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The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

The answer is yes, and this morning Rocky Mountain Institute and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins were featured in a New York Times blog in response to last years Presidential Debate. Energy efficiency, a solution at the core of RMIs work, was discussed as a viable and economically profitable resolution to both energy and economy issues. New York Times writer Kate Galbraith points out that RMI and Amory Lovins have consistently advocated the benefits of a soft-path approach to energy, with efficiency at its core. You can read the article here.

When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and micropower (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in Forget Nuclear, and fully documented in The Nuclear Illusion, available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio.

Hopefully our vision will help put these widely publicized issues into perspective and move us all toward a better understanding that takes us beyond politically divisive issues to collective and viable solutions.

Nuclear power plants use water because dry cooling would take up a much larger area. Solar already has a large area so dry cooling is not a problem. The scale of nuclear power is limited by the flow in the river. Already they disrupt the river ecology and have to be shut down from time to time. Nuclear power can't increase scale by becoming more efficient either because the fuel is fragile. So, it can not scale up any further. You were mistaken in saying that solar faces the same constraints as nuclear. It does not.

When nuclear power is admired for its scale, there is an error. It is non-dispatchable low quality power that is more an more frequently subject to unscheduled disruption with accompanying long delays in coming back on line, unreliability that can cause safety issues as in the Florida blackout. The only advantage of scale is cost but nuclear is not competitive http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly so there is no advantage. Wanting scale for scale's sake is a mistake.

If you want to save the world, you have to make it more profitable to save it than destroy it.

Here's my obligatory plug for The Rocky Mountain Institute which is focused on the business case for sustainability in recognition of this truth.

When the loans go south, the politicians who pushed for them are no longer in office. That makes this kind of thing easy compared to bank bailouts which get you party kicked out of office.

I agree that the subsidies for current nuclear power are very high but every single one of these loans will face default so we are looking at a 100% subsidy for any new nuclear power. There is just no way that any utilities are going to keep paying for the power since in will be so much more expensive than anything else. http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly

That does not work out that well since the new high burn-up reactors have a problem with iodine-129 http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/new-nuclear-reactor-s-waste-is and the electricity from new nuclear plants costs over $0.14/kWh http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly So, new nuclear does not look so good.

Nuclear costs upwards of $8 million/MW for a power plant and then you have to pay for fuel. This is more than four times as much as for thin film solar PV. You might be thinking that the cost of energy rather than capacity is low. Not so. It is also the most expensive on a kWh basis. http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E09-01_NuclPwrClimFixFolly1i09.pdf

Actually, what that study showed is that if you get 200,000 miles out of a Prius and a Hummer, they'll have similar energy costs.

Actually, what the study showed was that if you wrote a report with complete bullshit absurdities you could convince some people that a gigantic vehicle that gets 14 MPG average would have better or equivalent energy consumption to a small vehicle that gets 46 MPG.

Some people tried to analyse what little information was available about the report and found absurdities such as the Hummer H3 rated at 207,000 miles in its lifetime and the Prius at only 109,000 miles. While still others ran known models that are used to measure life cycle energy consumption and even when using the absurdities from the Dust to Dust report they still could not produce the ridiculous energy consumption numbers from the report.

The fact is that more than 80% of an automobiles life cycle energy is consumed in the operation of the vehicle. That bit of information makes it virtually impossible for a vehicle that consumes more than 3x the operating energy of a smaller car to some how use less or the same amount of energy as the small car over their life cycles.

As far as new versus old, just as its a no brainer that a small fuel efficient car will consume less total energy than a monster SUV its also obvious that buying a new car will not magically reduce total energy consumption. However, since we know autos have a life cycle there will be a need for many new vehicles so it may not be a bad idea to use some of our no brainer knowledge to have a positive impact on our energy consumption.

your cash goes to:

... bad stuff ...

Correct so far. In fact, because oil tends to dominate the economy of countries that are major producers of it, those countries are in fact damaged as well, causing the bad stuff to happen in the first place. For example, their currency value goes up too high for any of their industries other than oil to be competitive internationally -- and it's easier for them to import those items anyways -- so the bulk of their non-oil economy stagnates and withers. This makes for a lot of unemployment, unrest, etc. Also, the government holds near-monopoly power on the economy, and so tends strongly towards the dictatorial.

It's not a coincidence that most of the world's oil comes from the most volatile regions on Earth.

we need electric cars supported by a new wave of modern nuclear power plants. of course there are better sources of electricity than nuclear, but most of these are boutique and cannot scale like nuclear can. this includes wind and solar.

What in the world makes you think that solar and wind are not scalable like nuclear? In fact, I would argue it's the opposite:

• Since solar and wind come in smaller increments, it's easier to add capacity, even in locations where none exists yet. This means lower barriers to entry, and thus faster and more-widespread scalability.

• The environmental hurdles are much easier to overcome, even ignoring the toxic-waste and protesting-hippies concerns.

• The aforementioned waste- and hippie-related problems.

• Even just general NIMBY. Nuclear plants are quite frightening for people to have nearby -- even for non-hippies. Solar and wind installations, on the other hand, literally are being installed even in people's back yards.

• A larger number of smaller installations is far friendlier to the grid, because their output will be more consistent on average. A nuclear plant needs to go offline periodically each year for maintenance, causing Gigawatt-scale dips in available supply.

• Uranium supply is limited, and causes environmental damage to mine and process. We've barely even begun to tap into our available solar and wind resources.

• Nuclear is a mature technology, and its costs are only going up. Wind and solar still have a great deal of innovation remaining, and their costs are only going down.

• If your utility is adding a nuclear plant, your rates are going to go up substantially. If it's adding wind and/or solar, they're probably going to go down, or at least remain even.

• There isn't a single nuclear plant in development on the planet that is not receiving a massive amount of help from a government entity. Even many huge subsidies available in the U.S. are going unclaimed. The market has rejected Nuclear already. Contrast that with the amount being invested in wind and solar research and buildouts -- despite the uncertainty of continued government subsidies. Also, wind/solar promise to become economical without subsidies very soon, as they scale up and develop. Nuclear hasn't reached that point even after half a century of development and buildout.

Every dollar put into building a nuclear plant today is a dollar that could have been invested in a solar or wind plant. Since nuclear takes so much more time to come online, and costs so much more, that means that the current coal and natural gas plants will be operating that much longer. So, in essence, investment in new nuclear energy will contribute further to global warming.

My main reference for this: RMI summary page
Detailed report

your cash goes to:

... bad stuff ...

Correct so far. In fact, because oil tends to dominate the economy of countries that are major producers of it, those countries are in fact damaged as well, causing the bad stuff to happen in the first place. For example, their currency value goes up too high for any of their industries other than oil to be competitive internationally -- and it's easier for them to import those items anyways -- so the bulk of their non-oil economy stagnates and withers. This makes for a lot of unemployment, unrest, etc. Also, the government holds near-monopoly power on the economy, and so tends strongly towards the dictatorial.

It's not a coincidence that most of the world's oil comes from the most volatile regions on Earth.

we need electric cars supported by a new wave of modern nuclear power plants. of course there are better sources of electricity than nuclear, but most of these are boutique and cannot scale like nuclear can. this includes wind and solar.

What in the world makes you think that solar and wind are not scalable like nuclear? In fact, I would argue it's the opposite:

• Since solar and wind come in smaller increments, it's easier to add capacity, even in locations where none exists yet. This means lower barriers to entry, and thus faster and more-widespread scalability.

• The environmental hurdles are much easier to overcome, even ignoring the toxic-waste and protesting-hippies concerns.

• The aforementioned waste- and hippie-related problems.

• Even just general NIMBY. Nuclear plants are quite frightening for people to have nearby -- even for non-hippies. Solar and wind installations, on the other hand, literally are being installed even in people's back yards.

• A larger number of smaller installations is far friendlier to the grid, because their output will be more consistent on average. A nuclear plant needs to go offline periodically each year for maintenance, causing Gigawatt-scale dips in available supply.

• Uranium supply is limited, and causes environmental damage to mine and process. We've barely even begun to tap into our available solar and wind resources.

• Nuclear is a mature technology, and its costs are only going up. Wind and solar still have a great deal of innovation remaining, and their costs are only going down.

• If your utility is adding a nuclear plant, your rates are going to go up substantially. If it's adding wind and/or solar, they're probably going to go down, or at least remain even.

• There isn't a single nuclear plant in development on the planet that is not receiving a massive amount of help from a government entity. Even many huge subsidies available in the U.S. are going unclaimed. The market has rejected Nuclear already. Contrast that with the amount being invested in wind and solar research and buildouts -- despite the uncertainty of continued government subsidies. Also, wind/solar promise to become economical without subsidies very soon, as they scale up and develop. Nuclear hasn't reached that point even after half a century of development and buildout.

Every dollar put into building a nuclear plant today is a dollar that could have been invested in a solar or wind plant. Since nuclear takes so much more time to come online, and costs so much more, that means that the current coal and natural gas plants will be operating that much longer. So, in essence, investment in new nuclear energy will contribute further to global warming.

My main reference for this: RMI summary page
Detailed report

For the link-phobic, here's the abstract:

Abstract
This paper addresses the debate over compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and incandescents through life-cycle analyses (LCA) conducted in the SimaPro1 life-cycle analysis program. It compares the environmental impacts of providing a given amount of light (approximately 1,600 lumens) from incandescents and CFLs for 10,000 hours. Special attention has been paid to recently raised concerns regarding CFLs--specifically that their complex manufacturing process uses so much energy that it outweighs the benefits of using CFLs, that turning CFLs on and off frequently eliminates their energy-efficiency benefits, and that they contain a large amount of mercury. The research shows that the efficiency benefits compensate for the added complexity in manufacturing, that while rapid on-off cycling of the lamp does reduce the environmental (and payback) benefits of CFLs they remain a net "win," and that the mercury emitted over a CFL's life--by power plants to power the CFL and by leakage on disposal--is still less than the mercury that can be attributed to powering the incandescent.

How about this?

I've been there, and it's super cool. Their heating system is a woodstove, which they use occasionally.

The point is, the libertarian position is directly against wealth redistribution. In most modern societies, this is done through progressive taxing, luxury taxes, and estate taxes. Without those tools, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and eventually are so far behind that they are pretty much slaves.

Stealing from the rich and giving to uncle Sam you mean? Allow more people to keep more of the money they earn then they can create new jobs which benefit everyone. They can do this in two ways. The more money people can keep that they earn, the more they can invest and/or spend. Investing means more money can be used for research and for job creation. The more people spend the more jobs can be created as well. Whereas with government, with few exceptions government is less efficient than the capital market. Also more money goes to the already wealthy.

For instance in the US large multinational agriculture corporations get billions of dollars in subsidies yearly. That was a big reason the WTO meetings in Geneva fell apart. India and other countries demanded the EU, Japan, and the US to stop subsidizing these businesses because with subsidizies multinationals can sell food in India, South Korea, and Mexico cheaper than farmers in these countries can grow food. If you live in the US do you ever wonder why so many Mexicans and other Latin Americans come to the US as "illegal aliens or immigrants"? Many of them are being driven off of their farms because they can't compete with subsidized US agribusinesses who are able to export food to Mexico and sale it cheaply there.

Read some Marx.

I have read him, as well as Hilter's book. I've also read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations , various writings from Thomas Paine, and Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Of course the anti-capitalists (which is the true goal of the so-called environmental movement) would never present a low probability wild guess based on intentionally falsified data (such as the "hockey stick") as fact...oh wait...that's exactly what they did.

Do you really need to name calling for those who you disagree with? You're doing the same thing as what you accused the grandparent of doing. Fact is is not all environmentalists are anticapitalists, sure some are but not all. I know people who, like me, are both environmentalists and capitalists as well. And more and more companies are getting into the act as well. The book Natural Capitalist offers a bunch of case studies and such illustrating how businesses have been able to cut expenses by reducing resources and waste. The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is a nonprofit that "shows businesses, communities, individuals, and governments how to create more wealth and employment, protect and enhance natural and human capital, increase profit and competitive advantage, and enjoy many other benefits--largely by doing what they do far more efficiently."

2 MW really isn't all that much, in terms of enterprise-level power systems. That would run about 1000 homes, or a smallish skyscaper.

However, thinking of the power source in terms of the number of computers you can run is missing a very important part of the picture: COOLING. Refridgeration can account for half or more of the power requirements for modern datacenters. That's the downside to the drive towards more computation in a smaller footprint: much higher cooling requirements. And these buildings are not typically built (nor are the racks typically arranged) for optimal cooling. Far from it. There are enormous efficiency benefits to be had, if the designers would just slow down long enough to think things through.

Rocky Mountain Institute's Design Recommendations for High Performance Data Centers offers up a number of suggestions that could drop computing power requirements by a factor of four using current technology more intelligently deployed. With the development of new servers designed for efficiency, they forcast a potential for 10x energy savings. (Granted, this is vs. 2003 technology, but even so.) That translates into much reduced cooling requirements.

They also suggest designing the data centers to generate their power on site, using high-duty-cycle generators or solid-oxide fuel cells, and use the grid as a backup. Then you can capture the waste heat from the generation system, and use it to drive an adsorption chiller to provide a large part of your cooling needs (which have been greatly reduced by aforementioned efficiecy measures). The end result is higher reliability, lower capital costs, and MUCH lower operating costs.

Rocky Mountain Institute did a charrette (design intensive) on energy efficient data centers a few years ago. Some of the points are a little out of date, but there's still some very good stuff there. They outline a set of techniques to reduce the energy consumption by nearly a factor of 10 while increasing reliability and without impacting performance.

Rocky Mountain Institute did a charrette (design intensive) on energy efficient data centers a few years ago. Some of the points are a little out of date, but there's still some very good stuff there. They outline a set of techniques to reduce the energy consumption by nearly a factor of 10 while increasing reliability and without impacting performance.

Or, more on topic, how the WHO screwed over Borneo by recklessly spraying DDT without first examining its effects on the local population. They ended up very likely causing more deaths than the malaria outbreak originally would have.

Haven't seen too many instances of references to RMI or the Hypercar here on /.

The Hypercar design that they've put a lot of engineering effort into would appear to merit some consideration. It's predicated on the assumption of a transition to the hydrogen fuel cell, but I would imagine that a biodiesel/electric hybrid based on their Whole System Design methodology represents one viable future of personal transportation.

It'd certainly be interesting to hear some slashengineers comment on some of the concepts integral to RMI's approach.

Nuclear power is extremely capital-intensive, and starves other alternatives for capital, and I'm not just talking about power plants. The sensible thing to do is to reduce demand first - not by "freezing in the dark", as nuclear industry honchos characterized conservation in the '70s, but by efficiency improvements. Lighting, for example, is headed toward LEDs vastly more efficient than conventional lamps. So we have a choice: pay more for the bulbs and recoup the cost in energy savings, or keep using cheap bulbs and pay more for shiny nuclear power plants. Which one makes better economic sense to the consumer?

Watch for detailed rebuttal of the op-ed piece from places like the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Kaboom == FUD.

RTFR

http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Energy/E03-05_20Hy drogenMyths.pdf

Some ideas are flash heater for hot water, or heat exchanger for used shower water to water going into a traditional water heater, or solar water heating of course. There's the usual thermal mass ideas to even out temperature swings, such as this green roof. Concrete has an undeserved reputation of being ugly, and cracking, and trapping moisture. People don't even consider it for residences, but somehow prefabricated concrete is ok for commercial buildings. Some concrete systems are tilt-wall, poured into molds (the most common, as that's the easiest to make look exactly like a conventional home), and the more radical "shot-crete" for domes. Another interesting site is Rocky Mt. Institute. Lot of ideas out there.

A lot of this stuff can be done for less money than conventional construction. I quite agree with the complaints about these contractors and builders who want to turn everything into a horrendous expense for the would-be homebuilder. Atypical = expensive, even when it's not expensive. The vast majority of "green" designs are put out of reach of most people by this sort of mentality. The sort of gadget-packed geek home that appears in, say, Popular Science is ridiculous. All the advantages of a solar water heater can be instantly negated for 3 times the expense by adding pumps, or the payback can be made longer than a century by using expensive metals, etc.

A thing I'd like to not have in a home is the fireplace. I know, I know, most people have a thing for fireplaces. I'd rather not have anything at all, but might settle for "fireplace ready", as in, a place to hook up a chimney. Let the next owners of the house blow $ on a fireplace if they just have to have one. I'd also like to lose the dryer. Have an indoor clothesline that also is a closet. But for those who just have to have a dryer, why in the world is all that hot air always vented to the outside? Be great to have that warm and humid dryer exhaust pumped into the house in winter.

I've also wondered whether rounding off exterior corners would be a good idea. As in, less surface area per interior area = improved thermal properties. Saw quite a few comments declaring a lvoe for the rectangular, so maybe not.

This issue has been well-analyzed for decades, as in "Least Cost Energy: Solving the CO2 Problem" by Amory Lovins (out of print, but the Rocky Mountain Institute has other documentation online). Reducing demand is the same as increasing capacity, and if it is cheaper, then do it first. Better insulation, for example, reduces energy demand 24/7 just as a nuclear plant (supposedly) provides energy 24/7 and costs much less per unit of demand reduced than the nuke does per unit of energy produced. It's also much quicker to reduce demand through efficiency improvements than to increase capacity by building more power plants.

Actually according to the http://www.rmi.org/Rocky Mountain Institute we've made huge gains in energy productivity over the last several decades and there's a lot more to be done.

There are some simpler ways to manage power use and heat in a data centre. Here they suggest simply putting the power supply above the chips can make a huge difference.

Barring some miracle breakthrough

No, we don't need a miracle. An aerodynamic, low-rolling resistance, ultralight (composite) mid-sized SUV could be energy efficent enough to go ~330 mile on 3.4kg (138 L) of hydrogen. At 5,000 psi (easily doable today) the tank(s) would be a very managable size.

Look up the hypercar and check out pages 233-235 (257-259 in pdf) of Winning the Oil Endgame [warning: ~2 meg PDF]

No, I'm not the experts but I refer you to the: Rocky Mountains Insititute . They are a not for profit environmental think tank who work with corporations and governments (Ford, the US Military for example) to increase profits or reduce costs through more efficient environmental practices. They ran a Design Charrette around this specific question. This is where they take their staff members with general energy efficiency expertise and a whole bunch of industry types (data centre types, power company types etc. and worked at redesigning the entire data centre idea from scratch with energy efficiency in mind. There is a detailed report including return on investment figures and detailed financial breakdowns. The information available is extremely comprehensive and free (as in beer). These guys are excellent and slashdotters might also like to look at similar exercises they have done with cars and energy security.

No, I'm not the experts but I refer you to the: Rocky Mountains Insititute . They are a not for profit environmental think tank who work with corporations and governments (Ford, the US Military for example) to increase profits or reduce costs through more efficient environmental practices. They ran a Design Charrette around this specific question. This is where they take their staff members with general energy efficiency expertise and a whole bunch of industry types (data centre types, power company types etc. and worked at redesigning the entire data centre idea from scratch with energy efficiency in mind. There is a detailed report including return on investment figures and detailed financial breakdowns. The information available is extremely comprehensive and free (as in beer). These guys are excellent and slashdotters might also like to look at similar exercises they have done with cars and energy security.

No, I'm not the experts but I refer you to the: Rocky Mountains Insititute . They are a not for profit environmental think tank who work with corporations and governments (Ford, the US Military for example) to increase profits or reduce costs through more efficient environmental practices. They ran a Design Charrette around this specific question. This is where they take their staff members with general energy efficiency expertise and a whole bunch of industry types (data centre types, power company types etc. and worked at redesigning the entire data centre idea from scratch with energy efficiency in mind. There is a detailed report including return on investment figures and detailed financial breakdowns. The information available is extremely comprehensive and free (as in beer). These guys are excellent and slashdotters might also like to look at similar exercises they have done with cars and energy security.

Solar panels can not only smooth the peak (peak AC use often coincides with peak solar output), but they can shade the building. You can also use them to shade your cooling towers & building transformers to pre-cool them. Another option--use high-efficiency power supplies and make your colo customers use high-eff power supplies. 80plus.org Here's a useful book I've used to cut my company's computer power load by almost 16%: High Performance Data Centers, published by Rocky Mountain Institute. High Performance Data Centers, published by Rocky Mountain Institute.

Whether Peak Oil will happen in 2020 (or sooner/or later) does not mean Oil will disappear overnight. What will happen is what happened in the 1970s: an "Oil Shock".

An Oil Shock, in turn, means there will be tremendous economic problems to be solved, but it does not mean the End of the World. I suspect a lot of people will adapt to the new circumstances. They won't like it, but they will adapt, because this is what humans do best.

In the worst possible case, I think governments will strongly intervene -- they will have to -- to guarantee (and subsidize) oil supplies to the most crucial consumers (food producers, electricity producers, emergency responders, armed forces) while the rest of us will have to use mass transportation and convert ASAP to a regimen of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

That really sucks if you live in a country with poor mass transportation like, uh... 90% of the United States. It's going to be mostly OK in many European countries, where mass transportation (including high-speed trains) is already a fact of life and renewable energies are being increasingly adopted. I am not saying it will be a walk in the park, because it won't be, but most wealthy countries consume too much energy and waste so much of it.

Other things that will be very dodgy will be the survival of airlines and of most cargo ships. But, even there, there are solutions: blimps, for instance, are much more efficient than airplanes energy-wise, and can cross the Atlantic in a couple of days at most. Clipper ships, that are powered by wind, the ultimate renewable energy, can be brought back from the dead and maintain vital commercial links between continents. I also strongly suspect that nuclear-powered giant cargoes will be used in the near future, if Peak Oil becomes a reality.

Sure, these are slow methods of transcontinental transportation, but it's better than no transportation at all.

And, of course, it is a lot more efficient to organize teleconferences and email links than it is to send people from one end of the world to the other anyway.

Finally, don't forget that an Oil Shock will make all other sources of energy economically viable. Wind, Solar, Sea Tides, Geothermal, etc. will all become competitive once the price of Oil goes through the roof. And that's a good thing as far as I am concerned, since Oil consumption is also one of the major reasons Global Warming is taking place...

For more information on this, I do recommend the many documents published by the Rocky Mountain Institute, including "Winning the Oil End Game". Recommended readings before you start to panic.

YES! The moderator is gone! Oh, wait you apparently don't know what a moderator is for. It is there to slow down the neutrons, so they can initiate another fission reaction if the neutrons are not slowed down the U-235 doesn't absorb them, resulting in a halting of the fission reaction.

Yes, the moderator has now stopped absorbing fast neutrons. This will in turn lead to a temperature rise in the reactor. Loss of moderator was a contributing factor to the Chernobyl explosion. Slowing down those neutrons keeps the reactor cool. If the graphite burns away, the sudden increase in temperature will fuel the fire.

Oh and if you read more of the wikipedia entry you would have noted the layer of inflammable silicon carbide in the pebble that is not flammable, and thus acts as a fire break.
This same silcon carbide is subject to oxidisation erosion, and furthermore begins to seriously fail at temperatures above 1250 celcius. This layer is also subjected to mechanical wear and tear through normal pebble use. Creation of the pebbles is subject to industrial error and homogeneity cannot be guaranteed. Inhomegeneity There are over 250,000 pebbles per reactor.

So, basically the entire danger in the pebble bed reactor is a chemical fire.
That's a big danger in itself. Smoke from the fire could spread highly radioactive material far and wide if it escaped.

Well no more radioactive material than any other fire.
Materials in close proximity to radioactive substance, themselves become more radioactive. This effect is so significant that components from nuclear plants must be disposed of as radioactive waste. I imagine th esame would hold true of any chemicals inside a PBR.

There are problems with pebble bed reactors. They are not infallible systems.

"one which is as close to being carbon neutral as possible within economic constraints." (emphasis mine)
Nothing new here. They're going to scavenge waste heat from their power plant, do some intelligent rain water capture, and put the sewage through a wetlands for treatment. Mix in a decent recycling program, modern building standards on par with ASHRAE 90.1 2004 or California's Title 24, and efficient buildings and you're there. Pull in Amory from the Rocky Mountain Institute if you want a touch of inspiration (Solar powered traffic lights? Communal electric cars? Sewage fermented into methane for generators?) and call it a day. Not entirely carbon neutral, but as carbon neutral as possible within 'economic constraints.'

Is Arups any relation to Ove Arup? I think they're the guys who once put in a 5 acre lake to provide evaporative cooling for an adjacent office building (along with synergistic landscape and park benefits yadda yad). Sigh. I wish I had that kind of economically 'constrained' budget on my next building.

Corporations should not be doing "green" things for the sake of the environment, they should be doing it for the sake of their bottom lines. The fact is, increasing operating efficiency will not only reduce energy use and ultimately green house gas emissions, it can also significantly reduce operating costs and increase profit.

> As nice as wind turbines are, you're never gonna get enough to gnerate enough power

Actually, you're completely wrong. Nuclear power is doomed by its cost structure. If it were economically viable, believe me power companies would be churning them out. If there's one thing that energy companies are good at, it's making money.

See Amory Lovins article "Nuclear Follies Meet Market Realities"
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid97.php

"In 2004 alone, Spain and Germany each added as much wind capacity - two billion watts - as nuclear power is adding worldwide in each year of this decade."

"Nothing can save nuclear power from its dismal economics... Not new kinds of reactors: if they were free, the rest of the plant would still cost too much.

This is untrue on a kg for kg basis. One kg of hydrogen yields about as much energy as one gallon of gasoline, but the gallon of gasoline weighs 2.8 kg.

2. Hydrogen is REALLY difficult to store.(blah, blah...)

So you don't store hydrogen. You store it as some compound that you can reform either in the vehicle or at the fueling station. You don't run cars on liquid hydrogen anyway, you run them on compressed gaseous hydrogen. And it doesn't pass through a properly designed container, not quickly anyway. Just ask NASA.

3. Hydrogen burns very fast in comparison to gasoline. This makes engine design much more difficult and shortens the life of components.

That's why you don't burn it. You make electricity from it in fuel cells.

4. Hydrogen explodes nicely.

No it doesn't, not in the open anyway. You only get an explosion if it's contained, and it disperses very quickly.

For more information see here and elsewhere here.

This is untrue on a kg for kg basis. One kg of hydrogen yields about as much energy as one gallon of gasoline, but the gallon of gasoline weighs 2.8 kg.

2. Hydrogen is REALLY difficult to store.(blah, blah...)

So you don't store hydrogen. You store it as some compound that you can reform either in the vehicle or at the fueling station. You don't run cars on liquid hydrogen anyway, you run them on compressed gaseous hydrogen. And it doesn't pass through a properly designed container, not quickly anyway. Just ask NASA.

3. Hydrogen burns very fast in comparison to gasoline. This makes engine design much more difficult and shortens the life of components.

That's why you don't burn it. You make electricity from it in fuel cells.

4. Hydrogen explodes nicely.

No it doesn't, not in the open anyway. You only get an explosion if it's contained, and it disperses very quickly.

For more information see here and elsewhere here.

Nuclear power is more expensive than renewables because the regulatory regime it operates under *makes it* more expensive.

The nuclear power industry has benefited from more governmental help and subsidies than all the other energy technologies put together. 95% of the DOE research budget has gone to nuclear, and once you throw in all the subsidies, government sponsored waste manage programs, insurance coverage, loan guarantees, cleanup, etc, etc... the US government by some estimates has dumped $1 trillion into nuclear over the last 50 years. And the amazing part? It is still not economically viable!

Meanwhile, renewables with comparatively smaller government help have been beating the pants off nuclear in the free market. With all of its problems, why oh why should we continue to prop it up? Because its a neat science project? Not a good enough reason.

The last nuclear plants to come on line in the US generated power at 10-15 cents/kWh - and that is not including all of the external costs the industry leaves up to the government to cover

PV, wind, and other renewable are growing 6 times faster in the market compared to nuclear. Twice as much wind capacity is being added every year than nuclear has added in the last 10.

With all of nuclear problems: cost, waste, terrorism, insurance subsidies, security, proliferation, centralization, long construction (read IRR profits)- why bother?

There are cheaper, better, decentrialized, safer solutions. Even photovoltaics generates power as economically, and its cost has been coming down exponentially, even without the trillion dollars in subsidies enjoyed by the nuclear industry over the last 50 years!

The last nuclear plants to come on line in the US generated power at 10-15 cents/kWh - and that is not including all of the external costs the industry leaves up to the government to cover

PV, wind, and other renewable are growing 6 times faster in the market compared to nuclear. Twice as much wind capacity is being added every year than nuclear has added in the last 10.

With all of nuclear problems: cost, waste, terrorism, insurance subsidies, security, proliferation, centralization, long construction (read IRR profits)- why bother?

There are cheaper, better, decentrialized, safer solutions. Even photovoltaics generates power as economically, and its cost has been coming down exponentially, even without the trillion dollars in subsidies enjoyed by the nuclear industry over the last 50 years!

For over 10 years Amory Lovins has done insightful, creative, comprehensive, and sound technical analysis on how to redesign cars from a systems point of view in order to dramatically increase their efficiency, performance, and safety at a reasonable cost.

The problem is that the whole automotive transportation industry (the big auto companies plus thousands of smaller suppliers plus the fuel distribution system) needs to change. Some say it is too expensive to make the change, but when gasoline hits $10 a gallon the drag will multiply across the entire economy and system-wide, revolutionary change will look pretty good.

Well in my opinion we should be looking for the "technological silver bullets" becauase that is were the future resides. Bush is worried that the US economy would be wrecked by taxing energy consumption, then what does he think a disastrous war that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars is going to do.

I use to think that people were naive if you thought the war in Iraq was about oil and now I think you are naive if you think it wasn't about the control of oil and contracts in oil field development. Lets just put it this way, the war in Iraq was not about WMD and it wasn't about terrorism.

It is good tho to see Bush acknowledging that our dependance on oil is a national security. Amory Lovins has been saying this for years. In fact, our dependence is not unlike a chemically dependent junkie who will do things to get his next fix that he would not normally do.

Regardless imagine if the money that was spent in Iraq was spent on the development of new demand and supply side technology such as hybrid vehicles, cheap diode lighting, solar sail lighting, better building techniques and terrestrial and extraterrestrial solar energy production, safer and cleaner nuclear, wave energy and of couse the holy grail of fusion energy.

Further the taxing of energy consumption would not create economic disaster as Bush states and as you note in the UK. It would harm certain segments such as traditional energy suppliers but creates and fosters others industries that are self sustaining and pay long term dividends. It would create a whole new economy dedicated to supplying new forms of energy and using what we have more efficiently.