51–60 of 278 posts
I live in Dallas Texas and buy renewable (wind or solar) electricity from the grid. It cost only marginally more
I'm assuming this is a joke since there aren't separate power lines for renewable energy. :-)
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It's positive but still no where near the scale of fossil fuels. If you consider the likely energy need growth of society, exponential maybe, it is really hard to see how solar and wind will cut it. Personally i think a full embracement of gen 4 or better nuclear power generation is the only way truly bring energy security.
You're completely off the mark. Enough energy from the sun hits the Earth in an hour or two to power humanity for a year. It's simply a matter of scaling up. Nuclear is already dead at current wind and solar generation costs.
We get it, you're a big fan of wind and solar. Making reaching arguments to show how excited you are doesn't actually help it come to fruition.
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It's positive but still no where near the scale of fossil fuels. If you consider the likely energy need growth of society, exponential maybe, it is really hard to see how solar and wind will cut it. Personally i think a full embracement of gen 4 or better nuclear power generation is the only way truly bring energy security.
You're completely off the mark. Enough energy from the sun hits the Earth in an hour or two to power humanity for a year. It's simply a matter of scaling up. Nuclear is already dead at current wind and solar generation costs.
Considering that PV's capacity factor is around 15%, that's around 26 PWh of annual (electric) energy production, around 50% of the electrical energy we use up in a year today, nevermind what we will actually need in 2050 thanks to the neverending growth we're apparently trying to go for.
IIRC, electricity represents 20-25% of our civilization's energy use mix, so solar should solve around 10-15% of our needs in 2050 under extremely optimistic assumptions and ignoring ALL of the variability, energy grid, energy storage, solar panel production issues, none of which are minor limitations.
2050 is around 10 years beyond the date we need to be carbon neutral to stay below 2°C [2], if we were to peak in 2020 and quickly ramp down our emissions. It's 20 years too late in business as usual scenarios.
[1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication... [2] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/06/why-gl...
It appears we're at the inflection point where even natural gas (in addition to coal) is getting pushed out of the generation mix. Good! About time. This may require paying natural gas generators for their ability to quickly throttle to back renewables, but only as a temporary measure until utility scale batteries fall in cost.
Natural gas energy can be transported much more easily than solar or wind. As more export capacity comes online in the US I would expect natural gas projects in the US to continue apace even if domestic consumption stays flat or declines.
Anywhere besides Canada and Mexico requires liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, which are very expensive and have low capacity compared to a pipeline. You'd need a lot of them to make up for the lost demand from even a relatively small percentage of American natural-gas power plants shutting down. So if production is really going to continue apace, it depends almost entirely on Mexico's demand continuing to increase.
I wonder what the economics would be without the federal tax incentives for wind and solar. Does anyone know? EDIT: Someone above provided a link that provides the figure I was looking for: "Between 2010 and 2016, subsidies for solar were between 10¢ and 88¢ per kWh and subsidies for wind were between 1.3¢ and 5.7¢ per kWh. Subsidies for coal, natural gas and nuclear are all between 0.05¢ and 0.2¢ per kWh over all ye…
Lighting isn't that big though, ~10% of US electrical consumption, when you include commercial and street lighting.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3
(It's a big chunk, just not a huge one. If you figure on a fair amount of it already being florescent or other relatively efficient lighting, the savings aren't going to be dramatic)
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No it is not. As a consumer in Dallas we get to choose which power company we want to buy from. Basically, we have to buy our share of electricity that is used from the grid.
But in this case, you are simply throwing your money away since the green producers aren't going to produce more energy because you and other consumers are paying them to. They will produce the same amount regardless. In that case, better to give the money to some charity that say, replaces incandescent bulbs with the newest LED lamps starting with your own house and office if you haven't already converted. Also, bet…
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Solar panels degrade about 0.7 percent a year based on historical data for the last two decades; after 20 years they're still generating at 80+% of total output. This doesn't take into account the ridiculous cost decline curve we're seeing in solar, and that'll be a fraction of the cost to replace degraded capacity decades from now. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf EROI has been positive for quite some tim…
It's positive but still no where near the scale of fossil fuels. If you consider the likely energy need growth of society, exponential maybe, it is really hard to see how solar and wind will cut it. Personally i think a full embracement of gen 4 or better nuclear power generation is the only way truly bring energy security.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Natural gas energy can be transported much more easily than solar or wind. As more export capacity comes online in the US I would expect natural gas projects in the US to continue apace even if domestic consumption stays flat or declines.
Gas is easy to transport, but only really by pipeline. LNG is a lot more expensive and capital-intensive. And there is only one place with rising demand where it's easy to transport U.S. natural gas: Mexico. Pipeline gas exports to Mexico did nearly triple between 2011 and 2016 [1]. Exports to Canada over the same period fell, however. Anywhere besides Canada and Mexico requires liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals,…
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I don't know the economics specifically but coal, gas, oil are all subsidized too.
Some fraction of the US military expense should be attributed to obtaining energy, both explicitly (eg, patrolling shipping lanes) and implicitly (as a superpower, we can get considerations other countries don't). I don't know enough about it to hazard a guess, but I'm hoping someone, somewhere, has done an analysis.