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TFT talks about a payment, but if you follow links you end up at this page which talks about loan guarantees instead.

Pointing at maintenance when it is due in either case provides no new information to the argument at all; everyone knows that things require upkeep. If you were to demonstrate evidence to show the maintenance would be disproportionately expensive you might have something to say.

Fortunately there are other great sources of energy that are available when you naysayers get to talking. There is also a tidal 5mw outputting kite developed in the netherlands. It is about 12 meters wide, 3 meters deep, and 2 meters high. Since you're relatively coastal, implementing the tidal kite might be more effective. Or hydroelectric.

As for energy density, your calculations are way off. Let me straighten that out for you. These figures represent current electricity use, by the way. So considerations of cost should only be compared to electricity part of PG&E bill, etc.

California yearly energy use is: 235,438,000 MwH/year
California daily energy use is: 645,035 MwH/day (divide yearly by 365)
California constant average is: 26,876 Mw (divide daily by 24 H/day hour time period to get constant flow figure)
Each 8 acre plant puts out 5Mw consant. Thus, 5376 plants are required, totaling 43,000 acres.
43,000 acres is about 68 square miles. California has great open areas that are MUCH larger than 68 square miles.

Total cost to do right now is $20m/plant. Thus 107 Billion dollars to do right now.
This cost, divided by the number of california residents is $2841/person.
California GDP is 1.85 TRILLION dollars.
That cost, distributed across 10 years is $284/person.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/molten-salt-takes-one-step-further-in-solar-thermal/
-------

I'm glad to raise your awareness to actual numbers; I can't stand it when people like you echo the b.s. assumptions and predictions made by paid pundits. You should do the math yourself before you naysay so badly and make such ridiculous claims. It would not be trillions to implement, but rather just over 100bn. It would require a space about 9x9 miles. The cost is actually lower in long term than current energy production.

Good luck out there.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/molten-salt-takes-one-step-further-in-solar-thermal/

7 acres.

I imagine MoS2 based semiconductors would only be cost effective if they can figure out how to use as little of it as possible, perhaps with MoS2 over some other substrate.

Near as I can tell it's dirt cheap. I figure the cost will be the same as current processors, getting it to ultra-pure quality and the etching process. You can get a kilo of not-so-very-pure MoS2 for about a buck. Even silicon good enough to make solar cells costs $67 dollars a kilo according to this 2009 article. The rest is for turning it from a lump of metal to a working processor.

One more thing I almost forgot. Load shedding > Peaker Plants.

You don't want the utility being able to shut your AC compressor down. OK. My utility also has the same plan, where they pay you for the ability to shut my compressor down for 2 hours every so many hours. Why? Peak demand. It's cheaper to perform load shedding (i.e. remotely shut down compressors) than it is to maintain and operate gas turbine peaker plants that sit idle 95% of the year, and than consume costly (comparatively) natural gas when called upon to provide peak power.

Distribution infrastructure is one thing. Peak power needs a quite another. You want better infrastructure, which is fair. It's also fair that utilities should provide time of use power costs, so their power costs are passed on to customers instead of them insulating customers with a flat rate. If you don't allow market pricing to work, poor decisions result.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9803658-7.html

http://www.epa.state.il.us/air/fact-sheets/peaker-power-plant.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=peak+power+cost

http://energypriorities.com/entries/2006/02/pse_tou_amr_case.php

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/connecticut-power-light-proposes-10-1-ratio-for-peak-power/

Newer datacenters don't have raised floors because it is more energy efficient to have concrete floors.

Hogwash.

Yeah, what do I know about the subject? I'm just quoting from a recent talk given by Subodh Bapat, Vice President, Energy Efficiency and Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems.

Oh, and there are some articles about this

But please, continue to refute my statement with clear, unsupported, single-word denials. They carry so much weight in an argument.

It is $20-33k without a battery. Call it insane if you want. The Volt only has 40 miles electric range. Many people want a pure EV for the lower maintenance and longer electric range (for example, for a commuter car).

Contrary to popular myth, EVs aren't currently expensive just because of the batteries. They're also expensive because many of their components are not produced in bulk. Handmade motors, chargers, inverters, etc aren't cheap. That'll change over time, but if you want the first gen...

They may be mining the "renewable energy" incentive program.Some outfits in Texas pay the grid operator to take the power..

Wind is very expensive, and it is highly variable, which makes it a royal pain to tap. When someone plans a major energy storage facility to level the output, then you'll know they're actually serious about using wind as a power source. The most economical storage systems of that scale are compressed air and pumped hydro-electric.

Prove it.

Government-2006 energy review
http://www.carbon-info.org/carbonnews_100.htm
Also I take it you couldn't re arsed reading this when I linked to it earlier.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf
read it.
for the love of god read it.

Your sources seem to be nothing more than opinion pieces with broken links.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-wind-the-best-energy-nuclear-coal-and-ethanol-the-worst-5352/
If Jacobson ranked nuclear bellow tidal and solar for "overall potential to generate electricity" then he's a moron.
Jacobsen makes some fairly heroic assumptions ? even charging civilian nuclear power generation with the carbon emissions (and loss of life) of a 50x15-kiloton nuclear war! By contrast, he charges his favored power sources with no "opportunity cost emissions", as though they faced no delays in permitting, environmental reviews, transmission-line construction, and equipment backlogs.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/for-cheap-clean-energy-go-geothermal-study-says/
An MIT study that's much more extensive suggests geothermal is damn risky; loss of water to the formation, loss of heat over time, dry (cold) holes that are non-productive; difficult drilling conditions (hot etc). And, geothermal is rarely near city the user base... so add long transmission lines...

Sure geothermal is great for some things, it may cause small earthquakes but that's not too bad but depending on how you use it it can be more like oil drilling, you extract all the heat from a given area and it takes thousands of years to replenish.
I wouldn't complain at seeing a fair investment in geothermal but can it provide what we need? only a little.
We need power everywhere, not just where there's pleanty of geothermal near the surface.

By that criteria nuclear power is not a serious energy source

By the grand total subsidies or the subsidies per megawatt? the second is what matters and by that criteria nuclear is very good. You know why solar and wind don't get as much total? because they're no hopers. They get money to placate people who know fuck all about generating power for the grid but want a symbol of how very green their power is.

Studies linked to say both wind and geothermal and cheaper and cleaner than nuclear. Now will you provide links to evidence says nuclear is cleaner?

Did you even read my post?wind+solar cannot be used for more than 20% of the grid. Add in some kind of smart grid and you might, might just push that up to 30% and that's at an insane cost.
Geothermal is fantastic for the few places where there's magma near the surface, otherwise drilling a hole 15km deep and keeping it open can be a problem.
Plus you use up the heat in a region and you stop getting geothermal power out and you have to drill a new hole.

This isn't that bad a problem since lots of things kill birds but it's also expensive to maintain. Offshore wind farms suffer from the salt water and need a lot of maintenance.

I know reading is hard but try it some time.

This isn't that bad a problem since lots of things kill birds but it's also expensive to maintain. Offshore wind farms suffer from the salt water and need a lot of maintenance.

I made the point that is isn't a big problem.
The bigger problem is how expensive it is and how short the lifetimes of turbines is.
Off shore ones suffer particularly badly.
Try again.

A Solar Grand Plan

Prove it.

Government-2006 energy review
http://www.carbon-info.org/carbonnews_100.htm
Also I take it you couldn't re arsed reading this when I linked to it earlier.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf
read it.
for the love of god read it.

Your sources seem to be nothing more than opinion pieces with broken links.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-wind-the-best-energy-nuclear-coal-and-ethanol-the-worst-5352/
If Jacobson ranked nuclear bellow tidal and solar for "overall potential to generate electricity" then he's a moron.
Jacobsen makes some fairly heroic assumptions ? even charging civilian nuclear power generation with the carbon emissions (and loss of life) of a 50x15-kiloton nuclear war! By contrast, he charges his favored power sources with no "opportunity cost emissions", as though they faced no delays in permitting, environmental reviews, transmission-line construction, and equipment backlogs.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/for-cheap-clean-energy-go-geothermal-study-says/
An MIT study that's much more extensive suggests geothermal is damn risky; loss of water to the formation, loss of heat over time, dry (cold) holes that are non-productive; difficult drilling conditions (hot etc). And, geothermal is rarely near city the user base... so add long transmission lines...

Sure geothermal is great for some things, it may cause small earthquakes but that's not too bad but depending on how you use it it can be more like oil drilling, you extract all the heat from a given area and it takes thousands of years to replenish.
I wouldn't complain at seeing a fair investment in geothermal but can it provide what we need? only a little.
We need power everywhere, not just where there's pleanty of geothermal near the surface.

By that criteria nuclear power is not a serious energy source

By the grand total subsidies or the subsidies per megawatt? the second is what matters and by that criteria nuclear is very good. You know why solar and wind don't get as much total? because they're no hopers. They get money to placate people who know fuck all about generating power for the grid but want a symbol of how very green their power is.

Studies linked to say both wind and geothermal and cheaper and cleaner than nuclear. Now will you provide links to evidence says nuclear is cleaner?

Did you even read my post?wind+solar cannot be used for more than 20% of the grid. Add in some kind of smart grid and you might, might just push that up to 30% and that's at an insane cost.
Geothermal is fantastic for the few places where there's magma near the surface, otherwise drilling a hole 15km deep and keeping it open can be a problem.
Plus you use up the heat in a region and you stop getting geothermal power out and you have to drill a new hole.

This isn't that bad a problem since lots of things kill birds but it's also expensive to maintain. Offshore wind farms suffer from the salt water and need a lot of maintenance.

I know reading is hard but try it some time.

This isn't that bad a problem since lots of things kill birds but it's also expensive to maintain. Offshore wind farms suffer from the salt water and need a lot of maintenance.

I made the point that is isn't a big problem.
The bigger problem is how expensive it is and how short the lifetimes of turbines is.
Off shore ones suffer particularly badly.
Try again.

A Solar Grand Plan

Environmentally nuclear is vastly better than all the other serious energy sources.

Prove it.

Now that I asked fro proof I'll provide my own evidence which supports my position as well as contradicts yours. "Report: Wind the Best Energy; Nuclear, Coal and Ethanol the Worst". "For Cheap Clean Energy, Go Geothermal, Study Says". "Oregon Geothermal Energy = Baseload Energy".

Wind and solar are not serious energy sources as is hinted by how much subsidies they need

By that criteria nuclear power is not a serious energy source because it needs massive subsidies. Not only does it need guarantied loans but it also needs it's liability limited and government disposal of it's waste. All alternative energy sources put together including geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, even biofuels only get a fraction of the subsidies nuclear power gets. "While renewable energy may require subsidies for the immediate future, nuclear power needs subsidies forever." From the Financial Times:

"'But those hoping for handouts would be disappointed. The "incentives" for nuclear and carbon capture and storage are only there to "help a nascent sector grow', he said."

"We are not going to achieve a competitive [nuclear] sector by handing out subsidies... we are not in the business of giving out subsidies. We are in the business of maintaining a level playing field."

"It's telling that the 'level playing field' the industry wants and the one the government wants bear little resemblance to each other."

Something is still going to need to provide the power to run the aluminium foundries and nuclear is the cleanest, safest long term solution for that.

Neither you nor anyone else has proven that nuclear power is clean yet I have provided evidence solar and wind are clean. Such as 2 of the links I provide above. Studies linked to say both wind and geothermal and cheaper and cleaner than nuclear. Now will you provide links to evidence says nuclear is cleaner?

Lets run through the check lists.

I provide evidence that this list is wrong, where is yours saying you're right? And for one on that list, "Wind is nice but it's unpredictable and bigger wind farms kill migrating birds", buildings cats, and cars kill more birds than turbines.

Try again.

Together they can never provide more than 20% of the grids needs simply for stability reasons. This is pretty much a hard cap, once you get more than that from unpredictable sources rolling blackouts start to become a real problem.

So you know more about solar power than the writers of the SciAm article "A Solar Grand Plan", and know more about wind power than the writers of a new study in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science" as well as those who created the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States at the National Renewable Energy Lab? What is your degree in and where did you get it so that you're smarter than they are? The SciAm article says that by 2050 solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs. The National Acad

Environmentally nuclear is vastly better than all the other serious energy sources.

Prove it.

Now that I asked fro proof I'll provide my own evidence which supports my position as well as contradicts yours. "Report: Wind the Best Energy; Nuclear, Coal and Ethanol the Worst". "For Cheap Clean Energy, Go Geothermal, Study Says". "Oregon Geothermal Energy = Baseload Energy".

Wind and solar are not serious energy sources as is hinted by how much subsidies they need

By that criteria nuclear power is not a serious energy source because it needs massive subsidies. Not only does it need guarantied loans but it also needs it's liability limited and government disposal of it's waste. All alternative energy sources put together including geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, even biofuels only get a fraction of the subsidies nuclear power gets. "While renewable energy may require subsidies for the immediate future, nuclear power needs subsidies forever." From the Financial Times:

"'But those hoping for handouts would be disappointed. The "incentives" for nuclear and carbon capture and storage are only there to "help a nascent sector grow', he said."

"We are not going to achieve a competitive [nuclear] sector by handing out subsidies... we are not in the business of giving out subsidies. We are in the business of maintaining a level playing field."

"It's telling that the 'level playing field' the industry wants and the one the government wants bear little resemblance to each other."

Something is still going to need to provide the power to run the aluminium foundries and nuclear is the cleanest, safest long term solution for that.

Neither you nor anyone else has proven that nuclear power is clean yet I have provided evidence solar and wind are clean. Such as 2 of the links I provide above. Studies linked to say both wind and geothermal and cheaper and cleaner than nuclear. Now will you provide links to evidence says nuclear is cleaner?

Lets run through the check lists.

I provide evidence that this list is wrong, where is yours saying you're right? And for one on that list, "Wind is nice but it's unpredictable and bigger wind farms kill migrating birds", buildings cats, and cars kill more birds than turbines.

Try again.

Together they can never provide more than 20% of the grids needs simply for stability reasons. This is pretty much a hard cap, once you get more than that from unpredictable sources rolling blackouts start to become a real problem.

So you know more about solar power than the writers of the SciAm article "A Solar Grand Plan", and know more about wind power than the writers of a new study in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science" as well as those who created the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States at the National Renewable Energy Lab? What is your degree in and where did you get it so that you're smarter than they are? The SciAm article says that by 2050 solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs. The National Acad

A salesperson for renewable energy concluded that renewable energy is cheaper than it's chief competitor!

I noticed you provided no citations to back up your statement that nuclear power is clearer than coal and does does not need subsidies. I on the other hand provided not one but four links to back up mine in my post you replied to, and more links previously. Including links to business and freemarket supporters. Yes one was from a clean energy group, but hey didn't you claim nuclear power is clean. Another link was to a magazine, one to news, and one news about a study on costs. And it links to another study that "ranked technologies according to their environmental impact." Number one was wind, two solar thermal, and three geothermal. And "nuclear, coal and ethanol ranked at the bottom."

Try again.

Uh, you are aware that the majority of Uranium for Commercial Nuclear Power now comes from deactivated Nuclear Warheads.

Citation needed. But I doubt you'll provide one.

The AP1000 will be manufactured in modules designed for rail or barge shipment. This will allow constructing many modules in parallel. The plant is designed to have fuel load 36 months after concrete is first poured. This construction period is much shorter than generation II designs. If achieved, it should greatly decrease the interest costs needed to build the plant. Such reductions would make the design much more economically competitive against other power sources than previous generation nuclear plants.

Three years after concrete is poured? I notice you include an "If achieved" escape clause, you then say "Can they do it, I have no idea". So there are none of these units working and online providing power to the grid. They provide 1154 MWe or 1.154 gigawatts of electricity? Wind, and solar, on the other hand is proven. Erect 100 5 megawatt wind turbines a year and in 3 years you've added 1.5 gigawatts of capacity in those three years. Or 500 megawatts a year. Wind power can be added within months, even you admit nuclear power needs more than 3 years lead tyme.

I'm sorry if you don't "believe" these things, but they are as perfectly possible as theories regarding mass adoption of Solar and Wind (though I do think Nuclear is a sounder investment if only because there's never a doubt that it will produce electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

Wind and solar are proven. Your nuclear power plants are not. Geothermal is not only proven but it is also used for baseloads, your 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

You believe in the theories of nuclear power while I believe in the proven power sources of geothermal, solar, and wind.

Falcon

Of course not! Why would anyone turn down a subsidy offered? That doesn't change the fact, however, that A Nuclear Power plant and produce energy cheaper than coal

Citation needed. On the other hand, I'll provide some:

"Nick d'Arbeloff, president of the New England Clean Energy Council, views nuclear plants as costly. "Nuclear power plants are massively expensive and they are massively subsidized."
"By far the cheapest, cleanest, and quickest strategy to meet America's growing demand for electricity is energy efficiency and demand-side management."
"For Cheap Clean Energy, Go Geothermal, Study Says".
"Coal is America's most abundant and cheapest fossil fuel but, as Scott Pelley reports, burning it happens to be the biggest contributor to global warming."

Wiki has a table of the cost of various energy sources at Levelised energy cost. Of more than 10 sources listed of cost per megawatt coal is cheapest while 4 others are potentially cheaper than nuclear. One of those potentially cheaper is wind.

with a virtually nonexistent environmental footprint

Try to tell that to indigenous people's from who's land uranium is mined. Ask the Sioux or Navajo in the US. Ask the Algonquin First Nation in Canada. Or the aboriginals in Australia such as the Adnyamathanha community.

Now I picked on Australia, Canada, and the Unites States because they should have among the strictest environmental laws. Imagine what happens in countries without strong environmental laws.

AND with equal reliability (which, of all of the renewables I've ever heard of, none can accomplish all three).

Check into conservation which is listed as being cheaper and geothermal which is also listed as being cheaper by at least one of the links above and is good for baseload power.

Subsidies will be taken by the Nuclear Industry as long as they are offered

Nuclear power asks and is addicted to subsides. Without them Wall Street will not pay for nuclear power plants to be built. At least solar and wind would be built without subsidies. Think NanoSolar asked for or was given subsidies? Not that I know of, instead billionaire founders of Google invested in NanoSolar. Even if they did though, economically subsidies are supposed to be only temporary aid, however coal and nuclear power get subsidized year after year after year. There is nothing temporary about the subsidies they get.

One, the new "Cap and Trade" laws will make Coal Power (which is already more expensive to operate than Nuclear, even though the initial plant construction costs *might* be cheaper)

As referenced above coal is cheapest and even with cap and trade or carbon capture and storage it's still cheaper than nuclear power. Now if you have a link to data that disputes that provide it.

Despite all the rosy pictures and cheery outlook for renewables, *only* Nuclear Energy is a drop in replacement for Coal Fired Energy.

No matter how many tymes you repeat a lie* it doesn't magically make i

Power transmission is a bigger emergency than wind power.

And it would seem Texas and California would agree. Both have approved multi Billion dollar infrastructure upgrades. Which, even if a new wind farm started construction today likely would not be operational prior to the completion of the new lines several years from now.

Disclaimer: I work for the parent company of Lone Star Transmission.

Unfortunately I don't have such a choice now, I rent an apartment.

Do the research, if you can make it make financial sense(remember, it'd be a deductible expense!), talk with your landlord. They might do it.

I have done some research. Hopefully in a few years I'll own the apartment building. My sister owns it now but when the mortgage is paid down enough so I can qualify for one the plan is that she will sell it to me and I'll take over the mortgage. Once I do own it I'll have an energy audit done, then save money to have an architect redesign the building.

in the sense of a 'carbon tax', nuclear power is lumped in right along with wind, solar, tidal, etc...

Except nuclear power isn't carbon free, the construction emits a lot of carbon. How? Nuclear power plants require vast amounts of concrete and steel. Both require a lot of energy to make, concrete is made from cement and cement is made from heating lime to 1450C in a kiln. A lot of heat is also required to make steel. More than likely that energy comes from a fossil fuel. Then there's uranium mining. These along with other things are called the nuclear cycle.

Oh, and when have I expressed anything but disdain for coal power?

When did I say you didn't?

I'm trying to remember, did you ever post a link showing just how much nuclear power is subsidized? Bonus points if it shows coal or nuclear above wind/solar per kwh.

Yes I have. "Hooked on Subsidies: Why conservatives should join the left's campaign against nuclear power" is one. CATO, a Freemarket Institute, also has articles that say something about coal subsidies.

• Coal-to-liquids: "It's a Syn
• Clean Coal: "McCain, Obama, and Clean Coal"
• Rural Subsidies

And it doesn't matter if the company making the solar panel doesn't get the subsidy if every customer who buys their product gets one.

You're right it's still a subsidy however the people have a choice as to who they buy from. When a subsidy is given to nuclear power people don't have that choice.

BTW, your first solar and nanosolar links go to the same spot.

Oops I cut and pasted wrong, NanoSolar.

Nanosolar gets government subsidies

Maybe I spoke too soon. Looking at that page you provide a link to though it doesn't say how much or what type of subsidy Nanosolar gets. The second link says Germany gave the company a subsidy for it's German plant. The "Spectrum" article " First Solar: Quest for the $1 Watt" says the subsidies are feed-in tariffs. Because it's not the government giving the money though I don't consider them subsidies. Perhaps "rebate" would be a better word.

Falcon

Unfortunately I don't have such a choice now, I rent an apartment.

Do the research, if you can make it make financial sense(remember, it'd be a deductible expense!), talk with your landlord. They might do it.

If carbon emissions were taxed alternative energy wouldn't look as expensive. And there are no clean coal plants in commercial production, what plants there are are for research.

Pretty much my point. Except that, in the sense of a 'carbon tax', nuclear power is lumped in right along with wind, solar, tidal, etc... Oh, and when have I expressed anything but disdain for coal power? I want to get rid of it! Mountaintop mining is another form of nasty pollution in my mind.

Even then though I doubt nuclear power would be profitable without subsidies.

I'm trying to remember, did you ever post a link showing just how much nuclear power is subsidized? Bonus points if it shows coal or nuclear above wind/solar per kwh.

All I have is a Wall street journal article:

$29.91 'clean coal' per mwh (megawatt hour)
$24.34 solar
$23.37 wind
$1.59 nuclear .67 hydroelectric .44 normal coal .25 Natural Gas

Yes, engineering always needs to be done but they are not being subsidized at the same amount as coal or nuclear. They may have but I doubt either First Solar or Nanosolar received subsidies directly. You could say Germany's Nanosolar order is one, and it might be, but I don't think of it so much as a subsidy anymore than first adopters subsidize research and development.

Germany forces the electric companies to pay something like 10X what they normally pay for every kwh of solar energy sold on the grid; I'd tend to say that's a subsidy. And it doesn't matter if the company making the solar panel doesn't get the subsidy if every customer who buys their product gets one. BTW, your first solar and nanosolar links go to the same spot.

Still - Nanosolar gets government subsidies - "Nanosolar in 2006 announced a $75 million Series C round, which it claimed amounted to $100 million when combined with government subsidies." and "Nanosolar already has secured a subsidy for 50 percent of the capital expenses of building the German facility." 50% capex subsidy

First solar? Well, the first page of google reveals less, but they still seem dependent upon german subsidies.

Again, I'm not opposed to wind/solar/whatever where they make the most sense. I just think we should put some money down on actually building a few plants. Odds are they'll prove their worth over an estimated 60+ year lifespan, even if wind/solar end up being a bigger chunk of the final answer.

DOE is tracking what people in the industry think they can manage. PV is likely to be producing 25 GW of capacity a year in 2012. Probably 9% of that will be priced below $1/Watt http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/report-cigs-could-supply-3gw-of-solar-panels-by-2012-5625.html the CdTe and CIGS thin film panels. Everyone else will have to get there soon after to survive. It is really really hard to see how CSP can get down to that level very soon or how it can install that much capacity a year soon either.

150MW Data Center...

If a 7.2MW plant can power 9,000 homes, then a 150MW data center would use the equivalent of nearly 200,000 homes...

Didn't seem right so a bit of research found...

"5MW - the power consumption of a large data center today, according to Subodh Bapat, who runs Sun's energy efforts. 50MW - that's the average large datacenter in 2020, he said."

from some greentech mob

So we either have typical media numbers spin, or that's one mother of a data center they plan to build.

Brooke Coleman, head of the NFA, calls Obama's position on biofuels "infinitely better" than McCain's. As a daily reader of http://www.greentechmedia.com/ I can tell you that Obama is so so so so so much better than McCain on his understanding of technology and how to use it (great Fast Company mag article on Obama and Facebook worth finding), his understanding of the challenges and opportunitties of renewable energy ( see : http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/driving-change-how-us-prez-candidates-could-impact-cars-5113.html ) and c'mon who is going to make us look better in the eyes of the world??? Obama !!!

Brooke Coleman, head of the NFA, calls Obama's position on biofuels "infinitely better" than McCain's. As a daily reader of http://www.greentechmedia.com/ I can tell you that Obama is so so so so so much better than McCain on his understanding of technology and how to use it (great Fast Company mag article on Obama and Facebook worth finding), his understanding of the challenges and opportunitties of renewable energy ( see : http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/driving-change-how-us-prez-candidates-could-impact-cars-5113.html ) and c'mon who is going to make us look better in the eyes of the world??? Obama !!!

He's also sued the Magna Carta. ;) I actually read about him when he triggered one of my Google News Alerts by suing Steve Fambro, founder of Aptera Motors, for not giving him a long-sleeved shirt to stay warm with. Aptera is the company that's making the two hyper-efficient spaceship-like three wheelers: the $27k, 120-mile range Aptera Typ-1e electric car and the $30k Aptera Typ-1h plug-in hybrid.

He's also sued the Magna Carta. ;) I actually read about him when he triggered one of my Google News Alerts by suing Steve Fambro, founder of Aptera Motors, for not giving him a long-sleeved shirt to stay warm with. Aptera is the company that's making the two hyper-efficient spaceship-like three wheelers: the $27k, 120-mile range Aptera Typ-1e electric car and the $30k Aptera Typ-1h plug-in hybrid.

A commenter on Greentech Media points out that this research is mostly NASA and DOD funded.

No, I'd say zero-emission and near-zero-emission coal plants are 'clean.'

And where is the coal going to come from? Mining that's where and mining is dirty, especially Mountain Top Removal. As for the link you provide it says almost nothing about "zero-emission and near-zero-emission coal plants". One thing I did notice was that it said the CO2 was going to be stored underground. How in the world is anyone going to be able to keep it there? In a release of a massive amount of gas stored underground, in a methane burp, at Lake Nyos, Cameroon more than 1700 were killed up to 25 km away.

No, I'd say zero-emission and near-zero-emission coal plants are 'clean.'