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2007-07-25 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Renewable energy projects will devour huge amounts of land, warns researcher
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Posted by lotp 2007-07-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [7 views ]  Top

#1 The story actually mentions nuclear plants as a far more viable alternative. In the Grauniad, no less.
Posted by PBMcL 2007-07-25 01:48||   2007-07-25 01:48|| Front Page Top

#2 Even with these projects, renewables are set to decline as a percentage of total energy.

The reason is that most renewable energy is hydro - solar, wind and biomass are tiny in comparison - and the capacity to increase hydro production in the developed world (excepting Canada) is effectively zero.

As energy demand increases, renewables will decline as a percentage of the total. So says the US DoE. Renewables are just tinkering at the margins.
Posted by phil_b 2007-07-25 04:42||   2007-07-25 04:42|| Front Page Top

#3 It's my understanding that if you dammed every possible river, brook, and trickle in the U.S. in such a fashion as to maximize its potential for hydropower - a move which would have devastating effects ecologically speaking - you could only get to about 14% of the nation's energy needs.
Posted by no mo uro 2007-07-25 05:37||   2007-07-25 05:37|| Front Page Top

#4 Well it sounds like we're just flat out screwed.
Have a cigarette and a cheeseburger with bio-engineered onions on it and slurp down a cold beer made with contaminated wheat. I'm sick and tired of obstructionist assholes trying to push and pull us every direction at once.
Posted by bigjim-ky 2007-07-25 08:39||   2007-07-25 08:39|| Front Page Top

#5 This is probably why Gore and Edwards and all those other celebrity climate change experts have such big houses. They need the room for all those renewable energy projects.
Yeah! That's the ticket!
Posted by tu3031 2007-07-25 09:15||   2007-07-25 09:15|| Front Page Top

#6 -----What's the big deal with converting benign "countryside" to eeevil "farmland?" Humans have been doing this for thousands of generations.
----Energy demand can increase all it wants. Energy available operates under different rules.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-07-25 09:43||   2007-07-25 09:43|| Front Page Top

#7 And, no mo euro, I had read somewhere (forget the citation) that even if we converted ALL of our available cropland to corn (a very water and fertilizer intensive crop in and of itself) for ethanol, it would only produce somewhere around 12% of our auto fuel needs.

Nuclear is the way to go for electricity needs. I'm not sure where the answer lies for fuels, but it's obviously NOT gonna be a "single magic bullet," but a mix of sources. And the elephant in the room is that only approximately 50% of the current crude oil we import goes to gasoline. The rest goes to all sorts of stuff (plastics, fertilizers, even fuel for the industries that "make" gasoline, etc.).
Posted by BA 2007-07-25 10:02||   2007-07-25 10:02|| Front Page Top

#8 Steve DenBeste once calculated that if you replaced all the gasoline powered cars in California with electric cars, and generated the electricity to power the batteries with solar mirrors (that heat water into steam and turn turbines), given the efficiencies involved, you'd need ... 2300 square kilometers worth of mirrors.

DenBeste then notes just how silly it is to think of doing that, and so notes the real reason behind all the renewable energy nonsense: the goal is to prove that it's impossible to make work, and therefore we all have to consume less. If we don't do so voluntarily (hey guys, who's for impovrishing himself -- All in favor take one step forward), then of course the elite thinkers will do it for us. That's the agenda.

Of course we can't make 'renewable' energy work as a complete replacement for carbon-based energy. Won't ever happen. Just wait til Al Gore gets to drop the other shoe.
Posted by Steve White">Steve White  2007-07-25 10:20||   2007-07-25 10:20|| Front Page Top

#9 2300 square kilometers worth of mirrors

Are a square 48 km on a side---they don't have a 48x48 empty place in California?
Posted by gromgoru 2007-07-25 11:05||   2007-07-25 11:05|| Front Page Top

#10 Yep, Death Valley would work, except for the wonkiest enviro-nuts
Posted by Ernest Brown 2007-07-25 11:26|| saturninretrograde.blogspot.com]">[saturninretrograde.blogspot.com]  2007-07-25 11:26|| Front Page Top

#11 Fusion is the answer. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go before the technology is ready for industrial use.

Ok, and I admit it. I want my own fusion powered BattleMech too.
Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader  2007-07-25 12:23||   2007-07-25 12:23|| Front Page Top

#12 Nuclear power plants that crack water for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles continues to remain one of the only viable paths off of foreign oil dependency. America's urban infrastructure has been designed around personal transportation and little is going to change about that anytime soon.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-07-25 12:25||   2007-07-25 12:25|| Front Page Top

#13 Fusion is the answer. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go before the technology is ready for industrial use.

Not really, apparently the answer has been known for some time. Steps are now being taken to pursue a workable Fusion technology. See linky!
Posted by Natural Law 2007-07-25 13:10||   2007-07-25 13:10|| Front Page Top

#14 The only thing needed to find a way off imported fuel is sustained high prices for gasoline. If we really want to see the market respond, both with conservation and new sources of transportable energy, we would put a fee on oil that would assure that the cost of an imported barrel of oil would not fall below $55.
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-07-25 13:30||   2007-07-25 13:30|| Front Page Top

#15 This is all nonsense. You could put solar panels on the rooves of the houses in southern California and power the bulk of the southwest. There is no reason to put all the power infrastructure in a single location (single target) when rooves are very much underused these days.

If you force the power companies to allow reverse power meters and gave tax subsidies you might see industrious citizens taking the problem into their own hands. There are already solar power roof tiles that look nearly identical to regular roofing tiles so there is no reason such a solution has to be ugly.

I would suggest the government might get involved in putting solar panels on the rooves of schools and prisons and other government buildings to (a) take them off the grid and save future bills (b) allow them to actually earn some money (c) help bootstrap the industry in a non-controlling way.

I would also suggest to any entrepenuers out there that if someone came up with a computer power/strip APC backpu that had a solar power input and some way to hook it up on the roof or the inside of a window or something, to take a computer and peripherals off of the grid when the sun is shining and draw from the grid when the sun was not (and power usage lowers anyway), you might find a large market in the growing work at home crowd. And you'd have the advantage that your computer would stay on during a rolling blackout as long as the sun was still shining.
Posted by rjschwarz 2007-07-25 13:38||   2007-07-25 13:38|| Front Page Top

#16 For that matter someone should find a way to put a solar panel into one of those cover up your car window to keep your car from overheating things. If you had an electric car or hybrid there is no reason the sun couldn't juice your car a bit when you park it in the sun.

And I know solar panels aren't super effecient, and perhaps they are clunky in size, but when startups start seriously looking at the problem I believe they will drop.
Posted by rjschwarz 2007-07-25 13:41||   2007-07-25 13:41|| Front Page Top

#17 The new coal-to-gas technology makes use of our large coal deposits. East Dubuque, Il recently converted a fertilizer plant to the first in the nation; technology originally developed in China.
Posted by Danielle 2007-07-25 16:18||   2007-07-25 16:18|| Front Page Top

#18 This is all nonsense. You could put solar panels on the rooves of the houses in southern California and power the bulk of the southwest. There is no reason to put all the power infrastructure in a single location (single target) when rooves are very much underused these days.

If you force the power companies to allow reverse power meters and gave tax subsidies you might see industrious citizens taking the problem into their own hands. There are already solar power roof tiles that look nearly identical to regular roofing tiles so there is no reason such a solution has to be ugly.

rjschwarz makes a good point. Solar cell efficiency continues to improve although primary cost of installation still runs quite high. Several different Silicon Valley companies are currently pursuing—not just the roof tile approach—but the use of tuned-size nanoparticles to create paints so that all southern exposure walls and surfaces could become solar cells.

None of this addresses the simple issue of over-dependence upon personal transportation. Sadly, America's modern urban and suburban layouts were put in place without emphasis on mass transit. While that is changing, far too much sprawl has happened for transit systems to contain it.

Very interesting link, Natural Law. Hydrogen embrittlement has long been a serious problem for nearly all modern fusion reactor designs. Imagine taking a chunk of stainless steel and crushing it in your hands like a dessicated sponge. Eliminating neutron bombardment of the interior hardware would go a long way towards making the equipment servicable. Very interesting.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-07-25 17:12||   2007-07-25 17:12|| Front Page Top

#19 The U.S. has always been a personal transportation culture, going back to the horse and buggy days. For most of the country houses are simply too far apart to make mass transport financially viable, excepting city cores and the Boston-DC corridor. No doubt if we lose access to gasoline to power our vehicles before batteries become good enough, we'll go back to horses, at least in the outer suburbs. ;-)
Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-25 17:34||   2007-07-25 17:34|| Front Page Top

#20 And where will all the nutrient go? DC is only so big.
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-07-25 17:57||   2007-07-25 17:57|| Front Page Top

#21 Renewable energy projects will devour huge amounts of land, warns researcher

Congress/Capitol is always full up to the brim in nutrients.

/think of all that methane
Posted by RD ">RD  2007-07-25 18:32||   2007-07-25 18:32|| Front Page Top

#22 Chemical fertilizer producers claim their products allow twice the yield of organic. That means half the land. I don't know the truth, but I do know that knee jerk opposition to claims by business is the route to nowhere.
Posted by McZoid 2007-07-25 19:29||   2007-07-25 19:29|| Front Page Top

#23 Danielle,
That project is just in it's initial stages. I was working there last week and the preliminary stuff like relocating of septic systems, etc. are just starting. The fertilizer plant has been there for decades, a new owner (Rentech) is doing the conversion.

Basically it will use the good ole' high sulfur Illinois coal, put it through a Fischer-Trospch gasification producing an ultra clean diesel, firing the boilers to continue the fertilizer operation and sell excess electricity instead of consuming it.
Posted by Neville Phereng4211 2007-07-25 22:09||   2007-07-25 22:09|| Front Page Top

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