Five myths about green energy

Washington Post ^ | April 25, 2010 | Robert Bryce

[a fool in paradise]

Yup, the notion that electric cars are “green” is an urbanite illusion: they don’t produce pollution in the place you drive them, they produce it somewhere else.

And the scooters they like have worse emissions.

[businessprofessor]

I would like to see documentation for your claims about maintenance costs. Solar plants in the desert require lots of cleaning. I was told that a major solar plant in the California desert did not budget for maintenance causing uncertainty about the plant’s viability.

I also question your assertion about ease of construction. Because these plants are typically located across large areas away from existing transmission capacity, large increases in transmission capacity are necessary. In Texas, there was not a reliable estimate of the costs of transmission capacity. The feds are trying to push the cost of transmission capacity on the general grid, not on the renewable projects that require the additional capacity.

Of course, solar and wind produce no baseline nor peak power. Solar thermal has potential for baseline and peak power generation but the cost of solar thermal is higher. I think that the peak and baseline potential of solar thermal is overblown because bad weather can leave the plant producing no power.

[razorback-bert]

I have seen one of those house at a distance in Roswell, NM. I couldn’t get good picture due to the trees and couldn’t get close to it, because it was gated.

[ExSoldier]

I have seen one of those house at a distance in Roswell, NM.

Maybe it was a buried UFO.

[exDemMom]

Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats.

The wind technologies also kill birds. How many birds are killed by nuclear plants?

[curiosity]

Excellent article, as always.