Tag Archives: Renewables

ENERGY: Is the nuclearization of energy sources a prudent investment?

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Image via Clay Bennett

Personally, I’m not against using nuclear energy sources to meet energy demand and to reduce carbon emissions. However, since there are significant drawbacks to nuclear power, I do not believe that the nuclearization of energy sources, or substantially increasing the number of nuclear power stations to meet energy demand and to reduce carbon emissions, represents prudent energy policy. I’ve outlined the significant drawbacks to nuclear power before:

[T]he Republican Party believes that “the best way for utility companies to reduce carbon emissions is to increase their supply of nuclear energy.” However, nuclear power isn’t cheap, and the costs associated with constructing new nuclear power plants have skyrocketed. There are also substantial costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants (“it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant“). Other negatives associated with nuclear power production include the fact that the nuclear power industry depends solely on a nonrenewable energy source, and there’s the well-known problem of storing nuclear waste. Also, “the process of thermoelectric generation from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power, is water intensive. In fact, each kWh generated requires on average approximately 25 gallons of water to produce.” Therefore, drought could force nuclear power plants to shut down. What’s more, there are past and present safety concerns with nuclear power production. Recently, the nuclear power industry has been plagued by safety problems at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Certainly, if the costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants, with the management of nuclear power plants, and with the disposal of nuclear waste are considered, then both solar and wind power are substantially cheaper than nuclear power.

Shouldn’t the massive costs associated with nuclear power construction, production, and decommissioning be invested into renewable energy research and production and into research and technologies related to energy storage, grid modernization, and energy conservation. According to Nathan Lewis, “To get the 10 terawatts we need to stay on the ‘business-as-usual’ curve, we’d need 10,000 of our current one-gigawatt reactors, and that means we’d have to build one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 straight years.” Lewis also points out that “one hundred twenty thousand terawatts of solar power hits the earth . . . It is the only natural energy resource that can keep up with human consumption.” More via an earlier post on the Conservation Report:

Nathan Lewis provides a gloomy but sobering assessment of the challenges humanity will face in meeting its future energy needs (emphasis added):

Energy is the single most important technological challenge facing humanity today. Nothing else in science or technology comes close in comparison. If we don’t invent the next nano-widget, if we don’t cure cancer in 20 years, like it or not the world will stay the same. But with energy, we are in the middle of doing the biggest experiment that humans will have ever done, and we get to do that experiment exactly once. And there is no tomorrow, because in 20 years that experiment will be cast in stone. If we don’t get this right, we can say as students of physics and chemistry that we know that the world will, on a timescale comparable to modern human history, never be the same.

The currency of the world is not the dollar, it’s the joule.

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Humanity’s current energy consumption rate is 13 trillion thermal watts, or 13 terawatts.

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The United States consumes a quarter of the world’s energy, at a rate of about 3.3 terawatts[.]

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With population and GDP growth conspiring together, we would then obtain a tripling of energy demand by 2050. This is partly mitigated, however, by the fact that we’re using energy more efficiently per unit of GDP. The ratio of energy consumption to GDP has been declining at about 1 percent, globally averaged, per year. The United States actually saves energy at a faster rate, about 2 percent per year. Because we have such a high per-capita energy baseline consumption, it is easier for us to save off that base, whereas the developing countries save less. The “business as usual” scenario assumes that this will continue, and if we project that down, we will achieve an average energy consumption of two kilowatts per person within our lifetimes. (The United States now uses 10 kilowatts per person.) But factor in population growth and conservative economic growth, and we’ll still need twice as much energy as we need now.

In terms of average thermal load, a person on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet is basically a hundred-watt lightbulb. And in our highly mechanized western agricultural system, the energy embedded in food—to run the farm and grow the food and transport it to the supermarket and put it in the refrigerator—is 10 to 20 times the energy content of the food itself. And the farther you live from the food source, the more embedded energy you consume. If we are 100-watt lightbulbs, this means that just keeping us fed requires one to two kilowatts.

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Ice cores taken near Vostok Station, Antarctica, show that the CO2 level has been in a narrow band between 200 and 300 parts per million by volume (ppmv) for the last 425,000 years; data from other cores have extended this back to 670,000 years. Current CO2 levels are about 380 ppmv. “Business as usual” will require 10 trillion watts, 10 terawatts, of carbon-free power, and it never stabilizes CO2 levels—they just keep going up. So even on that track, we are betting against data that goes back for almost a million straight years, and hoping that this time, we get lucky.

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[U]nfortunately, there is no natural destruction mechanism for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Unlike ozone depletion, it will not heal by itself through chemical processes. In our highly oxidizing atmosphere, CO2 is an end product. The lifetimes of CO2 in the atmosphere are well known, and the time for 500 to 600 ppmv of CO2 to decay back to 300 ppmv is between 500 and 5,000 years. Which means that the CO2 we produce over the next 40 years, and its associated effects, will last for a timescale comparable to modern human history. This is why, within the next 20 years, we either solve this problem or the world will never be the same. How different that world will be, we won’t know until we get there.

If we want to hold CO2 even to 550 ppmv, even with aggressive energy efficiency we will need as much clean, carbon-free energy within the next 40 years, online, as the entire oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear industries today combined—10 to 15 terawatts. This is not changing a few lightbulbs in Fresno, this is building an industry comparable to 50 Exxon Mobils. Furthermore, if we wait 30 years, the amount of carbon-free energy we’ll need will be even greater, and needed even faster, because in the meantime we will have put out 30 years of accumulated CO2 emissions that will not go away for centuries to millennia. So stabilizing at 550 ppmv will then require about 15 to 20 terawatts of carbon-free power in 2050.

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So let’s look at carbon-neutral energy sources. We could go nuclear, which is the only proven technology that we have that could scale to these numbers. We have about 400 nuclear power plants in the world today. To get the 10 terawatts we need to stay on the “business-as-usual” curve, we’d need 10,000 of our current one-gigawatt reactors, and that means we’d have to build one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 straight years. I’ve been giving this talk in one version or another for five years—we should have already built on the order of 1,000 new reactors, or double what’s ever been built, just to stay on track. So we’re really behind.

There isn’t enough terrestrial uranium on the planet to build them as once-through reactors. We could get enough uranium from seawater, if we processed the equivalent of 3,000 Niagara Falls 24/7 to do the extraction. Which means that the only credible nuclear-energy source today involves plutonium. That’s never talked about by the politicians, but it’s a fact. Forgive my facetiousness, but on some level we should be thanking North Korea and Iran for doing their part to mitigate global warming. We’d need about 10,000 fast-breeder reactors and, by the way, their commissioned lifetime is only 50 years. That means that after we choose this route, we’re building one of them every other day, or more rapidly, forever.

We don’t have time for the physicists to figure out how to make nuclear fusion reactors—they’ve been saying it will be demonstrated (although not economical) in 35 years, and they’ve been saying that for the last 50. If we assume they’re right this time, then ITER, a multinational demonstration fusion reactor being built in the south of France, will demonstrate break even—that is, it will put out as much energy as it takes to run it—in 35 years, and it will run for all of one week before the entire machine will, by design, disintegrate in the presence of that high-neutron radiation and temperature flux. And in the meantime we would have to build a commercial fission reactor every day for the next 30 years. It’s not going to happen.

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One hundred twenty thousand terawatts of solar power hits the earth . . . It is the only natural energy resource that can keep up with human consumption. Everything else will run up against the stops, soon. In fact, more solar energy hits the earth in one hour than all the energy the world consumes in a year.

NONRENEWABLE RESOURCES: Energy analyst predicts that oil could reach $300 in ten years. Can the GOP’s energy policy meet our future energy needs?

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Images via Grant Neufeld and pshab on Flickr.

How will the future economy of the United States respond to rising oil prices or to $300-a-barrel oil? Under the Obama Administration and a Democratic majority, we’ve seen the federal government attempt to stimulate renewable energy by investing into it, by contributing to energy-storage technology, and by recognizing the utility of alternative-fuel vehicles.

Despite fossil fuels contributing to climate change, national security concerns, and the pollution of the human environment, the GOP embraces an economy dependent on dirty, nonrenewable fossil fuels. Fossil fuels may seem cheap, but they’re not. The cheap cost of fossil fuels, paid at the pump for example, doesn’t reflect the true cost of fossil fuels, because the price at the pump doesn’t include costs that are a consequence of the negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels. For example, it has been estimated by numerous studies that the negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels cost governments and the public billions of dollars each year. This means that while fossil-fuel companies receive record profits, they’re not responsible for the consequences of doing dirty business or for the billions of dollars that governments and the public are forced to pick up. Additionally, the fossil-fuel industry receives government subsidies to pollute the human environment. These fossil-fuel subsidies must be eliminated to “enhance energy security, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, and bring economic benefits.”

Given the facts and consequences associated with a fossil fuel-based economy, it would seem that a prudent and progressive energy policy shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but the Republican Party isn’t exactly known for pushing clean, sustainable, or rational energy policy reforms. For example, the Republican Party’s energy policy focuses on “lifting restrictions on ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf, and oil shale in the Mountain West.” Also, the Republican Party claims that “revenue generated by the sale of leases will be invested in renewable and alternative sources of energy.” However, what will the United States utilize after these nonrenewable resources are exhausted? Why drill here, drill now when these minerals are sold on an international market, so why is it necessary to invade protected wilderness areas to extract minerals, which aren’t necessarily consumed domestically. Also, considering greenhouse gases, global warming, and climate change, why is it necessary to add even more trapped carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere? Basically, the short-term benefits of extracting and using these minerals are outweighed by the long-term damage caused by climate change and a failure to implement a prudent or sustainable energy policy.

Furthermore, the Republican Party believes that “the best way for utility companies to reduce carbon emissions is to increase their supply of nuclear energy.” However, nuclear power isn’t cheap, and the costs associated with constructing new nuclear power plants have skyrocketed. There are also substantial costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants (“it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant“). Other negatives associated with nuclear power production include the fact that the nuclear power industry depends solely on a nonrenewable energy source, and there’s the well-known problem of storing nuclear waste. Also, “the process of thermoelectric generation from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power, is water intensive. In fact, each kWh generated requires on average approximately 25 gallons of water to produce.” Therefore, drought could force nuclear power plants to shut down. What’s more, there are past and present safety concerns with nuclear power production. Recently, the nuclear power industry has been plagued by safety problems at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Certainly, if the costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants, with the management of nuclear power plants, and with the disposal of nuclear waste are considered, then both solar and wind power are substantially cheaper than nuclear power.

The GOP’s talking points on energy also claim that Democrats tax energy, but the GOP makes no mention of the tax incentives and tax credits spurred under the Democratic majority and under the Obama Administration. Consequently, the Republican Party merely politicizes and trivializes the issue of energy. Why can’t the Republican Party aggressively pursue the development of renewables? Portugal is doing it. Denmark is doing it. Iceland is doing it. Even China understands the utility of developing its renewable energy sources.

Additionally, being a conservative political party, there are energy conservation strategies that the Republican Party should show open and strong support for but don’t. For example, there are the ideas of retrofitting buildings to conserve energy, adopting greener building standards to conserve energy, or even promoting the smart grid revolution to conserve energy. Also, instead of attacking it, the Republican Party should show strong support for science in order to spur innovation and technological development to meet our energy needs.

Given the Party’s energy policy positions, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives threatens to stifle the progress made by the Democratic majority by resurrecting an energy policy focused too much on fossil fuels. For example, Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas and BP apologist, is supposedly a contender for the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Another contender for the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee is John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois. Shimkus is a climate-change denier, and once declared that “global warming isn’t something to worry about because God said he wouldn’t destroy the Earth after Noah’s flood.”

To summarize, the Republican energy policy lacks innovation and forward-thinking, and their energy policy merely utilizes old ideas, which don’t promote energy security. To put it another way, the Republican Party’s answer to our current energy crisis is to stick their heads in the sand. Also, the failure of the Republican Party to embrace prudent energy policies is the failure to recognize the connection between population growth, rising energy demand, natural resource unavailability, and rising energy and mineral prices. More on the future price of oil via Peak Oil News and Message Boards:

Ludwig: What is your oil price outlook as this whole new world order begins to take shape?

Maxwell: The supply and demand of oil in the world today are pretty close to each other, and there shouldn’t be too much deviation in 2010 and 2011. We think prices will stay within a band roughly between $67-$87 a barrel. When it gets up toward $87, it seems to retreat, and when it gets down toward $67, it seems to take off again. That’s because supply and demand are in rough balance.

But as the economic recovery continues, as more people use oil because there are more people in the world, and China and India continue to progress with rapid expansion of cars and the roads they are offering their people, demand for oil will continue to climb between 1 and 1.5 percent per year. That, combined with the depletion of these mature oil fields we’ve talked about, will bring us to a plateau by 2015-2017, where the rising production of newer oil fields will equal the falling production of old fields.

At that stage, prices will break through this $87 boundary—in about 2013, I’m thinking. And by 2015 we’ll be up to around $130-$150 a barrel. And then by 2020, when we have 1.5 percent increases in demand each year and 0.5 percent declines on the downside, then we’ll really be in a fix. At that time, I’m looking at $300 a barrel in money of the day. But remember, by then we will have the full effects of inflation over the prior 10 years, so it would probably be something like $200 a barrel in today’s terms, but it will have a nominal price of about $300 a barrel.

WIND ENERGY in the news

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  1. Superhighway for wind power proposed for Mid-Atlantic Coast. Via the Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Investors on Tuesday proposed to build an underwater electricity superhighway that would carry wind power generated off the Mid-Atlantic Coast to land.

    The $5 billion transmission line, announced by backers including Google, would run about 15 to 20 miles offshore.

    It would act like a spine, linking the offshore projects to land at four locations – North Jersey, South Jersey near Atlantic City, the coast of Delaware and the coast of Virginia south of Norfolk.

    “This is a huge, bold project,” said Robert Mitchell, CEO of Trans-Elect, an independent transmission company operating nationwide, which is leading the project. “It’s going to result in thousands of megawatts of offshore wind being delivered to the East Coast” along with thousands of jobs.

    “Instead of multiple connections, this will serve as a superhighway with on-ramps for wind farms,” said Rick Needham, director of green business operations at Google, a major investor.

    It also would increase the reliability of wind, they said. By joining the projects together, the variability of wind at any one location is smoothed out, lulls in one place compensated for by gusts elsewhere.

  2. Google backs ‘superhighway’ for wind power. Via the Washington Post:

    Internet search engine giant Google announced Tuesday that it is investing in a mammoth project to build an underwater “superhighway for clean energy” that would be able to funnel power from offshore wind farms to 1.9 million homes without overtaxing the already congested mid-Atlantic power grid.

    The project, dubbed the Atlantic Wind Connection, calls for spending as much as $5 billion to create a 350-mile network of underwater cables stretching from northern New Jersey to Virginia. It would eliminate the need for offshore wind developers to build transmission lines of their own, easing what can be a barrier for such projects.

    Google is partnering with Good Energies, an environmentally focused international investment company based in New York, London and Switzerland, and Tokyo-based Marubeni to finance the project. The project is led by Trans-Elect, an electric transmission company in Chevy Chase.

  3. Report Identifies Transmission Corridors to Deliver 8,600 MW of New Wind in the Upper Midwest. Via Renewable + Law:

    [The Upper Midwest Transmission Development Initiative's] renewable transmission corridors are based on the Midwest ISO’s estimate that about 8,600 MW of new renewable capacity will be needed in the region by 2025 to serve the renewable energy standards and goals of these five states. The group identified twenty “wind zones” where it would be most efficient to develop wind power based on available wind resources, existing wind generation, existing interconnection queue requests, and local geography. The six transmission corridors were chosen as the best general areas for transmission lines to move wind energy from the wind zones to load centers in a cost-effective manner.

  4. In 2009, 40% of new U.S. electricity generation came from wind. Via EERE News:

    The U.S. Department of Energy has distributed the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recently published IEA Wind Energy Annual Report 2009, which is now available for free download. The report presents the latest information on domestic and international wind generation capacity, national incentive programs, progress toward national objectives, benefits to national economies, research and development results, and issues affecting turbines, market growth, and costs of projects. The Executive Summary synthesizes the information presented from IEA’s member countries, cooperative research tasks, the European Commission, and the European Wind Energy Association. Read the Executive SummaryPDF.

    Wind power is a fast-growing source of clean energy. In the United States 40% of new electricity generation came from wind last year, while in Europe, wind power installations accounted for 39% of new capacity. IEA Wind member countries added more than 20 gigawatts (GW) in 2009, for a total of more than 111 GW of wind generating capacity. Five countries added more than a gigawatt of net capacity: the United States (10 GW), Spain (2.5 GW), Germany (1.9 GW), Italy (1.1 GW), and the United Kingdom (1 GW). Additionally, wind power electrical generation capacity grew more than 32% worldwide in 2009. These and other statistics on wind energy development are highlighted in the report.

    The IEA Wind member countries—located in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Pacific Region—contain 70% of worldwide wind generating capacity. These countries share information and research efforts to increase wind energy’s contribution to their electrical generation mix, and they reach out to other countries to join the IEA Wind cooperation.

  5. Study: Offshore wind could generate all U.S. electricity (with graphics below). Via USA Today:

    U.S. offshore winds, abundant off the coasts of 26 states, have the potential to generate four times as much power as the nation’s present electric capacity, a new Department of Energy report says.

    Developing this resource would help the United States reduce air pollution, achieve 20% of its electricity (or about 54 gigawatts) from wind by 2030 and create more than 43,000 permanent, well-paid technical jobs, according to the 240-page study by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Images via a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

RENEWABLE ENERGY: Study: Six east coast states could replace dirty fossil fuels with clean energy derived from offshore wind

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Image of the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm by Nuon on Flickr.

As the United States struggles to do the right thing in terms of energy policy, the United Kingdom has just switched on the world’s largest offshore wind farm, which consists of “100 turbines spreading over 35 square kilometers, or 13.5 square miles, with a capacity to power more than 200,000 homes.” Also, Danish energy policy is pushing Denmark to be fossil fuel-free by 2050. China is also surpassing the United States in offshore wind development: “Chinese energy companies are expected to submit bids Friday for four offshore wind power projects with a total installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts, representing a combined investment of $3.06 billion.”

As the world population continues to grow and expand, energy demand and energy prices will continue to rise, as nonrenewable energy sources such as oil and coal are depleted. Rising energy prices helped trigger the economic downturn in the United States, so the United States government must protect its economy by aggressively implementing prudent energy policies, which are working in other countries.

More on the east coast’s renewable energy potential via the‎ International Business Times:

Oceana, compared the costs of offshore wind energy with oil and gas. The study focused primarily on the east coast and concluded an investment into wind energy would create jobs, reduce pollution and in many cases create just as much energy as fossil fuels.

All told, Oceana concluded wind energy could produce 30 percent more electricity than economically recoverable offshore oil and gas on the east coast. The group said the investment it proposed would supply nearly half of the current electricity generation of East Coast states. Oceana used conservative estimates of potential ocean spaces for wind farms.

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In six states: Massachusetts, North Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and South Carolina, Oceana said wind energy could completely replace fossil fuels. In the first three states, it would completely reduce the need for any fossil fuels. In the latter three, it at least would replace the energy demand. In some states, energy is exported to other states.

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RENEWABLES can reduce your energy bill

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Here’s one example. Via the Alameda Times-Star (emphasis added):

[Bruce] Cherry joined a small group of East Bay businesses that have taken advantage of the California Solar Initiative program, which provides rebates for installing photovoltaic systems.

“It is good for the environment,” said Cherry, who has one of the four businesses in town harnessing solar power. “It just made sense (to install) in the long run.”

Since the program began in 2007, 155 businesses in Alameda and Contra Costa counties have applied for state funds to help offset the cost of solar-panel systems.

The 542 solar panels on the top of Cherry’s two Dublin Boulevard buildings generate 50 kilowatts of power. He anticipates that year round it will produce enough to supply the tire store with 85 percent of its energy needs.

The system’s peak performing months are March through November because of the abundance of sunshine.

Since March, Cherry’s utility bill dropped from an average $1,500 a month to just $29 — the monthly connection fee he pays to PG&E to be connected to its power grid.

And Cherry, a San Ramon resident, could end up receiving a check from the utility company at the end of his first year in the program. The energy that Cherry doesn’t use goes to the grid, helping to power surrounding businesses. At the end of each year, the utility tallies up how much energy each solar customer produced and used — and pays them for the excess.