Slashdot Mirror
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."
Blair actually disagrees with Dubya on something.
Next up, he's going to be accused of supporting Al Qaeda's scheme to cripple American industry with this 'global warming' nonsense.
On the bright side, it's mentioned that sustainable energy sources are less susceptible to terrorist attack.
:/
Yeah let's see them terrorists blow up the sun. The jokes on them though even if they do, they'll just kill themselves too. HA!
Oh, kamikazes. yeah
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
It means you'll never have to depend upon a foreign country for energy or fuel.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This is a classic politicians trick. Are you on awkward territory with the liberals? Throw them an environmental policy they'll like. But the trick is make it so far fetched that nothing will happen for 20 years by which time you'll be conveniently out of office. Remember the Hydrogen Care initiative at El Presidente's State of The Union? Next up - a space elevator!
It's depressing that the primary reason for action, quoted, is expressed in monetary terms, and not human ones. This happens time and again, and is a reflection of the values of the times we live in. When we speak of damage to the environment, the future of the human race itself is at stake, but our primary reason for wanting to do something about it is how much it might cost? PLEASE WAKE UP.
Watch for this, watch for how often things are expressed in monetary terms, as though that was all that mattered.
2:09 PM, Feb 23, 2003
Shortly after receiving a telephone call from US President Bush, Tony Blair announced that he was wrong about alternative energy, that it is actually part of an "Axis of Evilnessity". Blair also said he recently read in some college essays on the internet that alternative energy would help fund terrorism. It was also revealed that the UK will be joining a "league of allies" in the US-led "War on Liberals". "I believe, and I think the people of the UK stand behind me on this, that we should do whatever Bush says, if it helps kill terrorists."
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.
Foreign oil funds dictators and terrorism.
:)
Renewable energy (wind, hydro, solar) creates local industries and reduces reliance on foreign energy sources.
It makes political, economic, and ecological sense
Before such measures have any effect on global warming, the following will have to take place:
As we are not even approaching the first step, we have to face the fact that these changes are coming. Not that we shouldn't try to change things - we'll have to have other forms of power when fossil fuels start to run out anyway. But these changes are coming and it is now out of our power to stop them.
The real question is, how is the world's food production going to be affected by the climate changes? From the current predictions, it seems that most intensive farming areas of the world are going to have less water, which is an extremely bad sign. I hope people start planning for this soon.
The most ironic part of the article is the continued push against nuclear power, which is currently the only technology which could produce a significant amount of Britain's power without CO2 emission. We have truly dug a deep hole for ourselves.
(Sorry if this is a bit bleak, it's monday morning here.)
I'm telling you... it would work.
But the metamphetamine you need to power them comes from non-renewable sources...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Actually, I don't think it's so much oil (and gas) as the old nuclear power stations coming to the end of their active lives, and the government being unwilling to build new ones (due to the political difficulties it would cause since much of the population here doesn't want new ones being built near them).
That's not too surprising, especially in Europe. There's not a whole bunch of places to put the waste, for one thing. No desert mountains to bury it under. New Scientist did a piece on the dump near Sellafield, which has the radioactive leavings stored up. It's a light concrete bunker containing enough waste that if a medium size plane were flown into it, it would release radioactive waste equivalent to hundreds of Chernobyls.
Europe's a small place. That kind of thing makes people very rationally concerned.
Oh, not to mention the ongoing problems in the Irish Sea, and the atypically high rates of cancer recorded around some of the existing plants...
I don't think you've really thought this thouroughly through.
... I think you would - mildly put - dent the worlds food usage statistics.
Hamsters need food, let say 10 kg a year per hamster and then we assume each hamster manages to generate 10W and that we need three shifts. That's 3 * 10 / 10 == 3 kg of salad per watt, now to get a terrawatt you'd need 3 * 1,000,000,000 kg of salad which is a lot. Not to mention that you'll need support hamsters to bread new hamsters for when the ones in the wheels drop dead. That alone would easily double, or maybe even triple the amount of salad needed for each watt. You might be able to justify some of the salad usage by using the droppings as fertilizer, but still
Now legistlation that would require every comb to be connected to your local electrical plant, that could work.
Look a monkey!
I refer you to this article by Steven Den Beste talking about amounts of energy produced by various technologies. (He starts with biodiesel but moves on from there.)
Personally, I think nuclear energy is the only realistic way to go, but like Den Beste, I admit that nuclear power is politically dead. On average, nuclear waste is by far the most containable pollution compared to anything releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. IMHO, being an 'environmentalist' and being anti-nuclear power is nonsensical.
- Necron69
Sadly some of us do consider human life cheap (It's very easy to make, and will be around a long long time). I believe in quality of life over quantity of life, and economics is a reflection of quality of life. When the shuttle broke up, I didn't think twice about the people on board, I wondered what it was going to do to the US financially.
We are all going to die, I promise you that. Spending an extra 2 months out of the year working to fund federal disaster programs affects me directly, and I am not ashamed to say that I care about that. Counting costs and counting lives are equally important, and intimately connected.
I'm not actually saying you are wrong, just that money and life aren't so seperate.
More people should look at wood burning these days. The technology has come a long since the days of an old rusty pot belly stove in the basement. There is a good site about burning wood
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Your assertion about solar energy is incorrect. Most solar panels are net energy producers after 5 years of their 30 year lifespan.
w ww.nrel.gov/wind/wind_potential.html
Your assertion about wind energy is also incorrect. The time for most wind turbines to be net positive in energy is a few months. The area required for energy production for wind is much smaller than you say. If 6% of the total land in the US were cultivated for wind power (which doesn't exclude other uses, like ranching), the total energy production would be 1.5 times the total produced in the US today.
The key to energy independance is not just switching sources, but using substantailly less energy. Using less energy is possible without making huge sacrifices, it just requires developing and building smarter.
See:
http://www.awea.org/faq/bal.html
http://
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.
Have you ever seen ice buildup slough off of the blades of a large wind generator in bad weather? It's deadly. The area around wind farms can be used for other functions, but there are times of the year where it's advisable to stay very far away from them.
Even wind farms have their dangers.
1) Climatology was still in its infancy back in the 1970's. The "computer simulations" they were doing back then could be done with a few hours on a P800 today. Sure, it's an inexact science. But it's gotten better, and will continue to get better.
2) It's stupid to put sneer quotes around the term "scientist" when referring to government scientists. They're graduating from the same doctorate programs as non-government scientists. Without further evidence, there's no reason to assume that they're any less qualified than their civilian counterparts.
3) Government represents the will of the people (one man, one vote). Microsoft represents the will of its shareholders (one share, one vote). That is why I feel safer about government-imposed standards than standards imposed by a near-monopoly corporation, and why you should too.
4) I have almost zero confidence that any government will be able to fix global warming, but I have even less confidence that unregulated corporations would do so. There's just no incentive to do so.
But corporations are often far more flexible and innovative than governments. The best solution is probably to let the government create the incentives through tax breaks and fines, and give the corporations free rein in deciding how to meet the challenge.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
More people should look at wood burning these days.
No. Not on a global scale, because then it becomes non-sustainable.
Excessive wood burning is one of the major reasons for desertification in developing countries. They experience a population explosion while many people retain their agricultural/nomadic lifestyle. Too many eaten, trampled and burnt plants means rapid erosion.
If you plant one tree for every one you burn, it's OK, but this makes little economic sense, as the energy density of wood is too low and the costs (time, space) too high to warrant the effort in a developed society.
Gasoline at $5/gallon would get rid of the SUV craze, and good riddance.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Back in the days when the UK energy market was nationalized, one provider took out a full page advert describing how they were going to solve the energy problem with solar power. The Earth's axis of rotation would be moved so that Britain was in the tropics, thus making solar power efficient. The ad went on to explain the effects on some other countries of the world, and how this was an entirely desirable and justifiable state of affairs: it was our turn to have some nice warm weather for a change.
Considering the published date, it's no surprise that the final line of the ad was "April Fuel!"
IIRC they were slapped on the wrist for wasting 50k of taxpayers money.
Ian.
A physicist is an atom's way of thinking about atoms
To get right answers to the energy question, we must start understanding that
a technology's efficiency rating must subtract the true energy cost of production of all hardware involved and extraction of all resources including the energy and resources consumed by the people involved and
an assessment of the environmental impact of technology must include the environmental impact of the factories producing the energy production devices, the raw materials consumed, the wastes produced, the land covered, and the environmental energy transferred (many transform environmental energy of some type to electricity and transfer that electricity to other locations where it almost always becomes heat).
Almost every "solution" I've seen come from the friends of the environment has huge environmental impacts and many consume more energy than they produce. Let's talk about a few.
Hydrogen - its an energy transportation mechanism, not a source. Its impact is little different than electrical wires with the exception that it allows you to "wire" a vehicle to a hydrogen generation plant that will likely be oil fueled. To date, it is cheaper to mass produce hydrogen from oil than any other substance.
Solar cells (cost) - once again, solar cells are an energy transport mechanism. Because the energy investment in lifecycle support (mining, production, distribution, maintenance, recycling) is greater than the lifetime energy output. Efficiencies would have to be far higher to offset this. Don't forget that you have to produce all the energy that we currently consume + all of the energy consumed to produce the energy. Another big weight on the efficiency rating is that you have to back this with other technologies for storing the energy to supply energy at night and when cloudy, these reduce the overall energy efficiency ratings of the system too, both directly and indirectly through the energy cost of production of the backup systems. On top of that, you have to plan for worse case scenarios because you'd likely supplant much of the other energy production technology. What effect would the fires a couple of years ago in Indonesia have had on regional and even worldwide solar energy production? And they lasted for how long?
Solar cells (environment) - solar cell energy consumption might be environmentally friendly, but the energy production will alter the landscape of an order of magnitude more land than oil. To get the capacities we need we will have to significantly change the reflectivity of large areas of our planet. What will that do to weather patterns?
Various underground organic energy sources - none are sustainable. We should stop just burning these up because they are also our cheapest stores for many other raw materials needed to sustain modern technology, though I'm figuring they will eventually make a bug to turn coal into oil/gas and leave behind an equivalent volume tubular matrix made from non-organic substances in the coal. This will allow for easier, more environmentally friendly extraction (it really ticks me off when they cut the tops off of the mountains). Anyway, suffice it to say that there will still be a massive need for oil even when none of it is used for energy production.
Wind - oh come on. Those things are a noisy, ugly blight on the landscape. Someone is making big bucks selling the Brooklyn Bridge here (and most of them are coming from tax dollars because it isn't a very good business yet except in very special circumstances). Has anybody even bothered to figure out the total energy cost of manufacturing and raw materials on these monstrosities? Not to mention maintenance, recycling, etc. And, once again, you need an entire backup infrastructure. It can't be another infrastructure needing a backup unless you can prove that their needs will never significantly overlap. No energy is free and wind seems far from it.
Inland hydroelectric - already more exploited than I like. So many beautiful rivers lost. So much history submerged. Very sad.
Oceanic water movement - This would include wave, current, and many other oceanic energy production methodologies. How come the environmentalists scream when a nuclear plant puts out heat but don't scream at the combined impact of all of this on the oceanic environment. No reason really. So they will. And rightly so. I can't wait for all the studies about what kinds of weather extremes are being caused by the minuscule reduction of energy transfers from one part of the ocean to another that all of these technologies cause.
????? combination maybe - just an easy way to trick yourself by distributing the impacts. The combination of all the smaller impacts is still as big or greater than the whole impact of other technologies.
So what's the answer. Nuclear of course. Its the only answer. Its environmental effects especially are far more containable than the other sources. Fission at first, preferrably with breeder technology, then fusion. Either way, it should be combined with a hydrogen and electrical distribution system. Perhaps mostly hydrogen at some point. I suspect hydrogen may prove to have a lesser loss in long distance transport than electric.
Even with fusion, we'll eventually need to find a way to radiate more of the energy into space because the heat produced by our consumption will eventually reach levels able to influence climates. Probably about the time we start moving society underground so that we can restore our environment and increase food production.
The interesting thing is that this is exactly the answer Bush has proposed. Hmmm. Maybe not so dumb after all. Its a wise man who seeks wise instead of radical counsel.
Like others have said, Blair's move is just a fig leaf thrown to the lions for political purposes. Unless he means "nuclear power" when he says "sustainable energy", it will have no real impact, not only because it won't last, but because its based on sensationalism and fear, not science.
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..
Problem solved. That will be $100 please.
Clickety Click
Has anyone looked at the costs of switching to solar towers vs the cost of war, and how much area would be required? I think that the answers actually look both economically and practically viable.
First the facts
from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/262
Sorry about the formatting - I can't figure out how to get the 2nd col to line up right.
So a TOTAL area of about 51x51 km of desert would be needed to provide all the households in the US with all their power. Since the household power usage figures are for Australia, you'd probably have to double or trebble this figure for US households (higher per capita consumption etc) but even so, you could practically pay for them ALL for the cost of 7 year's war on terror, or about 2/3 of a single year's annual defence budget, assuming you didn't get more efficient at building them - with practive, the costs of putting one up should drop.
You can extrapolate for the world & see that you could provide power for every man woman & child on earth at the Australian rate of consumption for about 20 times this amount.
Best of all, since it's relatively low-tech, ie. not sensitive military capable technologies - just a bloody big tower & turbines, there should be no issues regarding technology transfer. I would imagine it would be a nicely profitable business to be experts at building these things for other countries.
Isn't it time to start building these things all over Texas or something? How much does it cost to set up a new oil drilling site anyway?
Because it *wasn't* funny.
If it weren't for the timely intervention of the French 300-odd years ago, the American freedom fighters would most likely have *lost* the War of Independence, and the USA wouldn't exist today. Don't forget, your own Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, symbolizing the two nations' common ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity.
It's rather disappointing to see Americans so ready to hate their friends just because those friends should be, on occasion, strong enough to take a moral stance against them. This is the behaviour one might expect of a maladjusted child, not that of a civilised adult.
Even the best of friends can't always be expected to agree. It's no basis for racial hatred, and to show such petulant disrespect for another civilised nation, even in jest, is not only infantile but dangerously arrogant.
Mandating fleet fuel efficiency standards, in contrast, results in car manufacturers charging less for fuel efficient cars and charging more for gas guzzlers. That allows low-income families to both buy inexpensive fuel-efficient cars and save money on gas, while being subsidized by people who voluntarily choose to buy gas guzzlers. It seems like a very elegant free market solution to me. And it seems like a much better solution than raising the price of gasoline.
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.