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Review of solutions to energy problems

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malcolm

Active Member
Nov 12, 2006
3,072
1,760
This:

Ethanol turns out to be the worst type of renewable energy - AutoblogGreen

Got me reading this:

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security (DOI: 10.1039/b809990c)

Top of the list of preferences is BEVs + Wind Generation of electricity.

Hydrogen + Wind gets second place because efficiency is not a heavily weighted criteria in this particular study.

Also slide 8 in this presentation is worth a look: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/0810EnergySeminar.pdf
 
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What's seriously missing from the analysis in this review article is a discussion about cost.

I would expect the largest capital-intensive areas to be nuclear, large-scale hydro and hydrogen.

The first two as more easily quantifiable than the last; we have no idea how expensive hydrogen may turn out to be.

I'm hoping for "prohibitively" :biggrin:
 
Well, my point is that to make policy decisions, you need the whole story. It's of interest to me, as a scientifically literate concerned citizen, how small review articles like this can gain traction, get "summarized" by the media, and then shape what people think. While I appreciate the conclusions of the study, they need to be taken in the proper context. The author admits that he omits several different technologies in his review (some that I think could be important), and as I already said the economic viability of the solutions he ranks is missing, yet critically important.





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we have no idea how expensive hydrogen may turn out to be.

I'm hoping for "prohibitively" :biggrin:
Well it's already prohibitively expensive, but I wouldn't hope that. If hydrogen fuel cells were cheap and reliable, they could have a good position in the marketplace. A technology the article didn't cover is methanol fuel cells. Methanol solves much of the transport and storage problems of hydrogen. Of course it has it's own issues as well.

I really liked this graphic, btw. I know Martin had a similar one in his presentations.

"Area to Power 100% of U.S. Onroad Vehicles"
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I really liked this graphic, btw. I know Martin had a similar one in his presentations.

What's sorely missing on this graphic is a depiction of time. Those crops have to be harvested, the land cleared, fertilized, planted, grown with all the weather and pest problems, and reharvested every year. After year after year...


Is there a term that says pseudo-renewable?
 
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What's sorely missing on this graphic is a depiction of Time. Those crops have to be harvested, the land cleared, fertalized, planted, grown with all the weather and pest problems, and reharvested every year. After year after year...
If you think about it, the time is included in the area.
Unless you're talking about maintenance. In which case, wind and solar also need staff and maintenance. Yeah, I agree that seems likely to be far fewer man hours per year than farming. (I'm not certain, though. Large agribusiness has been around for a while.) But that doesn't mean it takes more time, just that it takes more people.

Is there a term that says pseudo-renewable?
That's probably as good as any.
 
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Well it's already prohibitively expensive, but I wouldn't hope that. If hydrogen fuel cells were cheap and reliable, they could have a good position in the marketplace.

Despite being a pretty big hydrogen critic, I have to agree also. I don't really wish them to be prohibitively expensive, since they can provide a pretty decent alternative if the BEVs don't pan out (after all they are still EVs, just less efficient in most cases).

It's just they don't make sense with the current cost.
 
If you think about it, the time is included in the area. Unless you're talking about maintenance. In which case, wind and solar also need staff and maintenance. Yeah, I agree that seems likely to be far fewer man hours per year than farming.

I don't get you Doug. The effort and resources to grow all that land is a major reoccuring cost. That's nothing compared the annual minor maintenance to Wind Turbines and Solar panels.
 
I don't get you Doug. The effort and resources to grow all that land is a major reoccuring cost. That's nothing compared the annual minor maintenance to Wind Turbines and Solar panels.
I used the word "maintenance" in a general sense that applied to all the technologies. In this context planting more crops each year is maintenance just as is keeping the wind turbines running (if that was the source of confusion). So I think we're agreeing that E85 technologies probably require more maintenance (in terms of man hours per year for a given number of transportation miles powered). Actual monetary cost, not just labor cost, is what counts, though. Solar panels and wind turbines aren't exactly cheap, and have large up front costs. So again, it would be nice to have a proper cost comparison here as well.

But your original statement was that the graphic should depict "time". As if it takes a lot more time to plant and harvest biofuels from the field than it does to wait for photons to accumulate on a set of solar panels to provide an equivalent number of transportation miles. Well it does, for the same size area of land. But this is why the area of the Corn E85 square is so much larger than the Solar PV-BEV square for the same rate of output. It might help to think of the average rate (say over a year) rather than an instantaneous rate.
 
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...So again, it would be nice to have a proper cost comparison here as well.
But your original statement was that the graphic should depict "time"....

These meant the same to me. Maintenance over time. Also the degradation of the land over time. Add in a request on how the weather affects each of these since crops seem more vulnerable than wind or solar over time.