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Solar is economically competitive in some markets today, like in sunny places with high electricity prices, e.g. Hawaii

The big island of Puna in Hawaii gets 30% of it's energy from geothermal power.

Department of Energy Handbooks (specifically 1011 / 1013 / 1014 series): http://www.hss.energy.gov/NuclearSafety/techstds/standard/standard.html

That's about as 'just the facts' as you can get, which comes in handy from an adult learning / slashdot-oriented user perspective.

Hope this helps...

Wind turbines can be manufactured "green" since most of their construction materials are recyclable. They are also fairly easy to construct since they don't require any sort of exotic manufacturing processes. The DOE's website has a nice diagram of a modern wind turbines components. Modern turbines are highly efficient and when situated correctly pay for themselves very quickly. As you've seen turbines have gotten cheap enough that individual units have become suitable for people to buy themselves. Small scale turbines can generate enough power for a single household for a day. They're often set up in grid-tied setups where the turbine complements grid power to a home. You can also use them for entirely off-grid usage where they charge a battery bank which is used when the wind isn't blowing.

The power plants themselves are protected from the regional environmental damage that directly hurts those around them (for instance acid rain and radiation exposure).

At least in the USA, enviromental requirements for new coal plants are quite stringent(good!), but the older plants are generally grandfathered, which is a pain. I consider myself a moderate enviromentalist. I fully believe that we can do better, but we need to be smart about it. As a result, I generally oppose grandfathering in favor of reasonable new requirements that encourage the replacing of old higher polluting plants with newer cleaner ones.

Coal power plants also typically get preferential treatment from the government for loans not to mention local communities often bend over backwards to attract them.

Happens in the USA as well, though communities more often have NIMBY attitudes that make placements difficult. See texas and some of the new plants they've been trying to build. They morphed from 'clean coal' to nuclear when Bush extended 'green' power loan guarentees to nuclear, and the proposing company figured out that clean coal plants would be more expensive to build than equivalent capacity nuclear plants.

Distribution power lines have a right of way over most property. A power company can put up power lines on your property and you can't refuse and you aren't compensated.

I'd argue that this is independant of coal power - you still need distribution lines for hydro, wind, nuclear, and central plant type solar systems.

There are no ongoing subsidies

Sure there is, to the tune of 42 cents a kwh. Over four times the going rate for utility power.

Coal requires ongoing subsidies in the form of legal protections or they will be sued out of existence almost immediately.

I'll agree with this, Coal is dirty, dirty power and I'd prefer to see it cleaned up or replaced. I just think that there are better options currently than massive installations of solar.

For example, here in the USA I'd look into pushing solar thermal water heating for those below the mason-dixon line. Well, I'd start south of there and work my way up. Many people here in the USA have electric water heaters. They're 4400 to 5500 watts typically. In my area it'd be 44 cents an hour to operate. That's a LOT of juice, and you can virtually turn them off for ~$2k per house. Using This calcuator, the 'average' electric water heater can be expected to cost $508 a year. Given that a solar heating system would require a little more maintenance, and that most models have a pump, call it a five year payback.

To me, that's an easy sell. Much like CFLs, additional insulation, other energy saving smart home construction techniques, etc...

Are we really to the point where we have to start shutting off hot water heaters because we don't want to re-invest in the electrical infra-structure?

The only reinvestment needed is when your water heater fails, as they do not last forever. Or if you choose to work out the cost-benefit analysis of replacing it with something that doesn't consume energy around the clock, on the off chance you'll want hot water at any moment of the day. Replace it with an updated model that's more energy efficient. The US DOE are promoting newer water heater designs under the Energy Star moniker. You could possibly even put a timer on your heater, shut it down when you depart for work, turn it on an hour before you come home. That alone could save half a day's energy, though I don't know if water heaters handle well having their electric power cycled externally.

In most countries I've spent time in outside the U.S., bathing and kitchen water is heated at the tap, on delivery! "Just in time," a popular term in computer science and business, and operations research. This is just another move towards efficiency, one that benefits consumers, business, and our oh-so-contentious environmental concerns.

Nearly all those countries are also the top economies in their region: Brazil, England, Germany, Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherlands and so on.

Delivered energy is obviously in high demand today, thanks to our growing population and energy demands, and also thanks to the so-called market economy; even when demand is met, prices are still quite high. Here in the U.S., our energy prices are quite low relative to the rest of the world (from US DOE historical energy price tables. For an eye-opener, compare U.S. gasoline prices with some major Western European economies.

I get the impression that most U.S. energy consumers are unwilling to consider making change if it interrupts their perceived convenience, unless a significant arm-twister appears, such as high energy prices. Global warming? Hah, that's just s disproved theory, why should I bother with change? Change is scary. Don't make me leave my warm cocoon!

Well written reply.

I'm going to focus on the Solar discussion because I find that the most interesting and the only one where we can really argue with facts instead of stories.

When I originally wrote my reply I did a search on google and didn't see anything, but punching in YOUR search phrase I get the articles you mentioned. Typically stuff like "the US never landed on the moon" is championed by a few sights pretty heavily, so I figured the first hit would be your strongest advocate. I'll summarize it:

* This is information from a study done in in 1989 theorizing what 1994 technology would be like
* They calculated that using 1989 technolgoy they would get an energy payback of 6.4 years
* Using what they theorized was 1994 technology they would get an energy payback of 3.1 years
* The author is summarizing their study and points out some things he thinks they missed, inverters and the like, but these will only capture a percentage of the power generated so at worst it will take a percentage longer to recapture the energy.

So even in the TOP search item doesn't make the claim that it takes "more energy to create a solar cell than you can EVER get out of the life of the cell" and my quick scan didn't show any others that advocated that.

Ok, so your statement does appear to be bullshit, but i'm curious what more modern numbers are for energy usage, because 6 years is a huge amount of time and if is still that high I could be convinced your statement wasn't far from the truth!

In looking through some other webpages I found a department of energy webpage provides some really good information.

They provide several different technologies and give the Energy Pay Back Time (EPBT) of each. The times range from 2.7 years to 1.0 years for energy pay back using 2004 and 2005 numbers.

There are also some startups that say they're able to produce photovolatics amazingly cheep (which also translates to low energy), but I'll believe that when I see it.

The DPoE webpage is here: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pv_basics.html

don

I'm sure they don't intend to just throw solid CO2 into the earth. Rapid sublimation of solid CO2 means it can be used as a "cold explosive" in mining. If you dump this stuff deep into the ground it will sublimate and leak out faster than you can throw it in.

It took a lot of digging though TFA to find anything remotely informative. Once you get past the "partnerships", "revolutionary" hyperbole and PR/Management bullshit there's some very thin science to thik about.

http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/capture/index.html

Basically the strong options are chemical combination, hydrates and carbonates that will basically lock the CO2 into limestone forever. However, if you understand much chemistry it's not hard to see the net energy input must be collosal. Imho it's wishful science. Free CO2 has reached a low entropic point, so where are you going to get the energy to put the genie back into the bottle? The only reasonable option we know is photosynthesis. In other words, plant lots of trees.

Perhaps you replied to the wrong post.

What kind of engineer? Sanitation enginneer? That's just utterly rediculous.

I have no idea, he's not my friend. He's the friend of the person I replied to.

No spud, you don't run electric space heaters, dryers and stoves off solar. The first thing you do is get rid of all the overconsumptive stuff.

Space heaters, whether electric or gas, aren't very efficient. Radiant floor heating is more efficient. Solar dryers are the most efficient as well, the oldtime version is the cloths line. And Solar cookers are quite good. As for overconsumption, when designing for off the grid living, the first thing that's usually focused on is conservation, people reduce what's needed and then what is needed energy efficient models are used.

without the angry-with-willful-ignorance screw-up

If people would just start thinking realistically about these problems and allow the building of Nuclear Power plants, this problem would be solved.

Then you'd just be exchanging one set of problems for another.

And while on the subject, I used to think that these people were simply "NIMBY's", the age old Not In My Back Yard type of folks. But these people aren't NIMBY's, These people are BANANAS! Build Almost Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. They are flat out anti-progress and they do it in the nicest way "we're trying to help".

I and a lot of other people are all for building geothermal and solar power plants as well as wind farms, even in their own back yards. The state I live in, Minnesota, has a number of wind farms and I'm all for building more. Not only is it relatively clean but it also creates a new income stream for farmers. If I lived in California near Yellowstone I'd be just as supportive of building geothermal plants there as is currently done in Hawaii. And if I lived in Cape Cod I'd be just as supportive of building off shore wind farms.

I say BULLSHIT! You have three choices: Nuclear Power, Agrarian Society, Global Warming. Pick one.

What's BULLSHIT is this. The Rocky Mountains along have almost enough potential wind power to provide all of the lower 48 states with electricity. And as that Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States shows other states have a lot of potential wind power as well. In "A Solar Grand Plan" Sciam lays out how solar power can provide "69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity" by 2050. In "Hot Rocks: Tapping an Underutilized Renewable Resource" Sciam reports how geothermal power plants can provide a lot of energy as well. Since 2000 "a geothermal power plant in northern California" has been powering 750,000 homes. Yellowstone is capable of generating more. In Hawaii geothermal provides the Big Island (Puna) with 30% of it's electricity.

Lighting is around 1/5th of US electricity production, of that, around half is for commercial lighting, residential about a quarter. Here is a semi recent breakdown US lighting stats

I wonder how much of that commercial figure is for..well.. for spam signage burning all night? I live out in the medium sticks but whenever I go to town that is the huge impression I get, tons of "buy me-acme stuff!" signs running all night long, even when the store/business isn't open. I also *seriously* question the business case or actual need for these thousands of office towers where people have to commute to and from every work day so they can sit in front of a screen and type stuff and read stuff. I think we could save just cubic boatloads of energy if they would actually *implement* the infrastructure for the "information age" and have millions of office commuters just work from home. Much less driving, eliminate a lot of the artificial "need" for the big fatcat ego towers (which have to be paid for and that is reflected in higher costs to the consumer for whatever widget they sell). I know some of that commuting is necessary, but all of it? I bet that if there was a real tax credit for homeworkers that they would discover real quick like that millions more could work where they live.

U.S. Department of Energy - Net Metering Policies
http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/markets/netmetering.shtml

http://www.energy.gov/taxbreaks.htm

Note the words "through 2007" at the end of the first paragraph. If you read further, once these companies sell 60k vehicles, there will no longer be any tax credit for them at all.

Unless there's a new EP Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005), all of these alternative fuel cars will cost us the same or more than the current gas guzzlers if you take all the factors into consideration: vehicle cost, taxes, fuel cost, maintenance cost, insurance cost, infrastructure cost to provide electrical outlets to parking lots/garages and any unforeseen costs that such a change to our current system will incur.

I'm all for alternative fuels to decrease our impact on the Earth's ecosystem and shift power away from the petroleum companies, but you're fooling yourself if you think any of these cars will result in saving consumers money.

I didn't say it doesn't have advantages, I'm sure it has major advantages ... most of them economic. What it doesn't have and never will have is as low a probability of meltdown as water moderated reactors or as low a severity of the results in the case of such a melt down.

As for Pollonium in the lead ... could you give me some numbers? The probabilities of complete exposure of the primary coolants in the first place for both types of reactors and the differences in environmental impact between partial vaporization of the lead and near full burn up of the sodium.

Most designs for solar thermal in a world that relies strongly on it are for either "combined cycle" plants, where solar either augments or completely replaces another heat source when the sun is out (and are capable of ramping output of the other thermal source up and down accordingly), or have some sort of energy storage system. Pumped energy storage, for example, can cost as little as 3-4 cents per kilowatt hour -- low enough that some places in China are using it in the opposite direction (using existing power plants to pump water at night and then letting it suppliment power during the day). If solar thermal can be made cheap enough, the energy storage issue can be compensated for.

I'm a big backer of solar. Even more than solar thermal, I'm bullish about photovoltaics. CIGS is taking off like there's no tomorrow. There's sliver cells, there's silicon ink, there's dye-sensitized cells, there's super-efficient silicon cells, and on, and on, with each tech advancing by leaps and bounds (just yesterday in the news, dye-sensitized cells got a big boost by the demonstration of 2 1/2 times their previous record sensitivity via nanoscale "popcorn balls"). And on top of this, silicon cells -- the ever-pricy cells that are still growing at 30-40% per year -- should have their prices fall dramatically in the next few years thanks to an upcoming "silicon glut".

High purity silicon is traditionally made from CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition), a slow and costly process. These plants take a while to build, so the solar boom has completely outstripped supply. To try and catch up for this high-profit raw material, many new plants are under construction and will be coming online soon -- enough that they could possibly create a glut on their own (let alone with all of the silicon-reducing panel techs underway). But now, a couple companies have announced techs for producing high purity silicon in metallurgical processes (I.e., molten silicon, not CVD). Which means far faster plant construction times and far lower product costs. And investors are lining up. So, by all measures, it looks like the silicon shortage will be turning into a silicon glut, which means cheaper panels all around.

*That said*, while I used to feel that low enough cost solar plus pumped storage (or advances in battery storage, which are coming pretty rapidly in their own right these days) could mostly power the future, I'd have to recommend strongly against that. All because I stumbled into this quote that reminded me of something I had not thought of:

"During this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness? and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear." -- Byzantine historian Procopius, 536 AD

Volcanoes. Unfortunately, volcanic events major enough to decrease the sun's light significantly are not rare, and some in human history have virtually blotted it out. Even in fairly modern human history -- for example, the Year Without A Summer, 1816, from the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, and later, the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa -- volcanic events have caused devastating blocking of the sun's light. When your civilization is relying on solar power, even a regional affect could be catastrophic on its own, let alone combined with poor harvests and the like.

As a consequence, while I feel solar may be a good way to offset our peak loads and even drive prices down, I'd hate to see our civilization become reliant on it. I think EGS is a much more reliable clean, renewable baseload power source. Let's hope it works out to be economical.

The "but my electricity does not come from a coal plant" argument is moot. Every power plant's output gets pooled into the electric grid, http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/grid_architecture.html , so there's no real way to precisely account for where "my" electricity comes from.

Lighting at 8.8%.

Lighting at 22%.

I'd like to second Colonel Korn on this one (I've certainly never written THAT before); the concept of reusable hydrogen storage materials is not a new one. It's devilishly difficult, of course, but not new. Check out http://hydrogen.energy.gov/ to see what's been done so far.

Buckyballs, like carbon nanotubes (CNTs) before them, store hydrogen by physisorption, whereby hydrogen molecules (not atoms, usually) "stick" to the near-surface via van der Waals forces (or equivalent). The issue with CNTs, of course, is that they really didn't do it as well as folks had hoped (or originally thought; there was some controversy over this). Overall, physisorption systems (the AD- vs. AB-sorption that the parent was referring to) don't do as well as chemisorption systems like metallic hydrides, though. The peak capacities are something like 3-6% vs. 12-15%, respectively.

But let's not mince words here; the real key issue in this case is that the nice folks at Rice have RUN A MODEL. They haven't done any empirical work to determine whether this actually works. If you've been keeping score here, that's where the rubber meets the road. Personally, I'm not holding my breath on the claimed 8% number.

After working in this field for a while, I've noticed that these kinds of claims appear at regular intervals (usually from universities with good media departments) regarding "miracle materials" that store tons of hydrogen. Don't get me wrong; any active thinking is progress - but let's be productively skeptical, eh?

To Rice's PR department: good show, but I don't buy it. Sorry for the cynicism.

Cheers,
--joe.

1) The Prius isn't an electric car. It's a hybrid. It's just an efficient user of gasoline.

2) Priuses aren't largely driven by "the affluent". They're mostly a middle class car. And they've been a stunning success; Toyota has said not to expect any more increases in sales next year because they can't produce them any faster.

3) "In the end" is hardly applicable; the adoption of hybrids keeps expanding, and automakers are offering more and more options. GM, for example, plans to release a new hybrid modelevery three months for the next four years.

4) As for electric cars, there are a lot of myths. Here they are, all broken down for you.

5) Yes, you are correct that there was no conspiracy to kill the EV1. The EV1 was never designed to be profitable; like all of its competitors, it was solely a byproduct of the CARB mandate. It was produced in tiny numbers, with tech far worse than what is available nowadays, based on a design that shared no common infrastructure with other GM vehicles (a "one-off"), and so forth. The leases were heavily subsidized. GM wanted nothing to do with actually making EVs, and as soon as the CARB mandate was overturned, they were quite glad to be rid of them. So were the other manufacturers who also had similarly unprofitable EVs. It was a horrible PR move, and GM realizes that now, but it made sense on the books, especially since GM was bleeding money at the time. And as for the "liability" argument, GM was 100% correct; lawsuits add hundreds of dollars to the cost of every car made in the US, and an owner can't disclaim liability for *someone else's* lawsuits. And as for the battery argument, please -- if GM cared about the EV1, they wouldn't have *sold the batteries* in the first place. They had already shut down many other part lines before CARB was overturned anyways; even if they had the batteries, they still couldn't have made more. The conspiracy arguments get crazier and crazier from there (like GM destroying the EVs because they wanted to "hide" them, yet in a fit of insanity they donated them to museums, but then they put pressure on the museums to hide them...)

Good to see some of that 24.3 billion dollars they have requested in this year's budget filtering down to where it can do some good. *cough* http://www.energy.gov/news/4706.htm

And with all the NIMBYs out there, nobody is willing to build new and needed Hydro Electric, Nuclear, Coal powered plants anytime soon.

Neither more nuclear nor coal plants are needed. In December 2007 SciAm had an article, "A Solar Grand Plan" saying that by 2050 solar power can provide 69% of the USA's electricity and 35 percent of its total energy. Then the Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential wind power to supply the lower 48 states with electricity. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details the potential wind power of sites throughout the 48 states. TFA "The Unsung Solution" in "Orion Magazine" goes over waste heat that can be used to produce more electricity. But you're right about NIMBYs, they are working to stop offshore wind farms. Though the Mid Atlantic states have good sites for offshore wind farms NIMBYs are doing what they can to stop wind farms in places like Cape Hatteras. Geothermal energy also offers good energy potential.

Photovoltaics are an inefficient source of power, have a short lifecycles, etc. Most places use solar-assisted water heating instead because per square foot it's more efficient at reducing the electrical load.

Not the ones I have been looking into. They have 10-15 year life cycles and while not 100% efficient, they are 20% or better. Consider that against in my area when usable wind isn't available for more then 30% of the time. It seems that you might be stuck with your knowledge of 20 years ago.

Wind power is available to Florida, as well, as they have lots of wind. If it gets too windy when storms come in, they can turn the blades.

You need to explain these finding of yours to the government then. You see, they don't classify Florida as winding enough to make wind power more then a waist of money. Here, check for yourself Download the PDF linked to the first map. and it will give your the legend and reasoning for not listing FL (as well as other states) as usable or suitable for wind powered electric generation. I'm not exactly sure how you came across this information, but seriously, tell them about your revelations.

And no, Florida has not done more to reduce their emissions, even to the fossil fuel portions that remain. The stats didn't show that. And no, you don't need to look at the same types of production.

Lol.. First, yes you do need to look at similar means of production. Your claiing Oregon's Clean enviromentally friendly way is better then florida's whuich somehow makes Florida lacking. The problem is that Oregon is using resources that simply isn't availible in Florida. So when you look at the ones that are similar, you see a different picture. I know you don't like that picture but that is no reason not to view it.

Also the stats I showed weren't removing hydro power. That was with Hydro included. IF you take Oregon's production system as a whole (wind and hydro included), multiple it to produce the same output as Florida does, the pollution numbers are the same. This shows that Oregon, as a whole isn't as clean as Florida is when you consider how much of their system doesn't produce emissions at all. Now where this is really important to this conversation is where you incorrectly claimed Florida hasn't done anything and then attempted to base this off of the Bush name being involved.

Florida had a major power outage over its use of nuclear. Beaverton, OR had a substation explode and power was on sooner than a simple malfunction in the grid outside the nuclear plant. Oregon decommissioned the Trojan nuclear plant after it was shut down due to an equipment failure that forced it to shut down. The power company had ratepayers subsidize both the purchase and destruction of the plant (there's a line item on my power bill just for that). The company said it wasn't economical to reopen it.

Lol.. It wasn't over the use of nuclear. That was just an incidental factor of it that has no bearing to the loss or how long it was out. The substation's transformer spiked and cause a safety switch to shut down the reactor which over stressed other plants which caused them to trip the grid to isolate the issues. And no, the substation didn't explode either. But this is nothing new or specific to nuclear power. The blackout in the 80's and again in the 90's and who can forget the 2003 which was caused by similar things. One was a spike from a substation and solar activity and the other was faulty software that failed to relay it's condition after it saw a spike. Except instead of limiting it's effect to one state, they all covered almost the entire mideast and parts of Canada.

And the power station your talking about that was shut down. Your not bitching about it are you? I mean this entire thread start with you wanting to claim the governme

More information Here (pg 34) and here

If you're interested in this technology area, you can definitely start by following the .gov link in my post. Much of the published data produced by groups under the DOE funding can eventually be found there; there are annual reports and other such summaries.

Some pretty hard-core (but still interesting) stuff is at this link, for example; tech publications and such:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/hydrogen_publications.html#h2_storage

As for the idea of hydrogen dissolved in solid material, that technology area refers to "metal hydrides", which are metallic alloys and related compounds that - among other behaviors - can literally "soak up" gaseous hydrogen like a sponge. And many can do this at room temperature, at or under atmospheric pressure (read: relatively inert/safe).

You know nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries? Although this rechargeable technology is on the way out as Li-ion batteries mature, they contain exactly these kinds of materials. Metal hydride technology isn't so new, actually; the chemical effect has been known for, I don't know; something like 75 years or so. As a useful technology, though, it was the arms race (i.e., nuclear weapon research) that pushed the envelope in the 50s and 60s.

Hope that helps. As for "odorizing" the hydrogen, it's probably more preferable to employ sensitive detectors that will warn folks of an H2 leak long before their noses can. Never can tell, though.

Cheers,
--joe.

Another Hindenburg reference. Great fricking Caesar's Ghost.

Seriously, though - and on a tangent for a sec - he's got a point. No, not about a hydrogen-fueled car ACTUALLY bursting into flames a'la the great Lakehurst weenie roast (that's why he used a smiley-face, I guess) but - unwittingly - about the public's perception of the implications of having hydrogen on-board a road vehicle.

The truth is, technology wants to go in a safer direction. The US DOE is spending a lot of money - well-spent, in my opinion - on developing components of an automotive approach to hydrogen fuels, including infrastructure, end-to-end efficiency and cost, and of course materials science and engineering.

Check out http://hydrogen.energy.gov/

The long and the short of it is this: the current standard is to store compressed hydrogen on-board in 5000 psig tanks; the tech maturation for this approach is to up the ante to 10000 psig. Yikes; no wonder the public has the wrong idea - that's a lot of mechanical energy stored up in there. Some of the more interesting (but not new) technology DOE is funding is for "absorptive" storage, both liquid- and solid-state, wherein the hydrogen isn't at high levels of compression - rather, it's safely (for the most part) tucked away inside the molecular structure of a parent "carrier" substance. At fairly low pressures (~15-150 psig), for the most part.

Okay, tangent over. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a hydrogen materials engineer. And I'm WAY more frightened of gasoline vapors than I am of hydrogen in any form.

Cheers,
--joe.

1. Make solar energy affordable - Done
2. Provide energy from fusion - This is something I don't know anything about.
3. Develop carbon sequestration methods - More information
4. Manage the nitrogen cycle - More information. I feel like on a basic, local level this can already be accomplished easily. On an advanced/global level though... Manage it? In the next 100 years maybe we can gather some data points so we can UNDERSTAND it. Until then, any attempts to "manage" it would be foolish
5. Provide access to clean water - Tried and true method and 1, 2, 3 Orgs doing it.
6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure - And run on-time and build more parks - but who will fund it?
7. Advance health informatics - This "engineering goal" is too general to discuss. It's like, make it easier to get useful data on our health. Duh!
8. Engineer better medicines - I think "Engineer better robots" would be a more worthwhile engineering goal... but that's just me.
9. Reverse-engineer the brain - Teaching it, and studying it
10. Prevent nuclear terror - This is a political bombshell that I won't go near, but from what I see the strategy is (a) deterrence, and (b) threaten anybody with a nuclear project.
11. Secure cyberspace - Ha!
12. Enhance virtual reality - In a practical way or just enough so that my brain can be tricked into thinking that an incredibly hot women is going down on me?
13. Advance personalized learning - Not sure what this is...
14. Engineer the tools for scientific discovery - Another overly general one, but I'd like to think "discovery" is a misspelling of "exploration". Lately I've been thinking that our satellites are similar to the Triremes of Greece times (which are bound to stay close to our shores), the Apollo/Space Shuttle is like Viking ships (which couldn't (or weren't) be used to setup a new settlement), and then this would be the equivalent of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria (except they will be called Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Lincoln).

I am going to be fair... this is really a list of things that can be completed in the next 25 years. These are not "100 year" goals. They are simply to generalized, for the most part. A real engineer knows that goals should be Specific, Measurable, and ARTistic. These goals don't qualify.

There are already drain water heat recovery systems in existance.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=13040

http://www.gfxstar.ca/specifications.htm

As pointed out by some other posters, kinetic or potential energy recovery might lead to the nasty problem of clogged pipes, but thermal energy recovery doesn't have that problem.

I wasn't aware of a efficient, comercial biodiesel algee in use. I've heard LOTS of theoretical or lab products.

Even the US DOE says that it should be commercially feasible using whatever algae colonizes the water by the time diesel fuel reaches $3/gallon. (see A Look Back at the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program .) It's well over that now and likely to stay that way barring some other development.

The beauty of algae is that it can be grown in salt water, which is only going to get more plentiful if certain ice melts :P

I don't believe we have sufficient spare organic matter currently to get withing an order of magnitude of what's necessary for butanol at the moment. This is all subject to change of course.

There is no one answer. Biodiesel, butanol, full-electrics, and maybe even hydrogen all have their place.

Your suggested improvements to the ICE aren't going to put it on par with an efficient commercial AC motor.

That is true. But they can make substantial improvements. Also, we have a number of technologies today that make cars more efficient which are seldom used - at least, in the USA. For example, vehicles with tiny turbocharged engines are much more efficient, and since they are smaller they can have less parts (generally having less cylinders) and thus are cheaper; so you can spend money on advanced materials, they come out around the same price, and you can still have high performance. When the pedal isn't slammed, however, they are much more efficient.

I understand that electric motors are far more efficient, around 85-90% in models currently in use in electric cars, whereas the most efficient ICE on the planet is a container ship motor the size of a house - and it's only at 50%. But then, we DO have alternatives like turbines, which while still not as efficient as electrics, are still significantly more efficient than ICEs.

Even with the horrible inefficiency of the typical gasoline motor, you still get far more range out of it than the best electrics today by just adding a larger tank, which becomes lighter as you drive.

Oh, and one other point. Electrolysis may be at >50% but you still need the electrical energy to begin with. You multiply your losses this way.

This is true, of course. I would imagine burning the hydrogen in micro-turbines or using it in a fuel cell (down the road) and it's only interesting because it has more energy density than a battery - hydrogen has relatively poor energy density compared to other fuels. I would prefer a turbine which runs on a variety of fuels including alcohol and diesel-like fuels, closely coupled to (or integrated with) a generator, and used as a series hybrid. As I blather on about often, this permits the use of minimal battery, maximum range, easiest refueling, support for the broadest range of biofuels, and high efficiency in the same package.

I do think that phasing out the ICE is the best thing to do. But in the mean time, what will we run them on? Do we continue to run our gasoline engines on dino juice? Or do we shift over to butanol? Actually, all the products of the ABE reaction (acetone, butanol, and ethanol) can be burned in a gasoline engine; ethanol burns clean, butanol burns pretty clean, but I'm not entirely sure about acetone. I do know that some people use it as a gasoline additive and claim it gives significant mileage improvements and reduction in emissions, but I don't know anything about the veracity of such claims.

In "modern" vehicles, with continuously variable lift, duration, and timing (as well as distributorless ignition and constant knowledge of the position of crank and cam(s)) it should be fairly simple to make any of the higher-compression engines run on a broader variety of fuels; it may be necess

Mercury Rising:
"SMOKY SKIES: The coal-burning Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio, is one of the US's top producers of mercury, according to the EPA. In the US, power plants account for 60 percent of all mercury released into the air by industry."

Or do you mean an organization like the Department of Energy which has been controlled by an administration which is absurdly friendly to the energy industry? (See: Mercury Emission Control R&D).

Dude. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is in doubt about the mercury released into the atmosphere from human activity, and which then falls into the oceans. Even according to the Bush administration, about a third of this is apparently from burning coal. Oh, and look! The data in the DOE chart is from 1994 and 1995! The data from the Christian Science Monitor is ten years newer. Huh. Imagine that. As mercury emissions are reduced form other industries, the proportion of emissions from coal fire plants has gone up. Bummer. Undermines the DOE case against actually doing anything about the problem of emissions from coal fire plants in the US, which just doubled in importance, right then, by taking the time to understand the attempted deception in the graph.

There are a few reasons that any mercury is released at all from coal burning:

1. Coal has mercury in it,
2. we haven't widely deployed the best available technology for scrubbing the mercury out of the emissions, and
3. we haven't the technical ability to scrub it all out, even with the best available technology, and
4. even the best available technology is apparently widely variable in effectiveness, ranging from not effective at all (scrubbing zero percent of the mercury from the emissions), to somewhat effective (a third to half of emissions captured).

Although global mercury emissions have fallen in recent decades, they are still absurdly high. Human activity is causing a rising level of mercury found in top level predator fish, the kinds people like to eat, like tuna.

Mercury is a neurotoxin, and a general toxin, and it accumulates in organisms (Bioaccumulation of mercury). In tiny quantities, it's bad for you. It's particularly bad for those unborn children that the "Christian Right" proponents of "Family Values" love to go on and on about. They don't seem to care much if those children are born healthy, only that they get born. But I digress.

Were this not the case, we would not have research programs designed to figure out how to reduce these emissions, under this pro-industry, head-in-the-sand Republican administration. Unfortunately, the "propaganda" is on the other side of the issue. Even though the DOE can't deny this problem, due to the overwhelming nature of the evidence, they can still obfuscate it. Notice how the first paragraph of this article differs pretty dramatically in gestalt view of the problem, as compared to a paragraph from deeper in the body of the content:
Mercury Emission Control R&D

"Trace amounts of mercury can exist in coal and other fossil fuels. When these fuels burn, mercury vapor can be released to the atmosphere where it may drift for a year or more, spreading with air currents over vast regions of the globe. In 1995, an estimated 5,500 tons of mercury was emitted globally from both natural and human sources. Coal-fired power plants in the United States contributed less than 1 percent of the total."

Mercury Rising:
"SMOKY SKIES: The coal-burning Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio, is one of the US's top producers of mercury, according to the EPA. In the US, power plants account for 60 percent of all mercury released into the air by industry."

Or do you mean an organization like the Department of Energy which has been controlled by an administration which is absurdly friendly to the energy industry? (See: Mercury Emission Control R&D).

Dude. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is in doubt about the mercury released into the atmosphere from human activity, and which then falls into the oceans. Even according to the Bush administration, about a third of this is apparently from burning coal. Oh, and look! The data in the DOE chart is from 1994 and 1995! The data from the Christian Science Monitor is ten years newer. Huh. Imagine that. As mercury emissions are reduced form other industries, the proportion of emissions from coal fire plants has gone up. Bummer. Undermines the DOE case against actually doing anything about the problem of emissions from coal fire plants in the US, which just doubled in importance, right then, by taking the time to understand the attempted deception in the graph.

There are a few reasons that any mercury is released at all from coal burning:

1. Coal has mercury in it,
2. we haven't widely deployed the best available technology for scrubbing the mercury out of the emissions, and
3. we haven't the technical ability to scrub it all out, even with the best available technology, and
4. even the best available technology is apparently widely variable in effectiveness, ranging from not effective at all (scrubbing zero percent of the mercury from the emissions), to somewhat effective (a third to half of emissions captured).

Although global mercury emissions have fallen in recent decades, they are still absurdly high. Human activity is causing a rising level of mercury found in top level predator fish, the kinds people like to eat, like tuna.

Mercury is a neurotoxin, and a general toxin, and it accumulates in organisms (Bioaccumulation of mercury). In tiny quantities, it's bad for you. It's particularly bad for those unborn children that the "Christian Right" proponents of "Family Values" love to go on and on about. They don't seem to care much if those children are born healthy, only that they get born. But I digress.

Were this not the case, we would not have research programs designed to figure out how to reduce these emissions, under this pro-industry, head-in-the-sand Republican administration. Unfortunately, the "propaganda" is on the other side of the issue. Even though the DOE can't deny this problem, due to the overwhelming nature of the evidence, they can still obfuscate it. Notice how the first paragraph of this article differs pretty dramatically in gestalt view of the problem, as compared to a paragraph from deeper in the body of the content:
Mercury Emission Control R&D

"Trace amounts of mercury can exist in coal and other fossil fuels. When these fuels burn, mercury vapor can be released to the atmosphere where it may drift for a year or more, spreading with air currents over vast regions of the globe. In 1995, an estimated 5,500 tons of mercury was emitted globally from both natural and human sources. Coal-fired power plants in the United States contributed less than 1 percent of the total."

I suspect the standby losses will be more than the 500-750mW allowed by efficiency standards. These standards were set to challenge the manufacturers of conventional wire-connected power supplies. To meet them, the engineers must reduce losses wherever possible. Copper conductors can deliver power to the load device with efficiency better than 95% (less than 0.25V drop for a 5V adapter, etc.). Wireless couplers would be hard pressed to come anywhere close to that. It seems like a step backwards in the battle against wasted electrical power.

If this were combined with a "Clean Coal" power plant and the gasification process, they could reduce a step. one of the by products of a clean coal power plant is carbon monoxide...

See:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html

Continuous states, ie all states in the US except Alaska and Hawaii. Add all of the other good sites in the US for wind farms and there may be enough for those two states as well, but really long powerlines would be needed. It looks as though Alaska has good wind potential as well though. And Hawaii has it's own potential source of energy, Geothermal. This one plant makes 25% of the electricity on the Big Island.

I can completely imagine that running an engine at its peak efficiency for electricity generation, then using the electricity to power an electric motor (which can have 80% to 90% efficiency) would be more efficient than using the engine to drive the wheels directly.

my hybrid uses about 4 to 5 liters of gasoline per 100 km, whereas other gasoline cars in the same class use about twice as much. I like to think that this is at least partially due to the combustion engine being used to generate electricity

You still havent read the article have you?

If you had read my post you'd realize I did read it. Maybe you didn't comprehend that.

Maybe we will use a transporter to get it out... or... wait... what else could we do? Oh, I know! We can DRILL... DEEP! Sorry about the sarcasm... but I even quoted the article and bolded the relevant sections...

"Deep within" is NOT "Deep Drilling".

with today's technology, is a deep drill reservoir/plant combo. There isnt ANY other way. I provided a BUNCH of links in my other posts.

And elsewhere I provided links showing deep drilling isn't necessary. Another example that shows deep drilling isn't needed is Iceland. The same can be said of Yellowstone, Hawaii, and I'm sure there are many others such as along the Ring of Fire and near Hot Springs. One person used geothermal produced electricity for a resort. Here are more examples where geothermal can be used while drilling less than 10,000 feet, that's no where near the depth of the Mariana Trench. Maybe you have a different definition of "deep drilling" but that's not too deep to me. Here's a page showing 14 places in California that produces geothermal electricity.

Try again.

Where is "here"? In locations solar isn't good wind may be, or geothermal may be, or...

Solar won't work very well during the winter and your electric heater would suck down the production from a whole field of solar panels anyway.

Even in cold climates solar hot water heaters can be used. The Department of Energy says Solar Water Heaters can be used in any climate. A Closed Loop - Glycol System uses glycol, to eliminate busted water pipes and such, to heat water.

The only reliable means we have of producing energy are fuel powered reactors/power stations and hydro-electric plants and these are what a country should base it's energy policy on.

This is, in fact, a common misperception held by people in the northern, and in particular, north-western states, who already have a relatively clean energy mix - but in large part because their grids are built for it. It's easy to advocate for something you already have.

But you also seem to think there is no other alternative. There is. There are plenty of alternatives, in fact. The difficulty is actually that there is an ever-increasing demand due to ever increasing sources of energy demands and population increase. No one solution will meet this demand, period. Nuclear will be part of the solution, so will solar. Centralized generation will be part of the solution, so will decentralized local generation. Increase in power output will be part, as will an active pursuit of demand reduction through energy efficiency. Your fallacy is thinking that there is one true way, and that the 'governments' are 'realizing' it.

As a quick aside; solar energy has a lot more to do with how you build things than with how you turn sunlight into electricity. The facing of windows, the use of different materials, and paying attention to how the environment affects the building. Walmart, of all people, have done an amazing job of turning some of their stores into very energy efficient buildings in part using 'solar energy'. And it's not predicated on it being daylight all the time, or near the equator. Article here, and it's a very good example of how attacking the problem on multiple flanks is far more useful than shouting from the hilltops how there is only one possible solution, and everything else has drawbacks. Of course everything else has drawbacks. Everything has drawbacks. The trick is to balance them into something ultimately more useful, where the drawbacks cancel.

Nice point about management of power from dams. It got me thinking about power management in general. We can manage load in three ways: managing supply, storing power and managing demand.

Managing supply can be done by carefully choosing when to turn on and off various sources. As the parent mentioned, nuclear, coal and fuel oil are not well-suited for rapid adjustments to power to respond to demand variation and used for base load. I was going to tell you that gas-fired pants did not fall into this category, but Wikipedia tells me that there are two types of natural gas plants. The gas turbine facilities can be brought up to full power fairly quickly. The "combined cycle" plants are used for base load.

As other posters are mentioning, energy storage would be an ideal compliment to wind (or solar) power. Currently energy storage is in the form of "pump storage" where water up pumped up to a reservoir at higher elevation when there is excess supply. This is an especially nice way to store power from wind or solar system, since their power is quite variable and and inefficiency in the pump storage scheme would only be wasting sunlight or wind, not creating excess pollution.

Demand can also be shaped to more readily reflect supply by including a price signal. Many industrial and some residential customers pay different rates depending on time of use. For some energy-intensive industries (think aluminum smelting or hydrogen production through electrolysis) shifting their demand to off-peak times would have huge cost savings if there is a price differential. Perhaps some industrial customers would be interested in purchasing some of their power under a real-time pricing scheme, where they would decide how much power to purchase based on hourly pricing. There are also ways to manage residential demand as well. Customers with time of use pricing can save money by using a timer with their hot water heater so they are not paying to keep water hot when they are at work and the electric price is high or similarly plan their air conditioning load. There is also a scheme where the electric utility can remotely shut off hot water heaters during times of high demand via radio control, and customers are given incentives to participate. (see: http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=13110)

(Real-time pricing would, of course, might be impractical for many industries whose demand is inflexible (think health care) but could be useful for industries such as smelters. <rant> Hourly pricing for electrical suppliers without any price signal to consumers was part of the cause of the California energy meltdown. Ultimately the suppliers asked for a state bailout to cover the extreme prices the producers were charging because the producers had intentionally manipulated supply by manipulating supply, causing blackouts, halting subway systems and generally causing widespread disruption.</rant>)

The larger point is that we have some technologies available that will help us accommodate a greater degree of variability in our power sources, without having to toss out excess power or have shortages at times of high demand. We will always need base load power, but intelligent management of supply and demand can help smooth out the peaks and valleys of solar and wind power and customer demand.

-Jon

"Spent fuel" is hardly spent - most of the original fissionables are still in the bundle, waiting for wastes to be removed and new fuel bundles made. There are hundreds of highly-enriched U-235 reactors that can be recycled to make commercial fuel (lightly-enriched with U-235).

Some fairly smart people made very bad decisions in the 70's that haunt us today.

Have a look at the GNEP (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership) http://www.gnep.energy.gov/gnepPublicInformation.html for a plan to get rid of the nuclear waste we have (by burning it in reactors), and supply a lot of energy worldwide.

As an aside, we need to think about multiple sources of energy - Perhaps bio-diesel from algae http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html for transportation. Solar and Nuclear for electricity and heating.

Conservation via insulating, is another great solution. My home has R-46 insulation. Try to get someone to build one of those for ya! "No can do!", says the builder, because he's never done it.

We're between a rock and a hard place with Natural Gas and Propane this winter - demand has outstripped the supply, and (us) idiots in California and other places built Nat Gas fueled electrical plants - the most expensive fuel on planet earth and we use it for base load. Incredibly stupid.

I read an article recently that most of the Sierra Club consists of geezers. Since they kind of missed the point on a lot off issues, drinking bad ju-ju koolaid, it's probably best that they trundle off in their birks to history and leave Environmentalism to those who can think things through. We can use technology (and computer modeling using _all_ of the relevant variables) to peer through the haze and find good solutions for the future.

Yeah - I'ma geezer, too. Let's rock.

Then recover the left over energy indirectly; Geothermal energy is just indirect nuclear energy after all.

Secondly, reprocessing. The US's main focus for reprocessing is wrapped up in the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). This is a freaking scam, and the National Academy of Sciences backs me up. Basically, the types of reactors envisioned require materials science that just isn't there yet, requires funding that just isn't there yet, and requires an infrastructure that Just Isn't There Yet.

The solution is to turn Yucca Mountain into a medium-term repository. Bury it, safely, for 100 to 200 years, let the exceptionally hot stuff decay away, and I'm pretty darned sure civilization will be able to find some use for the energy stored in there in 100 years. But until then, let the technology mature. The commercial industry (and, by extension, every person in the U.S. who pays for electricity) has been paying into the Yucca fund for too long not to see any return on that investment.

Oh, one more snarky comment. Please provide support via links for your assertions; it's not hard. I would like to see evidence that after 30 years, the spent fuel coming out of a burner like envisioned for GNEP is actually less radioactive than the original ore.

You were probably looking at window units, while the parent was talking about house units, also known as central air.

Window units are exempt from the DOE requirement.

Requiring window units to meet the higher standard would be expensive, for perhaps not much gain.

The way water is usually treated and dealt with by most urban societies is to not treat it like a mineral (aka gold or even steel), but to treat it as a flushing mechanism. In other words, the aquatic structures of most urban environments are designed to flush toxic wastes and other pollutants (primarily organic compounds of various varieties) into a place where it will eventually be dealt with.... that usually being the oceans of the world.

But that doesn't deal with it, all it does is pass it on to someone, or something, else to deal with. It may sound like something dirty that no one wants to put up with but prior to piping and the massive sewage created by it, people used to collect human waste and take it to farms to fertilize the crops. Unfortunately this allows pathogens to enter the food chain, but by composting it pathogens can be killed. I think this is one area where organics goes wrong. While organics encourages the use of manure from other animals such as chickens, cows, and pigs, it does not allow the use of humanure. Basically organics takes humans out of the loop and creates a deadend. Ask good gardeners and farmers what many plants like and they'll tell you nitrogen, guess what? Human urine has a lot of nitrogen. In some circles, such as with some Permaculturists, people recommend mixing urine with water, something like 1 to 10 parts, to water crops. Diluted like this there's little smell. Then with things like living machines sewage can be treated producing no odor while producing fertilizer. Living machines, patented, are being investigated by a number of universities and businesses. Oberlin College has created a living machine that is capable of treating all the waste water created by the Lewis Center at Oberlin. There's no reason a living machine can't be expanded. The end result being clean water and nutrient rich fertilizer. Ah, I see you bring up sewage later.

The technology also exists to have a magnitude order of improvement or better with the efficiency of water usage for agricultural purposes. Living in a desert area, I've seen some amazing low water consumption methods that can be applied to gardens and even commercial food production facilities.

Drip irrigation and soaker hoses are good, as is only watering in the morning. Watering then allows the soil to soak up some water where it can then reach plant roots before the sun and heat can evaporate the water. I use a soaker hose in my garden in the morning. This is what farmers in Israel have been doing, however they are now draining more and more water from the Jordan River. Water is the one thing Queen Rania has said Jordan will go to war over. However Jordan is also diverting water. Because so much of the river is being diverted the Dead Sea is drying up much as the Soviets caused the Aral Sea to die.

And otherwise the climate of Texas is pretty reasonable for human habitation, even though I would have to agree that western Texas in the summer is something you want to avoid unless you have some serious air conditioning available.

Ah but western Texas is great for wind farms. Just three wind farms in western Texas creates 116 megawatts of electricity.

I certainly can walk about 15 miles from my house where I'm typing this message, and enter not only what is designated as an official federal wilderness area, but also risk getting attacked by rattle snakes and cougars.

In Florida where I used to live I

Not mine...my TVs are on pretty much anytime I'm home...so approx. 90+ hours a week (yes, it is my nightlight too.). My computers are on 24/7...and generally the monitors are on too....

Of course living where I do...I turn the A/C on in about mid April, and am looking forward to it clicking off sometime around early Nov. or so.....

Thanks goodness I've got a decent job to pay for it all.

:-)

The first place I would look to conserve energy is turning things off as opposed to standby. Televisions use 23% of their annual electricity while in standby, for VCRs that jumps to 50%. http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/info/documents/pdfs/lbnl-42393.pdf So if we turned monitors and computers and wireless routers and printers etc, completely off when we were not using them the savings would likely be significant. As an added bonus your computer can't be a zombie spam bot when the power is turned off.

I wonder how much of that 9% is used to light the billions of LEDs that are not needed?

By how much would our energy use go down if we transitioned to servers and network equipment that use less energy?

The first place I would look to conserve energy is turning things off as opposed to standby. Televisions use 23% of their annual electricity while in standby, for VCRs that jumps to 50%. http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/info/documents/pdfs/lbnl-42393.pdf So if we turned monitors and computers and wireless routers and printers etc, completely off when we were not using them the savings would likely be significant. As an added bonus your computer can't be a zombie spam bot when the power is turned off.

Regarding the cost of wind versus nuclear power (coincidentally, I was just reading NREL's annual report on wind energy the other day): While wind costs about $1.50/Watt (your number was right for 2005) to install, it has a much lower capacity factor; how much it generates on average divided by how much it could generate if it were possible to run at rated load 100% of the time.

The best wind farms have capacity factors around 0.35. US Nuclear plants have a capacity factor of 0.87 on average (1999 number...and remember this is from a previous generation of designs). So adjusting for the capacity factor in capital costs, that works out to be $4.30/Watt for wind and $2.50/Watt for the GE ABWR. Of course, wind has a bonus of extremely low operating costs, but it can not be adjusted to demand, which is one of the main factors that relegates it to a minor role in the US power portfolio. It doesn't matter how many windmills you have if the weather is calm.

I expect anyone with concerns about nuclear power will sensibly mention decommissioning costs. These are now factored into the project at the beginning, and the NRC requires utilities to report their decommissioning fund status. Typically it's equivalent to roughly $0.50/W of capacity (source). Also, all of the GE PBWR's that have been built have been on-budget and on-time, which was one of the reasons this design was chosen, so I wouldn't expect huge unplanned costs to start appearing.

Additionally, a 5 meter sea rise is at the silly extreme end of predictions. The IPCC's estimate (from your link) is half a meter for the century. Regardless, while this could cause operability concerns, I could hardly imagine it causing any added danger of radioactive release, and the sea level rise would be observable over a period of decades.

A last point I'd like to present is that roughly half of the US nuclear power plants, representing 10% of our nation's power production and 10 times our entire installed wind capacity, are scheduled to reach the end of their operating licenses over the next few years. They are going to need to be replaced somehow or another, in addition to meeting the growing demand. Currently most utilities are planning on doing this with coal.