount of spinning reserves). Do you think our current political stalemates would support such a reliable and sane approach … hardly. We seem dead set on the quick buck and making a fortune off rising, volatile, and supply chain disruptions with non-renewable resources on the margins. Heck, we've already deregulated most of the industry, all that is left is for energy traders to start running the show as they did with mortgages. Oh wait, they tried this already. Maybe today they are just a little bit smarter than the so called "smartest guys in the room." At some point, we'll start to realize that the best energy source is the one that is paid for in full (and not carved up a thousand ways among energy speculators, resource developers, government regulators, taxpayers, environmental consultants, remediation experts, displaced climate refuges, cities covering new infrastructure investments, lobbyists, and other bottom feeders in the oil and emissions anti-regulation game).
Very good points, there, idyl. Much of the drive behind financial speculation is the phenomemon known as volitility, i.e. that prices fly up and down on various short-term time scales in various phase shifts and correlation relationships for various commodities and other objects of speculation. This is yet another reason for "volitility surfers" to hate renewable energy, particularly wind, solar and geothermal. There is a known price of production for wind, solar and geothermal (and to some degree biomass)on a much longer time scale than what fits into their volitility-driven business models. You cannot speculate on the cost of installed wind and solar electricity production in the future! The production cost is given when the system is built essentially for its lifetime. Furthermore, it is clear that with enough renewable energy in the grid, and enough electrification of transport, there is no room for massive price increases due to fossil fuel availability swinging up and down with each war-mongering statement from the Middle East or the importing West/East. It should be entirely clear that we could essentially FIX the production cost of ALL FUTURE ELECTRICITY production by making a sufficiently high percentage of it coming from wind, solar, geothermal or sustainable biomass. This would kill the business model of oh so many parasitic speculators. Which is one of the reasons there is so much unbelievable, nonsensical, malignant criticism of renewable energy and electric vehicles.
Gail,
It's awfully disappointing to see an article that attempts to assess the viability of windpower without mentioning that fossil fuel prices are far too low because they don't include the cost of pollution (mercury, CO2, sulfur, particulates, etc, etc); other environmental damage (mountaintop removal, etc); occupation health (emphysema, etc); the cost of securing supplies ($2 trillion oil war, anyone?); and the depletion of limited supplies.
This reads like an advertisement from Peabody Coal.
yes, everything is relative isn't it?
Here's a report from the Gund School of Ecological Economics at UVM with a good "full cost accounting" for coal power. http://www.uvm.edu/giee/publications/FullCost_Account_LifeCycleofCoal_20...
Amory Lovins new book" Reinventing Fire" is also a good source to help put this into perspective.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/293982-book-review-reinventing-fire
Thanks. Here's another:
Coal: occupational health costs, CO2, acid rain, mercury in food, water consumption, adding up to $.18 per kWh ($345B/year):
"The United States' reliance on coal to generate almost half of its electricity, costs the economy about $345 billion a year in hidden expenses not borne by miners or utilities, including health problems in mining communities and pollution around power plants, a study found.
Those costs would effectively triple the price of electricity produced by coal-fired plants, which are prevalent in part due to the their low cost of operation, the study led by a Harvard University researcher found.
"This is not borne by the coal industry, this is borne by us, in our taxes," said Paul Epstein, a Harvard Medical School instructor and the associate director of its Center for Health and the Global Environment, the study's lead author.
"The public cost is far greater than the cost of the coal itself. The impacts of this industry go way beyond just lighting our lights."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/us-usa-coal-study-idUKTRE71F4X8... or http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/usa-coal-study-idUSN1628366220... or Here's the link to the pay-wall-protected version if desired:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x/full
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Just charge the coal industry their actual costs, and wind would instantly become far cheaper than coal.
Of course, then we'd need to assess and allocate the true costs of other competitors, like nuclear and natural gas. Gail suggests that NG is very low emissions, and that's true in comparison to coal. Still, NG has substantial emissions, both at the point of extraction as well as at the point of burning: the research I've seen suggests that the combination makes NG as bad as oil, which IIRC would be roughly 50% of coal. That's still a lot.
Finally, just to replace coal we need to ramp up very low emissions generation very quickly, and to a large scale. It seems very unlikely that nuclear or NG can be both that fast and that large.
To be fair, mitigation costs would be dramatically lower than the cost burden of externalities, which is why we have regulations driving mitigations. The study estimates are dominated by air pollution, for which existing mitigation tech is not terribly expensive.
Effective air pollution regs plus a carbon tax, would internalize almost all of the costs in the study. While these would certainly improve the cost competitiveness of wind, coal would remain cost-competitive.
I can understand how a new coal plant could reduce "criteria" emissions, such as mercury or sulfur. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, the cost of new coal plants with scrubbers is much higher than for legacy plants - barely competitive with wind. I believe a requirement to retrofit old grandfathered coal plants would mean raising costs even more sharply at many, and closing the rest.
What mitigation are you thinking of for CO2, occupational health costs, mountain top removal, and water consumption?
Do you have a table handy of their cost summary by source? If you have the time, could you send a PDF of the article to the email address in my TOD account (I think that would be covered by Fair Use)?
http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_full%20cost%20o...
Page 92 (20 of 26).
Most of the costs are due to emissions and based on 2005 emissions levels which are declining rapidly due to regulation. I support a carbon tax, which would provide incentives to create carbon sinks like tropical reforestation, as well as to reduce emissions. I am familiar with the social and health problems in Appalachian coal country (my Dad grew up in Beckley, WV and his first job was on a coal tipple, my uncle's name is Lilly he was a coal mine electrician). The study basically takes the delta between coal country health and health elsewhere and imposes that cost on coal. I don't think eliminating the coal mines is going to solve those problems. I do think there are some significant regulatory opportunities to mitigate the problems, though most of them are not technical in nature. I do tend to think better MSHA enforcement, and higher UMWA penetration would make a difference.
Interesting. I'll have to look closer at that.
What did you think of the 3.06 cents for CO2?
Would you agree with my comment above that: The cost of new coal plants with scrubbers is much higher than for legacy plants - barely competitive with wind. I believe a requirement to retrofit old grandfathered coal plants would mean raising costs even more sharply at many, and closing the rest.
3.06cents is based on the cost of carbon capture at coal plants, I think it's on the high-side for the cost of industrial scale offsets, it's on the order of ~$100/ton of carbon. I strongly suspect offsets could be created for less than 1 cent per kwh. A carbon tax would let the market decide, which would work a lot better for CO2 than for criteria pollutants in my estimation.
New plants have capital costs, which means they are more expensive than plants that are already paid for. That's uncontroversial. Recent retrofit costs appear inflated to me, but still economic. I'm not sure exactly what's going on there, but part of it is probably a lot of deferred maintenance happening as part of the scrubber projects. There are plants it is not economic to retrofit, however, the industry has an incentive to make the numbers look worse than they are.
Part of what you see in current coal plant economics is high delivered coal prices. This is due mostly to rents being captured by railroads and coal companies due to high natural gas prices over the past decade. Coal will be a lot cheaper if it has to be again due to competition, whether from gas or from cheap renewables.
I'm not sure how offsets would be created in a world with a simple carbon tax. I think you're thinking of cap and trade markets.
The European and Chicago offset markets were highly unrealistic, and their costs were far lower than they would be in a real market in which GHGs were being reduced by more than 50%.
rents being captured by railroads and coal companies
Wow. So they have an effective monopoly, with no real competition between coal mining companies?
Rail and Coal are both effectively oligopolistic markets.
Does rail have an effective monopoly on delivering coal, except for plants that are very near mines (in which case the mine has an effective delivery monopoly)? Yes. As long as rail doesn't gouge too badly the STB leaves them alone since the Staggers Act passed under Carter.
Most coal is delivered under long term contract. Many if not most coal contracts were renegotiated during the boom from 2000-2007. During that time the market regime was supply constrained since gas was expensive and coal plants were burning as much as they could buy (not due to production cost but due to supply development timeframes), the only competition was to burn more gas and less coal. With cheaper gas, this changes, unfortunately the prices are sticky.
I'm assuming a carbon tax would be on net emissions and that carbon absorbing activities would offset tax obligations. The price of absorbing carbon via reforestation is likely well under 1 cent per kwh. Of course, it isn't sustainable indefinitely, but neither is geologic sequestration, which is what the paper is based on.
With cheaper gas, this changes, unfortunately the prices are sticky.
That makes sense, and fits with what I know.
I'm assuming a carbon tax would be on net emissions and that carbon absorbing activities would offset tax obligations.
I haven't heard of that. A simple tax just taxes the thing involved. Where have you seen offsets or net emissions proposed?
The price of absorbing carbon via reforestation is likely well under 1 cent per kwh.
But extremely hard to verify. It invites gaming the system.
Of course, it isn't sustainable indefinitely, but neither is geologic sequestration, which is what the paper is based on.
I think we need to levy a tax that allocates impact costs, not mitigation costs. If the cost of mitigation is less than the cost of impacts, then the tax will succeed in stopping the emissions. If the cost of mitigation is more than the cost of impacts, then we don't really want to stop the emissions...
Do you see what I mean? A rational Pigovian tax doesn't worry about the cost of mitigation, it just allocates the cost of impacts, and lets the market sort it out.
A rational tax has to allow for the possibility of mitigation. If CO2 release is associated with a simple tax at the cost of impact, then C02 capture would have to receive a tax credit. Otherwise, you are creating a situation where the tax collects more than the net impact, which is not Pigouvian.
Nobody is doing exactly what I would implement, but Alberta, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden are doing interestingly similar things.
Well, consider a simple fuel tax. You pay when you sell fuel to consumers. You don't get a credit when you create fuel (say, by pumping it from a well, and refining it), or buy it, or do something conceptually the opposite of selling. It's simple and easy to measure - everyone understands it and it's difficult to game it. On the other hand, allowing credits for CO2 capture is confusing and invites deception and gaming. Peabody Coal isn't in the business of planting trees - that's not something that could reasonably be considered as part of their baseline operations.
I agree that encouraging CO2 capture is essential - perhaps there should be a simple credit for all owners of plants, so that they are all incentivized to maintain and expand their plants. That would be a credit for gross co2 capture, not net or incremental. Net or incremental changes are way too difficult to measure and control. Incentives on incremental changes may be much cheaper, but IMHO they're just a waste of precious time and money.
The whole concept is fairly simple: allocate external cost-impacts and benefits accurately with taxes and subsidies, and then let suppliers and consumers sort it all out in a decentralized market system. Anything else is pretense which delays real change, IMHO.
Strong central regulation is an alternative, of course. We can just mandate things, like CAFE regs - those are now working fairly well. We can just mandate dismantling of coal generation, and building of renewables, if we want.
Do you happen to have handy any links on what Alberta, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden are doing?
Thanks! That's very useful.
According to the same report, the Smart Grid is being built as it is being planned. The amount of funding is not clear; costs must be recovered from customers based on cost recovery laws which vary by state. There are a huge number of details that need to worked out, such as necessary cyber security measures. It would be easier to rest easy if the Smart Grid had all been planned out in advance, tested on a small scale and pre-funded.
my emphasis
In other words we should never build it, just wait for what we have now to rust into dust.
It's a big project and must be constructed without disrupting current operations. You aren't going to model all of that out in a pilot project. Instead areas upgraded first will be the pilots and will direct the design/build process as it goes forward. There is no other feasible way to go about building the Smart Grid here. The goal is full implementation by 2030--what are the odds technology and best practices will evolve between now and then? No doubt there will be hiccups at the very least--but waiting till it's completely planned out, road tested and paid for upfront will be dooming us to sit in the dark...oh, I forgot, Gail the Actuary predicts that outcome daily...
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