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Energy Production Is As 'Dirty' As Ever
kkleiner writes "A recent report (PDF) from International Energy Agency delivers some dire news: despite 20 years of efforts toward clean energy and a decade of growth in renewable energy, energy production remains as 'dirty' as ever due to worldwide reliance on fossil fuels. With the global demand for energy expected to rise by 25 percent in the next 10 years, a renewed effort toward cleaner energy is desperately needed to avoid detrimental effects to the environment and public health. The report says, 'Coal technologies continue to dominate growth in power generation. This is a major reason why the amount of CO2 emitted for each unit of energy supplied has fallen by less than 1% since 1990. Thus the net impact on CO2 intensity of all changes in supply has been minimal. Coal-fired generation, which rose by an estimated 6% from 2010 to 2012, continues to grow faster than non-fossil energy sources on an absolute basis.'"
I had no idea.
Dirty is a stupid bullshit description of CO2. CO2 is a colorless gas. It doesn't look, smell, taste, feel, or sound like "dirt". CO2 is not even pollution in any rational sense. CO2 is food for plants.
CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is ONE of the determinants of average temperature of the surface environment. Big whoop. Warming up this damn freezer I live in is NOT being "dirty".
We are producing more pollution because we are using more energy. The fact that it hasn't risen and is in fact falling in many places is due to us cleaning up and using more renewables.
I suspect this is just a lame excuse anti-environmentalists will use to justify inaction.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Just imagine how bad dirty it would have been if instead of ramping up energy production by coal, we would have added more nuclear power plants.
Luckily governments decided to step away from it.
Oh, wait.
The article had one fact of which I was unaware, but should be entertaining:
"The boom in natural gas availability [mainly from fracking] pushed natural gas prices down last year to a 10-year low in the US. But the drop in US demand for coal sparked a drop in the price of coal, which in turn sparked a shift in Europe where coal replaced much of the more expensive gas to supply power stations."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Throw another spotted owl on the fire and lets warm this bitch up!
Captcha reads: Remorse - LOL As if I had some.
Well you can do whatever you want in a few decades because words won't mean anything any more.
But right now words mean something. And if you want to use words without us berating you, you need to use them accurately instead of blasting sensationalism everywhere.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Since we are producing more and more energy, the absolute amounts of pollution emitted each year is still increasing.
Basically all the "green" energy is offsetting the increase in "dirty" energy.
...when your country completely discounts nuclear as the best option for an environmentally friendly energy source. Solar and wind can never be primary energy sources - they are not constant power sources. They can only supplement a steady power source. And they waste so much real estate compared to the alternative that even environmentalists don't like them, especially wind farms. I live in the shadow of one of the biggest wind farms in the United States, and it's an obnoxiously terrible use of land with comparatively little energy in return. At least now they're required to cover the cost of their eventual removal and land restoration.
Frankly I'd rather live next to a modern, safe nuclear power plant. China is appropriately proceeding with caution on the development of their next plants based on lessons learned with Fukishima (see recent slashdot posting) but they did not have a knee jerk "OMG nuclear is bad!" reaction. You fix it, you evolve the design, you move on. That's engineering. You don't go hide in a cave. Even Japan is coming round to the fact that ditching their nuclear reactors wholesale would result in an unacceptable level of energy dependence, plus they'd be burning dirty.
Nuclear is the only future in which we can have the energy abundance we have now, and do it clean. We CAN have both, unlike what some people may like to tell you.
How does the association with a substance killing people make something dirty? You fail to bring logic to the table, or even a basic English dictionary definition. You are asserting this because that is how you feel, at an emotional level, what the word "dirty" means? Have you tied up the negative connotation of the word dirty with your negative feelings about rising CO2 levels?
Let's explore some facts first. If you expose an individual to CO2 that is 5x of normal (from 0.04% to 0.25%), that isn't going to directly kill most people. It may destroy the environment, and indirectly kill everyone, but it isn't directly toxic to human beings at the levels we're talking about. But if you were to expose someone to an atmosphere of 0.01% mercury vapour, they would die as a direct result of mercury poisoning. (and quickly!)
Calling CO2 dirty, implying that it is a directly toxic contaminate, is dishonest. Subversion, misdirection and lies do not help people recognize the dangers of CO2 levels in our atmosphere and oceans.
Facts, scientific rigor, transparency, and intellectual honesty provides a much firmer foundation for making arguments.
That's what happens when you ship your manufacturing to the third world and refuse to build nuclear plants at home.
There is a new environmental pollutant to worry about soon. Humans.
For wasting tons of energy in debating why "everyone else" pisses away tons of energy on useless activities.
But since no information was lost (or gained). the universe is safe.
Carry on.
Until nuclear is no longer suppressed for political reasons energy generation will be dirty.
Environmentalists need to take their heads out of their asses.
and for chrissake turn your damn computer off.
I've been turning this one on and off for going on 5 years and it hasn't died or fried a drive yet.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Well the time for " ZPG " is past .
It is time for a negative population growth
or remove some of the population ( or nature will do it for us -- and not in a nice way)
we DO need to be back to PRE World War 2 population levels
that WILL solve the energy and food needs
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
No. The northern segment of the US qualifies as cold. Wind turbines run most during the winter, yet intermittently even then, and the electric power is needed mostly in the summer for air conditioning. No one heats their home with electricity, it's far too expensive. Industry needs steady reliable power which wind can't provide. Wind turbine power is bursty which is exactly the opposite of what the second-to-second grid needs.
In a very general sense carbon dioxide is food for plants since plants take up carbon dioxide and fix carbon in the process of photosynthesis. However, carbon dioxide does raise atmospheric temperature and temperature increases, particularly of the kind we are currently experiencing (ie 26 times faster than the spike during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) can be extremely hard on many plants, which are unable to grow in conditions of tremendous heat and dryness associated with heat. Keep in mind that prior to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the flora of Northern Wyoming was dominated by a redwood forest. During the height of the PETM, the North Wyoming flora included desert palm trees.
As the Earth heats and we humans do in hundreds of years what it took nature thousands, expect to see plants like corn and wheat to be unable to grow in places like Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, either because of dramatically increase droughts or because of more frequent and more unpredictable torrential rains. Primary agricultural productivity is already down about 10% in the past two decades, don't expect that to slow, especially since plants will have more carbon dioxide available and will need to photosynthesize less to provide the plant with minimal energy needs, eliminating the need for plants to invest heavily in fruit or seed production to maintain itself.
compared to climate change effects.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
All countries that publicly reduced nuclear energy production, makes up the diff with coal. China, is also using more coal, but they are building a large number of nukes too, so I won't blame them.
One problem with coal, is that after you burned coal, there is still more energy in the uranium in the ash, than was produced by burning the coal. So every coal fired plant is effectively a 'dirty bomb' that pollutes our food supply with radio active ash.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Your comparison between wind and pumped hydro is somewhat silly since the energy inputs are utterly different (previously generated electricity versus a drop in air pressure over the blades). In fact it's so silly to do a direct comparison and invoke efficiency, then throw to words "economically viable" into the mix, that it loses all connection with reality. I do not think you can possibly be that stupid, so I'm wondering if you are just parroting some PR buzzwords generated by a nineteen year old liberal arts dropout or if you are playing some sort of game here? Please enlighten the readers as to why you are debasing yourself in this manner and pretending to be of much lower intelligence than is likely.
Imagine that an influential member tells you, "If you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it may be time for you to leave nuclear energy." Someone who had just served as chair for the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.
And the course of history changes, for the worse. It all could have been so different.
But read on. There's still hope.
In 1973 Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg was fired from a position he had held for 18 years at Oak Ridge Labs Tennessee --- in great part because of his concern for safety. Shelving a dream that had become his own personal obsession.
Weinberg held a 1947 patent for the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) that is the basis of commercial nuclear power generation today. After the WWII his efforts turned to the peaceful use of nuclear power, and with many others he was excited by the prospect of harnessing the atom. But while these water based reactors had served the war effort so admirably, the thought of scaling them to power the country and world concerned him greatly.
I need not elaborate on the reasons, for they are the same reasons so many fear nuclear energy today. Weinberg envisioned all this in the 50s --- some 60 years ago. He realized that some radical departure from his own PWR design was called for. When a rare opportunity presented itself, a fanciful but well-funded notion for a nuclear powered airplane, Weinberg gathered a few of the most brilliant chemists of the era and set to work.
(My post continues in reply to this post. The lameness filter thinks I'm lame. I don't.)
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And they did it. It was different but so much better. Two prototypes of this new reactor were built, the last operating successfully from 1965-1969. During this time they learned a great deal about the chemistry and operating conditions of this new approach. This reactor was literally "walk away safe", did not use of water as coolant and moderator, or require pressure operation, the two things which drive the design (and present the inherent dangers) of the PWR. It operates principally on a naturally occurring mineral that is so prevalent that even today, mining operations separate and discard it.
So in 1969 Weinberg and his little group are on top of the world. Weinberg has a hands-on success, he has papers describing the process, he sees it working, scaling to power the world safely. It is as weapons proliferation-resistent as any reactor could be, for its waste consists of a small volume of material that is considered undesirable for weapons. Usually a few quick napkin calculations on "wonderful" new energy sources reveal nasty pratfalls --- this will run out in a few hundred years, that won't work unless [unsolved problem], this requires a massive new mining extraction effort, that requires something absent on our continent, this relies on the weather. There are NO this-or-thats. A few small (existing today for other operations) mines here and there could literally supply the essential element to power the entire planet for the foreseeable future.A dream come true.
All this is happening back in 1969. What could possibly go wrong?
(My post continues in reply to this post. The lameness filter thinks I'm lame. I don't.)
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We can start selling canned air, "pollution, bringing the dream of space balls a little closer to reality"
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
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Planet Earth and the Human Race was screwed over by Four-Star Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, that's what. Let others who are polite and diplomatic jump in to say he was a patriot or wayward visionary or product of his time or good soldier or handsome baby. When I started researching this topic and had the aha-moment, I began to feel a growing sadness but it has now passed, replaced with anger. Rickover and Chester E. Holifield, Democratic Representative of the State of California (the one who uttered the opening quote), were asshats.
To go into fast-forward... they completely snubbed Weinberg's work, pushed the plutonium fast breeder, and pushed Weinberg into the ditch. They did not even respect Weinberg's tenure to the extent of finding a place for him to continue to develop his vision with their copious funds They pushed light water reactors (by default assent), weapons production (by primary objective). They were in full knowledge of Weinberg's vision, he made it and its potential very clear. Gentlemen, this is the Voice of History judging you. You were asshats.
When I am speaking as the Voice Of History my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Has this telling of a turning point of history interested you? Do you know of which technology I am speaking?
I hope not, because it is so damned fun to learn new things. The story continues in this post.
I was hoping for more than a score:2, but the Voice Of History cannot afford to be picky.
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Soylent Green is people.............. to be continued .............
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
Seriously, what's with all those coal plants!? Get rid of them already and invest in greener alternative instead of spouting nonsense like "jobs creation", there's no point creating jobs if your kids won't be able to live on this planet anymore.
And the irony of this is that you can blame environmentalists for this.
Had they not prevented nuclear energy from being used massively, we would have mostly clean energy, with the added bonus of a better economy that would rely on importing fossil fuels much less.
Put bluntly, this is WORLDWIDE CO2 emissions.
The United States has dramatically reduced it's CO2, nitrous oxide and other pollutants, to the point that in Los Angeles, your average modern car is actually putting out cleaner air than it ingests for burning gasoline.
The farsical attempts to lay all of the problems of worldwide pollution on the United States, no longer bear up under scrutiny and should be re-examined in light of other countries who are modernizing and becoming more than competative with the US.
The concept of CO2 sequestering is likewise ill advised, as this puts a significant amount of OXYGEN under water, under ground or wherever peop;e choose to place it. The more logical way of handling CO2 is to trapp it, catalytically seperate the O2 from the carbon, and use the carbon for induatreial uses, such as graphene paphe, Buckyspheres or carbon fiber, all of which are quite useful and sucessfully sequesters the carbon in a useful form.
JasonAW3
If only the world could run on pipe-dreams, what a brave brave new world it would be...
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Compare the rate at which CO2 emission was growing between 1900 and 1990 to the rate at which it's growing now and it's quite an achievement. We've leveled off the production of CO2 whilst still increasing the net amount of Electricty produced since 1990. Or am I reading the post wrong?
Many of the coal plants in China I doubt meet any sort of regulations. On top of that I am sure a bunch do, however the fact is coal is used for a lot more than just power generation. The population uses it personally. You can buy cakes or bricks of the stuff and it is used for heating, cooking, etc... none of which is going to have ANY of the environmental scrubbers and the like. Now it does sound like much, but expand that usage to the number of citizens... Even if China refit every one of their power generation plants to be the most environmentally friendly ever, they still have a much larger problem.
The black lung smog over London in the industrial age wasn't only due to factories, but due to the fact that everyone used it for everything. Heck my parents house still has a "coal chute", which was eventually converted to Oil, and that is in Canada.
"despite 20 years of efforts toward clean energy and a decade of growth in renewable energy"
20 years of efforts from half the population, and 20 years of efforts by the other half to make more of the same dirty shit and suppress renewables and clean energy as much as they can.
Build a Dyson Sphere already!!! Out power consumption will need it by the time we finish building it!!! :-)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Breeder reactors. Now. End of story.
Social Credit would solve everything...
sorry, "pedanatic" is related to an inside joke of "pedanantic". I managed to type something half-way between the two.
I wish I could claim I was trying to be ironic.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Maybe we should start by making it more ethical.
Just pay a premium price for ethical fuel.
http://ethics-not-octane.org/
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/