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Wind and Sun Beat Other Energy Alternatives
iandoh passes along the news that researchers at Stanford University have completed the first quantitative, scientific comparison of alternative energy solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability, and sustainability. Based on their model, they found that the best sources of alternative energy are wind, concentrated solar, and geothermal energy. The worst are nuclear, clean coal, and ethanol-based fuels. In other words, "the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options."
Yes, solar thermal plants can be made using the same steam turbines and generators used by coal, gas power plants to produce energy from high pressure steam.
If one adds an additional component of a heat reservoir such as molten salt, a solar plant is even capable of providing electricity through night and cloudy days (depending on the duration of reduced insolation and the capacity of the thermal reservoir of course) without requiring any advancement in battery technology.
However, I really do not appreciate him lumping nuclear power in with inferior bio fuels and carbon sequestering. Proper use of feeder-breeder reactors can effectively eliminate nuclear waste from uranium reactors and provide power for the entire world for many hundreds of years (all on its own). Add to that the potential of thorium reactors using a more plentiful fuel and nuclear power makes a perfect compliment to solar for regions not blessed with great weather.
Meanwhile the drilling and pressure issues of carbon sequestering mean that the excess energy extracted is marginalized while the risk of a geologic release of billions of tons of CO2 due to fissures or shifting could kill thousands or even millions if close enough to a major city.
Biofuel is not a renewable resource. To meet our gasoline needs alone we would need a corn field larger than the continental US. Even with switchgrass we would need ~25% of the surface of the US to meet our gasoline needs. Consider for a moment that modern farming is already devastating the aquifers that will take 10s to 100s of thousands of years to replenish naturally.
Wind has some potential but can never be used for base load due to the fact that weather on earth is inherently unpredictable, producing squalls that can overload a power grid with to much wind or starve it with periods of calm over nearly continental spans.
There are production solar-thermal facilities in California. They are base-load generation, too, because they burn natural gas when output falls (in practice they're 85%-90% solar).
Most of these "alternative energy" ideas are pipedreams that just can't scale to the 1 TW electical baseload (which will get far higher whe people start plugging in hybrids - the idea that "people wil only plug in at night" is another pipe dream). Solar thermal is great, however. It's not limited by the scarce elements needed by photoelectric cells. It's proven technology using well-understood components.
If you want *no* depenency on fossil fuels, nuclear is the only real choice with technology that doesn't depend on some future scientific breakthrough, but I think a minimal natural gas solution is a great plan for Southern states.
Replacing heating oil for heating in Northern states is going to be a huge infrastructure change, however. Even if you're OK with the inefficiency of electrical heating (and we could be OK with that, given the right source of power), you *must* have a reliable way to deliver that power. Too many places lose power in blizzards, when the lines come down. Burying all the power lines in a rural area is a gigantic proposition.
Still, I'd rather spend 2 trillion on that than on bailing out executive bonuses and stockholder dividends!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.