Milestones and Trends in Renewable Energy

Sterling D. Allan writes "Some reflections and projections: The year 2005 saw large wind power installments come into a price range where they are now competitive with traditional grid prices. 2006 could see several solar designs do the same. Cold fusion was boosted with two, concurrent and independent sonofusion breakthroughs, though the stigma in the name is still deeply seated. 2006 could see floating wind turbines arrive on the commercial scene -- floating in the water like oil rigs, or floating high in the air, courtesy of helium. 2006 will see at least three companies offering after-market kits for adding Brown's gas (H and O from electrolysis, common ducted) to the air intake of vehicles for enhanced mileage and performance. Many other fuel economizing systems are slated to mature in the marketplace. Climate change evidence will continue to mount. It will yet be years before we harness lightning, but stable tornado systems prototypes that tap waste heat from power plants could arrive this coming year. Will 2006 be the year that clean energy becomes more the vogue than cool computer gadgets?"

Comments

Gadgets

[edgr]

Clean energy sources will become as cool as cool computer gadgets because they are themselves cool gagdets. I mean, come on, how cool is a wind generator floating in the air?

Re:Gadgets

[jacquesm]

I spent a good year designing and building a 2.5 KW wind generator, I wished NL wasn't so anal about 'horizon pollution' or I would have it up today.

mandatory viewing, MS vs IBM :)

Re:Gadgets

[bigman2003]

I think the author of the article is a little optimistic. In his paragraph about Tesla, he writes that public interest in 'the free energy genius' will increase because David Bowie is portraying him in a new movie. Then he said that the 150th anniversary of his (Tesla, not Bowie) birth will increase international awareness.

No...nobody cares about Tesla.

It's like the George Foreman Grill. Nobody knows who really invented the thing. But we all know that some ex-boxer turned nice-guy advertises it.

In America at least, they would be better off having the women of 'Desperate Housewives' do a pitch for renewable energy, that would generate a lot more interest than Tesla.

For those of you who do not live in America, please feel free to insult the United States and tell us how shallow we are. Then imagine that instead of the women from Desperate Housewives your own celebrities were used. Maybe Kylie Minouge, or Sophia Loren, or Bridget Bardot...or Jerry Lewis.

Yes.

[Zarhan]

Finland and France are constructing new nuclear power plants - first new ones in Western Europe for many years, and China and Russia are also going to nuclear (with 40 pebble-bed reactors coming to China in the coming decades).

So yes, we're finally starting to see some clean energy.

Re:Yes.

[Da Fokka]

Pebble bed reactors are inherently safer and make efficient use of nuclear fuel. And they can be a lot smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, which makes them more attractive for smaller scale use.

However, PBRs have a very large drawback. It is nearly impossible to extract useful material from the spent fuel pebbles. Manufacturing these pebbles is not a trivial process, by the way.

Personally, I'd like to see more development of integral fast reactors. They are not modular in design, but these plants are designed with the entire fuel cycle in mind and can burn up nuclear fuel so efficiently that the waste degrades to background radiation in just 300 years.

Re:Yes.

[Yvanhoe]

And yet, strangely, in France and Germany, ecologists want to revert to coal plants to prevent nuclear pollution.

Re:Yes.

[pfdietz]

It is nearly impossible to extract useful material from the spent fuel pebbles.

It's also impractical to extract useful materials from spent fuel rods of conventional reactors, unless you're running a weapons program and don't care about the cost. Pu from commercial reprocessed fuel is expensive to separate, and it has a negative value once you've separated it -- the extra hassle of designing your fuel fabrication plant to be able to handle Pu (which is much more radioactive than enriched uranium) dwarfs the cost of the uranium you save.

If you're concerned about uranium running out, the incremental approach will be to go to cycles with higher burnup and fuel efficiency. CANDU reactors are like this, particularly if used with thorium-uranium fuel elements.

Re:Yes.

[Da Fokka]

Chernobyl killed about 3000 people, that about 10% of the amount of mine workers that die in China each year. And Chernobyl was a very unsafe design with unsafe procedures. Modern nuclear power plants are inherently safe - if the cooling fails, the nuclear core will stay at a resting temperature until started up again.

In the face of a nuclear attack a nuclear power plant is way safer than say, a refinery.

Re:Yes.

[natmakarvitch]

"Chernobyl killed about 3000 people" is an awful lie. The figure coined by a 'conclusion' published by the IAEA (a pro-nuke agency) is 4000, and is completely ridiculous because it:

• does not precisely define the population concerned (by those 4000 deaths). The official conclusion is "premature deaths of around 4000 people from the 600 000 affected by the higher radiation doses", but "higher radiation doses" and the 600000 group composition, are not defined. The group may only have nearly not-exposed people!
• this is not a scientific work, even if it is presented as such because nobody signed this conclusion. The WHO guys (Dr Repacholi), in charge of the pertinent study, even said that this "conclusion" was made by PR people... Read about it in Nuclear News (which is NOT a frenzy anti-nuke paper but a verious serious pro-nuke publication)
• this conclusion was 'drawn' from a report which only exists in draft stage and was not scientifically published. No peer review... no scientific value
• this conclusion is not expressed in the drafts reports
• the conclusion is presented as global, albeit the reports only covers 3 countries
• the 'health' report only studies cancers and leukemias, but many other problems arise (mutagen, teratogenesis...)
• the 'health' report states major limits for his model and data:
  • radio-induced cancers appear at last 10 years after exposition, and on average after 20 years... but the data used were collected between 1992-1998 (less than 12 years after the accident)
  • bad data quality (as already stated in 1995 in a real ONU report)
  • the model used is far from perfect
• low radiations were neglected albeit many experts think that they are dangerous, especially over long period and/or when ingested
• a model used came from observations done in another context (Hiroshima and Nagasaki: brief major and external exposition, instead of the "long, minor and often internal" after Chernobyl)

Here is a critic of those "conclusions" (French).

Re:Yes.

[Guppy06]

"And yet, strangely, in France and Germany, ecologists want to revert to coal plants to prevent nuclear pollution."

First off, you're confusing nuke-happy France with the United States. They're continally building new nuclear power plants while I don't believe the United States has built a new one (outside of Newport News, at least) since the 1970's. We're the ones that want coal*.

Secondly, I was under the impression that the Germans had already devised the greenest option yet: buy electricity from France.

*(Actually, we don't seem to want either. Both coal and nuke plants are intended for putting out a steady amount of energy for long periods of time without variation, while electricity use spikes in the summer when we all turn on our air conditioners and plummets in the winter when we turn on our fossil fuel furnaces. Unlike coal or nuclear plants, natural gas plants can be turned on and off at a moments notice and seem to be the power source of choice in today's US market, at least until the coal and/or nuclear people find something to do with excess electricity during the winter, such as making hydrogen.)

no mention of bio-diesel

[User 956]

They didn't mention bio-diesel that I could see. Though I have to admit, that's not really a technology I'm rooting for. I'm not sure if I could stomach a $50,000 mercedes that smells like french fries.

Re:no mention of bio-diesel

[NardofDoom]

Would it be better if your $50,000 Mercedes smelled like a truck stop?

Re:no mention of bio-diesel

[User 956]

that depends. what kind of truck stop are we talking about?

Re:no mention of bio-diesel

[pfdietz]

Bio-diesel, if produced in large enough quantities to be significant, would be an ecological disaster. Much better to let the enormous areas of land that would be needed lay fallow or remain in a wild state.

To satisfy ultra-low sulfur requirements, Fischer-Tropsch diesel makes more sense. Converting stranded natural gas capacity around the world to FT diesel production would add 4 million barrels of oil per day equivalent liquid fuel production.

Until It Hurts

[ehaggis]

Until it hurts, U.S. consumers will not switch anything. The market will drive change. Gas prices are currently inconvenient but it is not something that keeps people from getting to work. When prices are prohibitive, maybe we will see changes.

U.S. citizens must also get out of the "grid" mentality. Electricty on site, not relying on the grid is a shifting in thinking for most. Lori Ryker addresses this in her book, "Off the Grid"

Re:Until It Hurts

[antifoidulus]

The market is good at eventually seeking the best answers, however the market cannot handle very large shocks very quickly(obviously nothing can handle huge shocks perfectly but) the problem is, oil is so ingrained in our current economy it's going to take the market a long while to find adequate substitutes for all its uses without an outside shove. I know that I personally would probably starve to death if tomorrow I woke up and all the oil supplies were cut off. Oil is essential in not only the production of food, but perhaps more importantly, the distrubution of food to everyone who isn't a farmer. While the market should decide the winner(s) of the alternative energy battle, I applaud both government and non-government actions in researching alternative fuels even if they are not cost effective right away.

Re:Until It Hurts

[Toby The Economist]

The problem is that the deadly cost of using oil and gas is globally distributed.

It is one of the roles of the State to ensure the people who ought to bear a cost *do* bear a cost.

In this case, carbon taxes would be the solution.

However, this requires willpower on the part of the State.

When this is lacking, the people who ought to bear a cost do not and as such the fuel they are using is cheaper than it ought to be and so has a competitive advantage in the market.

Re:Until It Hurts

[syphax]

I think markets are good things, but I remember learning about external costs and market failure in like week 3 of microeconomics class.

Energy markets have HUGE externalities (national security, environmental impacts, etc.), so government involvement is actually necessary to achieve the 'right' solutions. Of course, that leads to the topic of governments' track record at successfully correcting externalities and market failure...

Re:Until It Hurts

[swillden]

The market is good at eventually seeking the best answers, however the market cannot handle very large shocks very quickly

Luckily, the oil is not going to disappear overnight. Even as we approach the end of the available reserves, the flow of oil will just slow, not stop. Long before that, as the easy-to-reach oil reserves are depleted, the price will rise as the needed oil is drawn from less and less accessible sources. At some point extracting oil from shale and tar sands will become cost-effective.

As the price gradually rises, more and more alternatives to oil will become cost-effective. As use of alternative sources increases, the investment into them will improve their efficiency, through process improvements and through mass production, making them even better competitors.

the problem is, oil is so ingrained in our current economy it's going to take the market a long while to find adequate substitutes for all its uses without an outside shove.

The transition from oil to other energy sources will occur naturally, through normal market forces, and without any extreme shocks. No "outside shove" is required to make the energy source transition. That said, I think there is value in governmental influence pushing toward cleaner energy sources, since market forces won't naturally push us in that direction. I think "pollution taxes" (or pollution credits, which are similar) are a good idea as they can both bring market forces to bear on keeping the environment clean and can also provide funding for alternative energy research.

Re:Until It Hurts

[Colin Cordner]

Until it hurts, U.S. consumers will not switch anything. The market will drive change.

No, I'm afraid the market will not drive change, because "The Market" cannot drive change, because "The Market" does not exist. "The Market" is not a great Leviathan standing astride the conceptual econonomies of the world. It is not a thing. It does not exist as anything other than a concept or meme in human brains.

"The Market" is nothing but a shorthand describing you, and a data-set including other humans like yourself within certain arbitrary bounds (ie. the nation-state of the USA). "The Market" has no will, and is only as rational as its "members" are; which is to say, "The Market" is just as irrational as you are, multiplied by a factor of X million.

So no, "The Market" will not drive change. Overconsumption is essentially a psychological problem, and you can't make people not be crazy. At best, you can only encourage certain behaviour, and make it really discouraging to act like a nut.

Re:Until It Hurts

[llefler]

You have a narrow view of the market. I purchase gasoline with 10% ethanol. My purchase increases the demand for ethanol. That demand translates into the market price for ethanol. The market will find it's balance.

From another aspect, I recently had a conversation with consumer relations at Chrysler. I have decided my next vehicle purchase will be diesel. Chrysler manufactures a diesel Liberty annd they are considering the Commander, but not the Wrangler. Wrangler is all that interests me, I won't be buying a Jeep. My purchase will go towards the demand of a competing product. It will also translate to a change in demand for diesel cars in general, as well as diesel (or ideally, biodiesel) demand. In the future when Chrysler is making decisions for future models they will look at what is selling and what is not, and plan appropriately. Want to make a prediction on how many resources US automakers will allocate to big SUVs in the next few years? Personally, I expect a swing back towards smaller cars as a result of one person here and one person there influencing the market.

Maybe my demand is like a grain of sand on the beach. Some markets are huge. But if everybody said "I'm too small to make a difference, so I won't bother", then there would be no demand and the product would fail.

At my local grocery I have noticed a subtle shift over the years. I live in a relatively small town and have shopped at the same place for 5 years. Products that I use on a regular basis have increased shelf space. Either I'm just lucky, or my demand has affected that store's buying practices.

Producers and consumers drive change. They are the market. If you think the market is irrational, you aren't looking at all of it's influences.

Question for all greens

[sparks]

Let's assume that wind, wave, solar, and even cold fusion will be able to provide all our energy needs - in fifty year's time. (I personally don't think that will be the case, but - hey.)

How should we generate electricity until that happens? Let's assume that energy demand will not decline any time soon, but rather will continue to rise.

Coal?
Oil?
Natural gas?
Nuclear?

Which of these is the least-worst to you?

Re:Question for all greens

[Claire-plus-plus]

Oil won't last, cheap enough to use for power generation, for 50 years.

Coal is too damed poluting

Nuclear is not that easy to set up and then switch off again, that is... the nuclear waste will always be there and after switching off the reactor it will stay hot for years.

If I had to use one of the current technologies that provides most of our power (by no means all, Aussieland has quite a bit of wind power and solar these days) I would use natural gas, there's more of it than there is oil and it burns cleaner than coal.

Oh and by the way, I think if we can't find renewable power in 50 years we are screwed. Saying "I don't think that will be the case" won't help.

Re:Question for all greens

[Da Fokka]

You bring up a very valid point. We'll be stuck with fossile fuels for a long time anyway, so research into CO2 sequestration is also very important.

Re:Question for all greens

[BBird]

Not even CO2 if you use CO2 sequestration techniques

see http://www.co2captureandstorage.info/

Climate Change

[Kohath]

Climate change evidence will continue to mount.

Yes. In fact, depending on where you are today, it's colder or warmer, wetter or dryer, brighter or darker, calmer or stormier than normal. Some places are even foggy. It's all evidence of climate change.

What else could it be? Can we afford to wait to find out?

Stop commerce now. Before the weather gets any less precisely normal.

Re:Climate Change

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because developing new industries like wind and solar that could potentially fuel the world's energy needs is really bad for commerce. Put your Michael Chrichton down please.

Re:Climate Change

[LarsWestergren]

You are describing weather, and weather changes, correct. But when you measure weather over time, you get a climate average, and that average is shifting:

CBS: "The year 2005, the World Wildlife Fund said, is shaping up as the worst for extreme weather, with the hottest temperatures, most Arctic melting, worst Atlantic hurricane season and warmest Caribbean waters.

It's also been the driest year in decades in the Amazon, where a drought may surpass anything in the past century, said the report by international environmental group. "

BBC: "The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year, according to new data released by US scientists.

They say that this month sees the lowest extent of ice cover for more than a century.

The Arctic climate varies naturally, but the researchers conclude that human-induced global warming is at least partially responsible. "

Not this year

[dheltzel]

Will 2006 be the year that clean energy becomes more the vogue than cool computer gadgets?"

No, no, no!
2006 will be the year that Linux takes over the desktop, 2007 will be the year that Duke Nukem Forever is released and 2008 will be the year that clean energy comes into vogue!

Also, I think somewhere in there they discover the cure to the common cold, but that part of my crystal ball is still a bit fuzzy (probably due to that cheap antenna from Walmart).

Oil became expensive, not wind became cheaper

[Toby The Economist]

> The year 2005 saw large wind power installments come into a price range where they
> are now competitive with traditional grid prices.

Incorrect.

The year 2005 saw oil come into a price range where it competes with wind.

Re:Oil became expensive, not wind became cheaper

[syphax]

Incorrect.

Oil is not a dominant driver of the price of electricity. In 2004, the US got 3% of its electricity from oil, less than, say, conventional hydro, and not a whole lot more than non-hydro renewables (see here). Natural gas, on the other hand, was responsible for 18% (coal was 50%).

The cost of wind power has been steadily declining. Depending on the data you look at, it can be very competitive with traditional sources of electricity. In fact, because the marginal cost of producing electricity from wind is (nearly) zero, adding wind power capacity can *lower* electrical rates, because a wind farm operator can usually be the low bidder on the spot markets, lowering the final price (I'm speaking slightly out of my ass here, but the general idea is correct). Conventional generators are always bound by fuel prices for their marginal costs.

Re:Oil became expensive, not wind became cheaper

[castoridae]

It gets hairier - wind is general a cent or two higher per kWH than conventional, but that includes tax credits (and I'm discussing *only* the US here - I have no idea what the picture looks like in other countries). But then conventional power is subsidized too, it's just better-hidden in the tax structure.

I looked into raising money and building a wind farm in the Western US over the last year, and I discovered a few things:

1. No utility is interested in buying "green power" unless they are mandated to by their state government.
2. Transmission is the real bottleneck; the costs of the required assessments are so high, that it's not practical to build a small (read ~1 MW) wind farm - you really need to think more like 100MW (=>$100M) to make this cost effective.
3. Home-sized wind turbines generate at considerably more cost than grid power - even with the credits. Practical only for off-grid properties, otherwise it's simply a philosophy thing, but not an economically-driven decision.

I am eagerly watching & waiting for the "market" to ease up and make smaller-time investments & projects possible.

Re:Oil became expensive, not wind became cheaper

[Archimboldo]

Interesting. When I last studied energy utilization, most was for transportation (good old cars, trucks, and trains), second, I think, was lighting (!?).

I remember debates about whether electric cars really are greener since they rely on things like coal generated electricity to charge them. It's something to think about.

Arguments pro generally said that large scale electricity generators were more efficient per unit energy than a single internal combustion engine and that their pollution controls were also better per unit of energy.

Can't remember arguments con.

Even more interesting is if you figure in the costs of pollution, which the producer and consumer don't really see directly. Some farmer is paying more to grow crops, and some private citizens, insurance companies, and hospitals are paying more for health care. These all filter down to consumers and tax payers.

Unfortunately, we also have to figure in the effects of poverty and the benefits of cheap, but short-term polluting energy sources. Lost human potential also costs us something.

Also how do you quantify quality of life? Makes your head spin.

Re:Oil became expensive, not wind became cheaper

[blakestah]

I went and read one of the refs, the other was inaccessible.

The arguments were that the one wind turbine could produce the energy required to make them in 6.8 months, and then produced energy for a long time thereafter. Makes sense.

Unfortunately, the real analysis necessary is to factor the total cost of the wind turbine. Then, factor the amount of gas that money would otherwise buy. Then decide on what timetable a gas generator would beat the wind turbine if you had some money and needed some energy...

Just a few years ago it was incalculable, because wind turbines required replacement parts on a regular basis that made it simply cheaper to buy gas and put it in a generator than it would be to put up a wind farm. Still today I do not see the arguments framed in the same way...can you actually MAKE MONEY with a wind farm (decide with or without subsidies)...

Because when you can, it is going to be BIG TIME. Until then, it will be like biodiesel, waiting for a barrel of oil to cost three times what it costs now before it is cost effective. And the articles today still avoid this main point...

But you don't even need to read the article to see that...when wind becomes cheaper than gas you will see wind farms EVERYWHERE popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

So I take issue with the notion that wind is competitive with grid prices for energy. All the current investment is based on the supposition that petroleum based energy will rise enough to make it cost effective. PT Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute.

Re:Sadly, not in the UK

[JackDW]

It seems that our government is preparing to build reactors again,

But nuclear reactors are the only practical alternative to oil/natural gas-fired power stations. Which is the cleaner fuel, again? We made a mess because we didn't build enough reactors: we relied too heavily on dirty fossil fuels.

+1 parent so funny!

[kamapuaa]

He sticks his head in the sand, in the most hilarious of fashions!

Wind Farms

[iBod]

Beats me why so many people seem to keen to build wind farms.

Surely, there is too much wind in the world already (witness recent events) and farming more of the damn stuff seems like utter lunacy to me.

Anyhow, couldn't we just import some foreign wind from some windy place?

More about integral fast reactors

[Flying pig]

You don't mention the biggest benefit - the ability to use the spent fuel from the slow neutron reactors currently in use, with reprocessing. They are actually part of the solution to the mounds of nuclear waste we already have.

There is only one thing worries me about modern nuclear plants, and that is the access to cooling water. If you plan on using rivers or lakes, you need to be pretty sure that global warming will not dry them up.

Much as I like relatively low overhead technologies like wind, solar, bio-Diesel and bio-ethanol, I have to admit that I'm a convert to the idea of fast neutron sodium-cooled non-breeder plants. They even seem to be relatively terrorist-proof. And they would provide some well paid tech jobs that are not just in moving bits around.

Re:A few grains of skepticism

[ThosLives]

You don't just need better technology to produce (more) power in a "clean" way. You also need better technology and awareness to consume less power. I'm proud of the fact that I only used an average of 3 kW-hr per day for the period between Nov and Dec of last year (That amounts to an average of only 125 W for the entire day). I'm not sure exactly what my transportation consumption was, especially because I'm travelling a lot because of work, but my "domestic" energy consumption has dropped quite a bit.

Generally speaking, consuming less requires no technology or additional cost. Sometimes it might cost something intangible, such as moving closer to work (think about it - if everyone who commuted 30 miles one way was willing to move to only commute 20 miles one way, or, if possible, 10 miles, the aggregate reduction in transportation energy consumption would be quite large).

The problem is the "consume less" mentality is not very popular, and, unfortunately, not a problem which is readily solvable through technological means. While more efficient devices are better, what typically happens is people just get more devices and use as much if not more resources than with the "less efficient" technologies. Ah, the wonderful ironies of life...

America

[WindBourne]

It pissed me off when I saw that GWB was giving the oil industry HUGE tax breaks while cutting alternative energy research. The two industries that need a jump start are nuclear and alternative. As it is, California wants to build huge coal plants in eastern states and then ship the electricity back. Worse, California is not insisting on tight environmental laws be applied. I would rather that America offer huge tax incentives to start building nukes, wind, and solar.

Re:America

[WindBourne]

Is this no longer the case?

Sadly, yes. They are going to build several monster coal plants at the Wyoming/Colorado border and IIRC, another by the Colorado/Utah border. In both cases, the emissions standards will be even more relaxed than they would have been just 5 years ago. This has been a big concern in Colorado as it is showing that it will probably bump the mercury in the lakes/stream up to being illegal (which is already considered way too high). In colorado, the vast majority of our drinking water is runoff, so this will be a large issue down the road.

why?

[zogger]

Why would it be a "disaster"? Really, expound on this a bit. All the proposed methods and techniques and crops are "wrong"? It is not useful to use the sun and photosynthesis (our only practical fusion power at this point) to make biodiesel and other bio-derived fuels? What's wrong with using some of the huge quantities of biowaste produced every year to make fuel? What's wrong with putting more farmers to work and expanding crops? Using permaculture and low till ag techniques combined with some solar and perennial and self seeding annual crops, seems to me it could be quite a viable alternative, plus tend to spread out the jobs and money involved in the whole energy business, rather than have it remain in the hands of the current cartels. It's somehow wrong for joe third world farmer who's nation has little to no natural oil in the ground to also help grow the fuel his nation needs, rather than exporting precious hard currency to go purchase expensive petroleum on the world market? It's wrong for a first world farmer to expand his operations and produce fuel as well as food crops? Why?

Sorry, overall I would have to completely disagree, bio derived fuels are here now and they work ( I've made and used ethanol fuel before, incredibly easy), they aren't energy sinks, you get a gain with the newer processes, they use a closed carbon cycle that is neutral, unlike petroleum from the ground or liquid fuels derived from coal, they require very little if any infrastructure changes for either the vehicles or the fuel delivery process to the end user, (unlike the "hydrogen" schemes currently being pushed where most everything has to change radically and expensively) and there are a raft of techniques and crops out there that could be used, something for every climate and level of technology around the planet basically. You can take most any vehicle already out there and run it on either ethanol or biodiesel with very little changes, and the fuel stations are already set-up to handle and dispense liquid fuels into "normal" fuel tanks. It's an outstanding energy transition option while we are waiting for the universal backyard Mr. Fusion reactor and the pie in the sky "hydrogen economy" which is still a long ways off.

Anyway, the point is moot, it's *being done now on a large scale* all over the world and we aren't seeing much if any "disasters" associated with it.

Re:why?

[pfdietz]

Why would it be a "disaster"? Really, expound on this a bit. All the proposed methods and techniques and crops are "wrong"?

Because it would cause very large areas to be replaced with unnatural monocultures instead of natural ecosystems. The underlying cause is the great inefficiency of photosynthetic energy conversion.

Biodiesel is fine as a boutique-scale touchy-feely fashion statement for those who don't think too much about what they are actually proposing. As a real solution to the problem of producing significant amounts of liquid fuel, it's a ghastly crime against nature.

What's wrong with using some of the huge quantities of biowaste produced every year to make fuel?

Well, aside from the fact that if organic waste is not recycled into the soil it can cause the soil to degrade, the biggest problem is that even if all of it were converted to fuel, it would not produce more than a small faction of fuel demand. US refineries produced about 125 billion gallons of gasoline in 2003; using all US corn stover (for example) for cellulosic alcohol production would produce maybe 12 billion gallons. And that's just gasoline, which accounts for just a third of the output of an oil refinery.

Re:why?

[zogger]

A collection of strawdog arguments at best. I follow this subject a lot, the techniques being developed now are outstanding and are working well, and all the indications are it will be getting better. You propose to tell some nation "sorry, you can't have farmland and grow crops"? You are telling farmers, "sorry, I have determined that you shouldn't grow XYZ, only ABC? You insist that everything remain in stasis? How are humans around the planet supposed to live? We're humans, we will be altering the environment, this is justa gimmee, there's zero argument there, it has, does and will happen, so taking that, the best we can do is study on it and do it gracefully. We can't ignore the realities of increased demand over the next generation combined with lessening of conventional petroleum/natgas supplies, combined with external and unforseen geopolitics. I mean, just check world population stats and trends. We have to use everything we can think of in the next generation to pull this off, and then some. We can see *today*, right this second, go check your favorite general news source, exactly what can happen when you put a lot of your energy eggs into one basket, witness Russia shutting off natgas supplies to the Ukraine. Stuff happens. We have aacdemic theory and on the ground in your face realities, two different things there.

  It is MUCH, MUCH better to be well diversified and to have backups. This is good for data, and it's good for "energy" as well.

  It's all fine and dandy from someone's POV who already has access to energy products and running vehicles, etc, and lives a first world experience, but you want to limit those who currently *aren't* so well off to remain like they are. How the heck is some poor family making 200 bucks a year ever supposed to be able to even come close to a western styled middle class existence without more and cheaper energy sources? You want to limit the way the economies are running now to just making the current energy suppliers more wealthy and have even more influence over politics? What's a viable solution right now? Hydrogen? What can be done *today* right now as an alternative to petroleum products? Not 20 or 50 years from now, but today? To ME, biofuels are certainly one answer. Need fuel for your tractor and truck in order to get more efficient and be able to feed more people? A) shell out half your monthly pay for conventional diesel or gasoline that is sold at world prices, or B) "grow your own fuel" on your own land.

Now GUESS what will actually happen.

To me, the alternative energy "silver bullet" isn't one particular tech, it's the combination of techs we have that are getting better and better daily. Biofuels are just one of them, and the bulk of the rest of the planet agrees, because we ARE putting in wind farms and solar PV and solar thermal and biofuel facilities, and geothermal, and etc, in all the nations.

And guess what? It's WORKING. slow but sure, it's working, despite the critics insistence it won't, daily now people are driving around with full or partially fueled bio-derived fuels, from Canada to the US to Europe to south america to Asia. And it hasn't become "ghastly". Just because immediately right this second it can't "replace" all the petroleum is a weak argument, we as humans are working both ends to the middle, developing more fuel efficient devices and increasing sources of supply of fruel, and near as I can see that's all we CAN do for this problem. We can't just sit back and go "well, it might not work so let's don't try". That mindset GUARANTEES failure.

Alternative energy in general is a lot like Linux, it is the ability to adapt and create a solution that exactly fits your particular needs and resources. There is no "one size fits all" energy solution,the proverbial Mr. Fusion reactor, it doesn't exist, nor is it likely for the forseeable future, so we need to develop the "many sizes for many needs" sets of solutions in the meantime, else we as hoo-mannz will become en-screwed.

Sonofusion results are about neutron generation

[radtea]

two, concurrent and independent sonofusion breakthroughs

The big-news sonofusion results in 2005 were about neutron, not power, generation. There was some evidence that acoustically-driven cavitation could produce temperatures high enough to result in fusion-generated neutrons. This is quite exciting in terms of understanding the basic processes involved. However, in terms of the driving physics, this is hot fusion: a very small volume of material may be heated to extremely high temperatures for a very short time, resulting in a tiny amount of fusion occuring.

Due to fundamental physical constraints it is very unlikely that such a process is scalable in a way that will produce more power than is required to generate it. The bottom line for hot fusion is that the cross-sections for loss processes are orders of magnitude larger than those for the fusion process itself, and the losses scale as the surface area of the hot volume while power production scales with the volume. This means that the cube-square law strongly favours really big hot-fusion reactors (something the size of a star seems about optimal).

So while it is not impossible that one day we'll all drive cars powered by sonofusion, I don't think anyone working in the field is suggesting that.

Did anyone read the article?

[LWATCDR]

Good grief it is full of more pseudoscience than a Kansas biology class.

Re:Did anyone read the article?

[Kohath]

Dude, real science is hard and boring. And it doesn't fulfil my emotional needs at all.

Plus, Katie on the Today show said pseudoscience is the new pop-psychology. And pop-psych made me feel so good about myself, you're not going to make me miss out on this new thing.

Chillax. It's all good.

This is Science..?

[Ancil]

Climate change evidence will continue to mount.

Well I'm glad we settled that up-front.

Research goes a lot smoother when you decide ahead of time what the results will be.

Re:Overly optimistic

[mgscheue]

Yes, he mixes some reasonably realistic schemes with stuff that's a pure crock. He seems to have no skepticism whatsoever. Good article on the "hydrino" nonsense here: http://www.phact.org/e/z/hydrino.htm

Re:Wait a sec.

[Zoyd]

WindBourne: China loses 30000 mine workers a year? You are implying that they died from mining accidents or job-related sickness.

China loses 6,000 coal miners per year at the jobsites (in the mineshafts).

http://www.google.com/search?q=china+mining+deaths

What crap. A reality check follows.

[Animats]

Wind power is now working quite well. General Electric has over 2800 of their 1.5 megawatt turbines installed, so big wind machines are finally working commercially. The wind turbines of the 1980s were typically in the 50KW to 100KW range. By comparison, a big commercial power plant (coal or nuclear) is typically in the 500 to 2000 megawatt range.

These things are big - the towers are 200 to 300 feet high. It takes 500 of them to equal one coal plant. And bigger wind turbines are coming. The latest General Electric 3MW turbines are so big they're only being considered for offshore installations. The Cape Cod Wind Farm project has produced much grumbling: "A 24 square mile industrial park the size of the island of Manhattan, 40 story turbines permanently scarring our ocean horizon, 580 lights destroying our nightscape, 130 air and sea navigation hazards in the middle of some of the foggiest air and waters in the world..." This is a generic problem with wind and solar energy. Once it starts really working, the installations are huge, because the energy densities are so low.

The downside of wind power, of course, is that it's intermittent. Typically, average power is only 30% of rated power. Of course, you don't get to pick when you get power. So you either need energy storage (like a pumped storage plant) or excess capacity in non-wind generation. Which means building more plant.

Still, wind power is real. Unlike much of the other stuff mentioned, like the "magnet engines" (an entry-level bozo idea), the "neutron generator" (a misunderstanding of a well-understood device), and "blacklight power" (generally considered to be a scam).

Tidal power seems attractive, but there are only about 20 good sites worldwide.

The Athabasca Oil Sands projects are already producing 1 million barrels of oil per day, and that should double by 2010. The scale of the operation is huge. It takes two tons of sand to yield one barrel of oil. That's one Panama Canal every ten months. Want a job as a heavy equipment operator? Move to Fort McMurray, Alberta. They're hiring. Rents have passed Silicon Valley levels, and the apartment vacancy rate is zero.

The future looks like coal. Too much coal. China is building about 50,000MW of coal-fired electric plants per year. US coal consumption has been roughly constant for a while, but will probably go up as oil prices increase.

Nuclear may make a comeback, probably when coal gets too ugly.

Is renewable energy all that good

[dayton967]

One thing that all of the people have forgotten is that The law of conservation of energy. How does having all of these Windmills, and Ocean current turbines, and such effect our environment. Remembering that both the winds and ocean currents influence global weather patterns. Now when we put up these millions of devices up, could we not be causing environmental damage anyways. It might explain why the winters are so damn cold, or it could just be old age too. Just what I have been thinking about.

Taxes...

[benjamindees]

Taxation is such an awful way for governments to "correct" market failures.

They never do it correctly. I'm sure if there were carbon taxes today, they'd manage to make you pay to burn renewable fuels like wood, ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel along with fossil fuels.

Tax revenue never goes to correct the problems it was meant to correct. In a democracy, politicians will always find a way to divert funds to pork projects or buy votes with dubious social programs.

In the long run, governments become dependent upon taxes from sources that they were originally meant to discourage. Taxes then become the perfect way for harmful industries to become legitimized in the eyes of their regulators. History is rife with examples of corrupt governments becoming one with those who profit from harming others.

What's really better, your neighbor spewing pollutants into the air and water, or him doing so with the backing of the government and military?

Biodiesel & Algae

[Zobeid]

You shouldn't dismiss biodiesel with the assumption that SOYBEANS are the only thing you can make the stuff from. We naturally look forward to advances in solar cell technology, we look forward to advances in nuclear fission and fusion technology, but for some reason people hit a mental wall with biodiesel and can't imagine any technological advances happening.

The US Govt conducted studies on the cultivation of algae with high oil content, using open-raceway ponds. Greenfuel Technologies have an enclosed system using algae to synthesize fuel from CO2 waste, such as from power plants. Synthetic Genomics are working on genetically engineered organisms that secret biofuels (they are focused more on methanol or hydrogen, but the same approach could produce vegetable oil).

You can get around the whole problem of conventional farming and consuming too much arable land. None of these approaches are fully proven on a commercial scale yet. . . But then, a lot of things we discuss on Slashdot are more far-fetched than making biodiesel fuel from algae. It's hardly fair to wave away the whole idea of biofuel as if it were some annoying insect buzzing around your head, just because you found out soybeans won't fill the bill.

Oil dependency

[Trogre]

Unfortunately technical issues aren't the only hurdle to overcome in getting the world off petroleum. Many of the more influential world leaders believe the demon Allah has given them control of the world's energy.