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New York's $6 Billion Plan For Offshore Wind Shows That Oil Drilling Really Is On the Way Out (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a plan earlier this month to develop $6 billion of offshore wind projects off the southern coast of Long Island by 2028 and predicted that the industry would bring 5,000 jobs to the state. The plan calls for developing 2.4 gigawatts -- enough to power 1.2 million homes -- by 2030. It's all part of New York's Clean Energy Standard, which requires 50% of the state's electricity come from renewable sources like solar and wind. The move comes as President Donald Trump earlier this month announced a five-year plan to open up areas of the East Coast to offshore drilling.
"While the federal government continues to turn its back on protecting natural resources and plots to open up our coastline to drilling, New York is doubling down on our commitment to renewable energy and the industries of tomorrow," Cuomo said in a statement. Cuomo has asked Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for an exemption from the drilling plan, saying in an open letter that the plan "undermines New York's efforts to combat climate change by shifting from greenhouse gas emitting fossil energy sources to renewable sources, such as offshore wind." The report identifies a 1 million acre site approximately 20 miles south of Long Island that would best support the wind turbines, and "ensure that, for the vast majority of the time, turbines would have no discernible or visible impact from the casual viewer on the shore." The report also notes that New Jersey announced a similar plan last Wednesday to develop 3.5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity off its coast.
"While the federal government continues to turn its back on protecting natural resources and plots to open up our coastline to drilling, New York is doubling down on our commitment to renewable energy and the industries of tomorrow," Cuomo said in a statement. Cuomo has asked Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for an exemption from the drilling plan, saying in an open letter that the plan "undermines New York's efforts to combat climate change by shifting from greenhouse gas emitting fossil energy sources to renewable sources, such as offshore wind." The report identifies a 1 million acre site approximately 20 miles south of Long Island that would best support the wind turbines, and "ensure that, for the vast majority of the time, turbines would have no discernible or visible impact from the casual viewer on the shore." The report also notes that New Jersey announced a similar plan last Wednesday to develop 3.5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity off its coast.
I agree that in the long-term nuclear is a pretty good idea. But right now, isn't practically an option; the politics of building new nuclear plants are extreme and it can end up taking a decade or two to build them. We need carbon neutral power sources now. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Stop throwing your "base load" from your pants at everybody!
Niagara Falls is used already. Solar and Wind can meet all their needs if combined with storage. Ocean WIND is much better than land. Battery storage as well as LONG DISTANCE TRANSMISSION works far better than people realize. It's so stupid to say the same stupid obvious stuff about the sun, moon, wind, while ignoring the less obvious power storage and distribution!
This plan a step forward.
OIL is something they don't want off their coast; even if it's used in their cars and heating. Electric cars are moving forward so fast that 10 years ago today's shift would seem like a joke. This is a long term plan and by the time it finishes electric cars will have progressed further than they have over the whole last decade. So it is smart to realize this will impact oil demand. It's not built tomorrow; when it is, it will be part of the combustion car solution.
Heating. That will need some more planning. building standards etc can help. best thing would be to put together a war-chest like it's WW3 and seriously retrofit everything we can. I've rebuilt walls on 50s houses to double width and more than 2x R value. It wasn't horribly expensive or difficult. I can even replace the roof while living in the house.
But more seriously, they can get into burning the crazy amount of trash they output. Geothermal is another option (and electric.) oil burners I've seen are extremely wasteful heaters. they need to migrate to natural gas.
I don't know about the fuel mix in the state of New York (and maybe the headline is a mistake), but one explanation is that there are 2 ways to use the offshore area: 1) for producing wind power and 2) to drill for oil for cars. Cuomo's decision may pre-empt using the land for oil exploration and drilling. That's my two cents anyway.
Marc Jacobson has done a lot of research into the viability of renewables. (Indeed, he presented this very idea to NY a few years ago. https://news.stanford.edu/news... ) He found that using solar and wind are complementary. Wind tends to be highest at night; solar by day.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
The politics of building offshore wind isn't much better. There will ALWAYS be people fighting any new development, and slowing (or, in the case of Cape Wind, killing) deployment of new power sources. So you might as well go "for the best" because going to a lower-grade solution won't relax the difficulties in the first place.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Solar could do it for about 101 square miles.
https://inovateus.com/2017/08/...
Elon Musk: “If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah. You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States. The batteries you [would] need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”
Even if he's off by 100% 200 square miles IMO is a good price for relatively clean renewable energy. Add wind farms, hydro, etc I don't see the need for the risk of nuclear. Unless you want to go (far) into space.
There is only one real solution: Nuclear.
[citation needed]
Not your grandfather's nuclear, TODAY'S nuclear.
I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear. But what I do see actually being installed today is wind and solar. We should have been ramping up solar in the 1970s, since even the PV panels of those days would repay their energy investment in less than seven years, and most of those panels would still be functioning today. But people like you fought that tooth and nail, and now here we are today, with people like you clamoring for something which doesn't exist: safe nuclear power. There is no such thing, which is why the private sector can not and will not ever insure one. Decommissioning costs are always multiples of estimates and we still have no viable plan for dealing with nuclear waste. Even reprocessed fuel leaves waste behind, and the waste from that is spectacularly nasty. The solution for nuclear waste isn't to double down and produce worse nuclear waste. It's to stop producing it at all, because it's wholly unnecessary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most numbers you have are wrong. ... only rare cases are above. ... no idea why on /. people always claim it is lower. ...
Gasoline ICE, below 20%
Coal and gas plants have the same efficiency, around 42%-45%, exception are combined cycle gas plants which reach 60%.
Battery charging is about 95% - 99%
Electric engines are 99.999 (add as much 9 as you want) % efficient. Sine nearly 100 years
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So you might as well go "for the best" because going to a lower-grade solution won't relax the difficulties in the first place.
Right, that's why stopgaps with nuclear are stupid. There is more than enough excess solar energy to cover all of our needs. We could be building solar power satellites with little to no new technology, and here we are arguing over what kind of baroque arrangements of steam turbines you would like to build here on earth. What year is it?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"