So? They will replace them. Turbines in nuclear plants also wear out, and the cooling systems, etc. It's hardly unique to wind or natural gas. In fact if you are using turbine-based peaking plants, they are pretty simple and reliable.
Yes, nuclear power plants wear out as well and when they do they should be replaced with new nuclear power plants. At least until something better comes along. Why would Denmark not want to replace worn out natural gas with something safer and with lower CO2 output?
Denmark's population is pretty static, standards of living increasing don't always require lots of additional power.
That's fine, I'll give you that. There is still a need for new power plants to replace the old.
It is compared to coal, and 7% of energy from natural gas is tiny, so it doesn't make very much difference if it is replaced with nuclear (which still has some CO2 footprint up until the point that uranium springs from the ground and refines itself). I think you are also confusing the overall CO2 footprint of natural gas, and the issue of leakage from reservoirs of it, which depends very much on the type of reservoir.
I do see that natural gas reduces CO2 output from coal by half. Nuclear power reduces that to near zero. Again, why use natural gas when there is an energy source that is safer, lower CO2, and just as cheap? It's not likely to completely replace natural gas for things like load following but it makes sense to reduce the natural gas, and certainly coal, burning as much as possible.
I think you are confusing Denmark with Norway there.
Coal power provided 48.0% of the electricity and 22.0% of the heat in district heating in Denmark in 2008; and in total provided 21.6% of total energy consumption (187 PJ out of 864 PJ).
Official statistics estimate 231,000 residences heated by oil in 2014 (down from 328,000 in 2013), but only 87,000 actually purchased oil during 2014.
Looks like Denmark could in fact displace a lot of coal and oil with nuclear and natural gas.
As of 2014, Denmark only held 35 bcm of proved natural gas reserves. Denmarkâ(TM)s fields in the North Sea are mainly responsible for the countryâ(TM)s proved natural gas reserves and have allowed them to become a natural gas producer. Denmarkâ(TM)s natural gas production was only 4.6 bcm in 2014. However, their production level still plays an important role as it is sufficient to not only cover their domestic demand, but also allows for exportation as well. Denmark is self-sufficient in regards to natural gas as evidenced by their consumption level of 3.2 bcm in 2014. This self-sufficiency has aided Denmarkâ(TM)s energy security of supply.
Denmark also is a net exporter of natural gas. The country currently exports natural gas through pipeline trade. In 2014, Denmark exported 2.1 bcm of pipeline natural gas to other European countries.
The less natural gas Denmark burns the more they can sell to other European nations. They are already a net exporter and use of nuclear power can increase those exports and bring them greater income. Or, put another way, with their limited reserves of natural gas they may want to hold on to it as long as they can. Reducing domestic consumption can make this reserve last longer, perhaps to the point that some new technology for storage can come along to displace the need for natural gas for load matching.
I saw just an epic speech by Dr. Jordan Peterson on free speech. It's about a half hour long but worth every minute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Dr. Peterson explains how vital it is to speak freely to develop one's thoughts. If people are not able to say anything that isn't "righteous" then nothing of importance can be discussed. And who is to be the arbiter of what is righteous? To have a functioning society one needs to be able to say uncomfortable things. That includes "hate speech". Most anything of importance is in some way uncomfortable, hateful, or not "clean". It can be important as an example of good behavior as well as what we should not do.
To know what is good we at times need to see what is bad, and the damage this can cause. We define our heroes by their villains. You can't have Batman without the Joker. There is no Superman without Lex Luthor. These comic book characters borrow from old myths to the point of pulling Thor and Loki from mythical characters and turning them into big budget movies and comics. Wonder Woman borrows heavily from myth as well. In every case we see examples of heroes, fighting what we consider evil. To purge evil from society to the point that Chinese citizens can't even read of news of such evil outside their borders means Chinese people cannot learn how to see such evil within themselves.
This censorship can only end badly. We should not tolerate it in any form. That includes these college campus protests to "de-platform" people that student groups despise. By expressing intolerance for "bad speech" means in the end expressing a disdain for thinking clearly. If you cannot think of a better response then to make noise and smash things then you are no better than unthinking animals.
Hydroelectric power is a lot of things including the most dangerous of the non-fossil fuel power sources (except biofuel/biomass) due to just the immediate causalities from dam failures. That is 3 times more dangerous than solar, 9 times more dangerous than wind, and 16 times more dangerous than nuclear. Including casualties from long term effects like famine makes it several times more dangerous but that would apply to any dam whether power producing or not.
You are looking at the global numbers to get such poor performance, which does not apply to US policy. In the USA hydro is exceedingly safe, beat out only by nuclear. For the USA hydro should absolutely be used. If not only because it is safe, low CO2, inexpensive, and generally a good performing energy source, there is the need to match the load which also applies globally. I'll get into details next.
Even if we look at the global numbers on safety there is a very real need to keep using hydro power. Wind and solar are intermittent energy sources, so something needs to back them up when they are not available, and even possibly provide storage when there is an excess. Nuclear power, at least the third generation water boiler styles being built today, do not load follow well and will need something to match the changing loads through the day. If there is no hydro to go with the wind, solar, and nuclear to match supply to demand then that means oil, natural gas, or perhaps bio-mass fuel. This is not a choice between hydro, wind, or solar. This is a choice between hydro, natural gas, or oil.
If we are going to build out wind and solar to the point that there is an excess capacity with regularity, which inevitably comes with shortages, then there will be a need for storage to time shift the peaks to fill the valleys. I haven't seen any performance metrics on storage technologies except for price, and nothing is cheaper than pumped hydro storage. And no matter how you compute it, money saved is lives saved.
Fourth generation nuclear promises to offer the capability to match supply to demand. If this comes true, and maintains it's safety and other benefits, then we need nothing more for electricity. That's not likely to come for at least a decade. Until then we should invest in hydro and current generation nuclear when and where we can.
So Denmark has a large natural gas installed base (great for power when required) but rarely uses it (great for the environment). This means they don't need to go to the trouble of building nuclear, as they have it covered.
Those windmills and natural gas plants will wear out, and likely new capacity will be needed as populations and standards of living grow, so they will need to build new power plants eventually. What should Denmark do then? Seems to me that choosing the safest energy source we have available to us today would be the wise choice.
I could see an argument made to continue building windmills for power, as it is likely as low carbon and low cost as nuclear. Possibly just as safe as well. Replacing old natural gas with new natural gas though fails on several levels. Natural gas is not low CO2, it's not safe, and even if it is cheap there is still a case to be made to save on natural gas used for electricity and save that for heating or sale as exports.
It's easy to find a number of natural gas rich nations that are building nuclear power plants. This is because in nearly every case natural gas use, for domestic heating and cooking as well as electrical generation, is increasing and by not burning that natural gas for electricity they avoid having to end up importing it. Even if a nation has plenty of natural gas this can be exported, or used domestically to displace higher CO2 petroleum liquid fuels for transportation.
Denmark does not "have it covered". There will be a continual need for new power plants as the old ones wear out. They can replace them with more dangerous and higher CO2 sources like natural gas, or with far better nuclear. Europe as a whole is burning far too much coal and natural gas, and they have an international grid for electricity and natural gas. If Denmark builds nuclear power then they can help their neighbors in reducing their CO2 by exporting natural gas and electricity from nuclear to displace the coal and oil that's being burned now.
Perhaps you could help me find where it shows on that Wikipedia page where nuclear power costs 4 times that of wind, solar, or natural gas? I can't find it.
Also, I can fact check you on claim that solar energy subsidies expired. I saw that there is a tax credit for new solar installs in the USA up until at least 2020, and the tax credit for 2019 is the same as 2018 and 2017.
You mean like the common sense of comparing a 150,000 ton transoceanic cargo carrier to an 8,800 ton short run ferry? The fuel on the cargo carrier weighs more than that entire ferry.
Nuclear is about 4 times to 8 times the kwh price of natural gas, wind and solar.
You do realize that I have access to the internet, don't you? I can fact check this. It's real easy for you to fact check it too. Here's a place to fact check that: https://www.instituteforenergy...
Nuclear power is cheaper than off shore wind and every form of solar power. Nuclear is marginally more expensive than onshore wind and hydroelectricity. Natural gas is real cheap, nearly half the price of wind or nuclear. The problem with natural gas is the CO2 output. If the goal is to replace this natural gas with something reliable then that's going to be nuclear or hydro. We don't have many places left for cheap hydro, that leaves nuclear as our only choice.
The argument isn't if we will build more nuclear power plants, it's when and how many. We've run out of choices for cheap and reliable electricity. We will be building more nuclear power. The sooner people can wrap their heads around this the better. Continually pushing off new nuclear power into the future only means having to run the old nuclear power plants longer.
I keep reading claims of how solar will get cheaper in the future. That may be true, I believe it's nearly certain. Do you believe that nuclear can't also get cheaper in the future? I believe it can. One way to make it cheaper is to start training nuclear engineers now. To do that we need to build nuclear power plants, as there is no better training than real world experience. We've effectively skipped a generation of nuclear engineers, from a 40 year stagnation in the industry, and a lot of experience will die with those experienced engineers. It may be wise to get a new generation trained on nuclear power before the current generation of nuclear engineers retire, go senile, and/or die.
Solar and wind might be able to provide as high as 30% of the grid electricity but at that point the intermittent nature requires expensive storage and all cost benefits disappear.
Solar generates when we need it most but falls off before the peak demand.
Falls off before peak demand? Then it's not there when you need it most.
Nuclear is base-load and not typically available on demand. New systems can follow load but don't respond as quickly as a spinning NG turbine.
That's fine, we'll just use those cheap energy storage systems that the wind and solar people keep saying will come along any day now. You think cheap storage only helps with wind and solar? I believe if cheap storage does come then nuclear will look very nice. If it doesn't then we'll need those NG turbines either way, wind, solar, or nuclear. If solar fades just before the peak load then that means more NG burned in turbines than if we had simply used nuclear, no? That is CO2 burned that we would not have had to if we simply did not rely so heavily on solar.
Solar is only cheap if it doesn't need storage. If natural gas turbines are used to back up solar then solar isn't a low carbon energy source any more.
We weren't discussing nuclear. We were discussing whether, from a raw materials point of view, solar and wind energy could plausibly be expanded to cover all our energy needs.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Wind is a nice energy source but it cannot replace coal and nuclear on it's own based solely on the resources needed for construction, both in material resources and in human resources. From a raw materials point of view wind and solar take far too much material capital investment to compete with far less resource intensive (considering energy returned) coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro.
You tried to just hand wave away the materials needed by pointing out the energy returned. Well, you can't do that. There will always bee that need to mine a lot of limestone and iron ore for those windmill towers. That problem does not go away. Assuming improvements on windmill technology won't make it go away either, we've been using wind for power for a very long time now and we're getting diminishing returns on the advancements in technology.
Nice to see somebody sincere and not just a troll here.
Thanks.
Ok, I think that you looked at this all wrong. You simply looked at our electricity and nothing else. Instead, lets look at where CO2 comes from. Electricity USED to be our main source. Now, it and Transportation are tied.
Well, if electric cars are the future, which seems to be a popular claim, then this will be a self correcting problem if we fix the CO2 from electricity. No?
So, IOW, Transportation will take care of itself, assuming Tesla does not die.
Seems you agree with me. I'm not so sure Tesla will be the solution, they are still a luxury car maker. We'll need to see electric cars on every price level. Out here in snowy suburbia we'll need light trucks, SUVs, or whatever else that handles snow well. Not everyone can wait for the snow plows, and some of use need to carry tools and gear to work regularly.
You went through pointing out to the top 3, but ignored the other low ones. In addition, you made it solely about emissions, which I think is a HORRIBLE mistake.
I did not make it solely about emissions. I did exclude the worst offenders on every step, only because the primary goal is reducing CO2. The reason I stopped at the top three is because that seemed like a nice dividing line taking into the other factors like cost, safety, energy return, and of course CO2 emitted.
Also, if I include more than three then people will just focus on their "favorite" and ignore the rest. We need to first focus on where we get the most gain for the lowest costs, then once those are going then we can all pick a "favorite" and see how it stacks up.
As such, we need at least a good chunk of our power to come from on-demand systems. IOW, Perry is correct when he speaks of needing these kinds of systems. As such, 2/3 of it should be from on-demand systems. That means that 1/3 could come from wind/solar, but the other 2/3 really needs to come from hydro, nukes, geo-thermal, since these are all on-demand. Geo-thermal is CHEAP to add, and we can add a lot of it.
Yes, hydro and nuclear are on-demand power. Geothermal is just not that great on EROEI. I haven't seen any metrics on safety either. I could probably be convinced on geothermal. I had to draw a line somewhere and I found that on most every metric there is a consistent top three, beyond that geothermal gets mixed up with solar, ethanol, and maybe one or two more. Choosing a top five gets hard, and also dilutes the focus on far better solutions, like hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Hydro is not as cheap, but more importantly, it is limited.
Hydro is limited. Hydro is very nice as it has such a low CO2 footprint, is safe, and therefore should be used as much as we can. It's a nice storage medium, even without pumped hydro, as it can ramp up and down quickly and it has an inherent storage capability with the water kept behind the dam. It mates well with the intermittent nature of wind, and the slow ramp capability of nuclear (at least third generation nuclear, fourth generation might not have this problem). I included it on my list as it cannot be ignored as part of the solution.
SHould have a mix of wind/solar as well as nuke or geo-thermal if possible.
Solar is near worthless. I'll go along with wind, and maybe geothermal, but solar needs to stay in the realm of orbiting satellites and pocket calculators. We have better options than solar and so solar should be left as a last resort.
I would like to suggest that we also need to lower our energy use.
After nearly 50 years since the oil crisis of the 1970s there's been a push for ever increasing efficiency. I just don't believe that there is much left to gain on this. Lowering it any more will start to impact quality of lif
Interesting graph, especially the slopes on those lines. China's CO2 output has been climbing, quite rapidly too. For USA it's been pretty steady, even dropping slightly. The CO2 output per capita in the USA is the same now as it was in the 1960s, and down about 20% from the 1970s. Shouldn't we get a little credit for that?
I'd like to see the CO2 output go down in the USA. Judging from what I've picked up over the years there will not be a significant drop until we build more nuclear power. We've damned up all the rivers worth a dam for hydro, so we can't grow much there. Windmills are popping up like dandelions, that's good. What we need now to balance this out and really put a knife in the heart of coal, the biggest CO2 emitter of them all, is more nuclear power.
I've read some encouraging news recently. Seems like the powers that be are now taking nuclear power seriously. I suspect a lot of nuclear power plants breaking ground in the next five or ten years. Unfortunately most of that is just to make up for the nuclear power we'd be shutting down. We'll see growth in nuclear power yet, then we can see the CO2 per capita drop.
Your reading and other comprehension skills baffle me...
Your desire to follow me around and "correct" me is baffling.
You show us a link about Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... And then you claim, they generate their electricity They get 75% from natural gas, and 25% from wind. Could you have the dignity to READ your links? And comprehend them? Denmark produced 2014 47% of its energy by wind, solar and hydro. 7% not 75%, by gas.
Yep, I confused the installed capacity with production, so sue me. Here's another site I was able to find with more recent data. http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
They show about half the electricity from "thermal" (fossil fuels in various forms), and about half from wind.
I don't bother to debunk your other links... no idea what your secret agenda is.
I have no "secret agenda", I thought I was quite clear on my agenda. I want to see solutions rather than just complaints on the problem. Solar is not a solution, it can be part of the solution but it is not a solution on it's own. Hydro, nuclear, and wind are solutions. The main part is that hydro, nuclear, and wind must ALL be included in the solution. Without all three the solution falls apart.
Oh, and natural gas. It's going to be difficult to go all hydro, nuclear, and wind at once. Until that happens we should use lots of natural gas to get off of coal and oil.
So far everything you posted about nuclear energy, solar and anything related to power was basically wrong.
Oh, really? Sure would be nice if you posted some links to sources once in a while. Or, just once. Anyone can claim someone is wrong. I can claim you are wrong. Without something to back that up it's just talk.
Seems to me that if you picked up on my "oops" on Denmark that you took some time to look over what I linked. And when you found something wrong you jumped all over it. Since that was the only thing you commented on being wrong tells me you could find nothing else wrong.
Wait, maybe I do have a "secret agenda". It's to get under the skin of people like yourself.
I agree, but that's not a "how". That's not an engineering plan.
We need to get to the levels of Denmark and Finland .
Okay, let's look at how Finland does it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... They get 25% of their electricity from nuclear, 20% from hydro, and... 22% imported? That doesn't sound like a plan. That's just exporting your emissions.
Let's look at Denmark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... They get 75% from natural gas, and 25% from wind. Not a bad plan in my opinion. Though I would like to see them adopt some nuclear power like Finland. Natural gas produces about half the CO2 output of coal, and wind a tiny fraction of the CO2 output of natural gas.
To get an engineering plan start with the CO2 output of the different energy sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... If we toss out the carbon heavy sources we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Let's look at the safest energy sources. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... Wow, look at that, the same three come out on top, hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Cheapest energy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Well, the pattern is broken, geothermal comes out on top. What's the next three, again tossing out the carbon heavy sources? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.
I believe we have a start on an engineering plan for lowering the worlds emissions. Let's start with hydro, nuclear, and wind. If you want to sprinkle in some geothermal and solar then that's fine by me. Just so long as we start with hydro, nuclear, and wind. You know, like Denmark and Finland did.
You can make biofuel from algae, and in fact that's the most efficient and effective feedstock.
And you can synthesize diesel fuel from seawater and nuclear power. As it is now both processes are in the prototype stage.
I have an idea. Let's have both processes compete in the open market. We can have the Department of Energy dump a bunch of money into research on both and see which one will win out in the end.
Oh, but wait, that's already happening. Except maybe it's the Department of Defense that is dumping more money into both right now. The USAF put a lot of money into jet fuel from algae. The US Navy put a lot of money into jet fuel from nuclear reactors.
The technology was developed at Sandia NREL back in the 1980s.
And the Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis process dates back to the 1920s.
But biofuel does not necessarily mean environmental devastation, and repeating that lie only hastens our downhill slide into oblivion.
Your solution is to sacrifice efficiency by adding another conversion step?
What extra conversion step? Your solution: Solar -> electric -> chemical battery -> electric -> motive force My solution: Nuclear thermal -> chemical fuel -> thermal -> motive force
There's more than one way to define efficiency. Maybe we should try with energy returned on energy invested, solar gets about 10x return while nuclear gets about 50x. With that kind of return at the start we can tolerate some losses in the conversion later.
It will still have emissions.
Yes, there are emissions. These emissions are collected in the fuel synthesis process. It's a closed loop.
You will still need a separate fuel tank, and to purge fuel.
I don't know what you are talking about. I'm quite certain you don't either.
They are literally already viable, which is why they're being produced now.
Battery powered ships are prototypes, with limited utility. Diesel ships are exceedingly common and have been for decades. Same for nuclear. If we are taking this "green" idea to an extreme I could include wind powered shipping. The last commercial ship with sails stopped commercial service in the 1950s, but people try to bring sail ships back once in a while and with the right conditions it might be profitable again.
Not until the waste problem is solved, and you figure out how to get uranium without strip-mining. Until then, it's the opposite of green.
Where do you think the solar panels for your idea of solar collecting ships comes from? People are literally stealing the beaches to get high grade silicon for PV cells. If you want to see an environmental disaster then go right ahead with your solar collector idea.
The nuclear waste problem is solved, except the politicians try as best they can to prove otherwise. What of the solar power waste problem? That hasn't been solved yet. I suggest we hold off on the PV cell production until we figure out what to do with the worn out ones we got.
Do references to modulating polluting behavior based on proximity to port and/or coastline belie non-comprehension of the finite boundaries of the oceans?
It's a comprehension of political boundaries. California cannot dictate behavior beyond it's borders. As those borders are defined now they include 24 miles out to sea from the coastline. If you want less polluting behavior from these ships outside these boundaries then we must offer them one in which they would choose that give them the most benefit. They can buy this bunker fuel real cheap in places like China. If you'd rather they buy cleaner fuel then offer them something cleaner for a lower price.
In other words, the concrete, the rare earths and the steel can all be mined and refined for less than 5% of the energy output of the windmill. Even if increased demand causes us to use slightly less easily mined materials, increasing the energy use by a few percentage points, so what? It would still be immensely profitable from an energy standpoint.
That energy return on investment is with 40 year old reactors, reactors that do not use the fuel very efficiently. As the article points out the EROI on nuclear power has a lot of room for improvement but it already beats everything except the best locations for wind and hydro. Third generation reactors have not been operating long enough yet to have good data, and fourth generation reactors are expected to have large improvements over third generation designs.
Which should we choose? Something that has a 25 times return on investment or something that gives us 40 times return?
Then we get back to the resources needed, we can build nuclear reactors right now with the resources we have. Nuclear uses no more steel and concrete than a coal fired plant. We can build them now and not need an increase in any mining. To get the same output with wind requires considerably more mining for steel and concrete, about ten times more. One other limited resource is human resources, it takes more people to build those windmills than to build a nuclear reactor. Unless the goal is just "busy work" then it would be time best spent to build nuclear power.
On the solar side: Concentrators don't require silicon. If silicon consumption really is such a big problem for pv panels, we can build concentrators instead. They're not suited for residential rooftops, but they're fine for large-scale installations.
And concentrated solar thermal gets an EROI of about 10. Maybe there is some room for improvement there but given its intermittent nature this is not likely to improve much.
Okay, here's some more math. Picking up where I left off we would need 5 TW of electricity production capacity from wind and solar to merely replace the current production from coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear. Wind power requires 1 ton of rare earth metals per megawatt of capacity, assuming we use current windmill technology and not older less efficient types that do not make use of rare earth elements. Solar PV requires 5 tons of silicon per megawatt of capacity. Wind requires 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete per megawatt of generation capacity, again this assumes efficient rare earth based windmills. One TW equals 1,000,000 megawatts, and we need to see at least 5 TW just to meet current demand.
Annual silicon production is about 7.2 million tons, and this is already not enough. Annual concrete production is now 4 billion tons. Steel production is 1.7 billion tons. Rare earth production about 100,000 tons. We'll need millions of tons of rare earth elements, on top of what is already consumed for current electronics and electric cars. We'll need tens of millions of tons of silicon, on top of the millions consumed per year already. These PV panels do not last forever so even if we meet current demand the old panels will need to be replaced, and recycling old panels takes more resources than mining new silicon.
Did I do enough math for you now? This does not add up to a bright future for wind and solar energy.
I see this replacing the "clean" engines they have to run close to land. Then they will switch to the bunker fuel engines like normal at sea and recharge these batteries. This would make the most sense for such a system.
Have you considered how much weight this adds to the ship? Batteries, even the best on the market, weigh 100 times as much as diesel fuel for the same energy output. You can argue on the specific battery technology or such if you like but this is going to be a rounding error. Then consider just how much fuel a ship burns per mile. Here's a reference I found on that: https://newatlas.com/shipping-...
The title of worldâ(TM)s largest container ship is actually held by eight identical ships owned by Danish shipping line Mærsk. All eight ships are 1300ft (397.7m) long and can carry 15,200 shipping containers around the globe at a steady 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h, 29.3 mph).
At five storeys tall and weighing 2300 tonnes, this 14 cylinder turbocharged two-stroke monster puts out 84.4 MW (114,800 hp) - up to 90MW when the motor's waste heat recovery system is taken into account. These mammoth engines consume approx 16 tons of fuel per hour or 380 tons per day while at sea.
This is an extreme example of a very large ship but also a fairly new design and therefore presumably reasonably efficient per ton of cargo moved. California maintains a 24 mile clean burning border out to sea from it's coasts, where ships are prohibited from burning the nasty bunker fuel mentioned in the article. To replace the 16 tons of fuel it burns in one hour, for the roughly 30 miles to clear this zone, it would need 1600 tons of batteries to get the same energy. That weighs nearly as much as the engine, or as much as 100+ cargo containers it would not be able to take as cargo. As it can carry 15,200 cargo containers this might not seem like much, but that's the reduced cargo capacity for every trip it takes for the life of the ship.
Remember that this does not reduce the total fuel burned, the batteries would have to be charged up in transit.
There's been other ways to meet these emissions demands with far less impact on the ship. Each ship already has multiple fuel tanks, simply fill one tank with "clean" fuel for while near the coasts. This not only reduces the total "dirty" fuel burned but it requires no modifications to the ship.
Another popular tactic, though not mentioned in the article, is using liquid natural gas on a dual fuel engine. These can switch from bunker fuel to far cleaner natural gas when near the ports. This does require some modification, but far less than trying to make room for a very large and heavy battery pack. The article also makes mention of the possibility of nuclear powered ships, which is where I expect us to get to eventually.
A 400 ton battery would have about the same energy as 4 tons of diesel fuel. 4 tons of diesel fuel is about 1200 gallons. A large ship doesn't get "miles per gallon" it gets "feet per gallon". Getting just orders of magnitude here this is between 100 and 10 feet per gallon. How far will that 400 ton battery take a cargo ship? Somewhere between 120,000 and 12,000 FEET. Again in orders of magnitude this is between 20 miles and 2 miles. The Panama canal is about 50 miles long.
I'm no sailor but I've met a few and the big ships do often have backup generators in case of a main engine failure, usually more than one backup generator. These are not intended to propel the ship, only to provide lights, communication, and such, to prevent a collision and aid in recovery. Turning off the main engine is a BIG DEAL and not done often as that runs the risk of it not starting again. Doing so out of port means the possibility of going adrift. This is a hazard for the ship and other ships in the area.
The old diesel electric submarines kept two diesel engines on board. This was so they could still move under power if one engine was in need of repair. When submerged both engines would be stopped. When surfaced normally only one engine would be run. If that engine sucked in water, or some other kind of failure, then they could still run on the other engine until the problem was repaired. I assume in times of great need they could run both engines for higher speeds. If a cargo ship was similarly equipped, with two "main" (prime mover) engines, then perhaps one could be shut off when in or near port to reduce pollution. However, these engines are very large, very expensive, very reliable, and therefore only warships have two main engines. Deviating from what I assume to be nearly 100 years of common practice on commercial shipping would likely be met with considerable resistance from both the shipping companies and the regulators. Just getting transoceanic airplanes to shift from four to three engines was met with considerable resistance. This is not just an engineering problem, but one of regulations.
Slashdot Mirror
So? They will replace them. Turbines in nuclear plants also wear out, and the cooling systems, etc. It's hardly unique to wind or natural gas. In fact if you are using turbine-based peaking plants, they are pretty simple and reliable.
Yes, nuclear power plants wear out as well and when they do they should be replaced with new nuclear power plants. At least until something better comes along. Why would Denmark not want to replace worn out natural gas with something safer and with lower CO2 output?
Denmark's population is pretty static, standards of living increasing don't always require lots of additional power.
That's fine, I'll give you that. There is still a need for new power plants to replace the old.
It is compared to coal, and 7% of energy from natural gas is tiny, so it doesn't make very much difference if it is replaced with nuclear (which still has some CO2 footprint up until the point that uranium springs from the ground and refines itself). I think you are also confusing the overall CO2 footprint of natural gas, and the issue of leakage from reservoirs of it, which depends very much on the type of reservoir.
I do see that natural gas reduces CO2 output from coal by half. Nuclear power reduces that to near zero. Again, why use natural gas when there is an energy source that is safer, lower CO2, and just as cheap? It's not likely to completely replace natural gas for things like load following but it makes sense to reduce the natural gas, and certainly coal, burning as much as possible.
I think you are confusing Denmark with Norway there.
Well, let's see...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Coal power provided 48.0% of the electricity and 22.0% of the heat in district heating in Denmark in 2008; and in total provided 21.6% of total energy consumption (187 PJ out of 864 PJ).
Official statistics estimate 231,000 residences heated by oil in 2014 (down from 328,000 in 2013), but only 87,000 actually purchased oil during 2014.
Looks like Denmark could in fact displace a lot of coal and oil with nuclear and natural gas.
https://www.worldenergy.org/da...
As of 2014, Denmark only held 35 bcm of proved natural gas reserves. Denmarkâ(TM)s fields in the North Sea are mainly responsible for the countryâ(TM)s proved natural gas reserves and have allowed them to become a natural gas producer. Denmarkâ(TM)s natural gas production was only 4.6 bcm in 2014. However, their production level still plays an important role as it is sufficient to not only cover their domestic demand, but also allows for exportation as well. Denmark is self-sufficient in regards to natural gas as evidenced by their consumption level of 3.2 bcm in 2014. This self-sufficiency has aided Denmarkâ(TM)s energy security of supply.
Denmark also is a net exporter of natural gas. The country currently exports natural gas through pipeline trade. In 2014, Denmark exported 2.1 bcm of pipeline natural gas to other European countries.
The less natural gas Denmark burns the more they can sell to other European nations. They are already a net exporter and use of nuclear power can increase those exports and bring them greater income. Or, put another way, with their limited reserves of natural gas they may want to hold on to it as long as they can. Reducing domestic consumption can make this reserve last longer, perhaps to the point that some new technology for storage can come along to displace the need for natural gas for load matching.
I saw just an epic speech by Dr. Jordan Peterson on free speech. It's about a half hour long but worth every minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Dr. Peterson explains how vital it is to speak freely to develop one's thoughts. If people are not able to say anything that isn't "righteous" then nothing of importance can be discussed. And who is to be the arbiter of what is righteous? To have a functioning society one needs to be able to say uncomfortable things. That includes "hate speech". Most anything of importance is in some way uncomfortable, hateful, or not "clean". It can be important as an example of good behavior as well as what we should not do.
To know what is good we at times need to see what is bad, and the damage this can cause. We define our heroes by their villains. You can't have Batman without the Joker. There is no Superman without Lex Luthor. These comic book characters borrow from old myths to the point of pulling Thor and Loki from mythical characters and turning them into big budget movies and comics. Wonder Woman borrows heavily from myth as well. In every case we see examples of heroes, fighting what we consider evil. To purge evil from society to the point that Chinese citizens can't even read of news of such evil outside their borders means Chinese people cannot learn how to see such evil within themselves.
This censorship can only end badly. We should not tolerate it in any form. That includes these college campus protests to "de-platform" people that student groups despise. By expressing intolerance for "bad speech" means in the end expressing a disdain for thinking clearly. If you cannot think of a better response then to make noise and smash things then you are no better than unthinking animals.
Hydroelectric power is a lot of things including the most dangerous of the non-fossil fuel power sources (except biofuel/biomass) due to just the immediate causalities from dam failures. That is 3 times more dangerous than solar, 9 times more dangerous than wind, and 16 times more dangerous than nuclear. Including casualties from long term effects like famine makes it several times more dangerous but that would apply to any dam whether power producing or not.
You are looking at the global numbers to get such poor performance, which does not apply to US policy. In the USA hydro is exceedingly safe, beat out only by nuclear. For the USA hydro should absolutely be used. If not only because it is safe, low CO2, inexpensive, and generally a good performing energy source, there is the need to match the load which also applies globally. I'll get into details next.
Even if we look at the global numbers on safety there is a very real need to keep using hydro power. Wind and solar are intermittent energy sources, so something needs to back them up when they are not available, and even possibly provide storage when there is an excess. Nuclear power, at least the third generation water boiler styles being built today, do not load follow well and will need something to match the changing loads through the day. If there is no hydro to go with the wind, solar, and nuclear to match supply to demand then that means oil, natural gas, or perhaps bio-mass fuel. This is not a choice between hydro, wind, or solar. This is a choice between hydro, natural gas, or oil.
If we are going to build out wind and solar to the point that there is an excess capacity with regularity, which inevitably comes with shortages, then there will be a need for storage to time shift the peaks to fill the valleys. I haven't seen any performance metrics on storage technologies except for price, and nothing is cheaper than pumped hydro storage. And no matter how you compute it, money saved is lives saved.
Fourth generation nuclear promises to offer the capability to match supply to demand. If this comes true, and maintains it's safety and other benefits, then we need nothing more for electricity. That's not likely to come for at least a decade. Until then we should invest in hydro and current generation nuclear when and where we can.
So Denmark has a large natural gas installed base (great for power when required) but rarely uses it (great for the environment). This means they don't need to go to the trouble of building nuclear, as they have it covered.
Those windmills and natural gas plants will wear out, and likely new capacity will be needed as populations and standards of living grow, so they will need to build new power plants eventually. What should Denmark do then? Seems to me that choosing the safest energy source we have available to us today would be the wise choice.
I could see an argument made to continue building windmills for power, as it is likely as low carbon and low cost as nuclear. Possibly just as safe as well. Replacing old natural gas with new natural gas though fails on several levels. Natural gas is not low CO2, it's not safe, and even if it is cheap there is still a case to be made to save on natural gas used for electricity and save that for heating or sale as exports.
It's easy to find a number of natural gas rich nations that are building nuclear power plants. This is because in nearly every case natural gas use, for domestic heating and cooking as well as electrical generation, is increasing and by not burning that natural gas for electricity they avoid having to end up importing it. Even if a nation has plenty of natural gas this can be exported, or used domestically to displace higher CO2 petroleum liquid fuels for transportation.
Denmark does not "have it covered". There will be a continual need for new power plants as the old ones wear out. They can replace them with more dangerous and higher CO2 sources like natural gas, or with far better nuclear. Europe as a whole is burning far too much coal and natural gas, and they have an international grid for electricity and natural gas. If Denmark builds nuclear power then they can help their neighbors in reducing their CO2 by exporting natural gas and electricity from nuclear to displace the coal and oil that's being burned now.
Perhaps you could help me find where it shows on that Wikipedia page where nuclear power costs 4 times that of wind, solar, or natural gas? I can't find it.
Also, I can fact check you on claim that solar energy subsidies expired. I saw that there is a tax credit for new solar installs in the USA up until at least 2020, and the tax credit for 2019 is the same as 2018 and 2017.
I'm pretty sure you are still an idiot.
Hint: it helps to have some common sense
You mean like the common sense of comparing a 150,000 ton transoceanic cargo carrier to an 8,800 ton short run ferry? The fuel on the cargo carrier weighs more than that entire ferry.
You are an idiot.
Nuclear is about 4 times to 8 times the kwh price of natural gas, wind and solar.
You do realize that I have access to the internet, don't you? I can fact check this. It's real easy for you to fact check it too. Here's a place to fact check that:
https://www.instituteforenergy...
Nuclear power is cheaper than off shore wind and every form of solar power. Nuclear is marginally more expensive than onshore wind and hydroelectricity. Natural gas is real cheap, nearly half the price of wind or nuclear. The problem with natural gas is the CO2 output. If the goal is to replace this natural gas with something reliable then that's going to be nuclear or hydro. We don't have many places left for cheap hydro, that leaves nuclear as our only choice.
The argument isn't if we will build more nuclear power plants, it's when and how many. We've run out of choices for cheap and reliable electricity. We will be building more nuclear power. The sooner people can wrap their heads around this the better. Continually pushing off new nuclear power into the future only means having to run the old nuclear power plants longer.
I keep reading claims of how solar will get cheaper in the future. That may be true, I believe it's nearly certain. Do you believe that nuclear can't also get cheaper in the future? I believe it can. One way to make it cheaper is to start training nuclear engineers now. To do that we need to build nuclear power plants, as there is no better training than real world experience. We've effectively skipped a generation of nuclear engineers, from a 40 year stagnation in the industry, and a lot of experience will die with those experienced engineers. It may be wise to get a new generation trained on nuclear power before the current generation of nuclear engineers retire, go senile, and/or die.
Solar makes much more sense in places like California and Arizona, now that PV power is so cheap.
Solar and wind are cheap until you need to store it.
https://qz.com/1125355/solar-a...
Solar and wind might be able to provide as high as 30% of the grid electricity but at that point the intermittent nature requires expensive storage and all cost benefits disappear.
Solar generates when we need it most but falls off before the peak demand.
Falls off before peak demand? Then it's not there when you need it most.
Nuclear is base-load and not typically available on demand. New systems can follow load but don't respond as quickly as a spinning NG turbine.
That's fine, we'll just use those cheap energy storage systems that the wind and solar people keep saying will come along any day now. You think cheap storage only helps with wind and solar? I believe if cheap storage does come then nuclear will look very nice. If it doesn't then we'll need those NG turbines either way, wind, solar, or nuclear. If solar fades just before the peak load then that means more NG burned in turbines than if we had simply used nuclear, no? That is CO2 burned that we would not have had to if we simply did not rely so heavily on solar.
Solar is only cheap if it doesn't need storage. If natural gas turbines are used to back up solar then solar isn't a low carbon energy source any more.
We weren't discussing nuclear. We were discussing whether, from a raw materials point of view, solar and wind energy could plausibly be expanded to cover all our energy needs.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Wind is a nice energy source but it cannot replace coal and nuclear on it's own based solely on the resources needed for construction, both in material resources and in human resources. From a raw materials point of view wind and solar take far too much material capital investment to compete with far less resource intensive (considering energy returned) coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro.
You tried to just hand wave away the materials needed by pointing out the energy returned. Well, you can't do that. There will always bee that need to mine a lot of limestone and iron ore for those windmill towers. That problem does not go away. Assuming improvements on windmill technology won't make it go away either, we've been using wind for power for a very long time now and we're getting diminishing returns on the advancements in technology.
Nice to see somebody sincere and not just a troll here.
Thanks.
Ok, I think that you looked at this all wrong. You simply looked at our electricity and nothing else. Instead, lets look at where CO2 comes from. Electricity USED to be our main source. Now, it and Transportation are tied.
Well, if electric cars are the future, which seems to be a popular claim, then this will be a self correcting problem if we fix the CO2 from electricity. No?
So, IOW, Transportation will take care of itself, assuming Tesla does not die.
Seems you agree with me. I'm not so sure Tesla will be the solution, they are still a luxury car maker. We'll need to see electric cars on every price level. Out here in snowy suburbia we'll need light trucks, SUVs, or whatever else that handles snow well. Not everyone can wait for the snow plows, and some of use need to carry tools and gear to work regularly.
You went through pointing out to the top 3, but ignored the other low ones. In addition, you made it solely about emissions, which I think is a HORRIBLE mistake.
I did not make it solely about emissions. I did exclude the worst offenders on every step, only because the primary goal is reducing CO2. The reason I stopped at the top three is because that seemed like a nice dividing line taking into the other factors like cost, safety, energy return, and of course CO2 emitted.
Also, if I include more than three then people will just focus on their "favorite" and ignore the rest. We need to first focus on where we get the most gain for the lowest costs, then once those are going then we can all pick a "favorite" and see how it stacks up.
As such, we need at least a good chunk of our power to come from on-demand systems. IOW, Perry is correct when he speaks of needing these kinds of systems.
As such, 2/3 of it should be from on-demand systems.
That means that 1/3 could come from wind/solar, but the other 2/3 really needs to come from hydro, nukes, geo-thermal, since these are all on-demand.
Geo-thermal is CHEAP to add, and we can add a lot of it.
Yes, hydro and nuclear are on-demand power. Geothermal is just not that great on EROEI. I haven't seen any metrics on safety either. I could probably be convinced on geothermal. I had to draw a line somewhere and I found that on most every metric there is a consistent top three, beyond that geothermal gets mixed up with solar, ethanol, and maybe one or two more. Choosing a top five gets hard, and also dilutes the focus on far better solutions, like hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Hydro is not as cheap, but more importantly, it is limited.
Hydro is limited. Hydro is very nice as it has such a low CO2 footprint, is safe, and therefore should be used as much as we can. It's a nice storage medium, even without pumped hydro, as it can ramp up and down quickly and it has an inherent storage capability with the water kept behind the dam. It mates well with the intermittent nature of wind, and the slow ramp capability of nuclear (at least third generation nuclear, fourth generation might not have this problem). I included it on my list as it cannot be ignored as part of the solution.
SHould have a mix of wind/solar as well as nuke or geo-thermal if possible.
Solar is near worthless. I'll go along with wind, and maybe geothermal, but solar needs to stay in the realm of orbiting satellites and pocket calculators. We have better options than solar and so solar should be left as a last resort.
I would like to suggest that we also need to lower our energy use.
After nearly 50 years since the oil crisis of the 1970s there's been a push for ever increasing efficiency. I just don't believe that there is much left to gain on this. Lowering it any more will start to impact quality of lif
Interesting graph, especially the slopes on those lines. China's CO2 output has been climbing, quite rapidly too. For USA it's been pretty steady, even dropping slightly. The CO2 output per capita in the USA is the same now as it was in the 1960s, and down about 20% from the 1970s. Shouldn't we get a little credit for that?
I'd like to see the CO2 output go down in the USA. Judging from what I've picked up over the years there will not be a significant drop until we build more nuclear power. We've damned up all the rivers worth a dam for hydro, so we can't grow much there. Windmills are popping up like dandelions, that's good. What we need now to balance this out and really put a knife in the heart of coal, the biggest CO2 emitter of them all, is more nuclear power.
I've read some encouraging news recently. Seems like the powers that be are now taking nuclear power seriously. I suspect a lot of nuclear power plants breaking ground in the next five or ten years. Unfortunately most of that is just to make up for the nuclear power we'd be shutting down. We'll see growth in nuclear power yet, then we can see the CO2 per capita drop.
Your reading and other comprehension skills baffle me ...
Your desire to follow me around and "correct" me is baffling.
You show us a link about Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And then you claim, they generate their electricity They get 75% from natural gas, and 25% from wind.
Could you have the dignity to READ your links? And comprehend them?
Denmark produced 2014 47% of its energy by wind, solar and hydro. 7% not 75%, by gas.
Yep, I confused the installed capacity with production, so sue me. Here's another site I was able to find with more recent data.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
They show about half the electricity from "thermal" (fossil fuels in various forms), and about half from wind.
I don't bother to debunk your other links ... no idea what your secret agenda is.
I have no "secret agenda", I thought I was quite clear on my agenda. I want to see solutions rather than just complaints on the problem. Solar is not a solution, it can be part of the solution but it is not a solution on it's own. Hydro, nuclear, and wind are solutions. The main part is that hydro, nuclear, and wind must ALL be included in the solution. Without all three the solution falls apart.
Oh, and natural gas. It's going to be difficult to go all hydro, nuclear, and wind at once. Until that happens we should use lots of natural gas to get off of coal and oil.
So far everything you posted about nuclear energy, solar and anything related to power was basically wrong.
Oh, really? Sure would be nice if you posted some links to sources once in a while. Or, just once. Anyone can claim someone is wrong. I can claim you are wrong. Without something to back that up it's just talk.
Seems to me that if you picked up on my "oops" on Denmark that you took some time to look over what I linked. And when you found something wrong you jumped all over it. Since that was the only thing you commented on being wrong tells me you could find nothing else wrong.
Wait, maybe I do have a "secret agenda". It's to get under the skin of people like yourself.
Weather is not climate.
Instead of bringing up the problem again and again I'd like to see more discussions on solutions.
I like hydro, nuclear, and wind as solutions. Those seem to come out on top on every selection parameter I could come up with.
I'm also a fan of the Pickens Plan.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla...
That plan is to use as much natural gas to replace imported oil as we can while we develop alternatives.
Have all nations drop their emissions together.
I agree, but that's not a "how". That's not an engineering plan.
We need to get to the levels of Denmark and Finland .
Okay, let's look at how Finland does it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They get 25% of their electricity from nuclear, 20% from hydro, and... 22% imported? That doesn't sound like a plan. That's just exporting your emissions.
Let's look at Denmark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They get 75% from natural gas, and 25% from wind. Not a bad plan in my opinion. Though I would like to see them adopt some nuclear power like Finland. Natural gas produces about half the CO2 output of coal, and wind a tiny fraction of the CO2 output of natural gas.
To get an engineering plan start with the CO2 output of the different energy sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If we toss out the carbon heavy sources we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Let's look at the safest energy sources.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Wow, look at that, the same three come out on top, hydro, nuclear, and wind.
Cheapest energy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Well, the pattern is broken, geothermal comes out on top. What's the next three, again tossing out the carbon heavy sources? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.
I believe we have a start on an engineering plan for lowering the worlds emissions. Let's start with hydro, nuclear, and wind. If you want to sprinkle in some geothermal and solar then that's fine by me. Just so long as we start with hydro, nuclear, and wind. You know, like Denmark and Finland did.
It's called the "contiguous zone".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm more curious on how California is given such wide latitude on dictating behavior in what I would consider federal waters.
You can make biofuel from algae, and in fact that's the most efficient and effective feedstock.
And you can synthesize diesel fuel from seawater and nuclear power. As it is now both processes are in the prototype stage.
I have an idea. Let's have both processes compete in the open market. We can have the Department of Energy dump a bunch of money into research on both and see which one will win out in the end.
Oh, but wait, that's already happening. Except maybe it's the Department of Defense that is dumping more money into both right now. The USAF put a lot of money into jet fuel from algae. The US Navy put a lot of money into jet fuel from nuclear reactors.
The technology was developed at Sandia NREL back in the 1980s.
And the Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis process dates back to the 1920s.
But biofuel does not necessarily mean environmental devastation, and repeating that lie only hastens our downhill slide into oblivion.
The same can be said of nuclear power.
Your solution is to sacrifice efficiency by adding another conversion step?
What extra conversion step?
Your solution:
Solar -> electric -> chemical battery -> electric -> motive force
My solution:
Nuclear thermal -> chemical fuel -> thermal -> motive force
There's more than one way to define efficiency. Maybe we should try with energy returned on energy invested, solar gets about 10x return while nuclear gets about 50x. With that kind of return at the start we can tolerate some losses in the conversion later.
It will still have emissions.
Yes, there are emissions. These emissions are collected in the fuel synthesis process. It's a closed loop.
You will still need a separate fuel tank, and to purge fuel.
I don't know what you are talking about. I'm quite certain you don't either.
They are literally already viable, which is why they're being produced now.
Battery powered ships are prototypes, with limited utility. Diesel ships are exceedingly common and have been for decades. Same for nuclear. If we are taking this "green" idea to an extreme I could include wind powered shipping. The last commercial ship with sails stopped commercial service in the 1950s, but people try to bring sail ships back once in a while and with the right conditions it might be profitable again.
Not until the waste problem is solved, and you figure out how to get uranium without strip-mining. Until then, it's the opposite of green.
Where do you think the solar panels for your idea of solar collecting ships comes from? People are literally stealing the beaches to get high grade silicon for PV cells. If you want to see an environmental disaster then go right ahead with your solar collector idea.
The nuclear waste problem is solved, except the politicians try as best they can to prove otherwise. What of the solar power waste problem? That hasn't been solved yet. I suggest we hold off on the PV cell production until we figure out what to do with the worn out ones we got.
Do references to modulating polluting behavior based on proximity to port and/or coastline belie non-comprehension of the finite boundaries of the oceans?
It's a comprehension of political boundaries. California cannot dictate behavior beyond it's borders. As those borders are defined now they include 24 miles out to sea from the coastline. If you want less polluting behavior from these ships outside these boundaries then we must offer them one in which they would choose that give them the most benefit. They can buy this bunker fuel real cheap in places like China. If you'd rather they buy cleaner fuel then offer them something cleaner for a lower price.
Prove it.
In other words, the concrete, the rare earths and the steel can all be mined and refined for less than 5% of the energy output of the windmill. Even if increased demand causes us to use slightly less easily mined materials, increasing the energy use by a few percentage points, so what? It would still be immensely profitable from an energy standpoint.
So what? Nuclear power has an energy return between 40 and 80.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
That energy return on investment is with 40 year old reactors, reactors that do not use the fuel very efficiently. As the article points out the EROI on nuclear power has a lot of room for improvement but it already beats everything except the best locations for wind and hydro. Third generation reactors have not been operating long enough yet to have good data, and fourth generation reactors are expected to have large improvements over third generation designs.
Which should we choose? Something that has a 25 times return on investment or something that gives us 40 times return?
Then we get back to the resources needed, we can build nuclear reactors right now with the resources we have. Nuclear uses no more steel and concrete than a coal fired plant. We can build them now and not need an increase in any mining. To get the same output with wind requires considerably more mining for steel and concrete, about ten times more. One other limited resource is human resources, it takes more people to build those windmills than to build a nuclear reactor. Unless the goal is just "busy work" then it would be time best spent to build nuclear power.
On the solar side: Concentrators don't require silicon. If silicon consumption really is such a big problem for pv panels, we can build concentrators instead. They're not suited for residential rooftops, but they're fine for large-scale installations.
And concentrated solar thermal gets an EROI of about 10. Maybe there is some room for improvement there but given its intermittent nature this is not likely to improve much.
Okay, here's some more math. Picking up where I left off we would need 5 TW of electricity production capacity from wind and solar to merely replace the current production from coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear. Wind power requires 1 ton of rare earth metals per megawatt of capacity, assuming we use current windmill technology and not older less efficient types that do not make use of rare earth elements. Solar PV requires 5 tons of silicon per megawatt of capacity. Wind requires 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete per megawatt of generation capacity, again this assumes efficient rare earth based windmills. One TW equals 1,000,000 megawatts, and we need to see at least 5 TW just to meet current demand.
Annual silicon production is about 7.2 million tons, and this is already not enough. Annual concrete production is now 4 billion tons. Steel production is 1.7 billion tons. Rare earth production about 100,000 tons. We'll need millions of tons of rare earth elements, on top of what is already consumed for current electronics and electric cars. We'll need tens of millions of tons of silicon, on top of the millions consumed per year already. These PV panels do not last forever so even if we meet current demand the old panels will need to be replaced, and recycling old panels takes more resources than mining new silicon.
Did I do enough math for you now? This does not add up to a bright future for wind and solar energy.
I see this replacing the "clean" engines they have to run close to land. Then they will switch to the bunker fuel engines like normal at sea and recharge these batteries. This would make the most sense for such a system.
Have you considered how much weight this adds to the ship? Batteries, even the best on the market, weigh 100 times as much as diesel fuel for the same energy output. You can argue on the specific battery technology or such if you like but this is going to be a rounding error. Then consider just how much fuel a ship burns per mile. Here's a reference I found on that:
https://newatlas.com/shipping-...
The title of worldâ(TM)s largest container ship is actually held by eight identical ships owned by Danish shipping line Mærsk. All eight ships are 1300ft (397.7m) long and can carry 15,200 shipping containers around the globe at a steady 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h, 29.3 mph) .
At five storeys tall and weighing 2300 tonnes, this 14 cylinder turbocharged two-stroke monster puts out 84.4 MW (114,800 hp) - up to 90MW when the motor's waste heat recovery system is taken into account. These mammoth engines consume approx 16 tons of fuel per hour or 380 tons per day while at sea.
This is an extreme example of a very large ship but also a fairly new design and therefore presumably reasonably efficient per ton of cargo moved. California maintains a 24 mile clean burning border out to sea from it's coasts, where ships are prohibited from burning the nasty bunker fuel mentioned in the article. To replace the 16 tons of fuel it burns in one hour, for the roughly 30 miles to clear this zone, it would need 1600 tons of batteries to get the same energy. That weighs nearly as much as the engine, or as much as 100+ cargo containers it would not be able to take as cargo. As it can carry 15,200 cargo containers this might not seem like much, but that's the reduced cargo capacity for every trip it takes for the life of the ship.
Remember that this does not reduce the total fuel burned, the batteries would have to be charged up in transit.
There's been other ways to meet these emissions demands with far less impact on the ship. Each ship already has multiple fuel tanks, simply fill one tank with "clean" fuel for while near the coasts. This not only reduces the total "dirty" fuel burned but it requires no modifications to the ship.
Another popular tactic, though not mentioned in the article, is using liquid natural gas on a dual fuel engine. These can switch from bunker fuel to far cleaner natural gas when near the ports. This does require some modification, but far less than trying to make room for a very large and heavy battery pack. The article also makes mention of the possibility of nuclear powered ships, which is where I expect us to get to eventually.
Here's my armchair engineer response.
A 400 ton battery would have about the same energy as 4 tons of diesel fuel. 4 tons of diesel fuel is about 1200 gallons. A large ship doesn't get "miles per gallon" it gets "feet per gallon". Getting just orders of magnitude here this is between 100 and 10 feet per gallon. How far will that 400 ton battery take a cargo ship? Somewhere between 120,000 and 12,000 FEET. Again in orders of magnitude this is between 20 miles and 2 miles. The Panama canal is about 50 miles long.
I'm no sailor but I've met a few and the big ships do often have backup generators in case of a main engine failure, usually more than one backup generator. These are not intended to propel the ship, only to provide lights, communication, and such, to prevent a collision and aid in recovery. Turning off the main engine is a BIG DEAL and not done often as that runs the risk of it not starting again. Doing so out of port means the possibility of going adrift. This is a hazard for the ship and other ships in the area.
The old diesel electric submarines kept two diesel engines on board. This was so they could still move under power if one engine was in need of repair. When submerged both engines would be stopped. When surfaced normally only one engine would be run. If that engine sucked in water, or some other kind of failure, then they could still run on the other engine until the problem was repaired. I assume in times of great need they could run both engines for higher speeds. If a cargo ship was similarly equipped, with two "main" (prime mover) engines, then perhaps one could be shut off when in or near port to reduce pollution. However, these engines are very large, very expensive, very reliable, and therefore only warships have two main engines. Deviating from what I assume to be nearly 100 years of common practice on commercial shipping would likely be met with considerable resistance from both the shipping companies and the regulators. Just getting transoceanic airplanes to shift from four to three engines was met with considerable resistance. This is not just an engineering problem, but one of regulations.