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Freeze On US Solar Plant Applications Lifted
necro81 writes "Barely a month ago, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a freeze on applications for solar power plants on federally managed land, pending a two-year comprehensive environmental review. After much hue and cry from the public, industry, and other parts of government, BLM has today announced that it will lift the freeze, but continue to study the possible environmental effects. To date, no solar project has yet been approved on BLM land."
Because Big Oil doesn't like Big Sun.
My god, what next!? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Yes, it's from ... Ghostbusters!
We'll just figure out what the effects are after we're hooked up to your juice.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Solar power sounds great and is very trendy. Why evaluate the possible consequences for our actions when we can plow ahead blindly? Going ahead with energy policy without considering the environmental effects has worked well for us so far!
Besides, being in favor of solar power helps you score with hippie chicks.
They will kill all natural plant life, absorb all available sunlight, douse the planet with darkness, freeze up the North Pole, stop the North Atlantic Conveyor, interfere with the mating rituals of rhesus monkeys and cause the whales to change their tunes. It is the end of the world as we know it!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I wonder if the BLM has approved any oil wells on BLM land......
While we whine about 'environmental considerations' of grabbing free energy from the sun, other countries are actually doing something about it. I was just in Germany where solar cell farms have been built in many places along the autobahns. Further, there are huge windmills everywhere (turning VERY slowly--Any bird which hits one of these is not paying attention. In France they've gone whole-hog nuke for electricity. There isn't a project alive that we can't make take ten times longer and make ten times the cost over our 'concerns.'
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Birds instantly cooked in mid air due to highly focused sunlight.
You need to see just HOW MUCH BLM land exists here in the Southwest. It's the vast majority of land where solar could be a viable enterprise. The amount of private land vs government-land (not withstanding Indian reservations, which I suppose could be argued as casino/government land) vastly outstrips private land holdings.
This is a big deal, because bush is shutting off a huge reserve of prime solar generating real estate on BLM land. I suspect if oil was found on BLM land there would be a cry for getting guvamint out of the land business.
California has a mandate that 20% of its power must come from renewables (not including large hydropower plants) by 2012 and higher targets shortly after. The only cost-effective way to meet this requirement is by building massive thermal solar plants very quickly. Lots of the best land for such plants is controlled by the Federal government in one form or another. There are something like 10 500 MW solar farms planned for construction in in various parts of the Mojave desert over the next decade. So, the demand is real.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
Solar cells are still made from industrial chemical processes, so they're not necessarily very land-fill friendly (obviously, this depends on the chemical makeup of the cell)....and yes, the cells will wear out and require replacement.
Also, as a joker pointed out earlier, since they don't work at night, you need batteries...our battery technology is also fairly heavy on the heavy metals right now. These also wear out, often faster than the cells do.
In the case that the BLM are talking about, there are a number of interesting possibilities:
* How to bees/other insects react to light reflected back off large banks of cells? Does it mess with their navigation?
* Do any of the plans to get cables out to the banks of cells mess with the wildlife they're trying to protect?
* Do the cells have any (potentially) toxic runoff when hit with heavy rains/hail/etc?
* will any residual heat from the cells mess with the local flora/fauna? (if it's an area that's normally snow-covered in winter, what happens if the heat from the cells keeps it snow-free? Does that mess with any of the local plants cycles?)
This is what their study aims to answer (what exactly are the concerns and how bad they are). Unfortunately random people's suppositions don't substitute research, which is why they are investigating it.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Thermal solar power works by heating something like liquid sodium and then using that to heat steam to 1000F, which is a very efficient temperature to run a steam turbine. As such, they work at night, for between 2-20 hours after sundown (can even out a partially cloudy day, for example).
Thermal solar doesn't need batteries, and you don't use batteries for a grid intertie solar plant. Most energy is needed during the day, when the sun is brightest, so honestly, the big point is taking peak needs off the coal plants -- which is how you have to size them and where you pay most of your money. Photovoltaics can feed into the grid and provide this peak pretty well, although it's yet to be seen if thermal solar can beat them for efficiency.
Sorry when the facts bother you, but solar only recently made it past the "break even" point in regards to energy produced over energy put in during production.
Today on slashdot, lying liars and the lies they tell.
The truth is that we have known for over thirty years that Solar Cells recoup the energy invested in their production in under seven years and may actually do it in less than one year.
Now, a nuclear plant however ...
...could be safe and efficient, but none of the designs we are using now are particularly deserving of either description (although they are not spectacularly unsafe and are probably safer than many of the coal and oil plants operating in the USA.) And the plants which have been proposed to be built any time in the near future are just more of the same shit.
We would need to start using breeder reactors to reprocess nuclear fuel in order to make building more nuclear make any kind of sense. This is not impossible.
On the issue of solar passing the break even point, however, you are like Bush talking about WMDs in Iraq. Full of fucking shit and with no possible defense other than being misled. Too bad you got modded up (obviously by big oil! heh heh)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"