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UK to "get serious" About Renewable Energy
Bob Dobbs writes "Tomorrow the UK government will
announce (observer.co.uk) it's going to "get serious" about renewable energy; in the bleakest look at global warming so far Tony Blair will warn that extreme weather will wreak £150 billion worth of damage across Europe within a decade and the current situation is "unsustainable". On the bright side, it's mentioned that sustainable energy sources are less susceptible to terrorist attack."
Sounds like another arguement for my hydrogen powered Jeep. GWB mentioned it in his State of the Union Address too.
No telling what the British are thinking though, with all of that renewable energy sitting right there under the North Sea.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
this white paper, a few weeks ago,about the governemnt setting targets
for CO2 and renewable energy levels, instead they've set aspirations
(see the BBC , The Sunday Herald
and The Telegraph).
Most people seem to share the view that New Labour 'aspirations'
mean absolutely nothing, and we'll probally end up in 2050 with
more coal/gas/nuclear (best option in my opinion) powerstations than
ever before.
Renewable or sustainable? Nuclear fission is not renewable, but is sustainable in the long run (possibly with breeder reactors) and looks like the only way to reduce CO2 emission levels while keeping the energy production comparable to the current levels.
(Solar/photovoltaic consumes almost as much energy to make solar cells as they produce over their entire lifetime and yield toxic waste, solar/thermal has a poor ration of conversion to electricity, windmills and dams need to be spread over very large areas -- think whole countries -- to produce the same quantities...)
And nuclear reactors would still be vulnerable to terrorism. But they are not PC anyway.
What "tax breaks for SUVs" are you talking about?
Well, if he's talking about the ones everyone else is talking about, it's that SUVs don't have to meet the emmissions rules that cars do, nor do they have to meet the same MPG requirments (20 vs 27 for cars.)
Since it costs a bit more to make a cleaner car or a more efficient car, the suburban assult vehicles are getting a free ride on a statute meant to assist rural farmers and small businesses.
First Carbs have been out of favor for 15 years now. (The last auto with a carb was in the mid 80s) Second, even then US regulations required all cars to operate with a 10% ethanol mixture. Not 100% alcohol, but start. Further, many gas pumps supply that mixture, and in most cases you do not even know you are getting it.
I will grant that your points (other than sugar depostis) were true for old cars, but you looking at the 70s or before, not many cars that old are on the road, and those that are, are collectors cars who can afford expensive gas for the car. (That is the car should be driven so little due to its value as a collectors item that even $10/gallon for gas is affordable, no matter how poor you are)
Carbs are easier to modify for ethanol/alcohol than fuel injection, just change your jets, while fuel injection requires you find someone who can give you a good prom. (in theory easy, in practice nobody does it) Of course if you want to get your performance and power back after that mod you should increase your compression ration, which is a major rebuild, but that is a semi-optional step and destroys your ability to easially go back to regular gas.
In MN there are many cars on the road that run on E-85, which is 85% ethanol. All those cars will run just fine on regular gas, but with E-85 about 20 cents/gallon chepaer than gas, and avaiable in nearly every MN town I don't see why you would. To be fair ethanol is subsidiesd in MN, something that will likely end soon due to budget problems, but there now are enough E-85 cars on the road that they should be able to make money continuing production unsubsidies..
The longest transmission line in the world is the "Inga-Shaba", a 1700kM 500kV single-phase transmission line in western Africa. That's 1056 miles, roughly the distance from New York City to Chicago. However, its max capacity is 560 MW because of reactive line losses, equivalent to the output of one medium sized fossil fuel plant. This past summer, the mid-Atlantic states alone hit just over 60,000 MW for an instananeous peak. In 1999, the United States consumed 3.45 x 10^9 MW-hours of energy.
... a quick Google search could have answered your construction question (numbers for off-shore Alabama):
That is the problem with solar power, any type of generation really, you cannot concentrate it. Energy is lost as heat, proportional to the resistance of the wire, which is proportional to the distance of the line. So #1, even if you can generate it, you can't transport it that distance. #2, the more you concentrate, one cloudy day would wipe out the majority of your generation... remember, this is not a 365-day guaranteed capacity source. Not to mention #3 that a common sand storm in the desert would crack and scratch your glass, driving up repair costs.
What you would need is a 100% distributed system, maybe one station per square mile across every population center in the US, minimizing the path between generation and consumption. Now, try to get local approval from the municipalities to install it (and junk up their landscapes). Then, calculate the maintainence costs to visit each one of these locations... astronomical.
Finally, your whole "war on terror" argument is, for lack of a better word, crap. Every statement you've made is an approximation, and your solutions assume the ideal. It's a thinly masked anti-war rhetoric pretending to pass as fact. If the war were really about oil, we'd drill it ourself on our homeland, and be done with those dictators in the middle east. Then you finish it off with a snide remark against the President's home state
Q. How long does it take to drill these wells? A. Miocene: 1 to 2 weeks; Norphlet: 6 to 12 months
Q. How much does it cost to drill these wells? A. Miocene: $750,000 to $2 million; Norphlet: $15 million to $40 million
Q. What is the average daily drilling rig cost? A. $100,000 to $120,000
Q. How much and long does each well produce? A. Miocene: 2 million to 15 million cubic feet per day for 1 to 10 years, Norphlet: 10 million to 126 million cubic feet per day for 10 to 20 years
From StudyWorks Online: "For example, the consumption of oil in the United States reached a peak in 1978, then decreased by almost 20 percent by 1983 as more fuel-efficient cars were introduced and less oil was used for electricity. However, gasoline consumption increased again in the '90s as gas-guzzling SUV's and small trucks became more popular. Nonetheless, oil consumption is currently increasing by only 1 percent per year, and consumption in 1999 was only 3.5 percent higher than it was in 1978." Get those SUVs on a normal fuel usage plan. Improve gas-electric hybrids. Encourage more efficient fossil fuel generators. What we really need is efficiency, not alternative generation.