Somehow, some constructive and positive news about energy happened this week - and no, its not the temporary decline (by ~ 10%) in the price of crude oil. Give it time - it will bounce back, and eventually resume its upward price trajectory. First there was T. Boone Pickens' plan and his website (http://www.PickensPlan.com), and then Al Gore's speech (see previous posting). There was also Jerome a Paris' commentary and further explanation of how either plan could work (see
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4316#more), and Alan Drake's excellent essay on the electrification of a significant part of U.S. freight train lines (see http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301#more). Even Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of a country with an awesome wind resource (Great Britain) but plagued with NIMBY's who don't like to see how their electricity is made, put forth a decent speech on future energy policy.
Anyway, these ideas all make sense with the concept of Peak Oil accepted. By and large, the price of oil, the the price trend into the future, has pretty well settled that debate for the U.S. public - see http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45940. Sure, we'd love another shot of that fabled elixir of cheap gasoline and cheap diesel oil, but we sort of know that the price the bartender has to charge has gone up so much in the last couple of years that we are in danger of losing the shirt off our backs for that slug of the good stuff. Time to move on....
But which way to move? Should we go backwards in time, and use coal in every which way - for gas (City gas used to be made with coal, from coal, water and heat provided by burning extra coal), for liquid fuels (that City gas is a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can be reformed into liquid fuels). The Great Plains Gasification facility in North Dakota is such an example. Or should we go the nuke route - Homer Simpson gone wild, which is John McCain's idea of 750 nukes across America? Should we go back to nature, preceding or following a period of America sort of like those Mad Max movies (well, that was Australia...what do they know)? Or can't we just squeeze those oil fields harder for a few more years, and then it's someone else's problem...
Actually, too late for that. It's our problem now and in the future, and since the world seems to want to imitate America, we are the world's problem, and they also have our fossil fuel problem. Odds are, if we find any solutions - and better yet, implement these, put these into action - well, these will also be implemented worldwide. They probably will be implemented in some countries anyway, but it would be better to do this on a large scale before we thoroughly trash our climate control system and put this country permanently into hock to the Chinese, Indians (from India) and Persian Gulfers, to name a few of the current holders of what used to be known as our money.
So, here's a brief run-down on what is needed for this "Go Renewables!" approach, energy wise. Here is the data on the U.S. Electricity requirements (GW-hrs/yr divided by 8766 hrs/yr for 2006, source is the U.S. Energy Information Agency, http://www.eia.doe.gov):
Coal derived ~ 227 GW
Nuke Derived ~ 90 GW
Ngas Derived ~ 93 GW
Hydro ~ 33 GW
Oil ~ 7 GW
Renew, other ~ 11 GW
For 2006, we averaged 464 GW, though power usage depends on the time of year and time of day. Surprisingly, we have 19.6 GW of pumped hydro (= electricity storage), but only made 0.74 GW of power, on average, using these at less than 3.8% of capacity. Pumped hydro is a great way to buffer variable sources like wind, but it is barely used. It also comes at a cost, because the average efficiency of these is about 80% - for each 5 GW-hr used to pump water up a hill, only 4 GW-hr gets returned. If possible, deferred hydro is a preferred route, though this will vary the water output of a dam.
We used coal burners at 68% of the installed capacity, hydro at 43% of rated, nukes at 85% and Ngas burners at only 21% of the installed capacity. The Ngas and oil burners are more likely to be used as "peakers", and combined, are used about 20% of capacity. Most wind turbines operate at 30% or more of their capacity....
As of mid-2008, we probably have close to 18 GW of wind capacity, making about 6 GW of delivered electricity. How much more is needed?
Firstly, it really pays to be efficient - such as better fridges, more efficient computers, CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs, better insulated houses, better shaded houses (the right tree for the house), setting the AC setpoint temperature up and the heating setpoint temperature down. Doing that will probably allow us to cut electricity usage by 20%, meaning that in an all renewable country (electrically speaking), we have about 371 GW to go..... With 33 GW hydro and 11 GW of "other renewables" (including 6 GW wind), that means there is "only" 327 GW to go. And at a 33% capacity factor, that would mean we would need 981 new GW of wind capacity. If the average capacity of a new turbine is todays value of 1.65 GW, that would be 595,000 of those would be needed, scattered across the U.S., and probably concentrated in the midwest/west coast/east coast. At $2 million installed per MW of capacity, that's about $1.2 Trillion needed to electrify up the U.S. in a renewable fashion.
And, at 10 jobs/million dollars invested, plus a multiplier of 5, that's 7.2 million new jobs over the course of 10 years. Sounds good to me, what's the problem, how come we are not doing this already? The amount of direct dollars spent in IraqNam is already near $600 BILLION...that's half the cost of the Al Gore goal.
Odds are, we would need more wind turbines, as electricity is used more and more in transportation, to make ammonia and other chemicals like methanol, and any chemicals and fules made via reduction of CO2 with renewable hydrogen. And as home heating becomes more and more electrified (ground source heat pumps, air sourced heat pumps), that would also mean more and more electricity demand. But there is nothing but a lack of collective willpower stopping this. With some willpower, we could get Feed-In Laws, and with that, wind projects could get lower cost financing because their future cash flow would be a known item, not a wild-assed guess (not even a SWAG), as is often the case these days. For a review on our 2007 wind turbine costs, see http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/pdfs/wpa/200... and/or http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/pdfs/2007_an...
To me, this sure beats an Oil War any day. Anyway, any comments?