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Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover
daem0n1x writes "It appears that some countries in oil-poor Europe are making a successful transition to renewable energy at a fast and steady pace. This article talks about the small country of Portugal on the West Coast of Europe, known for its white sand beaches, oranges, fish, and wines. Portugal has no oil, but lots of sun and wind. Five years ago, the government decided, against many dissenting voices, to invest massively in taking advantage of the country's natural resources in clean energy. The results are here. It used to be a heavy energy importer, but now it exports it."
"The United States, which last year generated less than 5 percent of its power from newer forms of renewable energy, will lag behind..." Drill baby, drill.
Sun and wind?
Don't make me laugh. Hardly a blip compared to how much renewable power is generated by good ol' hydroelectric in Portugal.
Just out of fashion technology so not worth mentioning much in press.
Or maybe it's because Portugal is trying realllyyyyyy hard to export their wind tech to the USA?
Sun and wind?
Don't make me laugh. Those are hardly a blip compared to good ol' Hydroelectric production in Portugal.
But as an out of fashion techology (no one likes big dams anyway) I guess it's not worh mentioning.
or maybe this is all related to the fact Portugal is pushing really hard to export their wind tech to the US..
Well, no, this is not the problem. The public spending in these projects, even when it fails is not the problem here.
Portugal's problem, and you can check in the wikipedia by seeing our awful gini index (the worst of all European union), is the very bad distribution of wealth. Most company owners see people as a source of cheap labour ... so of course, if people doesn't earn enough, they also tend not to work very hard. And mind you, the bosses don't pay low wages because they don't have money (like I said they have a LOT OF MONEY), they pay low wages because, well, they all do, and unless you have a very specialized job, if you don't want to do it for what they pay, they find another one to do it.
Another problem, is that, there is a very big tax fraud in here. The proletariat pays taxes because they have a steady income ... the rich don't because the system is made so that it's very difficult to control what they really earn. Portugal it's a great country in some aspects ... but a very shitty one in some others :S
And it's probably still going to be talk 20 years from now.
A couple of years ago, voters passed a $10 billion bond measure to get it started. What many of them missed was that this was the first $10 billion of a $40 billion total cost, much of which is expected to be federally-funded even though nobody bothered to ask the federal government for the money. If the state has to cover the entire amount, it will cost $80 billion once the bonds are paid off.
Sure, it's planned to go from San Diego to San Francisco, but it's running into enormous political problems. City after city in Orange County alone are saying that they don't want it running through their land because of the financial and political costs that go with it. That means a longer run through Riverside County -- if cities in that county let it happen -- making it more expensive. San Francisco goes back and forth on whether they'll let it actually end in the city, or force it over to Oakland.
Then there's the time it's expected to take to get from San Diego to San Francisco, a trip of about 500 miles. The low end times are quoted at about four hours, which might be acceptable, but that's for an express train, which are rare to non-existent in most plans that have been made public. Every plan I've seen has the train making numerous stops along the way -- as many as a dozen along the 45 mile-path through Orange County, let alone San Diego and Los Angeles Counties and the Bay Area -- and some reports have suggested that it would take eight to ten hours for the train to make the trip, with it spending as much time accelerating and decelerating as it does in a cruise speed -- which wouldn't be that high in the urban areas to begin with.
It's also not expected to be up and running until 2030 at the earliest. Most of the realistic estimates put it at 2040. It's a total fiasco. We can't even get a simple light rail project that runs 30 miles in place in part because the costs ballooned to more than $1 billion despite plans to run most of the line running down the center medians of the streets (hence its name, CenterLine).
Absent a minor revolution, California will never be governable enough to get something like a high-speed-rail line in place.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
In Europe as a whole, transportation only takes about a third of their energy usage as of 2009. Much of that is electric since they have a lot of rail, but I couldn't find any better breakdowns.
In the US, transport takes about %28 of total energy use. In Europe, less than %10-%19 percent of all transport is public, and since they have a lot of buses, some fraction of that is rail. I could not find the numbers on percentage breakdown. All the rest is cars. In the USA, public transport is less than %3 of the total. All the rest is cars. Public transport is only as efficient as cars of the same type. For example, a diesel car is the same as a diesel train (in real operating scenarios).
The point is, there's no use in putting off transitioning to direct sun energy consumption.
Yep. I used to think the sun was not a good source of power. I then looked at the data. Most solar panels suck but the sun does not.
We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. - Thomas Edison
All known quantities of fossil fuels and U-235 will be exhausted by 2150 at current rates and predicted growth patterns. We might need it for something else we can't foresee, so the smart move would be to conserve every bit of easy to use energy, and use the resources we have now to make progress in sustainable technologies.
Actually, the oceans can last at least 500 years, and the Japanese are already working on technology to extract the uranium in the seawater. Of course, with crappy reactors burning only 0.7 percent of the energy in the uranium and dumping the rest, we have some major efficiency issues. If we fix it, we could look forward to 10,000 years plus. By that time, I'm sure will all by dead or cruising the galaxy. I think it is important to understand the paradoxes involved in energy conservation, as well as the actually effects of conservation measures. For example, public transport looks to be only a modest gain for a lot of investment, while say, upgrading your house's insulation is a much better idea with real, measurable (positive) economic consequences.
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Virtue is a temptation
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All known quantities of fossil fuels and U-235 will be exhausted by 2150 at current rates and predicted growth patterns...
This is a myth, or you pulled it out of your arse. We have enough U for 100-200 years or so with *current* known reserves, and we are not even looking. That is also assuming a once through cycle. You get about 60x more with reprocessing. 100x60=6000 years of *known* reserves. We have 5x that amount of Th and billions of tons of U in the ocean (extraction of U from the ocean has been demonstrated in the lab).
The amount of coal and peat we have is *enormous*. We really don't want to dig up and burn all of that....But its not running out any time soon.
Maybe we have low wages because we have one of the lowest productivity rates in Europe. Compared to the productivity of a German, a medium Portuguese "earns" more. And what about the "11-months worked/14-months payed"? That makes all the sense too. Or maybe the fact that we have such a heavy tax burden too helps explain that (an employer must set aside about 1.500€ to pay you 1.000€). Or the fact that half of the economy is in the State's hands. Guess only the "greedy neoliberals" are to blame, not our benevolent (our should I say corrupt?) government...And don't start with the "TVI/FoxNews" comparison, because I pass on watch RTP/SIC/TVI altogether. And by the way, our public debt should reach 110% by next year and our total external debt exceeds 350% of GDP (far worse than Greece's). Too bad the article says absolutely nothing about our energy efficiency, which is one of the worst in Europe. Of course enhancing this doesn't "sell" anything and doesn't make Mexia's (EDP's CEO) account balance grow by another couple a million per year. But if we were as efficient as say, Finland, we'd need significant less energy to start with and maybe we could ditch the whole wind-energy scheme, that's going to burden us for years to come. Don't forget we are NOT paying for most of this "brave new world" of renewables since electricity prices have been set by government to a lower value than actual production costs (the deficits just keep on pilling up, and sooner or later must be payed...with interests). That's why subsidies are then pulled off in Spain and Germany: because it's a huge burden for the economy.
You do realize that computers use electricity, right?
Very little. My current laptop (and most new computers are laptops) uses a peak of 85W, which is above average. If I leave it on and consuming electricity at full load for one year, that's around 750kWh. If it's only 8 hours a day, then it's only around 250kWh. In more realistic usage (not charging the battery, running the CPU and GPU flat out and simultaneously burning a DVD and driving the USB and FireWire ports at full power), it's closer to 100kWh/year, if that. That amounts to around 2% of the per-capita GDP energy consumption for Portugal.
And you're blithely ignoring secondary effects. For example, ubiquitous Internet means that I now do most of my grocery shopping online. Rather than every customer driving to a supermarket, loading up a car, and driving it back, I can order the stuff that I want and a van makes one trip around the city for 20-40 customers. You only need to do this a few times to completely offset the energy cost of the computer just from that one use. I also work from home now, so I don't need to travel anywhere for work - more energy saving. I pay bills and do banking online, rather than having things printed and posted - more energy saving.
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As well as being ahead of the game in terms of green energy Portugal also has the most advanced drug laws in the world
In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to abolish all criminal penalties for personal drug possession. In addition, drug users were to be targeted with therapy rather than prison sentences.[6]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
The first country to back away from AMERICA'S 'war on drugs' - which has been as successful as the 'war of terror.'?
Maybe we have low wages because we have one of the lowest productivity rates in Europe. Compared to the productivity of a German
No, that's wrong, very very wrong. That's a completely far right-wing view of the problem. The all North of Portugal relies on cheap labour. QUITE HARD cheap labour. Or do you think an employee from the shoes/textile industry working 40h a week for a measly €450 a month is not breaking his back for the boss? The productivity rate doesn't measure how are people work, it measures how much that work gives. The education levels in Germany are far higher than in Portugal, so they have many more people doing high paying, high level jobs and that's the real reason they are more productive.
What do you think it makes more money per hour to their boss, a civil Engineer in Germany or 10 shoemakers in Portugal? And now, which job would you rather do? Because from your point of view, it looks like you would like to be making shoes, since after all, that people don't do anything ... their productivity rates are too low.
Actually that would probably be a great idea, for example, "New Jersey a state on the East Coast of the United States that is similar in size and population to Portugal." Such things would go a long way towards helping people understand the differences in scale between countries in Europe and the U.S.. For example, one can look at what Portugal is doing and consider ways to do something similar in New Jersey a state of similar size to Potugal. However it is impractical to consider trying to apply the example of Portugal to the entire Unted States. When one considers both the issues of scale and differing geography there are just too many variables involved to make it work that way.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
From the article "Portuguese households have long paid about twice what Americans pay for electricity", so there is no miracle. Consumers pay for it with higher utility rates.
The grid is not as smart as the article implies. Earlier this year (see http://aeiou.expresso.pt/as-eolicas-e-o-mau-tempo=f562222 in Portuguese) in a stormy night Portugal was giving away electrical energy to Spain and France, while still paying the contracted rate to the producers.
The real Portuguese deficit is much higher then the statistics show. Hospitals, freeways and lots of other things have been transferred to private companies. For example private companies have built freeways, but it is the government that pays the toll, not the driver. The loans for building the freeway are on the company books not on the government books, but it is the government that has to pay the loans. Go to N 40 41', W 8 32' move north and check how the government managed to build two parallel freeways in the middle of the countryside. In one the toll is paid by the driver, the other it is paid by the government (that is the taxpayer). Next time you read about the risk of Portugal going bankrupt, you will know why: expensive freeways, expensive electrical energy, lots of public works...
Portugal has distinct geographic advantages which allows them to benefit from renewable energy sources. Many parts of the country fairly mountainous. So there are countless ideal locations for wind turbines and there are already a ton out there. But what the article fails to mention is that the majority of Portugal's power generation actually comes from hydroelectric.
In fact, in a region much of my family hails from there has been talk, for decades, of building a dam. It looks like it's finally going through and it's going to have a fairly profound affect on the area. I mean that negatively, people losing land and it possibly changing the nature of commerce in the area. A concern I've been hearing for years is that dams increase humidity. From personal observation summers seemed dryer when I visited as a kid to more recently. They get a lot of the hazy humidity I experience in the states. One of the concerns is that it affects the quality of grapes for wine production but admittedly I've seen no evidence to support that.
One thing that's certain is that it hasn't made electricity any cheaper. And from the way people talk, it seems to have gotten a good bit more expensive. But again, Portugal is ideally situation. They've got consistent strong winds blowing off the ocean and mountains. Perfect for wind turbines and they could easily set up tidal generation along the coast. It also helps that a lot of people have left the countryside for the cities. There have been some moving back, but there's still plenty of land, even if a lot of it is farmland, to erect turbines or sacrifice for reservoirs. The country is also quite small making it rather easy to keep the grid up-to-date.
The US is a far larger country and not every state has ideal geography for renewable energy. Certain areas are far too densely populated to realistically build anything like this. In my area there was furor over something as simple as how to run power lines across a few counties. And really, while individual states are comparable to any European nation the fact is that they've come to be far too dependent on the federal government. They don't have the resources or sufficiently knowledgeable state employees to be able to be able to do any of this for themselves. Hell, a a bunch of trees go down and a city will run to FEMA asking handouts.
The NIMBY crowds seem to be much stronger in the US than in most other countries. Choose from the right checklist of concerns, historical preservation or environmental issues, and you can block anything or at least put it in limbo. I'm not sure if it's because other governments walk all over their citizens with impunity, which in some cases they seem to, or if the people can look beyond their self-centered and unrealistic desires to protect their communities from change.