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China Is Winning Global Race To Make Clean Energy
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines, has leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels, and is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China."
The OP is comparing a natural ressource only present in specific places with something that is easily manufactured anywhere. So, dependence on chinese wind turbines - hardly.
You cannot compare our need for oil to our "need" for manufactured goods. The former is a finite resource, you can only get it from a handful of places around the world, the latter will be sourced from literally whoever is cheapest. If China suddenly cut the west's supply of goods off I'm sure one of their cheapest competitors would happily step in to fill the void. Or if it got too expensive then they would be produced in the west.
I suprised that this suprises some people. China has been securing large parts of the world's supply of rare earth elements / tantalum for quite some time. This should not really be news to anyone who has been paying attention.
These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.
Way to miss the point completely. As has been mentioned already, a wind turbine or solar panels can be built anywhere. Oil, however, can only be found in specific locations.
What this DOES imply is that China will not be a customer purchasing Western manufactured "clean energy" equipment, which in itself is significant when you consider each wind turbine, for instance, costs several million dollars. The less technological equipment they purchase from the West, the more the balance of trade shifts in their favor.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The US will corner the market once fusion gets perfected in 10 or so years... (seriously! Quite laughing! I'm prognosticating accurately!)
"the most efficient types of coal power plants" All based on technology developed in the U.S. For instance, they were just in N.D. trying to learn(aka copy) more efficient ways of drying coal. You can spin the story however you want, it doesn't make it true. That's only what they are hoping to do. Never underestimate the ability of the world's engineers in developing new technology, and China's meger(spin word like "vault" and "leapfrog") ability to copy it.
These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China."
You missed the most important point in the source article:
and is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.
These aren't "renewable" technologies, nor do they need to be. What they are, though, are the only realistic way of producing enough energy to power our society going forward.
The new generation of nuclear reactors is completely safe, and disposing of the waste products is a completely solvable problem.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
While you're focused on who invented what, the rest of the world forges ahead and the US spirals downwards into oblivion.
You really don't get what's happening, do you.
When the US attacks Iran....a major exporter of oil to China.
I agree. We never should have recognized Red China.
So much for this comment, posted just yesterday...
Not to mention that if you read the summary the Chinese are also leapfrogging everybody in nuclear and cleaned up fossil fuels too.
No sig today...
You might, but in the real world, the lowest bidder wins..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
This will be a somewhat general statement, but I'm an American and the endless flood of stories like this is quite disheartening. I've left the USA now, because it seems to be in decline, but more importantly because no one seems to give a damn. Just today I read the article about China (where I currently live) leapfrogging the West in renewable energy products (which is clearly happening, despite the West's complaints), as well as an article on Cringely's blog about upcoming cuts to NASA (which is probably the single most important government agency for the future of humanity).
Then, I go over to facebook, and all I see are status messages from politically-minded friends, essentially acting like children watching a football game "Go Democrats! Fuck Republicans!" "Go Republicans! Fuck Democrats!", and no one seems to give a flying fuck about actually making changes that position the country for the future.
Take China as an example. Like every other country, they injected a huge financial stimulus into their economy, but they are doing it with purpose. They're building new highways to serve parts of the country presently unserved; they're building bullet trains faster than those in Japan, Korea and France; they're upgrading their power grid to technologies surpassing that of any other country. When all is said and done, they will have used the downturn as an opportunity to improve their country's efficiency.
Meanwhile, in the USA, they bailed out the oligarchy that runs the banking system, and then gave money to a bunch of aimless projects that just put band-aids on current infrastructure. There was no national call to action (for example..."we're going to put unemployed auto workers to work building an all-new high-speed rail system to link our urban areas" or "we're going to use this opportunity to completely replace our power grid, because we lose such a high percentage of power to inefficiency of the lines") that would have solidly improved the country for the long-term, improve its ability to transact business.
Anyone to this site ought to understand that networks are important. The Internet, power grid, airports, train system, highway system...all networks, that allow society to function. In the USA, only the Internet and highways actually work well (the power grid is antiquated and incredibly inefficient, the air traffic control system is a dinosaur and most U.S. airports are shitholes comparatively speaking to the many other countries, and although highways work well, they depend on a resource that is finite and running out). When will Americans wake up and start pushing the country to actually upgrade the country's networked infrastructure; prepare the country for the future?
I know this seems to be out of place here, but the fact that the USA is doing essentially nothing on the renewable energy front is just another example. After a while, it gets pretty disheartening.
gameDB
Very insightful, I totally missed that Clinton was a Republican.
Again, another big party lemming who can't be bothered to see that his favored party's leadership also accomplished nothing while in office.
That won't change any of the "omg we don't need to care about the environment, our energy or item consumption or make things greener, because, look at China! As a country they are worse!!" .. never mind they use the energy and produce the items for the people in the US and not themselves, and they are six times as many.
In order to win race you must finish first. I don't think that China can do that when Norway is already 100% green. Or maybe "green energy" does not include hydro power.
WRONG! Have a look here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/
Quote:
"On average, about 200 Watts falls on each square meter of Earth’s surface, but you might preferentially put your cells in sunnier, clearer places, so let’s call it 250 Watts per square meter. With a 15% efficiency, which is middling for present technology the area you need is
2 trillion Watts/(.15 X 250. Watts per square meter)
or 53,333 square kilometers. That’s a square 231 kilometers on a side, or about the size of a single cell of a typical general circulation model grid box. "
It's disappointing that you are misrepresenting what that books says. First, the numbers presented on the page you link to are only for Britain (other areas have much more abundant solar resources), and the author makes lots of assumptions that are not related to physics as he comes up with the numbers (i.e., he talks about how much area is practical to cover, rather than possible, and he talks about the cost, and so on).
People living in Arizona can easily extract all the energy they need from the sun. There are people doing it.
(Of course, I don't think nuclear is a bad idea, especially right now where the main alternative is coal)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I'm not a fan of it in general it causes more problems than it solves (countries get into tit for tat issues). However, we NEED jobs in this country badly, good paying jobs for people being forced out of the auto industry and this is a perfect place to utilize their skills. It is also an insult to every American company that's been developing and building these things stateside. Buy American we develop the technology, buy Chinese and they develop technology.
Also you're spitting on every soldier who's fought in the Mid East, by buying Chinese wind turbines, solar panels etc. Do not trade one foreign energy dependency for another.
Of course, if those self-same "hippies" hadn't been busy doing Big Oil's job for them by demonising nuclear power at the time, the environmental situation, not to mention the face of world politics, might be very different today (I would have liked 20 years of building more efficient breeder reactors and better means of dealing with the waste, for instance, than the status quo of pumping the waste directly into the sky). I guess it's easy to say, in hindsight, that the world might be a cleaner, better place today if we'd done more nuclear back then, but the truth is the facts were there all along, people just chose to ignore them or distort them to their own ends (on both sides of the debate, I might add).
I'm an American and a few years ago, I went to Vietnam to visit with family (someone married Vietnamese in the family). While I was there, I saw something really interesting in terms of a cultural bias. The Vietnamese have a very strong tendency to favor cooperation over competition. That's the duopoly. The last I heard, their economy was growing at 8% a year.
The Japanese also demonstrated this with their desire to build one of the fastest, if not *the* fastest internet infrastructures in the world. The goal became a matter of national pride more than how a few executives could figure out how to line their pockets and still deliver lousy service while derailing every other effort to improve matters for consumers.
The Vietnamese and the Japanese are essentially descendants of the Chinese so they would share the same cultural value of favoring cooperation over competition. They have demonstrated this value over and over again with their resilience through wars, economic strife and growing pains.
In America, the profit motive seems to have priority over all other concerns in business. The profit motive overrules the desire to cooperate hands down, every time, at the firm level, and often within the firm. This behavior stems primarily from the desire to avoid shareholder lawsuits over share value in publicly held companies. Another motivating factor, in my opinion, is that executives who have so much money that they never have to work again start to see economics as a game of monopoly. Instead of being satisfied, they strive to get more and more. The result is that there is less and less for the rest of us to earn. Which brings "the rest of us" to the point that we can't even buy the stuff we make here, and we're getting to the point where we can't even buy the stuff "the captains of industry" want us to import from China.
Competition is not a sin. It's a part of life. But competition taken to it's logical conclusion is the decline of America. Until we get it that we're a team together and that there are bigger problems to solve than how to dominate a market, we're going to face a serious decline in our standard of living relative to other nations.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Clearly you're trolling, but lest anyone take you seriously please recall that implementing these measures would require the worst sort of totalitarian state.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
If you can dump the effluent from your factories into the rivers and if you don't need to give you workers protective gear, its amazing how financially compelling your argument to build in China becomes. Obviously China will outstrip the workers paradises in Europe, and nobody, least of all the Europeans, are going to complain about polluted rivers and skies in China.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There seems to be this pervasive 'If we're not #1 at <something>, everything is fucked.' attitude in American culture.
Why should anyone be surprised that a country that houses a fifth of the world's population is gradually moving closer towards one fifth of the global influence and achievements? Why would it surprise anyone that gradually, over time, a country with four times the population of the USA will pass the USA on a global '<something>' ranking?
And why would this be a reason to panic? Did the success of the USA, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the 2nd half of the 20th century make Europe poorer? Is the standard of living in London or Paris worse than it was in 1939? I dare say quite the opposite happened.
I see no reason to fear the success of China will make the USA poorer. Less supremely powerful in comparison perhaps, but there is no reason to assume this will cause problems. China and the US don't have any overlapping territorial claims, foreign resources are purchased rather than taken by force these days, and China has always shown very little interest in projecting military power globally. I understand that to become more like Britain is the average American's greatest nightmare, but with a population of 300 million and plenty of room to grow, that's just not going to happen in our lifetime, and even if it is, not being #1 at absolutely fucking everything isn't as horrible as it sounds.
Nothing to see here.
My dayjob is running a steel plate roller at a wind turbine tower construction company. I speak from first hand experience when I say they are NOT 'easily made anywhere'. Even if that were so, the tower sections are most definately not easily transported anywhere. It is a helluva lot easier to transport the flat steel plate than the completed sections, as there are so many restrictions on oversized loads on roadways.
The contracts to supply towers go to the construction facilities near the project sites, precisely because the cost of transporting completed sections is so much higher than transporting the materials. The only competition from Chinese towers will be for sites located within spitting distance of a deep water port.
Pardon me, but it strikes me as a bit silly to say we can't supply our energy needs through renewable sources without defining "need".
We don't "need" what the energy companies provide at all. What we need are things produced with that energy.
It would be more sensible to state we can't take an economy based on abundant, cheap, and widely available fossil fuels, suddenly take those fossil fuels away, and expect it not to hurt. Stated that way, why would one expect one or two discrete sources of energy to be a suitable drop-in replacement for oil? The universe doesn't owe us a living on our own terms. Even if we could wave a magic wand and conjure up magic electricity plants that ran on nothing, it wouldn't be as nice (from our perspective) as waving a magic wand and having a boundless supply of oil to supply the systems we have in place today.
Here's an interesting thought experiment. Imagine the world of 1800, where industrial revolution is under way, powered by water driven mills and wind driven ships and animal driven land transport. Imagine that world as just like our own, except there was no oil or coal. It is very likely that if we look at that world in 2010, it is much less wealthy than ours, and as a result less technologically advanced in many areas. But it would not be a world frozen in the technology and economic development levels of 1800.
Peak oil is a big challenge for our society. But it's not one that necessarily means a return to the Stone Age. I think the challenge we face is to continue improving the level of human welfare as oil runs out. New energy sources are important, but they won't be enough. We'll have to be come more efficient per unit of human welfare. The good news is that we're extremely inefficient, so we have lots of room for improvement.
Our current inefficiency is not a moral failing as some would like to paint it. It's the inevitable result of a world with an abundant, cheap, easily available oil. What would be a moral failing is to ignore the challenge of this generation: to find a way to continue improving human welfare as this enormously helpful resource becomes scarce.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
On the other hand it is a hell of a lot easier to get people do to things when doing things is the only chance they have. You could go out and build wind turbines or you could starve. Millions of rural Chinese are choosing to not starve.
Also, and just because I have a few bones to pick with the article/blog, saying that China is leading the way on solar and wind is like saying that a diabetic is leading the fight against world hunger and sugar imbalance. Of course they are producing more solar panels and wind turbines than anyone else, they are producing more of anything else than anybody else. This is just stating the obvious while the blogger quietly applauds China's take on cap and trade.
As as far as green infrastructure building goes, of course they are. They have a ton of people and what would save other countries a penny, will costs China billions. If China didn't take that approach it would be like Wal-Mart swapping out their distribution chair for backpacked clowns on pogo sticks.
I am sorry, but saying the Chinese government have suddenly developed an environmental conscious is bullshit. I have lived there personally, and I know environmentalist that have tried to work with the government. They are only interested in saving face in front of the World.
This is all about making products and money. If they thought they could sell blue widgets rather than solar panels for more money, they would. They will also likly dump the chemicals and waist from the manufacturing of the solar panels in to the rivers and lakes, while using the dirties coal powered energy to make them, making their workers sick with uncontrolled processes, and no one will even try to hide it.
So while you are all feeling warm and fuzzy about your new solar panels, electric car, or whatever saving the Planet, stop and realize that it was made with some of the most environmentally unfriendly and unethical practices in the World in China.
Try the rivers full of dead floating fish? How about the chemical spills that regularly kill thousands across China? Try driving by one of their coal fired power plants. Your eyes will be watering long before you see the plant. Has anyone on the East coast of China ever seen a star in their life?
Talking about pollution in China is still officially a State secret that can make people disappear.
Living in Chile
What is needed is to ask CHina nicely to follow their legal obligations, and if not, then we drop MFN, slowly. Once they do the right thing and follow the CLinton agreement, as well as WTO accords, then we restore MFN with the provision that it drops again if they ever reneg on their legal requirements .
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It isn't even clear peak oil is that big a problem. There were all sorts of things that people were doing when oil was $130 a barrel that still made sense, and there were all sorts of people who found alternatives that were cheaper than $130.
So it isn't clear that it is going to be a shock.
(I realize that people who were commuting long distances in big cars to their over-sized homes were rather uncomfortable with the increase in energy costs, but they did options to make things more tenable (smaller homes, smaller cars, shorter commutes, etc.))
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
In the long run, I have little fear of China. First, their oppressive government will eventually moderate or fail as the population becomes more educated and more connected to the rest of the world. Second, as China engages with other nations, they have quickly learned how taking shortcuts such as using lead paint on toys is not the path to success. Third, there is the lesson of Google, where China is learning that there is a high cost to forcing the private sector at private expense to do the government's bidding. Finally, China's public health issues and personal liberty issues are on a collision course with it's government ability to stay in power.
-- $G
They have the only full scale prototypes of current generation civilian nuclear power reactors - pebble bed.
Everybody else is still on the drawing board.
In this solar panel price survey, they won't list cheap Chinese panels and yet you can now find panels for under $1/Watt retail: http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm So those cheap Chinese panels must be doing something positive. On the other hand, China has to contend with rapidly advancing US thin film production: http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2009-intro.htm so no wonder they want to make their panels cheap and match the US growth rate.
That's an excellent point. We don't know that peak oil is necessarily a huge problem. What matters is how quickly declining oil production is factored into our economic decisions (which car to buy, which technology to back). If demand grows relatively slowly and supply falls relatively slowly, then a Mad Max style dystopia is a long way off, it is coming at all.
The nice thing about the "soft landing" scenario is that we don't have to plan anything. We just do what comes naturally and everything sorts itself out. Such a scenario does not seem improbable to me. However it's not the only plausible scenario, so some kind of concerted plan to get ahead of the supply curve seems reasonable to me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Let's borrow more money from them so we can invest in winning the race to clean energy!
Where did you get that from? A couple of years ago they imported a greater generating capacity of wind turbines from an Australian company than have actually been installed in Australia.
You've left? How sad.
First, please note that I don't take any issue with a number of your stated points - that the pop culture is obsessively superficial, etc. Yep, it is.
You have to understand the nature of democracy and capitalism. It's not efficient, it's not the quickest way from point A to point B, and it's not pretty. It's full of arguments, noise, dirt, and chaos; moreover it's usually grossly inefficient. Those are all frustrating as hell when you think there are a number of things that "need to be done" like renewable energy, infrastructure building, etc.
But in the same sense that Jefferson (?) said "A government strong enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take away everything you have." OBVIOUSLY a command economy like China is going to respond more quickly, more efficiently, and is able to make better long-term decisions, particularly about 'commons' items like infrastructure and huge, 30-year energy investments. Then again, they're also terrifically efficient at doing things that aren't so great - controlling dissent, making decisions 'for the good of the public' without actually ASKING the public, and so forth.
Great example: the US's lack of effort on renewable energy. China is making great strides in implementing hydropower, for example. The 3 Gorges Dam "...The project produces hydroelectricity, increases the river's navigation capacity, and reduces the potential for floods downstream by providing flood storage space." Not to even mention the stability of freshwater supplies for the entire region. All good, right? Of course, it only required the forcible relocation of 1.3 million people, the inundation of at least 1200 archaeological sites, and may prove to be catastrophic if its location on a seismic fault proves vulnerable.
Command economies are really good at other things, like autobahns, concentration camps, and making war. All ok with you?
It's a binary choice - if the public gets a say in their government, it's going to be chaotic and (generally) stupid. If you decouple the public from government, it becomes much more effective and efficient...of course, you no longer get to control which direction it goes.
Further, when you have a capitalistic system, you DON'T GET THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. Nope, doesn't work that way. Capitalism is the system of 'good enough'. So many people don't seem to understand that. A farmer might have a gravel driveway. Yes, he could put in an asphalt one, save on wear & tear on his vehicles, reduce his annual maintenance & grading costs, all sorts of good things. But: it's not worth it to him. The advantages don't exceed the costs, so he 'gets by' with a gravel road.
In that same sense, the moment that oil really IS a concern...say, when gas prices hit $5/gallon (real, not just $1.50/gal with $3.50 in politically motivated taxes), then you WILL see strides in efficiencies and the sale of efficient cars, because there will be a concrete value to it.
When coal and such are too politically/commercially unpleasant to power electrical plants, we'll finally get nuclear back because people will ignore the stinky hippies.
The moment there are enough people/goods that a high-speed rail system could preferentially serve over our current (shitty) system of individual vehicles and highways, and served better enough that they could make money on the deal? High speed rail would be built in a second. (Note that most passenger rail lines nowadays are little more than politically-motivated pork-barrel projects that end up being an annual subsidy project because "even though we built it, they didn't come.")
So yeah, there are a bunch of things wrong with the USA. But to whinge about it and then LEAVE? Then you need to shut up. Because if you're not staying here to WORK ON CHANGING IT, you no longer are entitled to a voice. If you think NASA is the most important government agency in the future of humanity? (Personally I'd agree that space exploration IS that
-Styopa
The problem with investing in green tech isn't the EPA. (Many of the worst chemicals in Solar Panel manufacturing are so toxic that they kill you instantly if you mishandle them... and they don't stick around).
The problem is that these investments take years to payoff and US corporations provide incentives for very short term results at the expense of serious long term investments.
I believe that there is the possibility of our return to the stone age due to peak oil. Not because we're not going to have cars or globalization, but because people will launch wars to secure the last drops.
China is effectively building new power infrastructure while most of the world either doesnt have the money for developing a power infrastructure, or already has one. Hence they are leading the way in "green" power, as the new plants built in china arn't significantly different to the new plants built elsewhere, but it is expensive to replace existing power plants simply because the new tech is "green". Also how is Iceland (who afaik run (almost) everything with their abundant geothermal energy) not the greenest country with respect to energy supply...
The 20th century progressives called; they want their eugenics back.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So, a guy wrote a book with a number of assumptions and generalizations predicated on existing technology only...And a dependence on renewable energy is moved right to the realm of impossible?
Bit of a stretch.
The obvious counterargument is that currently we treat electricity like it's an infinite resource, and allow products that use it to be WILDLY inefficient: it's like figuring out peak oil where every car is a 1970's car that gets 6 miles to the gallon, and where the number of cars on the road is going to continue increasing at the 1970's rate.
Requiring a certain level of efficiency, and requiring products to use a lot less power when they are ostensibly "off" would change the consumption figures substantially.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I can guarantee that in that world, most species of whale would be extinct, and environmentalists would be complaining that the rain forests were almost entirely gone because they'd been cut down to grow soybeans and corn.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It matters little to me that China is pushing "clean energy" technology so much as that SOMEBODY is doing it. Would it be a bad thing if China became a technological lead in this area. At the very least it should mean that they can sell the technology to other countries. Hopefully, it will also spur others to get off their ASSES and invest a little more in research+tech, rather than trying to make the flashiest effects in movies and video games whilst locking down the DRM as tightly as possible...
Build a wind turbine in the US or EU, and it's "Agggh! You might hurt some birds!"
Lawsuit-lawsuit-lawsuit....
Build a hydroelectric dam in the US or EU, and it's "Agggh! You might hurt some snails!"
Lawsuit-lawsuit-lawsuit....
Build a solar panel in the US or EU, and it's "Agggh! You might shade some weeds!"
Lawsuit-lawsuit-lawsuit....
Build a nuclear reactor in the US or EU, and it's "AGGGH! GIANT ANTS!"
Lawsuit-lawsuit-lawsuit....
Folks in China don't seem to have to deal with as many of the "technology is baaaaad" types.
I suspect it's because they have far more-recent memories of what it's like to freeze in the dark.
Regards;
So the fact that China is ending up with all manufacturing is shocking...not. lolll...thank heavens they have an open government.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Very insightful, I totally missed that Clinton was a Republican.
Then you probably missed the part about how Mrs. Clinton was on Wal*Mart's board for six years...and failed to link that fact, the Clintons' political successes in Wal*Mart's home state - Arkansas - and how much Wal*Mart benefited from Clinton's granting China MFN and being a champion of inequitable free trade.
And I bet you didn't consider how the additives in some cigars can make you eager to sign deregulation bills so as to buy Republican silence, either?
lolll...I bet you missed how Mrs. Clinton's Senate campaign was greatly aided by free rides on Vinod Gupta's (a significant beneficiary of inequitable free trade) jets, too?
My point being that you don't have to be an inanimate object to violate truth in labeling laws.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
When you look at the Harper government in Canada, and their stance to keep their hands in the ground with regards to environmental policy, you will have to wonder. Sure the country spends a third of the year below 0C, but you have to wonder whether there is nothing that can be done as he claims. Heck, investing in environmental friendly technologies would help create new industry sectors and even potentially provide new exportable technologies. If he was so in the pocket of Alberta's oil sands, then maybe something would happen.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Bullshit. A required reading here would be "Heat: How to stop the planet burning" by George Monbiot. The important difference between that and the "Can we live on renewables" absolutely worthless piece of reading, is that it has been long established that green energy alone will not give us the terawatts we need to enjoy our relatively luxurious lifestyle. We need to go down on energy usage, and that is what Monbiot advocates for. Of course, he also mentions it will be a pain in the ass thing to do, people hate to say goodbye to their toys, but there is no other option. We are too many, and too many want to live how the fuck they see fit. The aquarium has become too crowded however, some fish will have to hold their breath or something. A solution is not to sustain current need for energy using alternative means, it is rather invest in more energy friendly solutions. Until it becomes viable to go back to the current energy usage levels.
But, for the record, it has already been estimated that f.e. (I do not consider it a practical solution) installing and using 12% efficient solar panels in the entire Sahara desert, will give us 10 times the energy we need today. Citation not needed, because the required parameters are scientific facts - solar irradiation output, solar panel efficiency, and installation square area. All it takes is a giant motivation. A person choking to death would do anything however, I believe. Before that, the options are wider and more comfortable.
We never should have recognized Red China.
Nixon's revenge...out of the grave.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I can also guarantee that if the last giant sequoia were cut down for firewood, some people would say "so what?"
So what?
Look around you. The world is full of blockheads, and I can guarantee that no matter what side of any issue you are on, plenty of them will agree with you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Don't get me wrong, the world could due to have more... but China producing them only means Mass production.
1. How many can the world sustain before it become detrimental to the environment?
Lets not Kid ourselves this is a business, not a "green initiative'.
That said,
2. Does that business dry up once we get to said critical mass?
3. or does it push on due to labor rights?
From my perspective, the upcoming small non-service US companies I've seen up close or worked for do not want to compete with China. All they want to do is to grow their business just large enough to become a buyout candidate. If their product looks good enough, then some megacorp will buy the company out, the owner pockets a crap load of cash, and the remainder of the company withers and dies under the new corporate weight. The new megacorp management doesn't even know what they're selling, and China eats their lunch. Meantime, the owner buys a brand new multi-million dollar house and looks for the next "start-up".
Nowhere in that equation do you see upcoming US businesses actually wanting to compete with China...
Ah, an honest hair-shirt environmentalist. How refreshing.
My username is the character of a book I was reading more than a decade ago when I signed up and can't be changed now. Sorry.
There is some waste created in the construction process of the plant. but not particularly more than any other industrial facility. After it is built a nuclear power plant can generate a gigawatt-year of power while only producing about a ton of waste.
Solar panels don't produce any waste while they are operating but produce quite a bit in the manufacturing phase and even more if you don't recycle them (which is difficult).
If you want to start talking about moving to a solar economy how many panels must be manufactured to replace that power plant? Don't forget about all the extra panels you need to compensate for solar's 12%-19% capacity factor.
I say they are NOT 'easily made anywhere'.
I think the point was they are a lot more "easily made anywhere" compared to oil, which can only be extracted from a few places on Earth.
It seems trains work OK for transporting wind turbine towers, although I doubt it's easy.
This article is nonsense. There is no competition between solar and wind power versus gasoline.
Solar and wind power are used solely to generate electricity. Gasoline is rarely used to generate electricity, it is used for automobiles. And hence, there is no switching of foreign dependence from one country to another.
What solar and wind power in the United States will replace is mostly coal power. Coal which is a resource obtained almost completly from within the United States. Using more solar and wind power will cause the United States to replace domestic forms of energy with foreign energy imports.
China has announced research programs, but almost all of the nuclear reactors recently finished, under construction, or planned for the near term are imported technology. Operating fleets of Westinghouse, Areva, and CANDU reactors makes you a big operator -- but doesn't position you to export those technologies. For the most part, China is focused on very large pressurized water reactors. Those may make sense for China's situation, but are not (IMO) the right "export" product for them. The "growth" market for reactors/generators would seem to be developing nations; since most of those lack large national grids, smaller reactors that can feed into regional grids would seem to make more sense as a product for that market.
There isn't anything to ramp up.
The tech and the infrastructure is already here.
We're talking large propellers, and big generators.
Fact is that there is no tech gap at all.
China's "lead" in this imaginary race is in terms of units produced - which is a simple business decision based on demand - not any sort of technological lead.
It wouldn't take 30 years to "catch up" - more like 3 months.
About the same lead time you would see if you wanted a large increase in aircraft production.
TFE was pure garbage.
The book is pretty clear headed and reasonable. The author doesn't rant about things being impossible because of physics or anything, he simply talks about the massive effort required to move off of fossil fuels using the tools that we have, and I think, some estimates of the tools that we might have soon (and it is something to point both enthusiasts and skeptics at, it give the enthusiasts a dose of reality, and it give the skeptics a measure of hope).
(I would also point out that heating and cooling account for massive amounts of power compared to parasitic losses, which limits the impact of removing parasitic losses; also, most manufacturers are already paying at least some attention to it these days)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Ah, a bald skeptic. How depressing.
rinse and repeat...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
You are conveniently forgetting that the fuel is made out of a rock and there is a lot of highly toxic material to manage from the mining and enrichment processes. For example several people were poisoned when run off at the Ranger Uranium mine contaminated drinking water in a nearby town around two years ago. There is no point in pretending that any one is "cleaner" than the other when poor management in either case can end up giving you a pile of dead children. The answer is to treat toxic material with respect and give up on the entire stupid "clean" lie.
First, the numbers presented on the page you link to are only for Britain (other areas have much more abundant solar resources)
he talks about how much area is practical to cover, rather than possible, and he talks about the cost, and so on
True - but these are important factors that have to be taken into account. For me the important conclusion of the book is that there is no practical way to fullfill all our current energy needs from "renewable" resources. You can quibble about the exact numbers here and there but it would be hard to get more than a factor 2 better since the author tended to be conservative.
People living in Arizona can easily extract all the energy they need from the sun. There are people doing it.
For me the important conclusion of the book is that there is no practical way to fullfill all our current energy needs from "renewable" resources.
That's perfectly reasonable. This is a misrepresentation:
if you actually look at the physics, it is not possible to supply all our current energy needs entirely through solar and wind (renewable) power.
When you look at the physics, it is entirely possible, it just isn't attractive given the area used and the cost of doing it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No. We've built new plants in Abilene, Texas and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but we aren't HQ'd in Texas.
Yeah, it is relative. I took the phrase at face value which seemed to emphasize the 'easily' and 'anywhere', making it sound like tower fabrication could spring up like Walmarts. As usual, the truth is somewhere in between.
"Among the wind farm operators surveyed by Frontier, gearbox failures accounted for the largest amount of downtime, maintenance and loss of power production. Such failures can add up to 15 to 20 percent of the price of the turbine itself, according to Frontier."
Maintaining the wind turbine revolution
The solution a hydraulic "gearbox"? Artemis Intelligent Power.
The most dangerous drug