“It’s time for Congress and the Bush Administration to stop picking our pockets to reward big energy companies and start doing their part by harnessing innovative energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.”
-Anna Aurilio, US PIRG Legislative Director
There’s nothing innovative about using less of something that’s running out instead of developing something new. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of innovation.
“Renewable energy technologies” are in fact anything that’s being replenished faster than it’s being depleted, but usually refer to windmills, solar panels, hydro, solar heating, various waterwheel schemes, geothermal, and the very broad category of “biomass” (burning dead things). Of those, only hydro, geothermal, and solar panels aren’t things that have been in use for hundreds to thousands of years and abandoned for a number of reasons (cost, intermittency, not being able to scale, not working, environmental impact, and (especially for biomass) a lack of supply, to name a few).
-Hydro dams aren’t exactly great for the environment. Plus, hydro too has scaling problems: only some rivers can be dammed, and most of them that can be dammed already are. Those that haven’t been dammed–mainly in developing countries–probably will be, but most places hit a ceiling at about 10%-20% and some have no potential at all. Hydro dams also have problems in droughts.
-Geothermal power uses heat from uranium’s radioactive decay inside the Earth. Currently, water is pumped into the ground near a volcano or other near-surface heat source, and then collected. If somehow heat could be mined from miles underground, and brought to the surface without wasting large amounts of water in the hope that some of it will get hot, then this new source of nuclear energy might become a large-scale source of electricity. But it’s farther away from technological maturity than nuclear fission, and I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to redefine it as non-renewable.
-Solar panels are a new manifestation of all the problems that doomed biomass in favor of coal. High cost–$40,000 for a home system–can be dealt with if extremely necessary, and is of course not the most important consideration in a discussion of merits (but essentially the only factor to a utility seeking to install new capacity). Intermittency, however, is not an economic problem. No amount of market reform can make electricity that isn’t there. When sunlight does not reach the panels, they do not work, and reductions in light levels bring a proportional decrease in power output. Very simple. This means that every watt of solar capacity must be backed up by another source that can quickly be adjusted to follow the panels’ changing output. Coal-fired and nuclear power plants cannot do this; a gas turbine is required to back up every solar panel (and every windmill, and every waterwheel, etc.)–gas from either offshore drilling or unstable dictatorships. Reductions in light levels that cause these fluctuations can come from a number of sources: the atmosphere scatters most of the strongest light (blue light–that’s why the sky is blue), clouds block much of the rest, and things simply get dirty. Furthermore, the original strength of the sunlight is barely adequate. Solar panels are a wonderful source of electricity if you live on the Moon. For the rest of us, it’s more energy than we could ever use–distributed over a bigger area than we could ever collect it from. Building more solar panels in an attempt to compensate is of dubious value–shortages of some of the rare materials used in solar panels have already occurred. For example, raising installed capacity (NOT production) to 5% of the worldwide total would require 30% of global silver output. (Renewables aren’t supposed to have supply problems, are they?) Finally, the land use of a system that would produce anything resembling useful electricity is huge, requiring paving over of hundreds of square miles of farmland, wilderness, or rainforest.
Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Economics, Politics and Regulation
