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."

Comments

Well of course

[AkaKaryuu]

Of course the ones getting the most attention can be much more easily controlled by those who provide it. I would love to see a rise in energy costs because a "shortage" of wind or sun light.

Re:Well of course

[Gat0r30y]

Concentrated solar doesn't necessarily require cells, you can use the sun to heat up oil or water which drives a traditional turbine.

Re:Well of course

[Rei]

Battery capacity, charge times, etc., all need to improve by an order of magnitude.

So, just to use the Phoenix SUT as a starting point and improving it by an order of magnitude, you're saying that you want electric cars that go 1,500 miles per charge and charge to 80% in 30 seconds? Or are you still under the misconception that EVs only go 50 miles or so and inherently take hours to recharge?

State of the art but commercially available battery tech is the titanates, which get ~70Wh/kg and can recharge as fast as you can provide the power and cool the pack (individual cells have been charged to 80% in one minute), or phosphates and stabilized spinels which get ~100Wh/kg and can recharge in 10 to 20 minutes. Traditional li-ion now gets nearly 180Wh/kg, but is limited to 1 hour charging minimum and won't last the lifespan of the car (unlike the aforementioned techs). To get weight/range parity with a typical gasoline vehicle, you need about 300-400Wh/kg, which is what about a dozen different next-gen battery techs are promising. Personally, all I care about is the ability to drive for about two hours on a charge; I don't see the point to more since I'm not going to want to have to be sitting down for that long in a row.

As for chargers, the highest power EV chargers I've seen are 250kW. The highest I know of that are already installed for general use are the 60kW Aerovironment Posicharge chargers in Oahu. For a 200Wh/mi EV charging at 250kW, that's 21 miles range per minute of charging, meaning that charging makes up under 5% of your travel time.

In short, while the state of the art tech isn't perfect yet, it's not half bad.

Re:Well of course

[philspear]

Of course the ones getting the most attention can be much more easily controlled by those who provide it.

I smell a vague conspiracy theory that doesn't hold water compared to more simple explanations. Specifically that those which are attracting more attention are doing so in general because they're more viable in the short-term, or rather appeared that way.

Ethanol got a lot of attention (read: subsidies) because of exactly one thing: the iowa primary. Traditionally, politicians hoping to run for president supported ethanol because Iowa grows corn. The thinking was "If I support ethanol, I'll get big numbers in Iowa, one of the first primaries, and that will get me big campaign contributions!" Who cares about whether it is a real solution. Although not a good reason, it's not that "THEY" can controll you better. And to be honest, you can add it to your current car and put it into the infrastructure, that's a plus it has over other energies. Of course as the article points out, it's a waste of time for numerous reasons.

Nuclear: again, not evil white men out to control you, it was a big thing for a while. Of course it's going to get attention: we can do it right now.

Clean coal: you know who is pushing big for this? Everyone who is currently supported by coal, which is a lot of people. Say you own a coal-fired power plant. Which is more attractive: being forced to dismantle your plant completely in a few years (IE if solar power wins) or spend a few million on researching "clean" coal and convincing congressmen on your payroll that you're on the way to making coal which has all of the upsides of renewables but none of the downsides without raising taxes? If your answer is "going bankrupt" instead of "clean coal" you are either a saint, a liar, or are badly deluded.

In short, we can see it's not about population control, it's about money, laziness, and semi-corruption. It's not evil crafty men in suits trying to turn off your power if you stumble onto their secrets, its about fat lazy men in suits being greedy.

Subtle difference I guess, but be realistic and you won't sound like you wear a tinfoil hat.

Re:Well of course

[cromar]

I also heard a "rumor" that the ore used in the production of electric car/hybrid batteries is another big energy/carbon sink (fueld used for mining it, sending it somewhere for processing, sending it somewhere to produce the batteries, sending the batteries to the car manufacturers). Does anyone know if this is true or have any facts or references that would be apropos?

Re:Well of course

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Well of course

[OrangeTide]

The US may never have good nuclear reactors. The process of developing new reactor technology is so mired in political bullshit that in the future we'll have to look at nations like France for how to apply nuclear power in an effective and safe way. I am convinced that it will never be developed here at home.

Re:Well of course

[frieko]

Prohibitive? Try "implemented". http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/04/10/mojave-desert-solar-power-fields/

Re:Well of course

[lgw]

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!

Re:Well of course

[Ex-MislTech]

Yeah a grid is needed for high power transmission much like
we have now, though I say it is far less expensive to maintain
if they buried it in service tunnels.

In the tunnels the temp remains constant and thus less losses due
to heat such as in the southwest.

Sag of the lines in high heat has its own set of issues.

Too many times massive thunderstorms, ice storms, downed trees
damage the lines or lightning surges damage the substations and
end users personal electronics.

Often after massive storms, downed lines kill ppl and pets.

Less repair of the lines means smaller repair crews which
equals lower insurance losses, and lower operating costs.

The initial tunneling cost is high but could done in the
highest repair rate areas first, and the savings rolled
on to the other areas over time, ie. "pay it forward".

The farmers are gonna be mad

[John3]

The corn farmers are going to be upset by this but once again research shows that Ethanol made from corn is not an energy efficient way to create fuel. It's time to stop the ethanol subsidies and start spending money on energy sources with real potential. That way corn will now go back into the food stream, and farmers will also start growing hops again rather than switching to corn to make more money.

Sincerely,

Home Brewer who misses his hops

Re:The farmers are gonna be mad

[philspear]

Why don't we just put all the state primaries on the same day? The importance of the Iowa primary is no longer vastly inflated, presidential canidates no longer have to pledge to Big Corn, and ethanol stops getting subsidies.

Farmers can get mad all they like, it's bad for the rest of us.

Nuclear

[PitaBred]

I love it. He only doesn't like nuclear power because of them there terr'ists. And that it's completely reasonably possible to get weapons-grade uranium from any nuclear reactor.

And he completely ignores the effects of wind power on things like bats and birds.

Re:Nuclear

[MpVpRb]

The study claims to be quantitative and scientific. But when he goes into his anti-nuclear rant, it's all just opinion.

We currently have no perfect energy sources. I for one think nuclear sucks less than most of the others.

Re:Nuclear

[MarkusQ]

Storing that nuclear waste for the next million years is the problem. Who wants that stored in their backyard?

The only reason most of it "needs" to be stored is regulatory. 99% of the so-called primary wastes are perfectly usable as fuel for future cycles. If reprocessing were permitted (like in France, etc.) most of our "nuclear wastes" would become "nuclear fuel reserves."

Almost all of what's left is either commercially valuable / recyclable or harmless.

The nuclear waste "problem" is a creation of our fossil fuel industry driven political system.

--MarkusQ

Re:Nuclear

[GradiusCVK]

Just finished reading this garbage, and you're 100% right. The "study" was conducted to prove a certain worldview (that solar and hydro and wind are the only possible solution). Take for example the following:

Estimates of future (c. 2020) US premature deaths per year from vehicles replacing light- and heavy-duty gasoline onroad vehicles and their upstream emissions assuming full penetration of each vehicle type or fuel, as discussed in the text. Low (solid) and high (solid+vertical lines) estimates are given. In the case of nuclear-BEV, the upper limit of the number of deaths, scaled to US population, due to a nuclear exchange caused by the proliferation of nuclear energy facilities worldwide is also given (horizontal lines). In the case of corn-E85 and cellulosic-E85, the dots are the additional US death rate due to upstream emissions from producing and distributing E85 minus those from producing and distributing gasoline (see text) and the slanted lines are the additional tailpipe emissions of E85 over gasoline for the US

Essentially, they are assuming that converting to nuclear power results in global nuclear warfare. Yes, it's only the "upper limit" for the range of possible deaths that they throw into their calculations, but let me break it down for you... they have a weighted average of factors used to calculate what is the best solution, and each factor is actually a probability distribution, and they set the upper 10% (or whatever) of potential deaths per year (one of the factors in their model) for one of the solutions (nuclear) to infinity (essentially infinity.... a number so high as to completely skew the resulting weighted average), then guess what... they stated nuclear wasn't an option.

This isn't research, this is propaganda.

Re:Nuclear

[jmorris42]

> Yes, it sounds like the author had an axe to grind.

Of course the author had an ax to grind. Green gets grant money, nukes get you shunned from elite society.

The horrible truth is that for hard core greens the only solution is eliminating a couple billion excess humans and forcing the remnant to live a 'reduced' lifestyle to satisfy their self loathing. Thus no proposed solution to the 'energy crisis' is going to be acceptable if it has the potential to actually produce energy at affordable prices in quantities anywhere close to current levels. As you correctly note the greens are already mobilizing against wind and solar on the fear that they MIGHT become practical someday. There are even efforts to stop geothermal! What could possibly be wrong with geothermal? Google it if you want to be sickened.

The truth is there is no 'energy crisis' there is only a political movement to change our lifesysle. Nukes can be built perfectly safe these days, the fuel can be reprocessed to minimize the waste storage issue and we have more than enough Uranium to power any lifestyle we want until we finally perfect a practical fusion reactor. Saying this in public will end a scientist, politician or TV pundit's career though so we hear endless bleating about an energy crisis, running out of energy and global warming bullcrap intended to frighten us into doing things sane people would never do otherwise.

Re:Nuclear

[MarkusQ]

Carter decided to avoid breeder reactors in part because they can blow up and new fuel is cheep enough that reprocessing is not that big a deal.

I'll agree that Carter knew a lot about nuclear power, and for that reason I doubt that he thought that breeder reactors can blow up. 'cause it isn't true.

And while new fuel may be cheap the real question is how much does storing the fuel after extracting less than 1% of the energy cost?

--MarkusQ

Re:Nuclear

[Shatrat]

Well given that he computes the carbon footprint of nuclear by dragging things like "terrorists could steal the fuel to make a bomb which could be used in a city which would burn and release lots of CO2,"

Man, that's such a stretch my back just popped.

Re:Nuclear

[bnenning]

Not to mention the gross amount of concrete that would be needed to create all those plants and the resulting global climate effects resulting from the emissions in creating that concrete.

As opposed to the solar and wind installations that are built from pixie dust? The US has 104 active nuclear plants producing 20% of our electricity. Is building 400 more to get close to 100% really going to cause a concrete shortage?

Very sloppy, misleading headline

[MSTCrow5429]

The rankings are based on a model, not empirical, real-world science. You can stuff whatever you want into a model, and make it say whatever you want. All we know from this is if you make some wild assumptions on XYZ, options ABC line up in the order of 123.

Missing option

[pizzach]

Moon energy. I know there must be some way that we can harvest this great natural resource. Maybe attach a rope to it that pulls a gear or burn it or something.

Nuclear is the best option.

[Lumpy]

I love how it's dismissed out of hand because of the bogeyman argument.

TERRORISM!!!!!! Oh crap.

We better rule out anything that is efficient and can be used RIGHT NOW.

No let's pick the ones based on Unobtanium.

Nuclear?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

When I was young and savvy, I always knew that nuclear power was bad. Polluting. Toxic. Dangerous. Wrong. But now that I'm older, I'm not so sure. In fact I think it's pretty safe. But, I can't objectively confirm this. My current opinion is still just as uniformed as my previous one.

Trouble is, it's difficult to separate the facts from the rhetoric, and it is danm near impossible to find an unbiased introduction to radioactivity, its uses dangers and safety limits. I would like to learn more, but there is precious little information available. I mean real information, with numbers. Without them, I'm just getting gas. And no, I am not going to rely on wiki-trips.

It's easy to find information on astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, radio, electricity, etc, etc, etc. But radioactivity? Not a chance. How close to I have to be to an exposed nuclear rod before I am "at risk"? 10 meters? 100 meters? A kilometer? In orbit? Give me graphs. Give me numbers. Help me understand. I'm not stupid, nor are most people. But without hard numbers, I can't confirm or deny my suspicions?

Or you could just keep making Radioactive super-mutant movies and promoting candle wick alternate energy sources. Whichever.

This is a judgement call, not science.

[gurps_npc]

While I generally agree that 'clean coal' doesn't work and that non-production waste ethanol creation is foolish, I disagree with the basic premise of this article.

The problem is it is NOT comparing everything in one area. It uses multiple different measures, including pollution, cost, etc.

But when you that kind of study it requires you to make judgments about which is more important. These are value judgments, NOT scientific ones. Basically all this study does is tell you what a few scientists at Stanford want, not what is true or factual.

P.S. While ethanol as done in US is stupid, Ethanol as done in South America makes sense. They take all the production waste from agricultural and make ethanol from it. That would be the leaves, etc. the things we don't eat. In the US on the other hand they put the stuff we actually EAT into the pot. South American plan makes sense, but the US version does not..

Re:All things decay

[Retric]

You can find plenty of old abandoned buildings so clearly the single family home is never going to catch on without creating huge wastelands of old abandoned homes.

AKA: If the site is valuable maintaining or upgrading the wind farms is a net gain.

What he says about nuclear is just stupid

[Dr. Spork]

Here's TFA:

"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.

So basically, to make Nuclear just fall off his chart, he assumes that building more powerplants will lead to nuclear war, and calculates how much stuff that will burn. Is that not completely absurd?

Basically, the gist of what he's saying about Nuclear is this: "We have to pretend like it's a bad idea, because if we don't, other countries will want to do it, and then they might build bombs. So, say it with me: Nuclear is a baad idea."

Does somebody want to break it to the guy that Iran and other states will pursue weapons programs no matter what sort of powerplants we build in the US? And besides, what's more likely to cause war: Clean and cost-effective nuclear powerplants that the rest of the world will want to copy, or an energy shortage which sends us looking to secure fossil fuels? I think the latter.

Anyway, this calculating methodology is so incredibly bizarre that I suspect it's bought.