Renewables are great - for powering fantasies

Wind. Sun. Hydrogen. They are odorless, tasteless, invisible and abundant. And they can be harnessed to generate electricity, power cars and heat homes. So, hey, let's stop dallying! Replace those shameful fossil fuels with clean renewables. What is taking so long?

That was the gist of a series of passionate editorials in The Dallas Morning News during the past several weeks. Read them, and you might wonder what is wrong with those blockhead politicians and energy executives.

But there is a reason that renewables, despite a history of generous government subsidies stretching back to 1982, haven't made a dent in the dominance of oil, gas and coal – which together account for 85 percent of the energy used in this country. The reason is cost. As energy sources, wind, sun and hydrogen are hugely expensive and inefficient. Fossil fuels aren't.

In fact, thanks to new technology and better management, oil and gas companies – many of them, of course, based in Texas – have figured out how to bring fossil fuels out of the ground and refine them more and more cheaply. That is good, not bad. Abundant, low-cost energy is the key to prosperity, and prosperity is the key to cleaner air and water, as numerous studies, including a survey of 117 countries by the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, have shown.

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and places like Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico have tremendous potential for oil and gas exploration, which now has minimal impact on the environment. Yes, there is a lot of wind and sun here, too – not to mention hydrogen. The problem is turning those fuels into usable power.

Let's not deceive ourselves. At this point in history, renewables aren't a serious source of energy. While we should encourage more research, we shouldn't succumb to the wishful fantasy that the wind or the sun will power America's toasters.

Scientists Mike Oliver and John Hospers, writing in the American Enterprise magazine, use an apt analogy: "There are untold millions of tons of gold in the earth's oceans. Why aren't we taking this gold from the seas? It is the dilution that stops us. If we can't obtain at least $8 worth of gold from a ton of water, we will go broke from the costs of extraction."

Wind, solar and hydrogen are examples of dilution in the extreme. Wind is so intermittent and tough to harness that a wind farm that could produce 1,000 megawatts from thousands of those ungainly propeller-driven turbines ("eagle choppers," as some wags call them) would extend, according to Environmental Protection Agency research, over 400 square miles. A similar coal plant would take up just 10 acres.

Sure, the sun is bright in the California desert, and that is why a solar plant was built at Barstow a few years ago. It occupied 75 acres and cost $200 million to build, yet it generated only $1.7 million worth of energy a year – until the companies and government agencies that subsidized it shut it down.

The United States now generates 8 percent of its power from a category that the Energy Information Administration calls "renewables." But nearly all of that power comes from water and "biomass," mainly wood. Wind and solar each represents less than 1 percent – not of the total power but of the power generated by renewables!

Denmark, as The Morning News editorials pointed out, gets "a remarkable 13 percent" of its electricity from the wind. True, but the real story, reported earlier this month by the Economist magazine, is that Denmark has soured on the experiment, and "plans for three offshore wind power parks have been dropped" by its new government.

Similarly, The Morning News wants to subsidize solar cells "in the manner of Los Angeles Power and Water." But The Washington Post reported last year that this noble experiment to make Los Angeles the "solar capital" of the world, with 100,000 roofs covered by solar electric panels, has been a dismal failure. In the first year of the program, only 40 homes adopted the panels, despite subsidies averaging $8,000 per family.

Why? According to The Post, "In the real world, most systems don't pay for themselves in a few years, as some advocates claim, but take 20 years or more to return their initial cost in the form of reduced utility bills."

The truth is that, at least for the next few decades, renewables like wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cells will be boutique sources of energy – curiosities available only to the few who want to pay the exorbitant cost or to those who live in states where politicians are willing to socialize those costs by making all taxpayers shoulder them.

The economic rewards for making wind, solar and hydrogen commercially viable are immense, and many companies – often with government aid – have sunk billions into the attempt. But the science and technology just aren't there. We don't need more subsidies and special breaks for the renewables industry.

Nor should the fossil fuels that dominate the energy scene be demonized. The companies that find them and turn them into electricity, gasoline and diesel fuel aren't owed any favors, but neither should they be denigrated or embarrassed. They are fueling the main engine of the world's economic growth – growth that leads inexorably to cleaner air and water, better health and more comfortable and productive lives. Texans should know that story better than anyone else, and they should be proud.

James K. Glassman is host of the TechCentralStation website (www.TechCentralStation.com) and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

"The coming widespread use of the hybrid power source in automobiles (such as Toyoto's Prius which now gets more than 50 miles per gallon in town and on the open road) is more efficient than fuel cells and will be cheaper."

I rather doubt these hybrids will ever make it into widespread useage without the imposition of draconian measures forcing their adoption. The problems with highly fuel efficient automobiles are cost and utility. You can buy cars today that get high gas mileage. Most sit unpurchased on dealer show rooms. Algore was found of saying in the debates that automakers was eager to make 80 MPG cars. The problem is that consumers aren't eager to buy them. They're small and underpowered.

I have a surefire way to make wind power economical-have the government pay me to go fishing every day. You could light up New York City with the wind that blows whenever I am on the lake. The strange thing is that the wind stops when I quit fishing, so I guess that I will have to fish 24 hours a day.

I think the current popular support for fuel cell technology is idiotic. Nuclear and fossil fuels are our current best bets for power generation.

Sometimes, however, renewable technologies can be employed locally for good effect--low head hydrodynamic is the best example which pops to mind.

Oil has, at most, two more decades to be king.

Let's see. This was said prior to WW II. It gained popularity during the Carter oil "crisis."

It now surfaces on FR, where I thought most people knew better.

It is nothing but "Barbara Streisand."

There were one or two ( tag team? ) newer members who kept referring us to a website that promised all sorts of breakthroughs in wind-powered generators. Claiming they were now competitive with oil-fired steam plants.

What they didn't mention was the wind's variability and unreliable nature.... among other things.

I certainly don't oppose alternative types of power generation, I just know from 30-plus years of watching it that it's usually too costly, too unreliable, or too complicated to compete with oil, gas, hydroelectric or nuclear power on a large scale.

The most efficient and yes the least polluting means of generating electricity is (gasp) nuclear power.

One reason nuclear power has been not our main meansd of producing electricity (aside from the kooks in birkenstocks waving signs saying "split wood not atoms") is that every nuclear reactor operating in the US is a one off design.

France, which produces some 20% of its electricity from nuclear power, used a basic single design for its reactors. Yes, there were improvements in succeeding models, but the basic engineering is much the same for all plants. This allows for better training of operators and lower construction costs.

Current computer assisted design technology and state of the art engineering could allow the production of very efficient, easy to operate and SAFE nuclear plants. However, the required mountain of government paperwork and the environmentatist wackos making every attempt to block the construction of nuclear plants will keep us chained to fossil fuels for a long time.

What they didn't mention was the wind's variability and unreliable nature.... among other things.

Back in the late '70s a rather wealthy fellow put up a wind generator just off 45th St. and a block off the seawall in Galveston behind his home. Nice breeze most of the time. It proved to be so ineffieicnt that it is no longer there.

If I understand correctly, radioactivity DECREASES over time, so what man does is gather naturally occuring radioactive materials and use the decay process of a large quantity to produce power. This should mean the enviroment is actually improved , since fewer trees need to be cut, oils wells drilled, windmills erected, etc.

I think part of the desire for renewables is the desire to be free of the monthly utility bills; in my case ,the government allows me to use a large enough land area that wind-driven generators, biomass gas converters, alcohol stills, solar panels, and low-head hydroelectric turbines COULD provide ALL the energy my family could use. Of course, the initial costs of construction of all these things would be many times more than the cost of purchased energy.

I say , allows me to use, BECAUSE, if I do not pay property taxes every six months on the land and improvements like buildings and energy gathering devices, the gov't will send a man with a gun toi take it away from me. (This is why property taxes are a great evil;I pay tax on my earnings,tax again on my purchases, and yet more tax for permission to keep my purchases.)

Many arguments for fuel cell powered vehicles miss your point that you have to use energy to create hydrogen, more than you will get back. The overall process is fairly efficient, better than a gasoline engine, but still the fuel cell is more of a storage battery than a power source.

The problem, as cod aptly points out in post #9, is the storage and transport of hydrogen is problematic at best and frought with danger. Hydrogen is very light (it makes good dirigibles, except for the transport thing) so it is hard to carry enough poundage to get significant range.

"I notice the article completely left out nuclear which, while not renewable"

Except, of course, using breeder reactors, which are even more 'evil' than the ordinary sort. Just ask Jimmy "Nu-cu-lar" Carter.

--Boris

"Which is exactly why the "hydrogen economy" is an important feature of the total energy package--STORAGE and transmission of energy with hydrogen solves your "demand" problem. "Load-balancing" then becomes an inherent part of the transmission system. It also is more efficient for transmission over long distances, and works for nuclear as well (no more need for load-balancing gas turbines--just design the nuke plant with a larger capacity factor)."

Hydrogen is just a big storage battery--which must be charged by electrolyzing water using fossil fuels or nuclear plants.

Forget the middleman and go directly to all-electric vehicles as a thought experiment. No longer can you load-balance with, e.g., hydrogen production. The extra generating capacity you would need to supply all of the vehicles in the U.S. is 500,000 megawatts, roughly 500 brand-new 1,000 megawatt nuclear plants. With hydrogen, the situation is WORSE, since electrolyzers run at ~70% efficiency (tops) meaning you would need ~714,000 megawatts.

--Boris

"I can only begin to list all the safety hazards of dealing with LH2."

Don't forget that it is 11 times less dense (as a liquid) than plain old gasoline. It delivers 3 times as much energy per pound but that still leaves you 11/3 = 3.6 times LESS efficient (volumetrically) than gas. In other words, for the same range your fuel tank must be almost 4 times larger.

If you try to use compressed hydrogen gas, it becomes even more absurd.

--Boris

Gov't rules have prohibited many small-scale hydro plants ,for instance a creek of some size runs ALONG one side of my property, but I may not even get rocks out of it without gov't permits these days, much less build a hydro-powered generator.Out West, many areas suffer(ed)? under prohibition of private hydro plants because of utility "rights" to all hydro power. The REA mandated? destruction of private wind-powered generators as a condition of hooking up to the new rural electric co-op lines in the past. Not unlike the local water utilities that as a condition of service demand you stop using any private well, cistern or pump on your property. (Using your existing cistern (for multi-day reserves)and pump apparently allows dangerous freedom. . The old timers used the creek rocks for building materials ,etc , but the environuts are everywhere. The environuts are in league with big gov't and big utilities; part of the problem is those types don't want anyone to opt out of the system. They see my private well, septic tank, wood-burning stove et al , as anti-social. Even the so-called alternative home magazine are filled with cautions on obtaining the proper gov't permits before building anything.

Only in the rural areas is the land to people ratio likely to make home power practical ; I think it was that way before FDR.Someday Americans may realize just how much of our nation he destroyed.

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