http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/12/teacher_saves_t.html#comment-26079953

No new coal plants are needed and this proves it. Conservation can more than free up enough capacity to power plugin cars.

Adsorption cooling works well in really hot climates with a lot of solar energy, but in most places only geothermal cooling using circulating pumps is needed. In cloudy hot humid climates where ground cooling or adsorption cooling won't do the job, heat pumps that dump heat to the ground are the best way to reduce cooling load.

That solar cogeneration of electricity and heat is the key. Add in solar collector algae biofuel and fuel cell/turbine replacement for coal and natural gas power plants and burning coal and gas as backup for wind and solar becomes unecessary.

Biogas from manure, farm, human, and landfill waste used to power fuel cell/turbines at 75%, that's the first step. That prevents the release of methane from manure and chemical fertilizer runnoff (organic fertilizer that builds the soil is a byproduct of biogas digestors), and methane is 20 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. That huge reduction of methane release from lake and river sediment and landfills makes up for 20 times greater cO2 releases.

That cO2 is then sent into algae solar collectors which produce biodiesl for vehicles and powdered dry algae to send through the fuel cell. The biodiesl CO2 release has already been offset many times over by cutting methane release.

And the biogas adds enough CO2 into the algae system to make up for cO2 lost from the cycle from the biodiesl used in cars.

Lastly the fuel cell/turbine runs on natural gas, coal, or algae filtered from fertilizer polluted lakes and rivers. Helping to clean the present fertilier runnoff out of the ecosystem.

That provides for a transition to all renewable energy as solar collector area and biogas digestor capacity is expanded. Until then cO2 from present coal and natural gas plants can be captured by solar collector algae biofuel cogeneration, that also produces electricity and heat.

The problem of fertlizer and manure runnoff into lakes and rivers is huge, largely unrecognized, but easily mitigated. I wonder if any estimates of the percentage of GHG production caused by this nitrogen pollution is available?

New parameters may be needed to estimate the effect of biogas digestion on climate change.