Expanding the Electricity Grid May Be a Mistake

Perhaps T. Boone Pickens was onto something. Al writes "An article in Technology Review argues that plans to string new high-voltage lines across the US to bring wind power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, could be an expensive mistake. What's needed instead are improved local and regional electricity transmission, the development of an efficient and adaptable smart grid, and the demonstration of technology such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could prove a cheaper way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than transmitting power from North Dakota to New York City."

Comments

Central Generation

[Dr_Barnowl]

The CBI in the UK has been railing against our governments focus on wind power as well.

They were also keen on carbon-capture and also nuclear.

It's funny how big corporate interests are not so keen on projects where any little group of people could afford their own small-scale generation capacity. Although I could be talking through my tinfoil hat.

just another bunch of Big Coal shills

[alizard]

this is what the author really wants to sell us as an alternative to moving to renewable energy.

and the demonstration of technology such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could prove a cheaper way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

Capturing CO2 simply requires running smokestack emissions through a chilled ammonia bath at the cost of 25% input power... i.e. we get to pay for a 125% increase in the amount of coal burned.

How do we move all these gigatons of CO2 to disposal sites and store it forever?

Big, high pressure pipelines. Odd that nobody talking up a "clean" coal future ever talks about the comparative costs of a national pipeline network vs a smartgrid.

We have massive unused heavy manufacturing capability in terms of both idle car factories and a trained labor force that can be converted to building renewable generation capability. The question of replacing coal with wind/concentrated thermal solar is a question of political will, not technological capability.

Re:Problem with wind and solar?

[Bemopolis]

You start taking a significant chunk of that energy out of the atmosphere, couldn't you end up with climate changes that could be even more devestating than the global warming you're trying to avoid?

Yes you could. However, building the number of windmills required to satisfy all of our energy needs wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the climate AT ALL. Just to give a sense of scale, consider the following: wind power is primarily the result of solar input. At Earth distance sunlight delivers 1360 watts per (projected) square meter; that's about 10 megawatts per football field (or, if you prefer, soccer pitch.) Over the lit surface of the Earth, that's an energy input of 173,000 terawatts.

The current energy consumption of mankind? 16.

Note that this is just solar input (of which some percentage goes into wind power). This doesn't even touch on the potential of tapping into ocean tides, which is driven by gravitational forces. And of course the supernova remnant fuel storage device known as nuclear fission. Compared to the impact of releasing long-sequestered carbon from beneath the ground back into the atmosphere, stealing power from the wind is chicken feed.

Re:Problem with wind and solar?

[noidentity]

I'm pretty sure they said the same thing about pumping pollution into the air, too. The volume of pollution pumped out of factories vs the volume of the atmosphere, it'd never be significant. What do you know - as more people started jumping on the bandwagon, new technology found new ways to pump out pollution. If we invest heavily in wind farms, new technology will come along to extract more energy in less land footprint.

The difference is that pollution accumulates, while the wind dissipates pretty quickly. And hell, putting up a large structure probably blocks more wind (turns it into heat and sound) than a turbine could. Also, is anyone really concerned that having solar collectors on the ground is going to disrupt things as compared to having the sun hit the ground instead?!?