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EPA To Reuse Toxic Sites For Renewable Energy
Hugh Pickens writes:"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines — 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. 'We don't want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that's pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable for wind and solar power development, as well as biomass. Included are 5 million acres suitable for photovoltaic or concentrated solar power development, and 500,000 acres for wind power. These sites, if fully developed, have the potential to produce 950,000 megawatts — more than the country's total power needs in 2007, according to EPA data."
Just noticed, they are proposing this to get around concerns of the environmental groups... Interesting. If a Republican did this they'd claim he was sacrificing the planet to enrich thier friends in the energy business, except these folks are doing it to enrich their friends in the "green" energy business, so I guess it's all right.
Ken
Who is Nimby and why isn't he a factor anymore? Is he maybe a superhero who died in a nuclear power plant accident?
In seriousness, "Not in my backyard" shouldn't -logically- be a reason the community would object to a nuclear power plant on a superfund site, but there's significant keyword in there. I'm not being elitist here, I would be hesitant to allow a nuclear power plant in my neighborhood even if it were a superfund site. I know that would be stupid and illogical. Still wouldn't be able to shake the feeling that the thing was going to blow up and kill my family.
I'm _sure_ that will be the first concern for the contractors (of course -- can't have government jobs) who hire people for these "green" jobs. "Spend eight hours a day trampling around Love Canal. It's a fun job -- and green!" Everybody be for it if each job came with government-sponsored health insurance for _unlimited_ payment on cancer treatments?
Reminds me of the commercials for exciting off-world employment opportunities that are faithfully placed in most PK Dick inspired movies.
Problem is, the Earth Firsters want everything put back into 'pristine shape'. This really isn't feasible in any manner. From the way they talk, seems as though they consider humanity a disease that needs wiping out. Leave it up to them, there'd be maybe 5,000 humans running around naked and toolless, subsisting on carrion & berries while their prefered animal populations took over the Earth.
All except them, of course. They won't give up a technic lifestyle, they need it to pump out their propaganda.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
So much concentrated dumbassery in so few words. Let's start from the beginning - 1) there is no, zero, nada market for commercial space travel, and there's no indication that there will ever be. There is nothing you can obtain in space that is a) useful on earth (you know, where all the people live?), and b) can be obtained more cheaply in space.
2) We have a number of "commercial space satellites" (are there any ground-based satellites?) already - which has had no noticeable effect on demand for solar panels. And what possible mechanism could there be for stimulating such demand? I'm really having a hard time figuring out the connection here - while satellites do tend to use solar panels, there's only so many you can put up - they can't possibly affect the market much. And even in the vanishingly unlikely event that a lot of travel does end up going into interplanetary travel, those spacecraft would pretty much require nuclear power plants of some sort, as solar power gets scarce in the outer solar system.