Posted on 07/30/2008 12:02:28 PM PDT by cogitator
The precipitous rise in oil and gas prices over the past year has made the debate on greenhouse gas emissions moot. The reduction in the output of those gases will move forward at warp speed, not because of rules, regulations and cap-and-trade decrees but because of free markets and economics. (...)
How have we come to this point? Blame it on oil prices and technology. The extraordinary increase in the price of hydrocarbons and coal has created a price umbrella under which competing technologies can flourish. (...)
Today, wind energy is economic at about 7 cents per kilowatt hour. (...) A few years ago, that cost was 15 to 20 cents. Compare the 7 cents for wind energy with the 12 cents per kilowatt hour required to build a gas-fired power plant, and you can see why there is a veritable land rush to harness wind energy. (...)
Across the country, the price of electricity has skyrocketed for homeowners and businesses. This steep increase is creating a wide opening for technologies such as photovoltaics. The cost of this technology has fallen over the past few decades and is about ready for prime time. That retail electricity prices are increasing by as much as 30 percent this year will only accelerate the arrival of the "liftoff" phase of photovoltaics. (...)
Within the next two to three decades, the gasoline-fired internal combustion engine automobile will no longer be sold. Since gasoline accounts for more than a third of worldwide oil demand, the rise of plug-in hybrids represents a mega-change in terms of emissions. Plug-in hybrids are dramatically cheaper to operate than today's cars. They will consume about 2 cents' worth of electricity to travel one mile, compared with the current 20- to 25-cent cost of driving a mile using gasoline. (...)
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Fusion has been nearly ready for 30 years. I even visited the Tokamak facility many, many years ago.
I have a buddy who works for the INEL and he is quite confident that he isn’t going to see a working fusion reactor in his lifetime. Of course changing the funding from millions to billions, getting competing projects and treating it like the space race might change that dramatically : )
A much better short term solution is to start building lots of nukes and coal gasification plants with them.
Seen how well SUVs are selling lately?
Seriously, the current economics are causing many more people to buy smaller vehicles, by choice or not. You can always say that a smaller vehicle will fare poorly in a collision with a larger vehicle. Over time, the percentages of each in the total vehicle population will change.
Can you say whiplash?
for the renewable energy ping list
Wind and solar energy is a hoax. It will forever be a minor source of energy.
That is the dim mantra.
LLS
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
You have any useful and credible links on fusion developments?
When demand is low, (like during the night), water is pumped up the hill into the lake.
When demand exceeds the plant's power production capability the water in the lake is released and it flows down the hill and the motor generator which pumped the water up the hill now generates the electricity that was stored as kinetic energy.
How about this. Windmills along the gulf coast would generate electricity which would hydrolize water into Oxygen and Hydrogen. These gases would be piped to those near desert places like Lubbock, Colorado Springs, OK City, etc. There the gases would be used as fuel for Fuel Cell, (BTW these are some truck borne fuel cell generators for emergency usage). Electricity would be generator and the byproduct, WATER!, would be used for civilian consumption.
Meanwhile for every cubic mile of seawater processed one ton of gold would be recovered. Also bromine chlorine etc.
You squeeze the apple properly and you get more than just the "juice"
I believe that is a myth.
just 1 gram of gold for every 100 million tonnes of sea water
Forgot the link
Thanks for the link!
seeing a comment like this encourages me to donate to FR.
I stopped reading right there. Unfortunately it was near the end of the article.
Excellent answer!
Another question for you, if it’s not a bother.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85PaperEST0207.pdf
It was brought to my attention, that when using E85 in a combustion engine that ‘human carcinogens emitted during gasoline and E85 combustion are formaldehyde,
acetaldehyde, 1,3-butadiene, and benzene’.
Since ethanol is being marketed as a ‘clean fuel’. Shouldn’t these issues be raised?
The major international program is ITER.
Free market my patootie.
It's all baloney:
"The EIA estimates that by 2015, wind energy will cost 7 cents per kilowatt-hour to produce, just a half-cent more than coal or natural gas." (underline mine)
This is from CNN Money no less!
The only way wind works is if the eco-freak gang drive up the price of electricity by government imposition of their Global Warming nonsense.
Interesting article. While it mentions climate change/global warming, it doesn't mention one other main reason to increase the use of renewable/alternative energy; reduction of economic dependence on foreign imports, i.e., less vulnerability to price shocks as well as the slow inexorable increase of oil prices due to increasing demand. If a considerable amount of energy is generated from sources other than oil, that will definitely reduce the price of oil because demand will drop significantly.
“Since ethanol is being marketed as a ‘clean fuel’. Shouldn’t these issues be raised?”
Ethanol is being marketed as a ‘renewable fuel’. That’s its ticket to being ‘green’ - that you can’t use-it-up, you can grow more next season. Generally, I’d say that grain-based ethanol would be essentially pure ethanol; it would not have many impurities.
An internal combustion engine produces small, but significant, undesirable reactions that produce toxic compounds, NOx, SO2, etc. High temperatures and high pressures will do that. And diesel is worse. That’s what your catalytic converter is cleaning up. Using Ethanol will improve, but not eliminate this phenomenon.
Note too that E85 still has 15% gasoline, so you may limit, but not eliminate gasoline-related pollutants.
So, to answer your question directly, it probably does produce small quantities of those chemicals - but no worse pollutants than a purely gasoline powered engine.
One other factoid to pass along: I stumped my family recently in a discussion of fuels. The question: “Why do most fork trucks/forklifts use propane as fuel?”
Answer: Fork trucks are generally used indoors (warehouses mostly) and the propane used produces the least pollutants of any hydrocarbon-based fuel. Of course, Natural Gas falls into this category, too. That’s why the mass-produced Honda CNG car falls into a special category of ‘almost’ pollution-free.
I hope that was helpful, thanks for asking...
cheee
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