I was reading an article in the magazine Science published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It started with;

"Consumers increasingly want energy that is renewable, clean, and affordable from solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and biomass sources.".

My first response was b*****t consumers just want cheap energy but I continued reading and toward the end found something interesting; numbers for total U.S. energy consumption and the percent amounts from various sources.

Total consumption is about 100 quads {100 x 10^15 British thermal Units (BTU) per year}. For those who want to be metric this is 25.2 x 10^15 kcal.

Nuclear capacity is currently at 10 quads per year; i.e. 10% of the total.

Hydroelectric provides about 3 quads; i.e. 3% of the total.

Wood energy provides 2 quads; i.e 2% of the total.

Geothermal, Solar and Wind did not even rate a mention despite the introductory statement I quote above.

So clean/renewable energy sources provide 10 + 3 + 2 = 15% of the annual energy consumption in the U.S. This is if you consider nuclear to be clean and renewable.

In other words fossil fuels provide 85%. These are the ones that produce that demon compound CO2 and we (you I guess since I live in Canada :D) are supposed to cut back on fossil fuel consumption.

And get energy from what?

The real problem is that the "consumer" they are talking about is the guy writing the article and it is his opinion about what we want.

First they want you to buy all of the stuff to keep the economy going. Then they make stuff that draws as much power when off as when on.

Of course now that everyone has all this stuff, they want you to cut back on your power consumtion. Which means a reduction is the services and stuff that you have or spend more money buying more energy efficent stuff.
The reaon we don't use much of anything else is cost. If solar was cost competative, I would do it in a heart beat. Of course, to get the energy fund rebate, I have to have a liscensed installer who will charge me as much as the rebate check so there is no cost savings since I could easily do it myself. If I was allowed to do the install myself and then get the rebate check, I would already have solar on my house.

Currently petroleum is one of, if not the best cost effective way to get power. As the saying goes dollar for dollar and pound for pound, it is the best.
With all of the DIY going on now, don't you think we would all switch if it could be done and save money and be safe.

At least I can still burn condenesed solar energy(firewood) and help with the heating bill. Until they make it a crime.

Mike

That has been my question for some time. The effciency of some of these alternates just squeak by in unity of input to output. If it were not for subsidies, some wouldn't survive.

Within the 90% reduction of using fossil fuels by 2050, there is going to need to be a huge push to force all energy consuming devices to be at minimum 50% more efficient as a start or removed from existance.

The efficiency of energy productions isn't always what it seems either....

Ethanol 40% efficient? (http://www.safehaven.com/article-5010.htm)

Wind over blown (http://www.dartdorset.org/co2falsehoods.html)

Which begs the question of replacing fossil fuel use will take 40-70% more in alternate energy generating sources to replace the current usage. Limiting growth in economy, populations and GDP's for developed nations and moving it to undeveloped nations which is ultimately what cap and trade will fund. The members of the UN fully intend to institute Global Welfare with schemes like this. Which seems to go against what the UN foundation of peace and security with its neighbors. There is definitely a shift in motivation and incentive to coerce funding for their own needs, than to worry about ethinic cleansing in some third world country that has nothing to offer them in the first place. Mass genocide is fine, but fossil fuel polution in any form must be stopped, unless of course you write us a check for our foregiveness.



DC

I'm not sure that rating the viability of various energy collection schemes based on economic cost is the correct approach. Sooner or later, every scheme becomes economically feasible as the prior scheme is exhausted or depleted.

In some ways, the most economic, popular method is simply the result of mass production/mass consumption patterns, and has little correlation to the real costs in terms of side effects. Witness the decline of our western economy as the automotive industry is being strangled. It had to happen sooner or later, whether caused by recession or by limited supply of oil.

Now the wonderful western civilization built on oil maybe doesn't look so smart. The infrastructure built with oil, to maintain oil consumption appears to have decay at its roots. So was it smart to build a society this way? Is it reasonable to place the blame for the economic costs of changing over, on the newer tech, when in fact the previous (oil) scheme was not paying for all of its own costs? The initial cheapness of oil subsidized the growth of an economic system below cost, and now we cannot afford the system we built.

Some guys want to put up a wind charger. Others say, heck you'll never get your money back (based on today's electricity rates). But is it always a matter of dollars? Is that all that matters?

I'm not sure that rating the viability of various energy collection schemes based on economic cost is the correct approach. Sooner or later, every scheme becomes economically feasible as the prior scheme is exhausted or depleted....

Quite right but I think with a qualification; there are no other 'schemes' that can feasibly supply the same abundance of energy at any cost. This what I get out of these numbers.

The author's estimated that if every available source was utilised for wood energy then it could be increased to 5 quads but admitted they did not know if that was sustainable.

Any other source would need to be increased many fold: You want to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 90% over forty years? Simple; just build nine times as many new nuclear plants as currently exist. Or build thirty times as many hydroelectric installations.

Geof your absuluty right I'm from the midwest US. and I'm sick of seeing the ethonal plant's get tax break's and subsidies while the price of food went up because of the preasure on the grain market Hydro yes might even give off some byproduct's like less flouding Ie. southdakota and recration and can make water avlable for iragation and nuc it now the lifespan maintnance cost and productivy per Sq. foot of space is unblevible A sub can run for five years on 20# of uranium where the same boat would take thousand's of gallon's of #2 to last a mounth How about rendering politation's and new's people into Bio Diesel seem's to be plenty of them Kevin

I read an interesting article on nuclear energy, and the author claimed if we replaced all of the energy from coal plants with nuclear, we would depleat all of the known uranium in about 10 years.

Quite right but I think with a qualification; there are no other 'schemes' that can feasibly supply the same abundance of energy at any cost. This what I get out of these numbers.

The author's estimated that if every available source was utilised for wood energy then it could be increased to 5 quads but admitted they did not know if that was sustainable.

Any other source would need to be increased many fold: You want to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 90% over forty years? Simple; just build nine times as many new nuclear plants as currently exist. Or build thirty times as many hydroelectric installations.

Those alternatives have always thrown environmentalists into fits of rage and convulsions.

I cannot even imagine 9 times the nuclear waste and I doubt there are enough rivers to handle 30 times increase in hydroelectric.


"Want" is by whom and for what purpose? Some screams are for cleaner energy forms. Other screams are limited supply. And still other screams are against the riches it creates. Take any other commodity and tell your customers that the price needs to double to satisfy the conscience of the screamers and scared followers that won't support the higher priced product anyways and see how long you can compete. Stories like the one you sited is promoting popularity in the modern marketing of getting the reader to believe what the writer wants them to believe.

The inflationary effects across the board do come down to dollars as its value gets dilluted. The primary purpose of forcing subsidized and inefficient alternates onto the market is resetting the value. That alone does not change the cost of producing fossil fuels that get used to produce the alternatives. It just makes fossil fuels more expensive to fund an agenda by placing aggrandized hysteria into a crisis mode urgency and putting the foot soldier to work to get everyone else to follow along....willingly or not. Guilting the population into going all green just isn't happening fast enough.

I'd question if next 41 years still might not be enough time to replace our reliance on fossil fuels.

DC

I read an interesting article on nuclear energy, and the author claimed if we replaced all of the energy from coal plants with nuclear, we would depleat all of the known uranium in about 10 years.

I have seen something to this effect but it is taking a narrow view. Theoretically if fast breeder reactors are used the amount of nuclear fuel is almost unlimited because you keep on 'burning' the unstable isotopes produced in the first reaction. Also done correctly I think it can reduce the volume of radioactive waste. But the spent fuel from the first step has to be processed into stuff that can be used in bombs so there are hazards in that aspect.

DC; the big problem is not that we can't reduce dependence on fossil fuels in 41 years; we can't reduce dependence on fossil fuels, period.