Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
Check out 0:18 and 0:56
Two questions:
1- Who is advising this man and where is their information coming from?
2- When JFK said the following, did they have the technology required to get to the moon?
“We will go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
Anna C Keenan is a climate activist, thinker and organiser working to create the paradigm-shift that we all so desperately need. She is currently working as an independent volunteer activist and is a key organiser behind Climate Justice Fast , a long-term hunger-strike in the lead-up to the Copenhagen Climate summit. Originally from Australia, Anna attended the COP13 in Bali in 2007 with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and in 2008, together with four other young Australians, travelled overland - without flying - from Singapore to Poland for the COP14, taking one month to do so. She has remained in Europe since, coordinating the 'AVAAZ Action Factory' in Europe during the summer, and working extensively with the international youth community who engages with the UNFCCC process. Her diverse activist experiences span non-violent direct action at Climate Camp in Australia to NGO campaigns with trade unions, and she has been a presenter as part of Al Gore's Climate Project since 2006. Anna is characterised by her firm resolve, strong commitment to her principles, and endlessly bouncy hyperactivity.
And check out the blog-post from the woman who posed confronted Obama, Gillian Caldwell at 1Sky:
http://www.1sky.org/blog/2010/02/my-chat-with-president-obama-dont-be-stubborn-or-we-will-be
You may not believe this, but the US was actually closer to the technology to go to the moon when JFK made the speech than we are for an all renewables grid. Energy storage is still not cheap or of large enough scale to support it. Taking the carbon out of the energy system is probably one of the most difficult technological challenges faced by civilization. This is a much different scale problem than has been faced before.
Criticism Sandwich!
Glad to see the growing disillusionment with charismatic leaders – it’s a step forward for the movement!
That said, as nice as the comparison with getting to the moon sounds, I think it is a false comparison. The transition to a sustainable and just society with minimal damage from climate change requires total economic and political transformation – getting to the moon required an impressive organization of lots of scientists and engineers. Science and engineering is just a small piece of the larger social and economic puzzles that stand between us (the status quo) and a sustainable and just future. Obama, and decision makers know that’s a false comparison, informed citizens know it, and most people can figure it out. I think it’s time to drop this sounds bite from our repertoire.
But yeah! I’m glad to see unqualified criticism of his approach to energy. First step to solving a problem is admitting we’ve got one! Thanks!
The fact is, Obama is right. We can’t get all our energy from wind and solar in the next 20 years- it’s logistically impossible. But, with increased use of wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, greater steps in energy efficiency, and yes, nuclear, hopefully we can end dependence on coal soon.
rmarg: reality checks are important, and understanding exactly how to solve the problem as opposed to rhetoric is really important. Do you think there’s an important goal for young people to be pushing despite those obstacles?
as Obama said, he’s getting advice from a nuclear physicist. One who happens to have a Nobel prize, too. That’s not something you should dismiss lightly.
David MacKay has a free ebook about sustainable energy, you can download it from his site. Barry Brook has some even more detailed analyses, including lifecycle cost, raw materials cost, and cost of backup. Having read their stuff, I agree with Obama, you can’t do address climate change with renewables.
I’ve yet to see an analysis that considered all those factors, with numbers to back it up, and that still concluded that renewables are a viable means of addressing climate-change.
Renewables just don’t scale or work reliably enough for a fully non fossil-fuel world. If you want to get off fossil fuels completely, you need to electrify transport, not just get away from coal-fired power-stations. You need more electricity for that, not less, and renewables just do not deliver the goods.
It seems to me that Obama is getting good advice.
@Tony Wildish “Renewables just don’t scale or work reliably enough for a fully non fossil-fuel world.” True statement, especially within the existing centralized, extremely energy wasteful system.
Are you using such a restrictive statement to justify Obama doing too little to stop coal?
He is getting poor advice, if his advisors are telling him to perpetuate the clean coal lie.
@Dan: Well-stated, and a precaution, be careful how you lump the solutions together. Wind and solar are clean energy; nuclear and biomass are not.
Be especially careful about biomass. Gasification is economical, yet dirty, the same type of process used in “unconventional energy” (read tar sands). The spin is strong in this one.
The fossil fuel crowd want to keep burning liquid fuels; King Coal sees it as a way to profit from low grade coal; Peabody has billion dollar Air Force contracts, etc.
@jcwinnie, no, I am not saying we should burn more coal. The video shows Obama being questioned about renewables, and I was addressing that.
Renewables do not provide reliable energy, so require backup and/or storage. Backup by gas is greatly inefficient, less so than a continuous-generating facility, so does little to reduce our carbon footprint. Storage for the sort of capacity that would get us through conditions like the recent snowstorms would be prohibitive, at the very least it would take a long time to construct. And it would be very expensive, too.
Efficiency is good, yes, but do not make the mistake of thinking we can reduce our needs that way. If our goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, we also need to get off fossil fuels for transport, and for domestic heating. We need to replace them with something clean, and that means clean electricity. If you want to electrify all that, you are not likely to reduce your consumption, far from it.
I will stick to Morgan’s question as I have opined before on solar energy cleanliness (especially if you live next to the chip plant)…
I believe that the youth climate movement needs to move beyond the ideological battles that characterized energy debates of the 1970s. Where solar and wind works the best to eliminate carbon, let’s use it. Where nuclear works best, let’s use it too. Where we can be more efficient, let’s do it. We have to recognize that there are real physical and chemical limitations. There is no energy source that requires no mining or materials processing to utilize it (i.e., there is no such thing as absolutely clean and safe energy). Yes we need new ways to make energy development more equitable (i.e., not just strip mine and dump wastes in poorer communities), but we are stuck with the laws of physics and thermodynamics. [Any plans for a thermodynamics primer at the next Powershift?
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In short, the climate youth movement should be as savvy on energy engineering as much as you are on climate science and climate justice (you need all three). Hope that helps some.
Here’s my question. If we back down, agree that yes, renewables are not feasible, we need some nuclear, some “clean coal,” then what happens? With no loud, unified voice pushing for “the impossible” do we have to wait 20, 30, 40 years to make the transition. My advice: Keep pushing for the impossible, because if we don’t, no one will believe, no one will feel the pressure to move as fast as humanly possible. It’s been this sort of pushing that has gotten us to where we are in the first place, which is a hell of a lot farther than if we have accepted “realities” from the get go.
@jpkemmick, there are several reasons why a thing may be impossible. It may be scientifically impossible, technically impossible, or politically impossible, to name just a few. Political impossibilities may be changed by concerted action, technical impossibilities may be changed by research, but the laws of physics are not going to change (at least, not enough to make a difference in the context of reducing CO2 emissions).
rmarg has the right idea, use whichever technology leads to good results in a given setting. But you still need a plan for how that fits into the larger scheme of things, you need a roadmap to a goal. The best example of that I have seen so far is Emission cuts realities for electricity generation – costs and CO2 emissions.
The author, Peter Lang, considers several scenarios combining different types of energy production, not just all-or-nothing of any given type. His analysis is deliberately somewhat simple, but has a lot of important features.
He looks at things like the build-rates for various forms of energy-production and how fast coal-fired power stations can be retired under different schemes.
He also considers the probable cost of electricity under these different scenarios, and the capital cost to build them. Let’s face it, if it costs too much to build and costs too much to consumers, it won’t happen, however nice a plan it might be.
With a plan like that, it should be clearer how to proceed. It becomes much more possible to make political changes, and to know where more research can be targeted to improve the plan in the future.
I think that sort of plan is what is needed, one which considers $$$, rates, and realistic deployment. One which says how we are going to get rid of fossil fuels year by year, and how much CO2 will be produced while we are doing it.
Without it, people like Obama are at the mercy of politics-of-the-day, which is often driven by big financial interests and the next election. If people (including Obama, yes) would start talking about plans like that, there would be a chance for real progress. We should start talking to him in these terms.
I see lots of great back-and-forth here about the feasibility of a complete transition to renewable energy, but let’s not lose sight of one thing:
The most important question is not “Can we transition to a grid powered completely by renewable energy in 20 years?”
Rather the real question is, can the planet survive two more decades of the US relying on coal and nuclear power?
As Tony points out above, the laws of physics are unalterable. In a more ideal world, we would have begun this transition 20-30 years ago, but that failed to happen thanks to political short-sightedness. Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, and Bush Jr will go down in history for having failed to get serious about moving away from fossil fuels. President Obama may well still go down with them.
We’ve lost at least two decades already, time is running out, and with the laws of physics there is no compromise. Transitioning completely away from fossil fuels, however difficult that may be, will be easier than bargaining with all the CO2 molecules we’re releasing into the atmosphere each day.
@nickengelfried Thanks for re-framing the question. We indeed have lost valuable time with a 2 decade delay. Speaking of “the laws of physics”, if science had prevailed, then we would be in a lot better position now.
A problem seems to be the uncertainty in calculating how much time, if any, we have left.
A caution about lumping coal and nuclear together, then calculating survival rates. Nuclear is a bad choice for reasons other than climate.
I agree with the assessment of Dr. Jim Hansen who says we need to stop coal. Federal policymakers should eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and institute a carbon tax and not perpetuate the clean coal lie. As said to Jesse Jenkins before, it is scary that they continue with such obvious deception.
My understanding of the question is how quickly can our civilization get away from higher carbon fuels (i.e., coal, oil, natural gas). These fuels represent about 80% of our energy infrastructure. In the next 20 years, you can (with an immense effort) greatly reduce fossil fuel use. However, you cannot get rid of carbon fuels AND nuclear. Despite the controversy, nuclear is the lowest carbon energy source that is both large scale and 24/7 (the IPCC says so along with other scientific studies such as ExternE). For a 20 year timeframe, you have efficiency, renewables, geothermal, pipeline natural gas, and nuclear. You will need ALL of these to make the timeframe as each has limitations that the other counteracts.
Greater than 20 years we can see if energy storage gets a breakthrough or fusion or others.
@rmarg Agreed and what your summary omits is the direction that this country has been going for the past 20 years in terms of human-caused GHG emissions. And, it ignores the green wash to the Spin.
For the horizon implicit in your concise summary, we should be aiming toward reducing coal from 50% t0 20% of all electric power generation. For every kW that comes from a non-clean energy*, we increase the CO2 in the atmosphere and negative consequence.
* Your reference to pipeline gas being the exception when the gas is biogas.
Any intelligent person would agree with you that the foot print of any energy source is greater than zero. By “clean energy” I refer to above ground sources** of electric power, e.g., wind and solar, which are combustion-free in the generation (if not in terms of construction and installation). These require rapid distribution and not politics as usual.
** Geothermal is an exception with its own set of limitations and advantages.
The assertion about nuclear, the red herring about storage, etc. I see as an expressions of fear about traditional forms of ownership and not concerns about energy supply. One can own the ore for the nuclear power or the land for the geothermal or the hydrofracing, but how to own the wind or the sun?
I would surmise that Exxon could own windmills and solar panels just as well as oil and gas.
My concerns are not for ownership, but for the reality of energy storage. Even lithium or sodium batteries have very small energy densities compared to fossil fuels. Unless the densities can be significantly raised or the costs vastly trimmed, you will have solar and wind with low capacity factors combined with an expensive energy storage system. Physically doable, but with such a higher price tag that the public would likely reject it.
As for pipeline gas, I was contrasting against LNG as it is more expensive and does have a higher carbon footprint than natural gas from pipelines. As for nuclear, the data is in the IPCC and ExternE reports regarding its carbon footprint. We do not have a plethora of low carbon choices.
Indeed, Exxon could. If they had begun investing the monies directed (and which they continue to direct toward denial and delay) into wind and solar, things would be much different right now.
Again, true statement about energy density as far as it goes. Add another variable in the equation (grams of CO2) and all of sudden such re-charging inconvenience seems small compared to trillion dollar losses expected with the arctic melting.
True, however using solar and wind for peaking/swings with goethermal, hydro, and nuclear for baseload still saves the carbon and would probably cost much less. Maybe one would need some pipeline gas in certain locales as well.
@jcwinnie, be careful about dismissing the impact of construction and installation.
Compare, for example, the amount of steel and concrete needed to produce 680 MW of electricity with wind (with 1-day battery backup) or solar-thermal (Andasol, with 7-hour storage).
- wind turbines, 1,250,000 tonnes concrete, 455,000 tonnes steel
- solar thermal, 2,215,000 tonnes concrete, 690,000 tonnes steel
Scale that up to the current US electricity consumption, about 3,800 million MW-hours in 2008, which is about 430,000 MW average. To provide that much power with wind you would need 790 million tonnes of concrete, and 290 million tonnes of steel.
The US produced 90 million tonnes of steel in 2008. So if we wanted to replace all electrical power in the US with wind in 10 years, we would therefore need to use about one-third of all the steel produced in the US in that time. That doesn’t seem plausible to me.
Obviously that’s an extreme example, nobody is suggesting we deploy only wind turbines. We need to do the math for whatever mix of technologies we prefer, we just can’t ignore numbers like that. If we want a massive deployment of renewables, we need to understand the scale of what we are asking for.
@Tony Wildish True, capital costs comprise the main cost for wind energy. You show concrete and steel estimates for a certain wind (including battery cost) or solar (Andasol is early, proof of concept example) applications, yet omit such estimates for other energy generation. Are you wanting us to believe that nuclear power requires less?
Lang is your source. He certainly has the credentials to present traditional power generation estimates; his assessment of wind and solar would carry more weight if he had similar field experience.
A quick Google provided a statement from GE Energy http://www.ge-energy.com/businesses/ge_wind_energy/en/about_wind_ener.htm “With a cost of energy of approximately 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour and declining, wind is a low-cost renewable energy source that is less expensive than coal, oil, nuclear and most natural gas-fired generation, and is becoming attractive to utilities and electric cooperatives.” A different assertion, not without bias, yet coming from those in current wind energy development.
Again I agree with the point upon which rmarg and you continue to hammer: there is a carbon foot print to new clean energy development. So, bring on the meta analysis life cycle assessments.
O.K., then I will start: http://cleanenergywonk.com/2007/02/22/visual-comparison-of-electricity-generation-technologies/
Or, how about the supporting studies that his students have done in support of Dan Kammen’s SWITCH model for Planning low-cost, high-penetration renewable energy investments. http://rael.berkeley.edu/
Here is the link to the ExternE results for CO2:
http://www.externe.info/results.html
The cleanenergywonk definition perplexed me. He penalized baseload sources that produce power 24/7. As for GE, their biggest moneymaker is natural gas. Certainly natural gas could be used to ramp up and down to smooth out the intermittency with wind and solar. However, that is likely not a low carbon solution (though gas will likely be part of the transition).
@jcwinnie, I specifically didn’t mention nuclear because I wanted to encourage critical thinking about the true cost of renewables, without getting sidetracked. However, since you ask, if you follow the link I gave, you’ll find that nuclear is indeed there. The figures are 160,000 tonnes of concrete, and 10,000 tonnes of steel. That’s right, 1/8th the amount of concrete and 1/45th the amount of steel that wind would require.
Daniel Kammen: “[...] by 2020 the world would be on the way to an energy system in which solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric power will supply more than 80% of electricity.”.
…sounds a lot like what rmarg and I have been saying. Incidentally, I note that he (correctly) considers nuclear power to be clean.
From your cleanenergywonk link: “Most of these are off the top of my head, so their accuracy is admittedly questionable”, and no sources are quoted. I don’t see how we can take those numbers seriously.
For the GE link, that link simply quotes a number with no context to put that in, so I cannot judge. My instinct is to be suspicious of the manufacturers claim, for obvious reasons. Are they relying on government subsidies, as most wind-power promoters do? What assumptions are they making about turbine-lifetime? Where is their analysis?
So, of the three links you offer, two do not analyse anything at all, they merely state numbers with no sources. The only one that does look like an analysis actually backs me up!
If you want to discuss meta analysis life cycle assessments, please, let’s stick to analyses that explain their assumptions and contain calculations with references that allow them to be assessed objectively.
@Tony Wildish Do you mean instead of taking an idealized nuclear situation and worst case wind situation as a means of comparison? O.K. How about http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.uvm.edu/giee/publications/IKub_2009_wind_EROI.pdf&pli=1 Meta-analysis of Net Energy Return (EROI) of Wind Systems
Actually, I consider nuclear a cleanER way to make 24/7 power.
Just looked at the paper and it said much of the nuclear data dates prior to 1980. This was before centrifuge became the main way to enrich uranium and is much more energy efficient than gaseous diffusion.
Lets forget nuclear for a moment. Natural gas turbines also use a lot less steel per unit capacity than a windmill. Remember that you need to cover more land with windmills or solar panels. Natural gas or other high energy density fuels can be built more compact. This along with the low natural gas prices are why gas turbines were pretty much the only capacity additions utilities made during the 1990s. For all the talk of nuclear, it is natural gas that will be the holdup for low carbon energy expansion (though gas replacing coal will give some reduction).
The 1/8 and 1/45 measures are single study estimates that disagree with other studies, e.g., “Modern wind energy systems, with good wind conditions, take 460 metric tons of steel and 870 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt.” Nick in discussion of the Hall study on EROI of nuclear http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3877
And, yes, Kammen is in agreement with the assertion that nuclear power is low carbon (the Chooster’s (in)famous quote I’d rather live downstream from a nuclear power plant than a coal plant) and, being a smart person like Amory Lovins, I doubt seriously that he has, or would ever, describe nuclear energy as “clean energy”. Such disinformation comes from sources like TVA and FPL.
@jcwinnie, there is nothing idealised about the commercially successful AP1000, nor is the example for wind worst-case. Peter Lang quotes his sources and references, so it’s easy to see that this is so with even a casual read of the report.
If someone can actually demonstrate that there is a real flaw in Peter Lang’s reasoning, I’d be really interested to know about it. That analysis has been scrutinised by many smart and experienced people who are interested in getting it right, as you can see from the 140+ comments it has attracted. I’d be very surprised if they’ve missed anything obvious.
The point stands: you cannot ignore the construction and installation costs of renewables if you want to deploy them on a massive scale.
The oildrum site quotes the Leeuwen studies which used estimated energy inputs. In addition, they clearly did not know how the Japanese extracted uranium from seawater (they use ocean currents not pumps).
As for the concept of “clean energy” I consider it a chimera along with perpetual motion machines. Energy technologies can be relatively cleaner than others, but you have impacts whichever way you go. Nuclear is lower than fossil fuels and is 24/7. We are going to need many different low carbon technologies to get through the transition.
@rmarg Because of boundary conditions, it is more difficult to argue against your assertion that natural gas trumps wind in the near term, at least from a meta-analytical (read scientific) perspective.
So I will resort to demagoguery. The Bush-Cheney regime that censured science also gave us the Halliburton loophole, so I tend to view hydro-fracing the same way I view water boarding, American citizens on federal hit lists, etc., at a Tom Clancy game level. (If we tell you, then we have to trigger your self-destruct gene.)
A more honest answer is “too soon to tell,” especially if we can find ways to capture methane released due to global heating, if we can link bio-gas production with CAFO, etc.
Why T. Boone has forgone his wind pitch is believable, and yet one could distrust the motives given his swift boat his story. I do think a NGV (Natural Gas Vehicle) pitch is wrong-headed, yet would entertain the possibility that local conditions may make a limited approach effective (like sugar cane ethanol powered cars in Brazil).
“The point stands: you cannot ignore the construction and installation costs of renewables if you want to deploy them on a massive scale.” Agreed.
jcwinnie, I agree with you that natural gas gets somewhat of a free ride with the exemption from the Clean Water Act. Certainly one of the major issues in energy is keeping the regulatory arbitrage straight…
Those of you who discussed this post so keenly might enjoy the next one of my IGHIH blogs: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/23/framing-were-going-to-solve-it/
To tell you the truth, I was quite surprised at the level of ‘renewables scepticism’ that popped up in response to this post. So many of us seem to have bought in to what I believe to be a fossil-industry-propagated myth that ‘renewables can’t provide baseload power’. Those of you who believe this is a fact should do a little googling about ‘the baseload myth’.
The responses to this post have inspired me to take it on as a personal mission to destroy cyncism/disbelief around renewable energy in the next few months. I think that as a physics graduate myself, I have at least some credibility on the topic. More on that coming soon. In the meantime, have a look at http://www.bwea.com/pdf/RenewableUK_Manifesto2010.pdf and the rest of the BWEA website – a great example of renewable energy charging ahead. They know that there are technical limitations, but rightly believe that they can be overcome, and they are doing the work required to overcome them.
As for Steven Chu, do you think that there’s a coincidence between the fact that he is a NUCLEAR physicist and that Obama has recently announced huge support for NUCLEAR energy?
Anna, I glanced through the document you link to (I confess I didn’t read it in detail), and I see nothing that addresses either the environmental impact of such renewables infrastructure or the material resources required to supply it. There is no plan there how to actually build this system. By that I mean it does not address the rates at which it can be built, how fast it will displace fossil fuel, what fraction of each technology to deploy, where, and so on. Without numbers, it’s an opinion, not a plan.
I strongly recommend reading Sustainable Energy Without the hot air for several good examples of what a fossil-free plan for the UK should start out looking like. David MacKay starts with fundamentals, the amount of energy the UK uses, the potentially available energy from various sources (renewables and nuclear), and how a mix of any of those can deliver the needs of the UK. If you look at the alternative plans he describes in the book, and see where and how he gets his numbers, then you can start to see what you are up against, and that’s before looking at the financial costs involved.
It’s analyses like his that explain why many people are skeptical about the ability of renewables to be scaled up to solve our problem. Even before looking at the money, they just don’t scale up well.
David is not a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry, nor for nuclear, nor for renewables. The book is free to download from the web, so he’s not out to make money either. His key point, which he repeats throughout the book, is to make sure the numbers add up. That’s all. As a physics graduate, I’m certain you will agree that’s a reasonable position to take.
It’s clear from my previous comments that I’m pro-nuclear, but that’s not relevant here. I’m open to persuasion, but it’s numbers that convince me, not opinions. If someone can show me a plan with assumptions and calculations clearly laid out, then I can check it for myself and decide if it’s realistic or not. It’s precisely that which has led me away from supporting the promotion of renewables!
Anna -
I do not think the issue of non-hydro renewables providing baseload is one of physical impossiblity (e.g., pertual motion machines, etc), but one of the technical and economic hurdles. For example, it is physically possible to build a solar thermal plant that provides power at night using molten salts. However, covering large amounts of land, the amount of steel, concrete, volumes of the pwoer system with molten salt, etc would make such systems environmentally challenging and certainly expensive. Please remember, if solar is so cheap and easy, Saudi Arabia could build huge solar plants in the desert and sell the natural gas and petroleum saved to the open market.
As for Dr. Chu, nuclear physics is far more than just nuclear power. In fact the quantum mechanics of lasers, semiconductors, and PV cells is all from the same nuclear physics as nuclear fission and fusion technologies.
Anna, if you are surprised, it should be that the skeptics even would bother with IGHIH. On more scholarly weblogs like Green Car Congress and Scientific American, it gets quite ugly.
Anna and JC –
One thing that has sometimes confused me in the discussion of baseloaded renewables is that I often read differing scenarios amongst its advocates. Some will advocate off the grid living while others will talk of covering the Sahara with solar plants. Is there any consensus among the baseload renewable advocates in this regard? If it is worth anything, advocates for natural gas or nuclear have similar divergent visions for how things would come together.
@rmarg: Interesting construction to your rhetorical question, “baseloaded renewables” sounds like a name for a new-formed, short-lived folk group at the local coffee house ‘open mike’. In the gamut from off-grid living to MENA utility-scale, solar thermal electric power plants, one might suspect preparation for weighty discussion about energy storage. So let’s assume that it is a challenge to generate a 100% demand when off-grid. As to a consenus about solar thermal electric power, you may want to direct that inquiry to those doing due diligence for the World Bank. One might suspect their efforts cite publications by NREL and Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center scientists (“Off with their heads!“). However, I lack sufficient knowledge to answer your question authoritatively.
More basically, where you might look for resolution to your confusion is with a greater appreciation of thermodynamics and life cycles. To quote your friend and mine, Mister Inconvenient Truth, “the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.”
Natural gas and not wind power may seem a good compromise with our fossil fuel masters in the short term. After all, we really don’t know how much hydraulic fracturing threatens the watershed of the 90 million living in New York City, and burning methane is less devastating to the atmosphere than burning coal or “unconventional fuel” from the tar sands and oil shale.
Having advocated solar and wind and not Business As Usual And Above All Else, I expect next a Wildish thump about wind energy’s carbon footprint. (Citing a nuclear energy expert, donncha kno, Anna.) Again, I lack sufficient knowledge to answer such a retort authoritatively.
OTOH, I do know something about consensus… true consensus when one stands in favor, stands opposed, or stands aside. During a recent speech, President Obama foretold more compromise. His mention of oil drilling off coast (and not wind turbines) evoked my strident, “No”. His mention of “clean coal” evoked a wry smile and terse negative head shake while I listened further.
When he came to the main theme, i.e., union pipefitters building the loops in the first new nuclear power stations since Three Mile Island, I remained silent. Like the old joke, the patient died but the operation was a success, more nuclear is the wrong decision for the right reason. When the question is low-carbon base load, Big Eddie got his way that day, just as Big Farm continues to do with corn to ethanol. We call it “political expediency”.
OTOH, I appreciated how from an engineering perspective Lena Hansen and Amory Lovins recently re-defined the question of base load. They instead wrote in terms of how to increase capacity to meet demand.
I hope I still have an appreciation for thermodynamics having been an engineer for so long…
As for Amory Lovins, he often mixes natural gas in with renewables. For example, he has a famous graph that purportedly shows how renewables and “combined heat and power plants” CHP) have had greater growth than nuclear. When you look at his graph components, the CHP portion is most of the growth. CHP is solely gas fired. IMHO, Mr. Lovins is not that concerned over increased natural gas use. As for his argument on baseload, obviously the grid requires baseload, swingload, and peaking power. While nuclear can be used for swingload (e.g., the Columbia plant in Washington operates in swingload at times, Mr. Lovins claims to the contrary are nonsense), it is cheaper to use natural gas in areas where pipeline gas is available. South Korea and Japan use more nuclear because they have to import gas via LNG which is more expensive. I am not sure Mr. Lovins has all the answers
In a low carbon economy, there may be opportunities for non-hydro renewables to provide swingload or peaking power. Geothermal can provide baseload where it is available. There will still be a gap that must be provided for by natural gas and/or nuclear (even if you could cut our per capita energy use in half).
@jcwinnie, I hope I don’t ‘thump’ anyone! I try to keep my comments based on facts with evidence to back them up, so my views can be challenged and changed if the evidence is faulty.
The links I give contain their assumptions and calculations. The math isn’t complicated, anyone can check them for themselves. The whole point of posting such links is so that people realise they can access this information for themselves, and not have to rely on simply following concensus. Concensus can lead to wrong results, as history has shown countless times. I do not trust it without question, I believe that knowledge is more important than opinion.
Your remark about me quoting nuclear experts is a bit unfair. I have named three people in this comment-thread. None of them are nuclear scientists by training. If they are now experts in nuclear power, that alone does not disqualify their opinions, quite the contrary! Let me also point out that it was not I who brought up the topic of nuclear power in this thread.
But let’s not lose sight of the goal here. I’m in favour of ending the consumption of fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, in all its aspects. The only question is how to do that. There are a great many potential options, and it is only with realistic models for deployment, with numbers to back them up, that we can decide which approach is best. I don’t mind what the final choice is, as long as it works. That is my goal.
I have to disagree with something you assert. It’s for my own sake, to clarify why I even would bother with IGHIH commentary. I disagree that the only question is how we might end consumption of fossil fuels. Were it that simple, there would be no argument. Nuclear is the cat’s pajamas and Nimitz is your uncle. It’s a French thing. Everybody is doing it.
My guess would be there also would be no argument if utilities perceived nuclear power as uneconomical. Of the first order is profit and in my foolishness I advocate ecology and equity also are of the first order. I imagine that a corollary to your way to end consumption of fossil fuels is “Save the Mountain, We need It for a Nuclear Waste Dump!”
I also see as foolish, as exemplary of human foibles that we have this reactor that recycles its waste and is pumping out a tremendous amount of energy. Is it safe? No, in the long run, it probably will explode. There are people smarter than me considering that possibility.
My concern is that life on the Planet, to include we foolish mortals, continues in the interim. And, I foolishly think that it might aid our survival to make more shiny things and more twirly things to capture all that energy coming from that one huge reactor.
Every design has a context and I foolishly like it when in the context there is acknowledgment of cycles. More emphasis on the Circle of Life, a little less on top to bottom line. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. The wind changes with the seasons. Things decay. Let’s cheat the Laws of Thermodynamics just a little more, eh?
Excuse me, will you. The sun is shining this wintry day, I wish it to warm my face. I am thankful for the warmth. With my gratitude may there also come humility.
Unfortunately, there is no cheating the laws of thermodynamics…
I guess I still haven’t explained myself well, please bear with me while I try again:
- I want the earth to be preserved in a state of natural beauty, with polar bears, coral reefs, monarch butterflies, and so on all living in a sustainable environment, not only in zoos. I like the planet I live on, and I don’t want to see it wrecked.
- I believe that GHG emissions will alter our climate greatly, and that the environmental damage they will lead to could change our world out of all recognition.
- I therefore think that we need to stop emissions of GHGs as fast as possible, and getting off fossil fuels fast is a significant component of that.
- There are many potential ways of getting off of fossil fuels. For each of them, we can calculate how much they will cost, how fast they will work, how much damage they will do to rivers, forests, mountain-tops, deserts, people, plants or animals if we use them at any given scale, in any given manner. Granted, it’s not always easy to do those calculations, but it’s important to try, to identify what is uncertain, and to refine our knowledge where it is lacking.
- Once the numbers tell us what can work (and what can’t!), we can then start choosing between solutions. However, to start with a choice of solution, before knowing what can and cannot work, is pointless.
As rmarg has pointed out, nothing we do is without consequences. We have to choose which consequences we want to accept. Do we try to reduce emissions as fast as possible if that means deploying technology that comes with a high ecological cost, or do we delay until we do more research for more efficient solutions? Do we accept a solution that involves mining minerals in a way that damages rare ecosystems? Does political instability in some parts of the world mean that we may be denied access to the resources we would need for a given solution? Will this or that approach take too much water from the rivers, or dump too many toxic chemicals into them? Do we allow this species or that to become extinct as a result of our choices?
Those questions, and many others, are not based in science, and cannot be answered by science. They are ethical, social, political in nature. But until and unless we know that a proposed solution can work, it is wrong to assume it is the answer to those non-scientific questions.
This is where I have a big problem with much of the environmental movement. There are many proposed ‘solutions’ that simply do not add up, they will not work. If people would actually look at the math first, they’d save a lot of time. Then maybe we can converge on an approach that will actually work.