WH Science Adviser: ‘Cars, Trucks and Planes Are Going to Have to Run on Electricity, Biofuels or…’

Cybercast News Service ^ | June 16, 2015 | 6:58 PM EDT | Penny Starr

[Olog-hai]

John Holdren, President Barack Obama’s top science and technology advisor, said at a White House summit on clean energy on Tuesday that a “global low-carbon economy” by the year 2050 means that “cars, trucks and planes” will be powered by “electricity, biofuels or hydrogen.”

“As we all know, a global low-carbon economy in 2050 is going to have to meet the energy needs of 9 or 10 billion people using technologies that will have to be more advanced than the technologies that are in place today,” he said. “Buildings, agriculture, machines must be dramatically more energy-efficient.”

“Cars, trucks and planes are going to have to run on electricity, biofuels or hydrogen,” Holdren said. "Electricity generation is going to need to come primarily from renewables and nuclear energy.” …

[beethovenfan]

Holdren is an ass (hole).

[PIF]

In comparison to a run of the mill 1,000-megawatt coal/NG plant:

Solar power plant: Each run-of-the-mill 1,000-megawatt photovoltaic plant will require about 60 square miles of panes alone. In other words, the largest industrial structure ever built.

Biomass: Biomass: growing the amount of cellulose required to shift US electricity production to biomass would require farming... an area the size of 10 Iowas or 562,720 sq mi. which is either most of Alaska or California, New Mexico, and Texas.

Wind: the wind equivalent of a typical utility plant would require 300 square miles of turbines plus costly transmission lines from the wind-scoured fields of, say, North Dakota.

None of the power from wind or solar is on demand, and cannot be stored - except possibly in extremely expensive and massive batteries ...

[exDemMom]

In other words, those “alternatives” are not very efficient sources of energy.

Thanks for the explanation.