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

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?