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People really need to read the original comment from the link given. I'll save you a click and post it here.

It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?

To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.

While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.

Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.

Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.

By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.

When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...

Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.

Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.

At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.

I keep seeing articles on the problems

It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?

To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.

While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.

Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.

Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.

By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.

When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...

Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.

Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.

At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.

I keep seeing articles on the problems of dirty, CO2 emitting, dangerous, and expensive energy. Let's talk solutions. Here's my solution... Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas.

Instead of bringing up the problem again and again I'd like to see more discussions on solutions.

I like hydro, nuclear, and wind as solutions. Those seem to come out on top on every selection parameter I could come up with.

I'm also a fan of the Pickens Plan.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...

That plan is to use as much natural gas to replace imported oil as we can while we develop alternatives.

Hmm, my my, where have I heard this before?
Perhaps here? http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

      * Create millions of new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind. And adding to that with additional solar generation capacity;
        * Building a 21st century backbone electrical transmission grid;
        * Providing incentives for homeowners and the owners of commercial buildings to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options; and
        * Using America's natural gas to replace imported oil as a transportation fuel in addition to its other uses in power generation, chemicals, etc.

While dependence on foreign oil is a critical concern, it is not a problem that can be solved in isolation. We have to think about energy as a whole, and that begins by considering our energy alternatives and thinking about how we will fuel our world in the next 10 to 20 years and beyond.

So, one has to wonder how does pending 50 million $ I'm with the government, and I'm here to help plan contrast and qualitatively learn from the 80 Million spend on the private sector T. Boone Pickens 80 million dollar plan.

And where was the press when Mr. Boon Pickens was spending and promoting is 80 million dollar effort, Oh I forgot they were /removed obvious remark/.
Hey, but they did report $80 Million the loss Here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40612094/ns/business-oil_and_energy/

Now don't mod me down for point out how history repeats. Its just sad how politics colors engineering, and renewable energy is a learnable technology, I'm just not sure anyone's trying to learn.

I'd take this article with a grain of salt. At least one big name in Natural Gas (T Boone Pickens) is very much interested in promoting Wind Power. (See the Picken's Plan.)

Um no... this was always in the "Pickens Plan." Wind is only one half of it. Moving vehicles over to natural gas (it's the only energy he thinks could displace oil in vehicles in a relatively short amount of time) is the second half.

You could have a good argument over your comment about whether he is overly optimistic about our supplies of natural gas though.

I know you have an ax to grind with nuclear power for some reason - but calling it "dirty" compared to it's alternatives is just silly and you should know better.

BS! Nuclear power is dirtier than either solar or wind. With both there is no waste to be stored. And there is no processing or reprocessing of fuel. The sun or wind is the fuel.

Does it create some potentially hazardous materials that have to be dealt with? Yes
Are they in reality THAT HARD to deal with? No

Yes it is hard to deal with. Even the French, who have gone further with reprocessing nuclear waste has problems doing it. "France is aggravating both problems: spent fuel and separated plutonium stocks." "Reprocessing [pdf] and MOX fuel use are uneconomical and will remain so for the foreseeable future;"

"Nuclear France - The Myths Uncovered"
"France gets nearly 80% of its electricity from its 58 reactors. However, such a heavy reliance on nuclear power brings with it many major, unsolved problems, most especially that of radioactive waste. Despite assertions to the contrary, the French nuclear story is far from a gleaming example of nuclear success. The example, set by the French nuclear infrastructure - and best exemplified by its giant nuclear corporation, Areva, is not to be emulated."

Are they really that bad for the environment? Not really

If you believe that you haven't seen the effects of uranium mining. "The Effects of Uranium Mining are Disastrous."

biggest problem with dealing with nuclear byproducts is NIMBY.

The biggest problem with wind is NIMBYism. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab has produced an atlas of wind potential through the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the continental US. Which I might add that Texas Oil Man T Boone Pickens is pushing with his Pickens Plan. But that's not all. The Pacific Northwest has a lot as well. If you draw a line south from there to Southern CA then turn east to Texas, you'll see more potential. Now go east, the Appalachians is a good location for wind as well. The mountains up the east coast have good locations. Offshore from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod there's another line of good cites.

Oh, I think it's rather telling that so called environmentalist activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr is one of those NIMBYs fighting wind farms in Cape Cod, from that first link on Nimbys.

Corn Ethanol? uses more energy to produce than it provides.

No, corn ethanol's EROEI, Energy Returned on Energy Invested, is about 1.5 or 1.6 to 1 or 1.2 or 1.5 to 1, about the same as oil sands. While it does make more energy than the energy required to make it, it doesn't even double the energy. Brazil gets from 8 to 10 units per unit of energy used from sugarcane.

PV

PV's produce as much energy in 5 years as it takes to make. PVs are warrantied for from 10 to 30 years depending on the manufacturer, so over their life they produce more energy than they need for manufacturing.

Wind - sure if you're lucky to live where it's windy and you use energy in the spring and fall (you don't).

Wind blows year round not just in the spring and fall. Wind also blows in a lot of places. As the Picken's Plan details the Rocky Mountains alone have enough potential wind energy to provide the 48 continuous states in the US with energy. That's not all though, the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States gives wind's potential in other parts of the US. The Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Southern California has an abundance of potential, along with Southern CA eastward to Texas. In the east the Appalachias and Cascades have good potential as it does off the coast between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras.

Falcon

Plants use solar, but very few natural things use wind or tidal power. Nature has had a very long time to try and fill these energy niches, so it is a safe guess that they can't produce enough energy to sustain a large population at a reasonable standard of living.

It may not be true in some parts of the world but the US has plenty of potential wind energy. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States lists the potential of various places. For instance just as the Picken's Plan covers, the Rocky Mountains alone have enough potential to supple the 48 continuous states with electricity. There are plenty of other places as well.

Falcon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Falcon

Scientific American just had an article on fast neutron reactors that get around the waste issue and don't create any weapons grade material: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste&page=1

SciAm has another article, "A Solar Grand Plan" which along with Picken's Plan shows why nuclear power isn't needed.

Falcon

I dropped by http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/ just now, where it says that wind energy can provide 20% of the U.S. electrical needs.

This will just about replace the nuclear reactors, which are pretty much being run past their design lives.

What the hell are we thus accomplishing with this trillion (thousand billion) dollars of windmills and $250 billion of new grid?

(1)Welp, we're depending on the weather for our energy, for one thing. (hunh?)
(2) And we're mounting four hundred foot propellers in Tornado Alley. (what?)
(3) And I dare anyone to say with a straight face that they can get around North Dakota to do maintenance during the winter.
Do these things even work at 50 below zero (F) ? And do they work when loaded with ice?

Allow me to propose the much, much less expensive David Small variant of the Pickens Plan. (Call it the Slim Pickens plan if you like old movies).

We could feed vultures with a much less expensive "Line Of Death" by selling hunting licenses in the Great Plains. Hunters could blast away randomly at birds, something like prop tips. In most states licenses like this completely pay for State Game and Fish departments.

We could do the 1950's SF Movie Sound Effects with big speakers emitting a low frequency "WAUM-WAUM-WAUM" sound to keep people up at night. And we could periodically have big cargo planes dropping huge fragments of propellers randomly out of the sky to simulate fractures.

Thus, we have all the pains of propellers, but none of the actual hassle, and an income source!

Thanks,
      Dave Small

There are too many posts following my first one to answer them all. I'll add a reply to yours because you mentioned HVDC. I went to Pickens's site and did a search in the Community section for "HVDC" and found that the subject of transport and storage is being covered. Here is one discussion for anyone wanting a quick take on the tone and direction. It's certainly no worse than most Slashdot discussions ;)

I think plenty of people are paying attention to precisely this argument:

http://www.pickensplan.com/

At least two things to consider:

- Natural gas can be (and is) used as an alternative to oil for transportation.
    And solar could offset natural gas currently being used for electricity generation.
    (It's being proposed over at http://pickensplan.com/)

- The oil used in the U.S for electricity generation is one thing.
    For gas prices, the important statistic is global use of oil for electricity generation.

Did you not see T. Boone Pickens' proposal for reducing our dependency on foreign fuels?

Solar isn't competing against oil unless you a solar powered car. Solar power is competing against coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear for electricity generation.

And Pickens' proposal was to create giant wind farms to generate electricity, so that we could free up the locally-sourced natural gas for cars.

I'm not saying I agree with him on everything, but some people understand plenty well where fuel comes from, at least well enough to know that you can use the same energy source for different purposes, just like you can use different energy sources for the same purpose.

(For what it's worth, our house is powered by wind and hydro for electricity, but natural gas for heat & water heat. I'd consider a swap to solar thermal if my HOA would allow solar anything on my roof.)

I like your ideas, but I think they are not as scalable as your arguments seem to imply. Distributed power generation only works when you have a distributed population. I.e., you might be able to coat every roof of every house in the burbs with solar cells, and fill the country-sides with wind turbines, but this still won't provide enough power for the CITIES. Especially when you are talking about cities in northern latitudes or countryside in gentle climes. For that you need concentrated energy generation capacity (ideally nuclear for base load with gas for peak capacity). This type of concentrated capacity necessitates high capital investments, either private or government. So while I very much like the idea of the Utopian aggrarian/distributed model, it is simply not realistic. At least not for our current society. Maybe in a couple hundred years as the draw of cities slowly wains and technology allows us to experiment with different social models. But not in the short term. Not even in the medium term. We have too many other things to spend our funds on. (BTW, I think that we should absolutely switch as much of our power generation to solar and wind as possible. Once the nanotube / multicolor absobtion based solar cells hits the market at reasonable buy-back costs it will make a lot more sense and the Pickens Plan is a great if expensive idea for reducing the importation of oil and reduction in pollution)

T. Boone Pickens is the guy funding a lot of this. He's a retired oil tycoon (who now runs some hedge funds). Even if you can't agree with his past and his wealth, you can't disagree with the fact that this guy is stepping up and attempting to _do someting_ about the problem. And he's willing to use his wealth to try and make it happen. They are currently constructing the largest wind farm in the world in western Texas.

Check it out for yourself and make your own judgements...

I really think that's what AC meant by "figure it out" I too had to "figure it out". I kept thinking some branch of Microsoft had suddenly decided to stop wandering around with it's eyes closed. (Which is about as crazy a concept as an oil tycoon saying drilling for oil won't get us out of this mess...)

The problem is that the quotes don't appear in a context that explains them. Look at his site: http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

Supposedly that's the plan. Ok, what is it? I see a lot of promises about results, but no plan to get there. The goal is to build sufficient wind farms to supply 20% of US electric needs and shut down all electric production via natural gas (in the US). Take that natural gas and use it for cars instead. Fine, that sounds like a reasonable goal. What's the actual plan to get there? I.e. what's the pain?

In principle, I'm willing to support government action to support this goal. However, before I pledge to do so, I'd really like to know what the plan is. Why does he need government action? In what form?