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I think it's obvious to most people that coal is even worse than nuclear. However, being better than the worst option doesn't automatically make nuclear the best option. As long as the majority of your electricity comes from coal, it might make it a viable option, though.

Note that I simply proposed flipping the proportion of nuclear and coal power. I will admit to misremembering coal's share. From doe.gov, in 2007:
Coal: 48.5%
Natural Gas: 21.6
Nuclear: 19.4
Hydro: 5.8(thought it was higher)
Other Renewable: 2.5
Petroleum: 1.6
Other Gases: .3
Other: .3

So instead of the 110 odd nuke plants we currently have, we'd have 220. As a result, our CO2 emissions for electricity would be over a third less. Our pollution would be a LOT less.

Of all the non-polluting, non-primary CO2 emitting(IE not including construction/maintenance emissions) power sources, nuclear has been the cheapest, especially back then.

Still, to me, it sounds like a temporary solution at best. I prefer safer, fool-proof, small-scale energy production.

Personally, I think cheaper needs to be in there. The problem with small-scale is that it's expensive. Please note that this doesn't mean that I'm not perfectly willing to make exceptions when it makes sense - such as co/trigeneration plants. A university using their own steam plant to provide heat AND electricity is a model of efficiency, and I'd much prefer to burn NG there than to simply produce electricity.

At a cost of $5.85 billion, and assuming a lifetime of 40 years, an interest rate of 6%, this nuclear plant will have an annual mortgage of $389 million. With a nameplate rating of 1100 MW, if it runs 92% of the time, it will produce 8.9 billion kWh per year, so the capital repayments will amount to $0.044/kWh, assuming it doesn't go over budget. Assuming an optimistic cost for fuel around $0.005/kwh, this gives a total cost of $0.049/kWh, neglecting the cost of maintenance, waste disposal, and any risk of contamination or weapons proliferation.

Now let's look at a new wind farm. A 50 MW wind farm would cost around $96 million (at $1923/kW), which yields an annual capital repayment of $7.5 million (assuming a lifetime of 25 years). If the plant runs at a 35% capacity factor, it will produce 153 million kWh per year. So the total cost will be $0.049/kWh.

So, which would you rather spend $0.049/kWh on -- a nuclear plant that might go over budget, might leak radiation at some point during its life, whose waste will need to be carefully controlled and permanently stored somewhere that hasn't yet been identified; or a wind farm whose costs are much more certain and which comes without all those ancillary risks?

Yes, any individual wind farm will not provide a firm supply of power. But if a lot of wind farms are used, and they are combined with solar, geothermal and other renewable resources, they will provide a fairly stable power supply. There is also a lot of potential for reshaping electricity loads to match the supply of power (e.g., recharge electric vehicles when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining). And finally, if you must have a firm supply of power, you can convert a wind farm into a completely firm supply (at 35% of its nameplate rating) by spending about 10% extra and building rarely-used natural gas peaker plants ($634/kW * 35% = $222kW).

At a cost of $5.85 billion, and assuming a lifetime of 40 years, an interest rate of 6%, this nuclear plant will have an annual mortgage of $389 million. With a nameplate rating of 1100 MW, if it runs 92% of the time, it will produce 8.9 billion kWh per year, so the capital repayments will amount to $0.044/kWh, assuming it doesn't go over budget. Assuming an optimistic cost for fuel around $0.005/kwh, this gives a total cost of $0.049/kWh, neglecting the cost of maintenance, waste disposal, and any risk of contamination or weapons proliferation.

Now let's look at a new wind farm. A 50 MW wind farm would cost around $96 million (at $1923/kW), which yields an annual capital repayment of $7.5 million (assuming a lifetime of 25 years). If the plant runs at a 35% capacity factor, it will produce 153 million kWh per year. So the total cost will be $0.049/kWh.

So, which would you rather spend $0.049/kWh on -- a nuclear plant that might go over budget, might leak radiation at some point during its life, whose waste will need to be carefully controlled and permanently stored somewhere that hasn't yet been identified; or a wind farm whose costs are much more certain and which comes without all those ancillary risks?

Yes, any individual wind farm will not provide a firm supply of power. But if a lot of wind farms are used, and they are combined with solar, geothermal and other renewable resources, they will provide a fairly stable power supply. There is also a lot of potential for reshaping electricity loads to match the supply of power (e.g., recharge electric vehicles when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining). And finally, if you must have a firm supply of power, you can convert a wind farm into a completely firm supply (at 35% of its nameplate rating) by spending about 10% extra and building rarely-used natural gas peaker plants ($634/kW * 35% = $222kW).

Oh and the depressing statistic is cars.
Dutch use 339L/person/year (2000)
http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/ene_cou_528.pdf

US use 1672L/person/year (2002) http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_prim_dcu_nus_a.htm

Around 5x as much gas used yay.

Seriously, I live in Class 3 area and within about 15 miles is a substantial chunk of Class 5 area.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/ilands/fig13.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/wind/wind.gif

Even class 2 is considered marginal for wind power production by the EIA.

Seriously, I live in Class 3 area and within about 15 miles is a substantial chunk of Class 5 area.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/ilands/fig13.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/wind/wind.gif

Even class 2 is considered marginal for wind power production by the EIA.

3.8 meters/second average is not a windy area, infact it's a Class 1 wind speed. There are many places in the U.S. that are Class 3 or better, and you'd get much different results from those areas.

So far, nuclear anything has 2 major problems compounded by 2 obvious ones. First, the obvious:
1) nuclear waste is deadly
2) nuclear waste remains deadly for 10,000 to 100,000 years.

2) Not necessarily. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe for one simple reason. Every other element has been created in a 'nuclear reactor' known as a star, and released from the core of the star when it 'breaches core containment' by going nova. Since you're not 100% hydrogen, it's obvious that you are partially nuclear waste, just like me.

2) Not necessarily. See Answer #1 above.

About 99.999% of the current problem with nuclear power is the hot button effect. Everybody starts screaming "MY GOD THEY'RE BUILDING NUKES!! WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKIN DIE!!!!" without sitting down and taking a good honest look at things. Let's start with a couple more things...

Now, the major problems:
1) How do you safely store something deadly for that amount of time?

Not necessarily. You're forgetting the definitition of the word 'half-life'. An element's half-life is the amount of time to statistically insure the quantity of the element is reduced by half. So, that 25 kilos of Element ZZ, with a half-life of 10 years should be 12.5 kilos at the end of that decade, and statistically reduced to 6.25 kilos the decade after, and so on. Replace Element ZZ and the time period from any particle physics text book.

2) If location is solved, how can deadly material be safely transferred from all over to that location?

Believe it or not, railways are about the best way to do it. The engineers of the Atomic Energy Commission designed a rail car to transport nuclear materials that can withstand derailments and direct impacts. None of the containers has ever been breached in an accident. It's safe proven technology.

The site dealing with 'nuclear waste recycling' is a bit X-Files/tin-hatty for me, and I don't think that science will work until you show me the math. But dammit, don't dismiss guys like this off the cuff just because they're weird and don't quite have their science right. They're trying to do something about the problem they see, not giving up like so many of us do. Cut 'em some slack, jail the obvious con artists, and fund the nutjobs a bit cause you never know what they might come up with...

I love that graph. But the vast majority of the "lost energy" from generation, transmission, and distribution is in *generation* specifically. The biggest factor is the unavoidable Carnot inefficiency of the boilers and turbines, but the efficiency of the electrical generators (around 80%) plays a role too.

Here's a diagram that breaks it down in more detail. Look carefully for "T&D losses" (transmission and distribution)... it's really hard to notice.

There are lots and lots of places to save energy by improving efficiency... but the power distribution network is not the place to start, it's the most efficient part of our entire energy infrastructure.

Dude, check the numbers.

Amount of coal the U.S. burned in 2007: 1,145.6 x 10^6 tons

Total mass of Earth's atmosphere: 1.135 x 10^16 tons

Assuming (a) pure carbon, and (b) it all stays in the atmosphere, this represents 0.00002% of atmospheric mass, a trivial amount. (By comparison, China uses 1900 x 10^6 tons of coal each year, much more than the U.S.) Previous numbers are 2006 figures, according to wikipedia. 2008 production amounts are found here, and show China producing twice that of the United States. I didn't bother to check what India is using.

Now, I agree that dumping all this stuff into the atmosphere is a bad idea, a terrible open-ended experiment. But chasing a poor scientific theory (AGW) with worse data ('200 Pyramids of coal') is even worse. Blaming a single country is worse still. Let science do its job- none of the problems are hard- and lets fix the problem instead of running back to the stone age. Energy consumption is not the problem; efficient and clean energy production is.

So, lets get back to the beer and other yummy yeasty foods.

Also, you dismiss it, but there's no reason why we couldn't produce the energy through nuclear power.

I don't dismiss nuclear power at all. I'd LOVE to see more nukes running, it'd clean the air even more. But when was the last time a nuke plant was authorised for operation?

Nifty site I found that talks about the Perry plant, which I'm most familiar with (I lived in Cleveland from '77 to '99ish), The Perry was started in like the early to mid 70's, seemed they were in court every goddamned week over something or other, the antinukes kept appealling any win that CEI made. The 6 billion figure includes court and lawyer fees over 30 years to get it built, online, and keep it online.

If you're one of the major benefactors of an extraction based economy, you want your average neighbor to be as idiotic as possible.

Like the neighbor to the #1 supplier of oil to the US?

Hey, you said it; I didn't...

ecasue that doesn't solve any of the problems.
diesel is nasty, it still require reliance on foreign suppliers, bio diesel is not a practical replacement and diesel is more expensive the gas iun the US. It will be even more expensive as it continues to strive to the Europeans diesel standards.

If you double the average MPG of the fleet then it follows that fuel usage will drop in half. Since we use 19.5 million barrels a day and import roughly 9 million a day... We might actually stop funding dictatorships the world over in my lifetime.

I agree diesel isn't a long term solution, but only if you will concede that an electric car is not a short or even medium term solution. The fact is a TDI is far more efficient then even todays hybrids. No battery technology exists that can compete with modern clean diesel in any area much less the all important areas of cost and (overall) pollution. Storing electricity in batteries only makes sense to people who do not have a firm grasp of physics. There is no safe efficient way to store massive numbers of electrons in a portable manner.

Your heart is in the right place, but you need to understand that batteries are universally:

• Toxic
• Expensive
• Heavy
• Inefficient

Charging a battery will require up to 2x the energy that the battery will deliver back. So you waste the charge energy EVERY SINGLE DAY. Couple the production and delivery of 2x the electricity with the pollution footprint of manufacturing the battery and you begin to understand how the electric car might be far less "green" then just burning 1/2 the fuel we do now.

TDI is the answer for TODAY. Maybe the electric car tomorrow, but I seriously doubt it. My money on long term mobile energy is not in batteries but rather in compressed air. There is much less conversion energy required to store, it can be efficiently transported, etc.

Don't think with your heart, think with your brain!

The best number we can get now is for the Tesla Roadster, which is pretty overpowered compared to a commuter car. According to Wikipedia, it goes 4.85 miles per kWh. Here's the chart for electricity prices: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

Taking the price for my state, 17.74 cents / kWh, which is a high price nationally, that gives 3.7 cents per mile or 27 miles/dollar. In comparison, 30 miles per gallon at $1.75/gallon is about 17 miles/dollar.

Good point. I looked up cost of production vs. total revenues ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p3.html ) and to have comparable returns, the cost of production is about 1/2 of the revenues. I think that implies that at the current price point, the total end consumer retail price (including transmission) would be 19.6 cents per kilowatt hour. This is about two times the cost of yearly average conventional generation in the areas most likely to adopt solar. If the US goes the route of Europe and charges for CO2 emissions, then this will drop in the price multiplier.

Where's that energy coming from? Milking invisible pink unicorns?

The unicorns aren't pink, they're blue, and unfortunately they're rather large.

Seriously, this (Al powder) isn't an energy generation solution, it's an energy distribution solution. Most (populated) areas have both water and oxygen in the air, so if you can get the water to this powder and get hydrogen back... that could be very interesting.

If you look at the overall efficiency of the fossilized oil cycle, starting with solar input and running through geologic time as a major part of the refining process toward becoming a portable fuel, recycling oxidized aluminum is pretty damn attractive.

If you are going to say that I think you also have to look at the availability of the Nuclear plant. If the plant is only available to produce power for %50 percent of it's expected 40 year lifespan then it's actual output is only 45% of it's capacity to produce.

FUD. US nuclear plants average a capacity factor of >90%.

"Table 9.2 Nuclear Power Plant Operations, 1957-2007"
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb0902.html

Kinda makes you wonder if government intervention is really necessary.

The summary uses words like "Surged", and "biggest" which is more than a little misleading for the overall renewable situation, given the tiny fraction renewable energy makes up of the total energy market (7% in 2006, wind 1% of that):
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/prelim_trends/rea_prereport.html

Okay, in advocating that there's enough NG to replace coal and nuclear you post a link that says "but LNG will not be a panacea for North American natural gas shortfall" ?

Second link - aren't we trying to gain energy independence from the middle east? Besides - Natural Gas Imported To US For Electricity Generation May Be Environmentally Worse Than Coal "The 1990s saw a surge in construction of natural gas power plants, fueled by cheap natural gas, low investment requirements and the idea that natural gas was less carbon-intensive than coal. Since these plants were constructed, natural gas prices have skyrocketed as the North American natural gas supply has become more limited. These gas plants are now operating at a very low capacity, fueling the energy industry's interest in increasing gas supply by using LNG."

By the way, that also increases costs for people trying to heat their homes with 97% efficient NG systems.

Your third link doesn't address production, it addresses liquification, storage, and transportation.

In 2003, natural gas reserves in the United States were estimated to be 1,338 trillion cubic feet, and U.S. gas production was 18.6 trillion cubic feet.

Per the DOE, in 2007 we used 6.8 trillion cubic feet for electricity. NG and nuclear are about equal at 20%, and coal is over double at slightly over 40% of electrical generation. We'd need 27 trillion cubic feet per year to replace the coal & nuclear plants. Overall production in 2007 was only 24 trillion.

Where are we going to get the supply to feed the various uses of NG for residential, commercial, and industrial use?

Okay, in advocating that there's enough NG to replace coal and nuclear you post a link that says "but LNG will not be a panacea for North American natural gas shortfall" ?

Second link - aren't we trying to gain energy independence from the middle east? Besides - Natural Gas Imported To US For Electricity Generation May Be Environmentally Worse Than Coal "The 1990s saw a surge in construction of natural gas power plants, fueled by cheap natural gas, low investment requirements and the idea that natural gas was less carbon-intensive than coal. Since these plants were constructed, natural gas prices have skyrocketed as the North American natural gas supply has become more limited. These gas plants are now operating at a very low capacity, fueling the energy industry's interest in increasing gas supply by using LNG."

By the way, that also increases costs for people trying to heat their homes with 97% efficient NG systems.

Your third link doesn't address production, it addresses liquification, storage, and transportation.

In 2003, natural gas reserves in the United States were estimated to be 1,338 trillion cubic feet, and U.S. gas production was 18.6 trillion cubic feet.

Per the DOE, in 2007 we used 6.8 trillion cubic feet for electricity. NG and nuclear are about equal at 20%, and coal is over double at slightly over 40% of electrical generation. We'd need 27 trillion cubic feet per year to replace the coal & nuclear plants. Overall production in 2007 was only 24 trillion.

Where are we going to get the supply to feed the various uses of NG for residential, commercial, and industrial use?

France has managed to run an economical electric grid off of mostly nuclear power for generations.

France also leads the world in reprocessing, which I think John McCain pointed out during the campaign, however they still don't have it worked out. The article "Nuclear Reprocessing Poses Risks for S.C." goes over this. One quote is "Denmark, Norway and Ireland have sought the closure of reprocessing plants in France and Great Britain because of radioactive waste washing up on their shores."

Until energy storage is solved I'd rather have natural gas power plants serve as a baseload.

Do you have any idea how much NG that would take? We don't have the generation capacity

Actually we do have the capacity. Behind coal natural gas (LNG), linked to from Electricity generation, is the largest source of fuel in the US producing 20% the the electricity. However if it isn't enough electrical generation, then coal fired power plants can be converted to burn LNG. If geothermal, solar, and wind power are deployed this should be enough for the baseload generation. According to the Department of Energy the US only imports 16% of the LNG used, and most of that from Canada. The Picken's Plan calls for LNG plants be closed then LNG to be used as fuel for transportation.

I'd much rather have to deal with a few coal trains worth of nuclear waste a year than all the very real pollution of coal.

And I'd rather LNG be used for the baseload, if it's really needed, as it's less polluting than coal. Unlike coal, the mining of which is destructive, LNG is pumped from wells. While I don't particularly like drilling it's better than coal mining.

For the storage, well, we've proposed the solutions a number of times. Reprocess or run a breeder reactor, like France, Japan, and Russia.

All of which, as I said above about France, stull have trouble with reprocessing.

Falcon

Goodness gracious no. Just nuclear alone does 19.3% of the electric generation. Coal does 48.2% of generation. Before claiming everyone else is doing failed calculations try revising your own.

We are talking about near and mid term solutions to the transportation problem here. Things that may be practical in the next 10 years. I never claimed currently sold electrics are economic. FWIW I own a diesel car. Considered gasoline-hybrid but it makes no sense here due to fuel prices.

For example, you count losses, but forget all electric vehicles have regenerative breaking which reduces energy use in stop and start situations such as urban settings (which is where the pollution problem is more serious to begin with). You discount the fact that just the ICE engine has about the efficiency of the whole electric system from power plant to wheel you mentioned. The ICE vehicle will have additional losses as well: transmission losses and other engine losses due to not operating at the designed RPM, which a pure electric should not have, since the engine can be connected directly to the wheels. Then there is the fact that the energy mix is not pure coal or gas fired. I do not know where you live exactly, but in the state you mentioned, California, the electric energy mix is like this:

Net Electricity Generation California
Total Net Electricity Generation 17508 thousand MWh
Petroleum-Fired 9 thousand MWh
Natural Gas-Fired 10431 thousand MWh
Coal-Fired 194 thousand MWh
Nuclear 2606 thousand MWh
Hydroelectric 2033 thousand MWh
Other Renewables 1986 thousand MWh

Sure, on a pure economic sense presently a hybrid diesel is better at this moment in time. But theoretically that is not an invariant and there is more room for efficiency improvements in electrics than ICE (which is barred by the Carnot limit for a thermal engine operating at that temperature)

No one said oil would just STOP dead , just that peak growth would hit a wall, and it would not increase again above a ceiling.

More official real data and information at:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html true natural gas and nuclear are significant according to that table however they are still less than coal when combined, with coal close to 50%.

That said while I have nothing against electric cars so far they have been vaporware. I will believe it when I see it. Further as electric pluggables replace gas powered vehicles the load on the grid will rise by a significant factor. So who is willing to have the new power plant nearby? If history is an indicator no one in California thus brownouts will become more common. Add in new transmission lines also, yep support for those is high also.

I like to see technical advances but according to press releases made 5-10 years ago the solution to efficient solar is here today ;-) So take this article with a grain of salt also is my recommendation.

>Always remember aggregate costs.

Yes, you should. I don't have numbers for the EU, but in the US we used 474,514MW[1] in total in 2007. 100MW is .02% of that.

[1] http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html

BTW You should divide 380 million by the size of an average household, since usually it's not one computer per person, but per household.

Your math doesn't make sense. There are about 50 million households in the US. 50 million * .650 = 32.5Mw. Not 200.

Now lets compare something else, total electrical consumption in the US in 2007 was 4,156,745,000 MWh[1]. There are 8766 hours in a year so that's 474,189Mw continuous. 32.5 is 0.006% of that.

So yes, it's a matter of scale - tiny scale. Turn all those off and no one would notice.

[1] http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html

See http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_3.html for details on that.

Using 2001 numbers from: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html

Setting global warming aside, this is still a bit of an issue. If "off" electronics can actually be expected to average around, say, 5-15W, it's not to hard to imagine that most households are probably looking at about 50W (esp. if one includes "wall warts", etc) being consumed by things that aren't in use. Given that the average household averages about 1kW power consumption, this would indicate roughly 5% of residential power consumption, or about 57 billion kWh annually. That's an awful lot of power to be wasting.

Sure, that number may be a bit high. On the other hand, if you look at the source, you'll see that they are listing 7.3% of energy use going to unsurveyed devices. This goes to all kinds of things, but most of them are only on for a max of 30min/day (hair dryers, power tools, etc), and probably (though it isn't clear*) "off" electronics. And keep in mind these number are from 7 years ago, which would be mostly before the advent of the always-kinda-on home theater.

So a huge problem? Not really, but a fairly serviceable one. And if we are going to be doing wind power and all that jazz, it'd be nice to have to make 5% less of 'em.

*The survey does cover things like VCR/DVD, but it doesn't specify if the data includes sleep mode draw or not.

Imagine if every home had this. And a more efficient setup (angle and sun tracking as others have pointed out) and you can see that it would make a HUGE difference, especially in the summertime. It would certainly put a hell of a dent in our use of fossil fuels, most of which go into generating electricity, not powering cars.

Except at night... or on cloudy days... when we'll still need those evil fossil fuel power plants.

And most of the oil is used for transportation (Share of US Oil Consumption for Transportation 70%).

Personally I say screw it, let's just build more nuclear power plants. We know how to build safe nuclear plants, nuclear waste is only a problem because we let it be a problem (some people want it to be a problem). So lets just build them and be done with it.

...travels through RIM(TM)'s central server in Canada

Canada, eh? That's one of those unstable, oil-rich nations run by a fundamentalist dictator, that supports all kinds of terror, right?

You are completely wrong Natural gas transmission and distribution costs are about 50% of consumer prices. Every dollar spent on gas costs a dollar to distribute.

This is ignoring the very inefficient wells, treatment, etc. involved in harnessing gas. It absolutely does not come right out of the ground. Depending on the age and condition of the wells, you may get as little as a third of the gas to the distributor.

I don't have indepth math, but first glance is as follows:

7 grams of CO2 per search

* 200,000,000 searches per day

= 1400 metric tons of C02 generated by Google alone, each day.

Viscerally that seems a bit on the heavy side, but I don't have any actual figures on Google. Current world CO2 daily output is 82,200,000 metric tons, based on 30 billion tons per year ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/emissions.html )

This would mean Google alone is responsible for 0.17% (a bit less than two tenths of one percent) of total world CO2 output. That seems excessive. There are other issues:

Do we posit the amount of CO2 per search vs. if Google didn't exist at all or vs. Google unutilized but with all its infrastructure running idle?

I'm intrigued, but not convinced. The article is long on abstracts and generalizations and short on concrete and specific facts. Jury has to remain out on this one, IMHO.

This will not save the earth. It will hurt the earth. The energy savings are marginal, really marginal as in replacing a single incandescent with a CFL will save two orders of magnitude more energy(*). The energy costs due to less efficient processes to make these TVs will far outweigh any benefit.

Fundamentalist environmentalism is irrational and doesn't help the earth. Just because someone says they are "saving energy" doesn't mean in the grand scheme of things that they really are.

(*) Assuming 5 hours use each day, a 100W incandescent , an equivalent CFL (23-30W), and the average price of residential electricity in California 2008.

Saving $18.48 of energy isn't all that much energy saved doesn't help the environment that much. If anything, it may hurt the environment more due to more resources being consumed in producing the TV using a less efficient production method.

To put this in perspective, in 2008 the average price of residential electricity was 14.45 cents/kwh. So saving $18.48 in energy means you saved 123.6kwh over the year. You could save that much by turning off one 100W bulb on only one day out of the week.

While it is our duty to take care of our environment, it is crazy laws like these (and people who push for these kinds of laws) that give environmentalism a bad name.

Windfarms are only profitable with government subsidy; wind mills cost more energy than they make in there serviceable lifetime (Hence the need for subsidy). Bad for bat populations, which are already in decline.

What? The ERoEI for wind power is pretty high, maybe as high as 20 If wind turbines used more energy to manufacture than they produced in their lifetime they would be useless. Wind power is profitable, less so than gas or coal currently are, but still profitable. Here they calculate the cost in dollars as $53.1 per mega watt hour for coal, $52.5 for gas, $55.8 for wind and $59.3 for nuclear.They do suffer from high capital costs though.

Solar panels are fantastically bad environmentally. They require the production of green house gasses far worse than CO2, lifetimes are limited and exponentially decay. They require toxic batteries to work, and are unreliable due to weather. 14% efficiency. Also, bad for ground-level wildlife.

I have tried to find out how toxic and inefficient the production of photovoltaic panels are but came up blank. This paper says the opposite, at least compared to coal, but really is that a surprise? In 3-5 years they have created more energy then was used to make them, with 300+ times less heavy metal pollution than coal.
Your post seems more biased against renewables with each sentence. Isn't exponential decay good compared to the alternative functions of decay? 20% loss in efficiency after 20 years does not sound too bad. However photovoltaic cells are fantastically expensive.

Nuclear (low risk, high output, radioactive half-lives are down to 200 years)

You forgot to mention expensive and 200 years half-life only if you are re-processing the fuel.
Wind power and nuclear are fairly favourable now, while photovoltaic have potential but are too expensive. Of course little will change until the inevitable finally happens and fossil fuels start to raise in price faster than other forms of energy generation. Until then coal and gas will meet most of our electricity needs unless the government looks ahead.

Energy has reached this threshhold on Earth already. For example, the average US home consumes enough energy each year in the form of electricity to put somewhere around 500 kilograms into escape velocity. I assume the average consumption of electricity is roughly 1 kW and that it takes, ignoring air resistance and gravity losses, 60 MJ of kinetic energy is contaiend in one kilogram of mass accelerated to escape velocity, 11 km/s. If energy was the restriction, then the US alone would be able to put an amazing amount of stuff into orbit. For example, since 1949, I calculate that the US has consumed roughly 73 quintillion btu. 60 MJ is roughly 57,000 btu. So that amount is 730 quadrillion kilograms reaching escape velocity or 730 trillion tons. If every person needs 100 tons of stuff (very generous estimate to be honest) in space to survive with a reasonable standard of living, then you're looking at accelerating to escape velocity enough mass to substain more than a thousand times the Earth's current population. This ignores food energy. A considerable portion of that comes from plants absorbing solar radiation.

The real problem is reaction mass. For anything to reach space, something must push in other direction to conserve momentum. This is generally reaction mass. Currently, the only engines we have that can generate a thrust to weight ratio of better than 1 (that's the absolutely minimum needed to overcome gravity) and reach space, are chemical rocket engines, though there are plenty of ideas out there.

I thought the US got most of its oil from canada and mexico?

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Turns out Canada is #1, Mexico is number 3 with Saudi Arabia #2.

.
Without those subsidies, solar and wind are insanely cost-prohibitive. And that FACTORS IN the cost of transport of coal to the plants - it's not like the plants get free transportation of coal, they have to pay for it and they charge for that in the costs passed along to the consumer.

Source for the above numbers: Department of Energy report on Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007.

Costs of transporting coal - and mining coal - are inherently INCLUDED in the price to produce power from coal. If they weren't, we should be on our knees thanking the rail companies and the mining companies for working for free...

If solar or wind were anywhere near competitive, why the consistent huge subsidies per MWhr compared to coal, nuclear, geothermal, and hydro?

And note that wind and solar combine to be 32 TWhr of generation in 2007. Coal is at 1,946 TWhr - 60 TIMES as much generation. Nuclear is at 794 TWhr, about 25 times as much. Heck, we get 8 times MORE energy from spilling water - a renewable resource - than we do from solar and wind combined.

Until you can make an advancement on the order of 10X to 30X in the amount of output per dollar with solar or wind, keep it as a fun research project and not at ALL consider it as an actual power source. It's wasting money and time.

The cost of solar power generation is typically in the range of 12 (industrial scale in the middle of nowhere) to 30 (small scale in urban environment) cents per kilowatt-hour. But only if you believe the solar industry. Mind you, this is using the most current technology.

The cost of nuclear power generation is 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. But only if you believe the Department of Energy. Mind you, this is using technology from the 1960s.

Nuclear's end cost ends up much higher, because the US has a peculiar set of laws that ban reprocessing, making waste storage very expensive, and necessitating much higher safety costs. Those laws are relatively easy to change.

Please note that I say nothing about what I wish were true, nor do I defend any technology. I merely state that economic considerations are more important to whether a technology is used than carbon emissions.

Indeed, the world apparently uses 83 million bbl/day (http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html) of petroleum. However, not all petroleum ends up as the gas in your tank. I'm not sure the biodiesel from coffee grounds would have the same number of uses as petroleum, so more of it would go to vehicles. Overall, not quite a fair comparison.

Just to put this in perspective, the US consumes 169 million gallons of distilate fuel per day.

So reprocessing the entire world's spent coffee grounds for one year would produce enough biodiesel to cover US demand for a couple of days.

Understand why I'm not impressed?

The total yearly amount of biodiesel available from this "abundant" source worldwide is less than the amount of motor gasoline consumed in a single day in the U.S. in 2007. To be fair, TFA implies nothing of the sort, the summary is just rather enthusiastic.

Can't get to the article, but - if you haven't heard of this before, it's pretty cool: the Oklo Natural Fission Reactor in Gabon. And while you're at it, you can read about how this natural reactor has scientists rethinking how constant the fine structure constant really is.

The world population is increasing exponentially.

No it isn't.

The rate of growth has been slowing for decades. It's not only sub-exponential, it's been sub-linear for 20 years - the world's population was growing at 83M/yr in the 80s, and will end this decade with an average growth of less than 80M/yr, despite a larger population.

the most likely scenario is that we will simply continue growing our consumption until we run out of the resources

Why do you believe that's the most likely outcome? Entire nations have behaved in exactly the opposite manner as you suggest they would; for example, Germany's energy consumption hasn't changed in 20 years, despite a strong economy and substantial population growth. Now that the population of the country is shrinking, its overall energy consumption will most likely also fall.

It is an enormous and fallacious oversimplification to suggest that humans are the same as yeast, for both theoretical reasons (we're able to reason about our situation) and evidential ones (e.g., Germany).

Actually DOE has always been deeply involved in high energy (particle physics) research. They fund a number of accelerators, including Fermilab. Its not clear that any of that research would lead to usable energy sources either.

You can see the Dark Energy research as the intersection of high energy physics (DOE) and cosmology (NASA).

A calculation of the German version of the AAA, the ADAC, showed that the electric smart that is currently on the road, would actually create more CO2 per km than the combustion engine version, IF the power plant was solely coal based

This did not seem quite right, so I ran the numbers for the electric and non-electric versions of the MINI:

• The electric MINI has a 35 kWh battery which takes it 150 miles
• 35 kWh / 150 Miles == ~233 Wh/Mile
• Coal plants emit 2.095 pounds of CO2 per kWh generated
• New MINI Coopers generate an average of 6.7 tons of CO2 in 15000 miles
• 6.70 tons == 13,400 lbs

Electric Mini: 2.095 lbs CO2 * .233 kWh/mile == .488 lbs CO2/mile

Gas Mini: 13,400 lbs / 15000 Miles == .893 lbs CO2/mile

So it looks like a Gas MINI produces about twice the CO2 per mile... In the absolute worst case (For the electric version).

Thanks!

mainly hydro, some natural gas - http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/oregon.pdf

Exactly. According to estimates and research, off-shore drilling is expected to produce .2 million barrels of oil a year by 2030. Due to international markets, and the Saudis vowing to drill more to offset, and the fact that the price gouging happens not from the oil companies but from the refineries (refineries used to be owned by the oil companies, but now they're not. We also have less of them today than we did 20 years ago), it will have a negligable effect on the price of oil.

What we need to do is build efficiently. Efficient gas and non-gas cars, efficient wind turbines (mostly produced offshore currently), and so on and so forth. It's the only thing we can do for future economic stability: increase USA's manufacturing and exports while building a more environmentally friendly industry.

I'll be interested to see your sources. I don't know the history of oil prices, but gasoline and oil aren't strictly correlated, or else we'd be seeing $1.00/gallon gas. Your geopolitical observations are interesting, but I don't believe they account for the difference in the gasoline price trends between each recent election year and the year immediately preceding. Typically, gas drops *a little* in the Fall, not by half. Interestingly, though, both the 2006 mid-term elections and the run up to the 2008 election show a significant decrease beginning in October while the 2005 and 2007 price curves are flat. I'm basing this on data from the U.S. Department of Energy at http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_history.html (the regular gas series for all regions).