Who would have thunk? Maybe it had something to do with this video of a Vestas wind turbine:
I wonder if it used “Lucas” electronic parts? I owned an Austin Healy Sprite and a Triumph TR6 at one time, and the failure above looks familiar.
Excerpts from an article in the Guardian:
Vestas is to shut down its Isle of Wight factory in the face of collapsing demand from a wind-farming industry hobbled by the recession and red tape.
The group had planned to convert the factory in Newport so it could make blades for the British market, but said this morning that the paralysis gripping the industry meant that orders had ground to a halt. Such low demand could not justify the investment, Ditlev Engel, the chief executive, told the Guardian.
The UK’s only wind turbine manufacturing plant is to close, dealing a humiliating blow to the government’s promise to support low-carbon industries.”
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/28/vestas-wind-turbine-factory-close
See Vestas Wind Power Solutions here
Of course, windmills produce clean emissions free power, they don’t pollute.
Just to be fair, anyone have video or photos of a coal fired power plant exploding or uncontrollably catching fire?
h/t to David Segesta
There was a statement that Windmills don’t pollute . Nonsense & Drivel. They require a disproportionate amount of steel, copper, and concrete for the energy they generate. Does the cost of making those products pollution free? Of course not.
But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Science expresses that formally as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Extracting energy from the wind is altering the climate in a detrimental all way. Greens without any scientific background, swallow that mindless zero pollution drivel.
What is wind but the attempt by the Earth to equalize temperatures produced by unequal solar heating of the planet. When you prevent some of that equalization you are insuring that the temperatures remain unequalized, but only for a short period. As high and low pressure systems get closer, the gradients become steeper.
But the Earth Will equalize temperatures. So the Storms and Winds to do so will become more intensive and destructive.
Instead of wind, the Brits go for coal to fuel up their future fleet of electric cars!
April 30, 2009
Britain going full speed ahead on coal plants
In Britain they’re playing a funny game. The government knows costly alternative energy schemes can’t possibly supply Britain’s future energy needs, it knows coal (or nuclear) is the only viable option, but it is also a professed true believer in the AGW religion, which views coal as Satan himself. What to do? Well (wink, wink), they’ll permit new coal-fired power plants now “on the condition they can be retrofitted [later] with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology within five years of 2020 – subject to the technology available” (link). This is a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. Future promises, coal-fired power now. The green fanatics will be apoplectic:
“Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Martin Horwood said the government’s proposal were subject to “a dirty great loophole” – that new stations will only have to implement the retrofitting of CCS if the technology is ready.
“The technology does need to be proven,” Mr Miliband insisted.
“It needs to work. I believe it will work. But we need to discuss the conditions if it doesn’t.”” “Another step towards Kingsnorth” h/t CCNet
“So the government will give the go-ahead to new coal power station before the technology is proven. And then there will be the mother of all lobbying battles over a future decision by the Environment Agency over whether CCS must be installed.
The interim proposals make the companies happy since they mean power stations get the go-ahead now. Environmental groups are pleased at the safeguards, but ultimately nervous CCS may never be passed fit for service. And the chance of carbon capture becoming commercially viable? And what happens to the new coal-fired power stations if it doesn’t?” “The cold reality of today’s energy strategy” h/t CCNet
CCS is a terrible idea for two reasons. First, it doubles the cost of electricity and halves electricity output (the other half is consumed by the CCS process). Second, it deprives Earth’s CO2-impoverished atmosphere of the vital life-giving trace gas. What idiocy.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/britain-going-full-speed-ahead-on-coal.html
stas peterson (11:55:25)
“Extracting energy from the wind is altering the climate in a detrimental all way.”
How does a wind-turbine alter the climate in a way that is different than a forest with tall trees? Or a series of palm trees, especially the tall slender type with a broad band of fronds up top? Or mountains with the occasional low pass? Or cities with tall skyscrapers (many that are much higher than the tallest wind-turbines)? Or high-rise condos on the beach?
I have a scientific/engineering and legal background. Can you please explain the difference?
http://mirror-uk-rb1.gallery.hd.org/_c/places-and-sights/_more2007/_more12/Fiji-palm-trees-against-twilight-sky-1-CKB.jpg.html
Roger Sowell (08:50:37) :
Roger, your point is well taken. It is true that the initial concerns that led to the interest in alternatives to fossil fuel and nuclear power were (a) increasing costs, (b) energy independence, (c) fears of scarcity, and (d) safety hysterics (in the case of nuclear), all stemming as I recollect from the ’70s.
But more than anything, it was the growing force of the ‘environmental’ movement that, after stopping nuclear power in its tracks, turned its attention to oil drilling, coal pollution, refineries, etc., aided by the Nixon-era EPA. So it is no wonder that these enviro-activists seized upon the alarms over ‘global warming’ promulgated by the Club of Rome and later the IPCC. The myth that CO2 is evil has enabled this movement to co-opt every government in Western Europe and North America, and now they dominate the rhetoric and are calling the policy shots.
In point of fact, as you well know, no alternative energy system is “absolutely free,” not even partially free. Yes, the winds and tides and radiance of the sun and heat of the earth are all there for the taking, but to exploit them on any scale requires substantial investment in engineering, construction, operation, maintenance, and distribution—and, in the case of these episodic sources, once they constitute a large portion of the energy grid, they require backup storage systems, requiring all the same cost factors.
If wind and solar are now in some implementations beginning to approach the low cost of coal, gas, and nuclear power, well and good. Then let them compete in the free market, without taxpayer subsidies. The only one of the four original reasons (a – d above) for pursuing the alternatives that has any real importance is American energy independence. Otherwise, there is no reason whatsoever to eschew coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. On the contrary, the artificial restrictions that have been imposed over the last three decades out to be lifted, and these resources fully exploited, to the great benefit of the American people and ultimately all the people of the world.
/Mr Lynn
Correction:
Last sentence should read: On the contrary, the artificial restrictions that have been imposed over the last three decades ought to be lifted, and these resources fully exploited, to the great benefit of the American people and ultimately all the people of the world.
/Mr L
Mr. Lynn,
Waxing a bit philosophical here, but I see other worthy reasons to pursue renewable energy. You are of course correct that nothing is free, but must carry the cost of its production and maintenance. Even a canister of compressed air is not free, yet the raw material (air) is certainly free. Nor is a bottle of spring water free, although the water flows eternally from a spring. Not even hydroelectric power is free, even though the rain falls from the sky to fill the reservoir behind the dam.
But I disagree about using coal, oil, and nuclear power. I leave natural gas to the side for the moment. My point is that combustion of fossil fuels is not truly clean, but produces various levels of toxic substances, such as SOx, NOx, soot or particulate matter, and in the case of coal, mercury, plus ash that contains solid toxics. I also have written about this (on my blog), and hope to see the day when all our energy needs are provided by clean renewable sources such as hydroelectric, wind, solar, wave, ocean thermal, and ocean current, and possibly geothermal. Then oil can be used exclusively for high-value purposes such as petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, lubrication, and asphalt. When that day comes, oil will drop in price due to low demand, and pharmaceuticals will also drop at least somewhat in price. Lower prices for medical drugs are good for society. The world political balance will shift dramatically, and some of the current tensions will ease.
As for nuclear power, in my view, it is now completely uneconomic, unnecessary, and should be forever banned. That should be the goal of any world-wide body such as the U.N. I am encouraged each time I read that another planned nuclear power plant is cancelled.
I look forward to the day when the engineers (my clients) can proudly state that the renewable power they developed is cheaper than any other power, also more reliable, more abundant, more secure, and less polluting than any other power source. No more coal miners need die deep underground, or from breathing black coal dust. No more children need grow up with the spectre of nuclear bombs falling on their heads. No more poor and elderly need make horrible choices between heating their homes or buying medicines or buying food. No more people anywhere need suffer from a lack of abundant, fresh, clean water, as they will have sufficient cheap energy to make fresh water out of seawater or brackish water. No more people anywhere need suffer from tainted food because they will have abundant, and cheap, electric power for refrigerators and freezers. No more people need sleep miserably in hot, humid homes while fighting off mosquitoes and flies, but will sleep in air conditioned comfort with the insects buzzing outside.
The promises that were made in the 1950’s by the nuclear power engineers regarding abundant power, that is too cheap to meter, will finally be realized. However, it will not be nuclear power providing that cheap energy, it will be a mix of renewable energy sources coupled to reliable energy storage systems.
Those are worthy goals for renewable energy, and CO2 has nothing to do with any of it. The engineers are close, and getting closer.
Regarding the factory closure which is the real issue here, not the NIMBYism.
The Vestas factory is located on the Isle of Wight which has a population of just over 100K people. Vestas is the biggest employer on the Isle of Wight and the the top of the list for skilled and graduate employees. The redundancy will effect 700 people directly and there isn’t one person on the Island that isn’t directly or indirectly effected by this crisis. The local economy will lose up to £20 million in revenue from houses, businesses who support the Vestas factory and the employees wages being spent here. It is going to be a disaster.
The Isle of Wights’ only other industry is Tourism, hotels and guest houses opening during the seasons and school holidays employing unskilled people who only work for 6 months of the year to support it.
When Vestas closes the skilled and graduate workers will be tempted to move off the Isle of Wight meaning the people who support the Islands economy will be gone and unlikely to return as the jobs and industry is just not there.
The Government has promised financial support to assist green manufacturers through the recession and has stated that the creation of green collar jobs will be an industrial revolution, but still 700 jobs are to be lost at the UK’s only Wind Turbine manufacturing plant. It is fair to say that Vestas probably made the decision months ago as the orders on Northern Europe dwindled due to the recession and non requirement. Wind Energy is the only power that can stand on the same platform as natural gas and fossil fuel electricity as the technology is 20 years ahead of tidal and biomass.
If anyone wants to help and lives in the UK or one of its Commonwealth Countries, please sign the petition to help Vestas remain open on the Isle of Wight.
Thank you
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveVestasIOW/
There is also a facebook group which would benefit from some of the positive comments made on this site
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=202457290312&ref=mf
All of the UK is in for a similar fate if you don’t start building coal or nuclear plants right now.
It’s funny how people will blithely state that the free market should decide our energy sources yet at the same time support massive military spending to support the oil economy plus massive spending on oil stockpiles just in case that doesn’t work. Does nobody see this farcical juxtaposition? Obviously no government anywhere is actually stupid enough to rely on the whims of the market to decide whether we have access to energy or not so that is a complete fallacy. Any energy plan is made by governments, not the markets.
Bank funding, as opposed to government funding, of coal, gas or oil plants is a US phenomenon but it is only possible due due to it being well-established technology with barriers to entry and economies of scale. It wasn’t quite the same when these energies were being established. Therefore if you want to prepare the ground for commercial, free-market, non-subsidized alternative fuels you need to be prepared for a little government push so that the market can then start to pull. After a time the pull becomes greater than the push.
Or you can follow this free-market wisdom, run out of your primary fuel source and then say “now what?”. And that is precisely what happened in the UK with the dash for gas; ie zero forward planning due to short-sighted free market ideology of the type advocated on the site.
Of course the US has abundant cheap coal and gas so your case is rather different from the major Europeans, who only have expensive deep-mined coal and scarce natural gas, most of which comes from Russia via the Ukraine
And just in case anyone still believes in the free-market of energy, just review the California versus Enron case to see what can happen:
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2005/07/15/enron-gouge050715.html
Now you might that they free-market works after all because the correction came – well you are partly right, even though a lot of pain is inflicted before said does come. But imagine there were no legal controls to stop monopolistic companies or cartels. And now imagine if a regulatory body didn’t allow the predatory practices of the likes of Enron to happen so that we didn’t have to endure the pain in the first place.
Now you are perhaps realizing that the free-market isn’t so great – or even free – nor is it always cheaper in the long run. Trouble is they can only do the real accounts at the end of a preventable fiasco and that’s when it’s too late. On the way to a debt catastrophe everyone thinks they are doing just dandy.
Roger Sowell (19:32:48) :
I certainly can’t argue with your vision of a world run by cheap, renewable energy; it is devoutly to be wished.
But none of the alternative ‘clean’ energy solutions proposed will in the near future come close to meeting the energy needs of a growing economy, neither for the USA and Western Europe, and even less for the rest of the developing (and stubbornly undeveloped) parts of the world. And world economic growth, growing prosperity fueled by abundant, cheap energy, is the key to the bright future you so eloquently describe.
Coal is being mined more safely and burned more cleanly than in the past, and we can still improve as older power plants are retired and new ones built. Nuclear power is safe and economical—just ask the French—and can be run on recycled fuel. What is the problem? The old bugaboos were the fear of meltdowns (which have never occurred) and (in the case of breeder reactors) the fear of plutonium getting into terrorist hands (there are precautions than can prevent that). Somewhere I read that a company was developing small nuclear plants that could serve local communities with minimal maintenance, anywhere in the world.
The point is that to ensure a prosperous, vibrant future for mankind (and energy security for the USA), we have to push ahead on all fronts. I don’t think government should be picking winners and losers in this process. Just a few years ago the ‘hydrogen economy’ was all the rage—what happened to that? People began to look at the real costs and hazards of switching to an hydrogen infrastructure, costs that no amount of subsidy can overcome.
We don’t know what the future will bring. If we can get the cost of lifting people and materials out of Earth’s gravity well down to a low level, we might find that it makes economic sense to build solar-power satellites in geo-stationary orbit and microwave the power down.
But in the meantime, it doesn’t make sense to penalize traditional energy producers (and the American people) in favor of politically-correct ‘green’ energy that may never be competitive, at least not on the scale we need. The current administration believes that it is acceptable to drive up the cost of energy in order to raise revenue for ‘alternative’ solutions and endless social programs. The inevitable result will be to put the brakes on an already-dismal economy mired in the low point of the business cycle, when instead we should be drilling and mining and building our way out of it.
/Mr Lynn
Our massive military spending serves other purposes than to “support the oil economy,” but to the extent that it does protect our access to foreign oil, that is a direct result of government restrictions on domestic drilling. Which shows again that when government makes the decisions, it usually makes the wrong ones.
The power companies in the USA are regulated monopolies; in any given region, there is not much of a free market, so far as cost and distribution are concerned. However, there is, or ought to be, a free market in technology. Aside from NIMBY concerns, which are legitimately the role of (local) government, why should the federal government be telling power companies whether they can build nukes, or wind farms, or trash-to-energy, or coal plants? Yes, regulation should extend to pollution control, safety, and the rest. But it should be up to the power company to decide what type of electric production works best for its business.
/Mr Lynn
realitycheck (05:32:10) : What about the massive amount of concrete required for the foundations? As I understand it concrete manufacture is a leading contributor to “greenhouse” gases?
IF you wanted to, you could get carbon credits for using ‘fly ash’ to make your concrete. Why do you think they are called ‘cinder blocks’? …
Basically to make cement, you roast limestone to get CaO and add to it some slicates and “other stuff”. If you wanted too, you could either capture the CO2 that came from roasting the limestone; use a non-CO2 laden mineral to get your Ca; use fly ash rather than limestone (thus using a coal plant waste product); and you can use wood to do the roasting of the minerals rather than coal for zero CO2 net from the heat source.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement#Portland_cement
for a variety of ways to make cement using various waste products from blast furnaces and other purposes. You can also make cement from ‘natural’ cooked limestone from volcanos (how the Romans developed it) and since that’s “natural” there is no net CO2 …
Not exactly economic, but the whole point of the exercise is to do a non-economic thing for PC reasons, so once you have that goal (wind defined as good regardless of economics) the necessary consequence is that you can set your “carbon footprint” to anything via other non-economic behaviours.
BTW, once concrete is poured, it starts to suck the CO2 back from the air as it cures and reforms the “stone”. It takes about 50 to 100 years (depends on thickness) so the net addition from concrete over a long time period is just the fuel used to make it and mine the rocks. So run your mine on bio-diesel and roast your stone with wood fires and you have zero carbon foot print cement. And it will only cost you about 5 times as much…
This, BTW, is why the whole ‘carbon footprint’ and ‘carbon credit’ stuff is just nutty. Dependent variables are held as independent then independent variables are calculated from the dependent variables…
Rather than saying “This has a carbon foot print of that” the correct statement ought to be “What carbon foot print do you want for that?”.
My favorite example of this is my car. When I put in bio-Diesel I’m “carbon neutral” and when I run dino-juice I’m considered evil. Same car. Same drive. Same folks get grumpy at me when I have bio-D in the car as when I’m on #2 Dino ’cause you can’t see from the outside what’s in the tank. So is my car a green car or an evil Diesel? “Yes.” Is it’s “carbon footprint” zero or about 1 lb CO2 / mile? It depends entirely on my choice on any given day…
Heck, when I run waste vegetable oil it’s technically negative carbon footprint since the WVO is being used twice and it’s original carbon content is amortized over the cooking use (yes, it’s an accounting game, but that’s all the carbon trap & charade is about anyway) but since the oil was ‘used up’ in cooking, my use avoids 1lb CO2/mile (from the alternative real Diesel fuel being avoided) for a net negative -1 lb / mile!
And this is my major complaint about the whole agenda of Carbon Credits: It’s a giant Quatloo Trading Scheme about as valuable as going to Vegas and betting on roulette. Money changes hands a lot and it feels like fun some times; but at the end of the day no body made any real product with any actual value. You can’t eat Quatloos … And as Iceland and others have recently learned, a “financial services economy” only works as long as somebody else is willing to give you stuff…
(Listen to me, the guy who makes his living trading financial products, tossing rocks at the notion of trading as a viable lifestyle 😉 but it really is true that somebody has to make real goods and they must be willing to accept phantom goods in exchange… (called “intangible goods” in the jargon…) and when they decided they don’t want any more, the game collapses. An economy can only support so much ‘intangible’ action before the drain on the host gets too large 😉
John Laidlaw (07:24:15) : Agreed to a degree – but load balancing becomes much more of an issue as one cannot predict when the wind will blow or the sun will shine.
Um, at least in Chico there’s a met who can predict pretty well 😉
Sorry, but yes. This was not a “short-term view” statement; if we do not start funding nuclear fusion research in a serious fashion *now*, it is always likely to be 30 or 50 years away.
Well if your going to go being all polite and reasonable about it, I’m forced to do this:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/mr-fusion/
I guess you could make one in your basement if you really wanted to! So you can make fusion, it’s getting net energy out that’s hard…
My statement was not one of “oil, gas and coal are evil”, just one of common sense about the future. The sooner we can use nuclear fusion to generate power, the sooner we can leave these ridiculous concepts of so-called renewable energy behind.
The renewables are highly variable in how ‘reasonable’ they are. Many of the schemes put up are ridiculous, but there are some that work well. The problem is that they are niche products being pressed into main line use. Wind in Britain is silly, because it does not produce when most needed. Wind in Texas is a good idea, because it’s always windy in west Texas… given all the chili and all 😉
It is folly to […] replace a functioning coal/oil/gas/nuclear power generation grid with wind turbines and solar cells.
Yup. As an adjunct they can work, as a replacement it’s a bad idea…
So in a way, I agree with you, but would add this: let’s keep what we’ve got going, and rather than spending huge amounts on stuff that almost certainly *cannot* meet even current demand (that’s my “folly” statement from above), use that money to invest in future technologies that can not only meet current and future demand, but also have the added advantage of being “clean”.
Well then, I guess we’re just going to have to agree to agree then…
OceanTwo (07:24:38) :We also have to contend with hurricanes (east coast significantly) and tornadoes (east an mid states). How durable are these turbines under such conditions? Even if the chance is low, it’s still a factor to consider.
You just put insurance on them and rebuild when they get blown away. Just like everything else..
JamesG (03:27:13) : It’s funny how people will blithely state that the free market should decide our energy sources yet at the same time support massive military spending to support the oil economy
Our ‘massive military spending’ largely happened to counter communist pressures. Now it’s more focused on militant terrorists. I’ve seen little to indicate that our military spending is dedicated to oil. Yeah, we sometimes protect shipping in the Gulf. Chump change.
BTW, one can support the idea of a free market even while knowing that the present status is not a free market. The presence of OPEC makes it a cartel driven oligopoly. The presence of massive government regulation also makes energy markets non-free. But yes, I would love to see a free market in energy. (And yes, I know it isn’t really going to happen).
plus massive spending on oil stockpiles just in case that doesn’t work.
So far the oil SPR has been of great value primarily during natural disasters, but has also been useful as a countervailing force to OPEC letting them know they can’t jerk us around with an oil cut off. Not much here to do with free markets nor with the military; a lot to do with politics of countervailing force against an Oligopoly cartel. And the stockpile cost is rather cheap. Much of the oil is from ‘in kind’ payments from the oil companies with offshore drilling leases. No dollars need apply… The hole in the ground was made by washing salt out with pumped water. Very very cheap way to make a storage tank.
Obviously no government anywhere is actually stupid enough to rely on the whims of the market to decide whether we have access to energy or not so that is a complete fallacy. Any energy plan is made by governments, not the markets.
This country (U.S.A.) had market driven energy planning for a very long time. Once the governments got involved, it’s become ever more expensive and ever less reliable. And i wouldn’t call what our government does an ‘energy plan’…
Bank funding, […] is only possible due due to it being well-established technology with barriers to entry and economies of scale.
Hate to break it to you, but banks also fund things like restaurants and farms. Not exactly large economies of scale and no barriers to entry. Then there’s venture capital firms that fund the real crapsoots… There is no need for government funding of anything. When government funding enters, it just drives out private capital. (See the present fiasco with TARP et. al.) One may use government funding just to get the rate down (at least until California goes bankrupt, they will get low rates on bonds) but that does not mean it is necessary.
It wasn’t quite the same when these energies were being established.
Pardon me? Drakes well? Standard oil? You think these were government subsidized? Funded?… It was the most wild and wooly free market capitalism this country has ever seen. Heck, Std. Oil was the thing that lead to the first anti-trust laws and regulations in the country.
you need to be prepared for a little government push
No, I don’t need any government pusher for anything. Let them go push they stuff on someone else…
Or you can follow this free-market wisdom, run out of your primary fuel source and then say “now what?”.
Since our primary fuel source is coal, and it runs out in 250 to 400 years, I’m fine with waiting for that day… The only ‘intervention’ I think is valuable would be a tariff on OPEC oil (and no other) such that it had a floor under the price at $80 / bbl (to offset the OPEC cartel power). Then leave it alone for the free market. I know of at least a dozen companies that would get private funding and flourish providing alternative fuels. They just can get traction now with the government picking winners and OPEC driving prices to extremes (including to the downside) that make them go broke.
JamesG (04:08:24) : And just in case anyone still believes in the free-market of energy, just review the California versus Enron case to see what can happen:
You’re kidding, right? You call that a ‘free market’? When the state of California MANDATED that a perfectly fine private company had to dump it’s own generation capacity and then buy back power “at minibar prices” (to quote Dennis Miller). They were FORBIDDEN from entering long term power purchase contracts by the GOVERNMENT. All Enron did was realize the absurdity of this very non-free market solution and take advantage of it.
If the state had left the market alone, PG&E and ConEd would NOT have sold off generating capacity and would have made long term stable contracts for purchase power and things would have been just fine – just as they were before the government screwed it up and just as they have been after the government backed off the idiocy of buying all power in the spot market.
The California / Enron energy crisis was 99% a government created mess and 1% clever greedy traders.
there were no legal controls to stop monopolistic companies or cartels.
OR monopolistic governments… BTW, there is no control on OPEC as a cartel.
And now imagine if a regulatory body didn’t allow the predatory practices of the likes of Enron to happen so that we didn’t have to endure the pain in the first place.
You have this exactly backwards. It was the regulatory body that “had a bright idea” that was exactly wrong and learned it was wrong at the expense of everyone else. It was NOT a free market, it was an artificial and regulated one and the regulators DEFINED IN a tremendous error. Their thesis was that “spot rates” would be most competitive, so lowest. They were wrong. Long term contracts are more efficient, so cheaper. Dennis Miller got it best. It really comes down to where is your booze cheapest: WalMart with long term buy contracts or the hotel Minibar?
Now you are perhaps realizing that the free-market isn’t so great – or even free
No, I’m not. I am hoping you are realizing that there has been no free market in energy in the U.S.A. for the better part of a century and that the California electricity market was an entirely regulated government created mistake. We had a perfectly fine electric system with a fine company that I’d bought power from for 1/2 a century with no problems. Then some petty regulators decided they wanted to play with the shiny thing and broke it. That has exactly zero to do with ‘free markets’.
Governments can sometimes do useful things, but more often than not they screw it up. Markets can have problems (I had to learn all of them to get my degree in Econ, but I’ll spare folks the details) but those are relatively dinky compared to government ‘issues’ and fairly easily fixed if you can get the regulators to do a little bit AND NO MORE. It’s when the regulators over reach that it all falls apart…
(The sins of the market tend to be moderately higher prices and moderately lower choices; the sins of the government tend to be complete lack of product, outrageous prices, frozen innovation and stagnation, or a dead industry. See the rationing of medical care in government run systems as an example… BTW, when I was a kid we had great access to a personal doctor with not too much cost, cash on the spot. With every increase in medical regulation and insurance mandates and government subsidized care the costs have gone up and the access has dropped. A cash customer now has to carry a couple of government clients on his back… which makes it untenable to be a cash customer and the spiral decent begins…)
E.M. Smith:
Well said. As usual.
My take on the California energy deregulation is that very long and complex legislation was rushed through — leading to a situation in which clever guys found ways to game the system.
Moral of the story: legislation should not be rushed. (with very few exceptions, like eminent danger to the country).
The lessons from hasty energy deregulation apparently were not learned and passed on to the current crop of bureaucrats in Sacramento, who are presently formulating the detailed regs under AB 32.
Let the games begin. Cap and trade, anyone? Low-carbon fuel? Renewable energy? This thing has more options than a gambler in Las Vegas.
Mr. Lynn,
I do enjoy these civilized discussions. We agree on some points, and not on others. With reference to your statement that “Nuclear power is safe and economical—just ask the French—and can be run on recycled fuel. What is the problem? The old bugaboos were the fear of meltdowns (which have never occurred) and (in the case of breeder reactors) the fear of plutonium getting into terrorist hands (there are precautions than can prevent that). Somewhere I read that a company was developing small nuclear plants that could serve local communities with minimal maintenance, anywhere in the world.”
Essentially, nuclear is not safe, it is not economical, and the French subsidize their nuclear plants. Mini-nuclear plants are even worse.
I refer you to my writings on this:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/nuclear-nuts.html
And for more extensive reading, (this comprises several blog posts over many months)
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/search?q=nuclear
Ditto.
I should defer to your expertise on nuclear energy. However, I will point out that your conclusion (in your blog) that nuclear power is ‘hazardous’ is based on the legal definition of ‘hazardous’ (not unreasonable given the need to manage highly radioactive materials), and on the possibility that severe problems may occur in the future, not on any actual record of problems to date.
Since in industrial society we deal with all manner of hazardous technologies constantly, and over time learn to manage them well, I submit that while caution is always appropriate, these fears are overblown.
Over the years I have been concerned about the problem of disposing of nuclear waste, but others say that that reprocessing technology now can obviate many potential problems.
As for how economical nuclear power is, or can be, all the data I have seen cited suggest that it is competitive with fossil-fuel power, and results in lower-cost electricity than the ‘alternatives’ being pushed. It has been argued, moreover, that were the regulatory hurdles that have prevented new nuclear-plant construction in the USA reduced, and if the industry were able to develop ‘off-the-shelf’ technology, the cost of building these plants would be much reduced.
Then, too, nuclear fission can be scaled up to handle the huge demands of modern America. There is little evidence that wind, solar, etc. can be.
I don’t have chapter and verse to back up these impressions, but I’m sure other respondents on this site do. Let’s hope the topic comes up again on a fresher thread.
/Mr Lynn
E.M.Smith (08:53:25) :
Well if your going to go being all polite and reasonable about it, I’m forced to do this:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/mr-fusion/
I guess you could make one in your basement if you really wanted to! So you can make fusion, it’s getting net energy out that’s hard…
Well… alright then :). I’d love to, but have no basement, only a crawlspace, thanks to a peculiarity of midwestern architecture. Sadly. Looks like fun.
Well then, I guess we’re just going to have to agree to agree then…
Um, yes :).
Thanks for the videos!
With wind turbines all around me, I’ve witnessed the blades flying as much as 1/4 mile after being struck by lightning and witnessed a few of them burn up during my years on the fire department.
I don’t see too many people discussing the amount of energy consumed in the building of wind turbines and just how long it will take to offset that energy consumption. I’ve heard it is around 100 years. Wondering if that figure is including the need to rebuild many wind turbines just North of me after less than 20 years of service?
Oh, I don’t know, the question should be, “have you ever seen a wind turbine melt down and release radioactive gas”? Or “have you ever seen a wind turbine cause acid rain that kills millions of acres of trees?” Or “have you ever seen a wind turbine require the removal of entire mountain tops in order for it to operate? The short sighted thinking on display here is exactly the same as the “gee it was cold yesterday in Podunkville so global warming must be a myth” crowd.
Energy Payback Period for Wind Turbines
Two to Three Months Required
Modern wind turbines rapidly recover all the energy spent in manufacturing, installing, maintaining, and finally scrapping them. Under normal wind conditions it takes between two and three months for a turbine to recover all of the energy involved.
This is one of the main results of a life cycle analysis of wind turbines done by the Danish Wind Industry Association.
The study includes the energy content in all components of a wind turbine, and it includes the global energy content in all links of the production chain.
http://www.windpower.org/media(444,1033)/The_energy_balance_of_modern_wind_turbines%2C_1997.pdf
Wind power, according to Swift, just makes sense. Wind has the third highest “energy payback,” following only hydropower and run-of-the-river hydropower. It takes only about nine months to pay back the investment of a wind turbine. The payback period for wind is a fraction of that of other fuels; nuclear power, for example, can have a payback period of up to 40 years (NRDC, 2007). Further, when one considers that essentially all major dammable rivers in the United States have already been dammed, and that damming new rivers is met with extreme resistance, wind just makes sense.
http://www.todaysengineer.org/2009/Jun/Green-Tech.asp