Posted on 06/24/2009 8:36:17 PM PDT by pissant
Everywhere you turn there is talk of a shift to renewable energy, of building wind farms and solar plants, of making buildings more efficient, of developing biofuels. And of billions in federal funding to help make it all happen.
This should mean a whole lot of new energy jobs. So where are they—and how do I get one?
The clean energy sector has certainly been on a tear in recent years, and there will be a lot more money flowing in to meet government-backed demand.
Here's the "but":
The recession has walloped the clean energy sector like every other, and no one is going on a hiring spree right now. Companies have shelved plans for wind farms, solar parks and biofuels plants. Some have laid off workers. Others have been forced to seek bankruptcy protection.
Still, this is a growth field, and most agree business will pick up later this year or in 2010.
Renewable energy provides a small fraction of electricity used today but the wind and solar sectors are among the fastest growing in the United States.
Between 1998 and 2007, renewable energy employment grew by about 9.1 percent, according to a recent study by The Pew Charitable Trusts that was based on an extensive jobs database. That still totals only about 770,000 jobs, or about one half of 1 percent of all jobs in the United States, according to the study. And the period under study ended before the recession struck, so it remains unclear how well the new energy sector has fared since then.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Yeah, I keep looking under all the rocks; but I don’t see any.
China?
To power the US, I saw an estimate that said that we would have to have one windmill to cover every square mile of the US.
When money is tight like it is now, people have to do the math.
The investors are pulling back, twice burnt, twice shy.
Yeah...
I’ve been looking for a job as a Network Admin at a windmill, but I haven’t found any openings. I’m currently working at a hospital, which formerly was considered a good stable place to work(especially for IT), but not for long. Since the remnants of our manufacturing will be finished off by cap and tax, healthcare related jobs are one of the few remaining high skill jobs a typical person can get, but we are about to get rid of those too via the government takeover. We are SO SCREWED!
I wonder if any solar panels are hiring?
“..we would have to have one windmill to cover every square mile of the US.”
.
All that BS while we have centuries worth of energy in the ground in the forms of gas, oil and coal.
“Clean” energy must have no BTU’s....just an illusion...
Your number is about right.
US Generating capacity, 2007, 1,087,791 MW
Average windmill capacity, 1 MW
Windmills needed, 1,087,791
Land area lower 48, 2,968,750 sq miles
Sq Mile per Windmill, 2.73
If you assume a 500 kW windmill, you get almost exactly one windmill per sq mile.
The things are horrible monstrosities. Noisy, ugly, destroying beautiful landscapes, kill birds, require roads and wire everywhere.
Just add in the expected future demand, I bet you get there.
About 3 billion megawatt-hours were produced from carbon sources in the U.S. in 2007, so this means about 400,000 such monsters would be needed. They'd probably need to be spaced at least a mile apart, so say 400,000 square miles would be needed.
Only about 10% of the continental U.S. has good wind potential, meaning about 300,000 square miles of windy land. And, almost all of this is in mountainous or plains regions where few people live.
So right off the bat, not enough windy land. Plus we'd destroy 10% of the country as the deeply-penetrating low-frequency noise made when the blades pass by the tower on their down-swing is unbearable and can't be blocked from penetrating houses, normal ear protection, etc.
And add in a local connection grid of 400,000 miles, a whole bunch of substations to step up voltage for long distance transmission, and a new national transmission grid to get the power to where people live, and there you have it!
Oh, and with a 400 ft diameter rotor and turning at only 12 rpm, the blade tips will be moving at about 165 mile/hr. (On one prominent wind power site, the idiots that run it said birds could easily dodge the blades that turn at only 12 rpm, so no worries about 400,000 windmills chopping up all the birds. I guess 12 rpm does seem kind of slow to a junior high school dropout.)
Oh, and of course we're assuming no additional energy growth occurs either.
So, I really wonder where all the extra electricity will come from to power all those millions of new electric vehicles.
Well let's see. 3 trillion miles were driven in 2007 in the U.S., and at .5 kilowatt-hours per mile, that's another 1.5 billion megawatt-hours needed, i.e., another 200,000 80 story windmills, another 200,000 square miles, etc. (The problem is really worse than this as you can probably multiply all of the above by 1.5 to account for transmission losses from windmill to vehicle battery charger, and loses charging and discharging the vehicle batteries.
It's just way too bad that all the elitist liberals flunked their junior high school science classes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.