Big differences seen compared to EIA estimate.
Documents (link to PDF) obtained from the U.S. Treasury under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute were released on Tuesday.
The U.S. Treasury Department admits that a “cap and trade” system for regulating greenhouse gas emissions could cost every household $1,761 a year. According to the CBS News story, “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent”.
This comes in way over claims that the EIA says:
The Climate Bill Will Cost You Just 23¢ a Day, EIA Analysis Shows. This works out to $83.95 per year. Big difference.
CEI Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on the accumulating evidence on the costs of cap and trade:
“The bill’s proponents talk about protecting consumers while intermittently acknowledging that cap-and-trade can only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by dramatically raising the price of energy derived from coal, oil and natural gas.
President Obama said during the campaign last year that ‘under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.’ Dr. Peter Orszag, now head of the White House Office and Management and Budget, testified last year when he was head of the Congressional Budget Office that ‘price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program.’”
Gene Nemetz (20:00:47) :
Jeff Green (16:09:53) : As much as you don’t want to hear it, government is the only answer.
[What you say here is un-Constitutional and un-American.
Government getting out of the way is the answer. America was much healthier when government was small and not felt in “we the people’s” lives—i.e., when it followed the Constitution. I am better equipped to know how to use my own money, raise my own children, and give to charities of my own choosing.
The government is only for defending me and all the others in this Nation.
But now the government has become a ‘domestic’ enemy of “we the people”.
The idea that government is the answer belongs to Communism, Fascism, etc. Surely someone with a college degree knows this. I think you do know it, but you haven’t taken the time to sit back and process it]
We come from 2 different places and that’s what makes it interesting. I have no interest in some other form of government. What pulled us out of the recession faster was the government. Had it not been for gov intervention we would be in depression right now. Probably one close to the great depression back in the 30’s.
The Fed did the best they could to get other banks to buy up the bad banks. After awhile there’s just no other choice or we will suffer extreme consequences.
From my point of view which is different from the purpose of this site, co2 is going to do us a whole lot of harm. From that point of view the only entity that can even handle the problem is the government.
From another platform Carbon Cap and Trade engages the private sector to find the cheapest most economical way to reduce emissions. It is a market stimulation to solve a very serious problem.
Someone must have come up with a way to drop the cost of renewable energy by an order of magnitude or two, because it wasn’t remotely competitive with fossil fuels last time I checked (speaking of solar, wind, wave etc… not the sensible ones like hydro).
As for “super batteries” I keep waiting to hear more about eeStor, but they still seem to be very secretive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEStor
I do not see a super battery, or rather accumulator as being likely.
The Economist reently had a briefing on electric cars in which it suggested batteries might improve by as much as 8% a year and that to be truly viable they had to be 3 times better in power to weight ratio than now.
I doubt that can be.
Great strides have been made in the mechanical construction of cells allowing much larger surface areas, and hence high charge/discharge rates. This has also reduced weight because mechanically the battery has to withstand the physical loads on the electrodes produced by charging and discharging as well as outside influences: such as vibration in a motor car.
Likewise chemical degradation of the cell with use can be improved giving a longer life. Also desirable.
But however successful that might be, and has been, for instance with the lead accumulator used in your motor car which today lasts for years but fifty years ago failed within a year or two and needed topping up with distilled water regularly, it only goes so far.
It is the electrochemical reation which determines the theoretical efficiency of the accumulator in terms of both its energy density and its weight, and thus cost.
And compared to the combustion of fossil fuels, weight for weight, volume for volume, cost for cost, the easily reversible electrochemical reactions of accumulators are at best ten times worse: but usually annot get anywhere near that.
It is a pipe dream.
Kindest Regards.
By the way Jeff Green, it is a year camping in Canada. Up for it? Any of your “systems ” up for it? Bring the kids? Whadaya say? Should we all move to warmer climes? Is it tough to power an MRI in the woods? You really haven’t thought this through have you.
Graeme Rodaughan (19:28:59) :
Hey, what about that M.I.T. dart board?
Jeff Green (20:07:46) :
WHy not let down your defenses a little bit. THis really isn’t a war. You will definitely be allowed on the site, but with a discussion of science as the basis. If all you have is just a political rant, then its just a waste of our time. Most of my conversation is based in science.
You Lie Jeff Green. Most of your sites deny an IP address if they find on “offensive” comment to their view. Stop feeding us garbage And a political rant? That is all your hero Romm does on his site. He headlines “study’s” and “model’s” as if they are fact. You live in a world created by yourself and revel in that fact. I can spot one of your kind in an instance just on the rhetoric you use. And I am amused at the monthly talking words you all use, it is so funny to see them used here, at Huffpo, DailyKos, CP, etc.. I know that you are expecting the minorities and immigrants to take your side and give you full power….but it has never worked before and it won’t work this time!!!
DGallagher (19:49:10) :
Jeff Green,
Remember, I’m on your side. A lot of the folks on this site are a bunch of science / mathematics geeky types and they don’t understand that the future belongs to those who have vision…
Aren’t you, Daniel?
Jeff Green (17:21:19) : I have read about plans proposed to replace coal with natural gas. This would cut the co2 emissions in half from those plants. It would be cheaper, quicker and we would meet our 2020 emission goals. Natural gas would be a transition fuel until we get our renewable infrastructure in place.
Jeff, please use numbers. It will be worth the effort. Until then, take a look at this graph:
It is from the government, so you ought to like it 😉
Notice that natural gas is a little smaller than coal? It is 19.6 while coal is 22.6 so that is a shortfall of 3 if we used every bit of present natural gas just to replace coal. Now think maybe all that natural gas might already have a use and might not be available to replace the coal? You know, things like:
1) Home heating
2) Food drying (for example, the giant rice driers that are used near where Anthony lives to dry all the harvested rice so it doesn’t rot).
3) Producing “petro” chemicals – natural gas is the dominant feedstock for many kinds of “petro” chemicals, not oil.
4) Present electric generation in gas turbines (that 5.7 that goes to electric generation up toward the top)
etc.
Do you see the problem? From where will you get that added 22.6 quads worth of natural gas? That is more than doubling the present supply for the nation.
Now look at the green bar at the bottom. That’s oil. Notice that almost all of it goes into transportation. Of that which doesn’t the largest bit is “non-fuel” at 5.2 and a lot of that is lubricants for, you guessed it, transportation.
Now what is the size for oil? 14.9 from the USA, 24.3 imported, total of 39.2 quads. So now you need roughly twice as much as all the natural gas we have just to replace oil.
Add that to coal, and you have more than 3 times as much coal and oil as you have natural gas. Last time I looked, 3 was a lot larger than 1 and you can not use 1 to replace 3. This is not negotiable and not a matter of opinion. The numbers are what they are and you can not wish them away.
The “natural gas will bridge” is a fantasy based on not looking at the size and ignoring the numbers. It is a “bridge too far” and “a bridge to nowhere”.
Now see that “Biomass other” at 3.2 just below nuclear? That is what you want to expand to replace all that coal and oil. Most of that is wood waste and farm waste along with some trash burning. Not things that can be readily expanded in a hurry. So the bottom line is that you want to take something that is at most a “1.4” (it is less than that, but I’ll be generous) and use it to cover 39.2+ +22.6 = 61.8 Quadrillion BTUs of energy. If you don’t appreciate just how impossible that is, and how much time and money it would take to build 60 Quads of solar and wind, please find an Electrical Engineering major and ask them.
Finally, just for fun, take a look at the “losses” bar. Now you think that can be magically shrunk some how, but it can’t. We spend $Billions to assure that electrical generation is astoundingly efficient. That GE gas turbine at 52% is an amazing accomplishment and widely used. You can not buy more efficient gas turbines. Notice that 26.3 of it comes from “electric generation” – by far the largest part. The next largest is vehicles at 21.2. Of those vehicle losses, the part from Diesels can not be made smaller. They are already at the top end of efficiency. The only way to change the rest is to replace the vehicle fleet. With Diesels. That’s one new car for every car on the road today… If you don’t use Diesels, the efficiency will go down, not up.
So you want to run ever more of our energy supplies through the part that accounts for most of the losses, THEN you want to layer on top transmission loses, charger losses, battery charge losses, standby losses, battery discharge losses, inverter losses, more transformer losses, more conversion losses in whatever the end equipment is: All so you can use wind and solar to replace very high efficiency coal?
Do you see the problems with this?
Do you see that the numbers don’t work?
Do you see that coal is not oil and does not go to the same places?
Do you see that using oil directly is the most efficient path to transport? (And that is why substantially 100% of the world does it… Mostly with Diesel engines.)
Do you see that the rest of the world and all the folks who built and bought all this equipment are not idiots and made fairly intelligent decisions?
Do you see what that implies about your decisions?
Think about it. With numbers, please.
evanmjones (20:21:18) : Edison’s… or his worker’s …Yes.
Very funny.
Ron de Haan (17:25:53) :
In Germany, VW has developed a home generator that runs on natural gas and operates at an incredible efficiency of 92%, fueled by natural gas.
There is a Japanese variation that uses a fuel cell and is less noisy and with less smog than an internal combustion engine. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have one of the VW gadgets, but for most folks the fuel cell solution will be better (think of an apartment building with 500 lawn mower engines droning away…)
The 92% efficiency of this comes largely from capture of “waste heat” for domestic heating needs. Works well in cold places. Not so well in places like California and Arizona where you need AC not heating… In those places the heat is still waste heat and you are back at the 25-30% range of the ICE generator. Less if you must meet smog requirements… (Ask CARB about running one on “spare the air” days…)
So I think they are a great idea for Alaska and Canada. Florida, not so much…
Jeff Green (20:54:41) :Lies again:
We come from 2 different places and that’s what makes it interesting. I have no interest in some other form of government. What pulled us out of the recession faster was the government. Had it not been for gov intervention we would be in depression right now. Probably one close to the great depression back in the 30’s.
We are not out of recession….saying so doesn’t make it so unless it is in your world of make believe.
The Jeff Greens of the world believe that if someone writes what they believe to be true then it must be true….Yet they deny the same belief in the religious world. Strange isn’t it?
I repent for expecting too much from what turns out to be a troll.
BTW, DGallagher: I do note your irony thread.
Sandy (16:36:47) :
” government is the only answer.”
Your mindlessness is frightening.
I understand what you mean.
But in the end the one who will be hurt the most by his mindlessness is himself.
Americans are rising to stop the mindlessness that has been transpiring here. They finally see how they have been getting hurt by that mindlessness for years now.
Gene Nemetz (21:05:24) :
Graeme Rodaughan (19:28:59) :
Hey, what about that M.I.T. dart board?
I remember it well – completely indicative of the intellectual bankruptcy of the MIT effort.
DGallagher (19:49:10) :
Jeff Green,
Remember, I’m on your side. A lot of the folks on this site are a bunch of science / mathematics geeky types and they don’t understand that the future belongs to those who have vision…
Vision? – so did Jim Jones – he’s vision is not still around.
How about a few others, Napoleon, Hirohito, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse tung… All failed visionaries. France does not rule Europe. No Japanese Empire. Italy and Germany are not Fascist states, No thousand year Reich, the Soviet Union is on the trash heap of History, China is embracing Capitalism.
History is littered with the failed visions of mad men that have crashed on the cold shore of hard fact. It seems to me that the practical men who focus on the practical realities of life are the ones who win in the end.
Apologies to DGallagher. I guess I’m having difficulty recognizing sarcasm lately. Re- reading your post showed me it was a brilliant one. I shall try to be more diligent in my reading of all posts, it is just that it there is so much to read (time constraints) and so much of it is so good. Sorry Mate, ..
Jeff Green. Empty pitchers make the most noise.
Good article by Garth Paltridge,who has a theory as to how science has sold itself down the river .It is a question I asked-Why didn’t the sceptics speak out at the start?)It seems to me that the sceptics are still not doing enough to defend science.An obvious choice would be a television campaign,full newspaper ads,your mob led us into this,pity you are not prepared to spend money to get us out of it.
Anyway,here is the link,and my favourite quote from the article
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26056202-7583,00.html
More generally, there are those who, like the politically correct everywhere, are driven by a need for public expression of their own virtue.”
Graeme Rodaughan (21:53:38) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
DGallagher (19:49:10) :
Jeff Green,
Remember, I’m on your side. A lot of the folks on this site are a bunch of science / mathematics geeky types and they don’t understand that the future belongs to those who have vision…
Vision? – so did Jim Jones – he’s vision is not still around.
How about a few others, Napoleon, Hirohito, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse tung… All failed visionaries. France does not rule Europe. No Japanese Empire. Italy and Germany are not Fascist states, No thousand year Reich, the Soviet Union is on the trash heap of History, China is embracing Capitalism.
History is littered with the failed visions of mad men that have crashed on the cold shore of hard fact. It seems to me that the practical men who focus on the practical realities of life are the ones who win in the end.
BTW: The death toll of all those visionaries is in the many tens of millions…
@Jeff Green.
How do you explain how the Medieval Warm Period was world wide and warmer than now?
REF: http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l3_nzeastnorth.php
Jeff Green (20:42:40) : I am definitely an optimist when it comes to Renewable energy.
As am I. I’ve been an advocate for it since the ’70s or so. I’ve played with running vehicles on all sorts of stuff (even ran my truck on Crisco once, just to prove a point…) and mostly run my car on BioDiesel when I can get it.
I have backup generators at home and a 1 kW inverter that can be attached to the car battery in the Diesel if needed. (Part of a ‘kit’ I was putting together to make a UPS for the house under the Grey Out Davis years here in California… then he left office and the electric system stabilized, so the kit got set aside. Still have the battery box and other hard goods, should the need arise. No batteries in it, though. Didn’t reach that step.)
From time to time I’ve owned several thousand dollars of investments in alternatives companies (often to my loss, but I like them conceptually, so I accept that cost to my portfolio… Right now my “toys” include a wave power company OPTT, an algae oil company PSUD, a ‘trash to motor fuels’ company RTK, and a Thorium alternative to Uranium company THPW) As charts say to ‘be in them’ I trade into and out of FAN (wind), GEX (global alternative energy fund), PBW (clean energy fund) and several others. Oh, and I’ve got some QTWW (an electric car drive train company that also holds some of Tesla stock IIRC). I’m addicted to the field, even if I’d make more money in other areas. Oh, and I own some biofuel stock in Brazil – CZZ.
Advanced coal burning is at best about 40% efficient
See:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html
which claims 50% is possible with combined cycle steam in the exhaust and asserts that there is 70% to 80% possible with combined heat and power with the final stage warm steam for heating uses.
One of my favorite energy storage schemes for utility is CAES. Compressed air energy storage. In Iowa they are building one with an attached wind field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
Did you read your link?
Thus if 1.0 m3 of ambient air is very slowly compressed into a 5-liter bottle at 200 bars (20 MPa), the potential energy stored is 530 kJ (or 0.15 kW·h). A highly efficient air motor could transfer this into kinetic energy if it runs very slowly and manages to expand the air from its initial 200-bar (20 MPa) pressure completely down to 1 bar (0.10 MPa) (bottle completely “empty” at ambient pressure). Achieving high efficiency is a technical challenge both due to nonlinear energy storage and the thermodynamic considerations. If the bottle above is emptied down to 10 bars (1.0 MPa), the energy extractable is about 300 kJ at the motor shaft. The efficiency of isothermal compressed gas storage is theoretically 100% but in practice the process is not isothermal and the two engines (compressor and motor) have additional types of losses.
300 / 530 = 57% and that is done carefully in a lab… You will be lucky to ever see 1/2 of your energy ever again. Not my idea of efficient storage.
Avoiding storage with micro scale combined heat and power is the best approach (uses fossil fuels…). Right behind it is IGCC integrated gasification combined cycle (uses coal and some biomass). Next in line is CTL and using that fuel in a Diesel (best for transportation, can use biomass). Way down the list is wind and solar (though solar is advancing very fast – solar thermal also lets you get some leverage on the sundown problem with thermal mass heat storage…)
The problem with the all of this is that putting fossil fuels off limits puts us way down the list of options into the “not quite ready for scale” ones…
The simple truth is that THE best capital allocator is the market, not the government. Governments allocate capital based on political needs, and that is always worse than the economic allocation of markets. This is not speculation. The “experiment” has been run many many times. Every time command economies fail and market economies (even with their problems) come out much better.
So as much as I would like to have alternative energy power plants, the fact is that it would be a bad economic idea and waste resources that could be better used elsewhere (such as in building water supplies in 3rd world countries or providing “rocket stoves” to the same people to save the forests).
See the Corn Ethanol mandate as a stellar example…
Speaking of how America better get it in gear…
President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday Venezuela signed a $16 billion investment deal with China over three years to raise oil output by several hundred thousand barrels per day….Last week, Venezuela and Russia formed a joint venture to develop the Junin 6 field with a $20 billion investment.
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Oil/idUSTRE58F5MS20090916
Good thing is is that America doesn’t have to sign a deal with Venezuela. We’ve got plenty of oil in Alaska!
Over on Climate Progress, this is what Jeff Green thinks about it all:
From what I’ve seen above, it seems clear that Jeff is the one who is bereft of data.
For starters, on your “5-6 degree business as usual temperature rise” claim, have a look at this graph showing the logarithmic response of CO2 in the atmosphere.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/co2_temperature_curve_saturation.png
Graeme Rodaughan (22:24:56) : @Jeff Green. How do you explain…
Graeme,
You’re asking him to think outside the party-line box. You’re just going to get some semblance of a quasi scientific answer. Like, he’ll bring up the Hockey Stick.
We all know the Hockey Stick, as in, “I visited ClimateAudit and all I got was this cruddy, broken Hockey Stick”. 😉