http://www.microturbine.com/caseStudies/hevCase1.asp

Capstone microturbine generators power electric buses at a much higher efficiency than  conventional internal combustion onboard power plants.

But combined with high temperature direct fuel cells that run on various  fuels  (gasloine, diesel, methanol, ethanol, natural gas) 75% efficiency  is now possible.

http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/IndustryInformation/IndustryInformationExternal/IndustryInformationDisplayArticle/0,1588,287,00.html

So far this technology is bus and power plant size, but there is nothing preventing the development of a 60 kw version to power electric plugin cars except the will backed by capital investment.

75% efficiency instead of the typical 17% efficiency of a normal internal combustion vehicle.

Since most driving is trips under 100 miles between the possibility of plugging in for a recharge from the utility grid and battery technology has reduced that recharge time to minutes, very few vehicles would need the auxillary fuel cell/microturbine recharger. 

 And even  vehicles, such as long hall trucks or cabs, could be recharged for most of the miles they drive from the power grid (even cab and  truck drivers need a break every few hours), only a small percentage of miles driven would rely on the fuel cell/microturbine generator.

This could reduce  the percentage of fuel consumption for transportation to single digits of what is used now, if it replaced standard internal combustion transportation.

Will you soon drive an electric car with an auxillary fuel cell/microturbine that plugs into the trunk for cross country trips?  The dealer plugs it in for your vacation, just in case. 

With more plugin points that operate 24/7 on cards, at rest stops, restaraunts, convenience stores..as well as gas stations, even on longer trips recharging would be easy.  And only take minutes with the latest battery technology.

Recharging while driving

Of course the ultimate recharge solution is power strips right in the roadway, under the asphalt.  Pull into the recharge lane and a pickup coil under your vehicle picks up power from coils under the road surface...as you drive, no need to stop for "gas" (recharge).

This is a pefect electric solution for trucks, buses, (trains too)or long distance driving by car.  With the internet and card accounts the power received would be properly billed to the driver's account.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/12/153637/246#3

400 times http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/uou-bm9102603.php "Bad Mileage: 98 tons of plants per gallon" "Dukes also calculated that the amount of fossil fuel burned in a single year - 1997 was used in the study - totals 97 million billion pounds of carbon, which is equivalent to more than 400 times "all the plant matter that grows in the world in a year," including vast amounts of microscopic plant life in the oceans." Just doesn't seem sustainable somehow.   Some intersections can be dangerous!

5 times And wind resources are 5 times energy used worldwide. http://www.ocean.udel.edu/windpower/ResourceMap/index-world.html "Archer and Jacobson use worldwide weather stations (more accurate than the above GEOS-1 data, but not covering the oceans) and estimate the worldwide land and near-shore wind resource. Their calculation of total wind resource is 72 TW. This is seven tiems the world's electricity demand and five times the world eneregy demand (all commercial fuels and carriers)." This on the other hand would seem sustainable.

How about a Prairie National Renewable Energy Conservation Park.  Where 1000s of huge wind plants spin over a renewed prairie filled with delicious free roaming organic buffalo?

Eat the healthy buffalo meat in lieu of cornfed, unhealthy, feedlot beef.  Use the wind electricity to stop greenhouse gas emmision.  

Enjoy the prairie.   Forever.

The wind plants will be dismatled, removed, and recycled after their useful life of  40 years. 

By then who knows what will provide power?  90% efficient solar panels?  Fusion?  

 At least we will hand off stewardship of a planet earth back in greenhouse gas balance by using wind (and solar, and hydrokinetic power)in the next 4 decades.  Rather than fossil fuel combustion based energy.

http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/nuclear-power-play.html

Well Nick there is a compromise that I have discovered, after many go arounds on nuclear power on various venues.

How about letting the nuclear industry build a few waste processing reactors at Yucca Mountain.  The waste needs to be dealt with anyway.

If they can operate safely, efficiently, and agree to real regulation instead of industry self regulation, then more plants can be considered.

The tradition  of contamination and corruption in the past government/industry operation needs to be eliminated before widespread nuclear power buildout occurs.  Trust must be restored.

Of course this will mean only a few new plants are built in the next decade.  It will be 10 years until they are proven to be safe and safely and economically operated.

Meanwhile that leaves nuclear fission out of the global climate change cure for awhile.  Hundreds of new plants would need to be built to have any signifigant effect.

After 10 years of power generation and waste processing, the lessons learned should be applied to new designs and new nuclear plants should then compete without subsidies with other clean power generatinmg technologies on long term cost, including any fuel requirements and future waste disposal costs.

This is a compromise that environmentalists may be able to  live with, providing subsidies now in place for coal, nuclear, and fossil fuel power are eliminated.

And a substantial portion  of those savings are put into temporary subsidies for wind, solar,and  wave power, large scale electrical energy storage, geothermal heat pump heating and cooling, and conversion from internal combustion transportation to battery electric vehicles.

 

Great Gristmill blog discussion:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/4/0241/31043/#2

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.jaffe.html

"The prospect of cheap cellulosic ethanol makes it possible to envision a very different energy landscape. Since it doesn't require fuel-intensive refining, Iogen's product would provide a net energy gain"

This is a bit misleading.  Actually the Iogen process requires more processing energy than ethanol from corn does.  Which is what it ought to be compared too. 

Sam is comparing it to the energy intensive process of breaking down the cellulose into fermentable starch and sugar using large industrial pressure cooking, similar to the process used to break down cellulose to make paper.

The Iogen process uses a bacteria that works like a natural organism in a wasp's digestive system to break down the cellulose.  That adds an extra  fermentation process which takes more energy than the single fermentation of corn mash.

The lower price of ethanol from  the Iogen process is due to the feedstock, crop waste, wood chips, or switchgrass is a lot cheaper than corn.

And the net energy gain from cellulosic ethanol is from the lack of chemical fertilizer needed to grow switchgrass and the fact that crop waste gets a free ride (so to speak) fertilizer wise, because the cost of the fertilizer is absorbed by the food portion of the crop, the grain or corn.

Monoculture switchgrass taking over the land now in conservation would further devestate the environment and burning more fossil fuel or using more nuclear power to process crop waste will cause more green house gas and other pollution and contamination related to nuclear power.

Only cellulosic ethanol from crop and food waste processed with wind, solar, and by using heat pumps to make fermentation and  distillation much more efficient will be an eco-friendly method.

And taking all that crop waste, normally tilled back in, out of the soil ecosystem will devestate the soil even further than chemical farming already has.  Use up the soil and we are sunk.

The costs, all heavily subsidized, for this cheap fuel could never compete with electric cars charged up with wind, solar, and wave power systems.

And where did anyone get the idea that burning ethanol is that much better than burning gasoline as far as global climate change is concerned?

The fuel cell/ethanol concept seems a good one as far as greenhouse gas goes, except that fuel cells are way too expensive and the catalytic converters to produce hydrogen from ethanol have not been perfected and still may emit a certain amount of CO2.

Wind, wave, and solar powered by the nuclear reactor in the sun is as close as we will ever get to perpetual free fueless non-polluting energy.  And run through electric vehicles and geothermal heat pumps it will beat these other schemes all hollow in every respect.

But that's in a real free market without  government subsidies, hidden as in the cost of war, global climate disaster, and nuclear waste; or  exposed in the form of pork barrel legislated corporate welfare for oil, nuclear, and agri-bizz interests.

Once again, I will repeat, the environmental movement needs to get unified behind the very best energy policy or the powerful interests behind these other subsidized corporate plans  WILL win.

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18976/article_detail.asp

This argument seems accurate and clearly proves the practicality of an alcohol based transportation economy.

He only misses two points, the improvements in battery technology that make electric vehicles (powered by wind and solar electric)even more cost effective, eliminate more greenhouse gases,and foster greater energy independence  than alcohol fueled internal combustion.

The second point he has missed, and this is huge, is that nuclear cogeneration to produce alcohol (from coal or biomass)would move the adoption of this technology  forward at a much faster rate due to the cost advantage from greater efficiency.

But as I said in my earlier comment, for some reason industry has blinders on when it comes to these sorts of inovations.  Even this expert, who has a vastly better understanding than most on these issues, has not mentioned it. 

His argument that americans only replace 17 million cars per year and that any new technology would not be adopted quickly enough to have any practical effect also applies to the FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles that run on any mixture of methanol, ethanol, and gasoline)that he is proposing to replace standard vehicles.

Lets face it, these series of oil wars, climate disaster, and economic ruin that are inevitable with dependence on imported oil are serious enough to justify manufacturing efforts on the scale of WW 2 war production.

And in that case it is possible to replace the vast majority of at least US vehicles within a decade.

If the nuclear industry combines with the biofuel agri-business sector the political and economic push behind it could crush any move towards wind, solar, and electric vehicles.

We could see the US and many other nations around the world knee deep in energy farming and nuclear power, and the resulting eco destruction from mono crop chemical agriculture and nuclear waste and pollution.  As well as vast new markets for coal converted to methanol.

Zubrin's argument is very powerful and very dangerous.  Moving forward as a unified environmental movement toward a green  electric powered transportation economy is more important than ever. 

The infighting and bickering over  issues like Cape Wind, nuclear power, and biofuel is handing victory to the industrial corporations of agri-bizz and nuclear that will benefit from Zubrin's plan.

 

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/2/52324/18981#3

I'm waiting for the big agri-chem-bizz and nuke you ler corporations  to announce that they are processing corn into ethanol using nuke-you-ler cogeneration.

 Waste heat from nukes heating the mash for fermentation and then distilling the ethanol off.  Triple distilling is used so it is a major cost of ethanol and a major energy input.

The industry will report the great news as unparralelled efficiency that lowers costs and greenhouse gas emmissions.

The process of turning cellulose to fuel is even more energy intensive, so that will benefit even more from cogeneration.  And cellulosic feed stock is much cheaper than corn, making this process even cheaper than corn to ethanol.

Say goodbye to a widespread trend towards wind, solar, and electric cars if/when this happens.

In other words, if big ag and nuke execs realize that this will make them the winners in the energy revolution, we could very well be looking at fields and forests turning into energy farms at an alarming rate.

And an excuse to build more and more nuke-you-ler cogeneration powered biofuel plants, that in turn provides an excuse to build more nuke-you-ler power plants.

Good thing few of these  energy execs  ever listen to the chemical engineers that work for them.  Corporations that depend upon technology used to be run by engineers, but now they are run by accountants.

That is the slim edge we have in this fight, but given the huge profits and political power at stake, how long will that be the case? 

Most accountants are technically illiterate petty tyrants it's true, but do they love money and power enough to sacrifice their egos this time around?  Let's hope not.

 

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/01/energy_independ.shtml

The oil mob got 15 billion in the last fiscal year in subsidies, take that away and buy 100,000 electric plugin hybrid cars for government replacement fleet vehicles on the local, state, and federal level. This creates mass production efficiency and cost reduction.

And pay 30% of the cost of small to medium solar and wind systems on homes and small businesses, and give the green energy credits to the owners to help pay for the systems also. More mass production.

Buy solar, wind, and geothermal heat pump systems to power government buildings. It saves taxpayers money on energy and creates mass production efficiencies.

Fund energy purchasing contracts for government electric power use from large wind and solar systems. Spurring more mass production.

Then the manufacturing revival created will in turn boost the tax base, paying the tacpayers back the 15 billion and more.

Apply this amount..saved by eliminating oil company subsidies for 10 years. Exponential demand will start up for these products in a few years. At the end of 10 years drop all the subsidies.

We arrive at the libertarian energy policy in the end. What could be more liberating than every home and business supplying it's own energy needs?

Especially once the systems are payed off, about 10 years, then the power is essentially free.

The (failed)promise of nuclear power? Electricity too cheap to meter?

Well no, because you will still be able to sell excess power back to the utility, maybe even negating the damnable property taxes on your home?

http://www.hydro.com/en/press_room/news/archive/2005_11/hywind_en.html

These are what are needed in the Cape Wind situation.   Anchored a few more miles offshore than the present site,they would not interfere with the residents who object to it.

By scaling the size of each machine up, the extra cost of cables to transport the power would not increase the cost per kwh.  Larger machines that will not be visible from shore are preferable to smaller machines that are.

And by adding a toroidal wave power generator the power would be even less expensive, it could double the amount of kwh produced by each platform.

From a discussion here:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/23/233434/091#11

Capacity factor measures how many kwh (kilowatt hours) a system produces in a given time period compared to how many kwh that the rated power of the system would produce in that same time period under continuous operation.

A coal fired plant typically produces  80% of what it's rated power running continuously would produce.  The site says nuclear is 90%, but what about downtime for maintenance?

Does cutting that 28 foot square opening in containments and replacing inner workings  take months or years?

Wind and solar are typically 30% due to variability of the energy source. 

So what does this mean?  It means that cost per watt of generating capacity tends to be difficlt to compare between generating  systems.

So it is easier to compare kwh per year, rather than power ratings or capacity factor.  That is how wind power contracts are negotiated and verified.

A typical home uses about 10,000 kwh per year.  A 12 foot wind generator operating in 12 mph average winds will produce about 3,000 kwh per year.  That solar panel on the New Jersey home mentioned on my blog produces about 7000 kwh per year.

His panels have an 8.5 year payback period in energy bill savings.  The wind generator would be similar in payback and most of the average home's power use could be obtained from a dual system of this type.

 With solar cogeneration heating domestic hot water and helping a geothermal heat pump provide home heating and cooling, the whole system would produce enough of a surplus of electric power to charge an electric vehicle for household use.

Wind and solar can be scaled up to provide commercial transportation, manufacturing, and heating/cooling energy by installing it on roofs, over parking lots, farms, and industrail sites.

The largest wind machine kwh production levels indicate that the generating capacity needed to power half the present capacity of 600,000 mega watts  (the equivalent of 600 typical nuclear reactors), 300,000 megawatts, could be provided by 15,000  1,000 foot wind machines.

The 15,000 square miles that these machines would be distributed on would constitute less than 2% of the very high windspeed area in the nearly deserted northern great plains.  And 98% of that land area would not be used, only rudimentary roads and the tower bases would be actually used.

Nuclear plants come in at 2,3,4 dollars per watt of generating capacity.  Who knows how high the cost will go, given the fact that new plants are so far impossible to site and finance in the wake of Cherbobyl, Three Mile Island, and revelations about widespread radioactive contamination at various government owned, nuclear industry contractor run, sites like Hanford, Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats ...and on and on.

The equivalent generating capacity per watt from wind (factoring in the 30% versus 80% capacity factor for wind versus nuclear) is at 2 dollars (in the newest, most efficient wind machines)and dropping.  With the mass production of 15,000 units the cost would drop signifigantly. And wind has no fuel or waste.  Cost of wind on that scale would be about 2 cents per kwh.

Half of national  electric power could come from home and commercial building installations of solar and over  parking lots, and the installation of small to medium wind systems.

The other half from these large wind machines.  Nuclear is just not necessary.  And it is far too expensive and dangerous.

That's all without even considering the waste, which could add up to a dollar ( or even more) per kwh generated over 10s of thousands of years of secure storage, not to mention transportation, processing, and  nuclear plant decommisioning.

 

 

Maybe all this infighting in the environmental community has produced a compromise on siting wind and solar power projects. 

No industrial renwable power in natural areas, unless those installations are temporary and a portion of the energy generated goes to remediate land around the wind farms already devestated by agriculture and industry... actually returning destroyed areas to a natural state.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/18/105422/981#2

  How much earth destruction does a particular human activity entail?  

Modifying a human  activity (such as home heating or transportation) to conserve energy should have the same (or maybe a greater) emphasis as powering that activity with green energy.

Most up to date comparisons indicate that the initial cost of wind is higher than coal or natural gas fueled generation capacity.  An independent, unbiased scietific study (with no industry funding or control)of the latest projects ought to be done.  

I think that otherpower.com, the do-it-yourself home wind power builders have attained the lowest intial cost and cost per kwh, with good old fashioned low tech cooperation between friends and neighbors.

As you say the main advantage to wind is zero fuel input.  Wind and solar are nuclear powered, but the reactor, the fuel, and the waste are 93 million miles away, in the sun, where they belong.

An antique Jacob's wind electric machine, running since the 30s, is probably the cost per kwh leader.  (Too low to meter...as the nuclear industry used to tout in the 50s.) Due to the advantage of not needing fuel decade after decade, all that free wind adds up.

It looks like solar panels that simultaneously generate elecricity and heating/cooling capacity covering the average sized home roof, parking area, and southern exposure coupled with a small wind system (under 12 ft in diameter) can produce enough power to equal the per capita personal energy use of the average american.

And enough capacity to power public and commercial buildings, manufacturing, and commercial transportation can be obtained with solar and wind installed on public buildings,at commercial, farming, and industrial sites and over parking lots.

No wilderness land need be utilized.  

In fact an environmental  program ought to be adopted that establishes a 40 year permit for industrial wind that includes remediation of the land around wind plants (don't call 'em "turbines", "plants" are bird friendly).

 If farming or industrial uses have destroyed it, the 40 year time period could be used to restore  the cropland around the machines into a nature conservation area.  In the case of industrial pollution, extra peak wind energy that would normally go to waste can be used to operate compressors that could power filtration systems that would trap and eventually eliminate toxic waste.

A small tax on the wind powered electricity ought to be reserved to retire and recycle the wind machines and the site after the 40 year period is up.  Then that remediated land can stay a natural area.

And no wind machines need to be installed where they interfere with  natural vistas like the ones near the Cape Cod area.  There is more than enough area already devestated by human abuse to meet our energy needs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html?ei=5070&en=8015c341d2572446&ex=1137560400&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1137397543-X1j9/0+ZrKUvmlkFPpTkZA

Mr. Nordhaus is the economist who put the subject back on the table with the publication of a prescient prewar paper that compared the coming conflict to a "giant role of the dice." He warned that "if the United States had a string of bad luck or misjudgments during or after the war, the outcome could reach $1.9 trillion," once all the secondary costs over many years were included.

That is the equivalent of adding 2 dollars per gallon to the cost of gasoline, diesel, and heating fuel over the next 20 years.  But since a gas tax will not be imposed to pay for these oil wars, that debt will be compounded instead.

Lowering the standard of living and gutting the financial health of the USA. 

On the other hand, a national  policy to replace oil with renewable energy would revive our failing manufacturing sector, lower and stabilize energy prices, and instead of raising the national debt to astronomical levels as these oil wars are doing..  actually pay off the debt incurred by this korporate kleptocracy disguised as the bush administration.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

    But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.

If this could be proven, the Bush administration should be history.

But with a GOP majority in the legislative branch that can't happen.  Can this assault on the US Constitution be halted in the 06 election cycle?

If it comes down to actual impeachment will neocons get their friends in Saudi or Syrian intelligence  to stage a minor  terror incident to bolster the president?  After all, they did stage the WMD, flowered greeting, and Saddam connection with al qaeda big lie campaign to justify the invasion of Iraq.

To save their administration would they at least be willing to let a terror attack occur?  Just a little one? 

This recent disposable cell phone terrorism story sure seems staged.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/13/111914/405/#6

If the urgency of global climate disaster impells the use of wind power over any local objections, why does that same emergency not impell us to simply drop controversial projects like this that delay the build out of wind power for years.

With the time and money wasted arguing and litigating over this one wind farm....how many times the power capacity could have been installed where there are no NIMBYs?

And given a wind farm many times the size of the Cape project, that could have already been up and running on the northern great plains, how much closer would we be to the meaty 10% level of the exponential growth curve that chatacterizes the adoption of a new technology?

Investment on a national scale, instead of getting tied down in endless bickering over one wind farm.  Rather than fighting a diversionary battle, move forward with the real home front effort to win these energy wars.

10s of thousands of 1000 foot scale wind machines are needed to really win this battle. North Dakota,South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota...  all welcome wind energy development.

If this green energy revolution is really that vital, and I believe it is, build capacity out where it is actually wanted first.  Then as that 10% level is approached and passed the momentum created will get projects going in places like Cape Cod, without blunting the leading edge of this important movement.

Only 3000 of these very large wind machines across the northern great plains would get US to the level of 10% of total electric power generated by wind.

And last but not least of the reasons to at least modify the Cape Wind project as RFK jr suggests?  

The time and money spent in endless litigation  would be better spent on moving the whole project further offshore, possibly on floating platforms.  That would open up the entire coast line of the US to offshore wind, wave, and ocean current power generation.

If NIMBYs can't see them from shore, it makes everything so much easier.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s03-sten.html

This design features the harvest of biodiesel from the algae that is used to soak up the CO2 from the coal combustion.

a further ptoduct after the biodiesel is natural gas, which can then be stored and burned instead of coal, or better yet run through a catalytic fuel cell to produce electricity directly.

Multi-fuel plants like this that store wind and solar power, in the form of natural gas, can cleanly buffer the times when wind and solar power does not keep pace with grid demand.  And the use of coal can gradually be phased out, but without idling the expensive turbines and generators, they can then burn mainly natural has from algae production.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/6/193649/7888/#12

Projections
Those pessimistic projections tend to move us all closer to ...  the ultimate pessimism.  Death.

Human energy is  better invested in hopeless causes, like this green energy revolution, than in really hopeless causes, like living out self fullfilling disasters, one oil war, climate shift, and terror attack after another.

Break the cycle.

Was the idea of producing millions of ships, planes, aircraft, tanks, trucks, guns  ...and the atom bomb (talk about looking impossible!!) in a few short years, to win WW 2, impossible?

We are in a downward spiral, a cold/hot war over energy.  And there are extra WMDs out there that anyone can buy for the right price.

This production of green energy revolutionary "war" machines needs to be approached as WW 2 war production was.  This is global survival at stake, not just national.

Build the millions of solar panels and geothermal heat pumps, like duuhbya has at his ranch, and millions of wind machines from home size all the way to 1000 foot industrial scale.  And the millions of electric cars, buses, trucks, trains, and yes even aircraft.  

We can win these series of neverending cycles of oil war with a massive war production effort.

No more need for oil, no more oil wars and climate disaster.

All over the news channels!

The same old rummi line.  Repeated by various cable news talking head retired military experts.

These middle managment military retired colonels are spewing this point. 

 If you wear more body armor and have uparmored humvees the bad guys will use bigger bombs...and get you anyway.

They are protecting their friends and relatives, administrators in the pentagon who bought into the neoconman war on the cheap plan. 

Someone has to pay for the mistake of not supplying the very best armor to US troops.  This has been delayed for YEARS! 

And is public knowledge.  The pentagon has finally ordered the new body armor?  Just recently.   Ass covering needs to be done.

All kinds of excuses are being made, but this is the main one.  Repeated over and over..it started with rummi in Iraq. 

Rummi  told the guardsman who asked about the missing armor upgrades, after riding from the airport in a specially super uparmored halliburton vehicle (I bet that one transport contract would have paid for body armor for all of US troops and uparmored humvees!), that fatality in combat is fate, armor does not matter.  If one has your number on it, your time is up.

The more the armor the bigger the bombs the enemy will use.

One aspect of that lie is true...the insurgents have unlimited quantities of explosives.  The shock and awe march to baghdad, neoconman war on the cheap strategery, left saddam's huge ammo dumps full of explosives unguarded.

They were looted, and those explosives provide a practically unlimited supply of improvised explosive devices, IEDs to kill US troops.

The level of criminal negligence in the conduct of these oil wars does rise to the level of prosecution and impeachment.  The fact that this can't and won't happen, makes it clear that the US government has been subverted by a coup.

The US constitution has been suspended since the 2000 appointment of Bush/Cheney.

 

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/6/172045/7999#6

"limit the amount of energy that any household or company may use.  A rational cap would be the amount that could be produced at the site added to what is produce within the political boundary"

An interesting and unique idea.

Personally I think small scale solar, wind, and water power would power my idea of balance, humankind living within it's means in symbiosis with the natural world.  

Enough EXTRA power could be conserved and generated, over and above local needs, to make those areas already blighted by industrial and agribizz destruction provide enough space for industrial energy uses.  

Land devestated by chemical agriculture is many, many times the area needed for wind and solar on land.  And offshore installations can be justified from an environmental stance by their prevention of the use of pond nets that are destroying life in the ocean.

Would it be possible to achieve that state of grace given the virulence of the human infection?  

I say we go for it.  Prove the concept works and fight the hopeless poltical and cultural odds to make that the new norm.

Is there any better hopeless crusade to join?  Nope.  Onward!

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/8/03856/17905#2

Biofuels (from anything but the waste stream or possibly algae grown in solar collectors)are a titanic waste of scarce capital that ought to be going into electric cars powered by wind, water, and solar power.  

As well as a waste of the natural world in the form of agribiz monocrop, genetically modified, pesticide/herbicide eco-suicide.

Biofuels still require combustion to yield useful energy.  And infernal combustion vehicles are inherently inefficient.

In a world at war over oil, it is imperative that a viable alternative be produced.  

That alternative is electric battery power, charged up with green power.  These cars are being kept off the market by the present capital allocation monopoly that favors infernal combustion at all costs.

The agribizz biofuel movement is a scam.  It uses oil, coal, and nuclear power to produce huge government subsidies for nothing but a feel good solution.

Nuclear power (from the sun) charging battery powered vehicles through wind, water, and solar power systems is the safe, economical alternative that is needed to end oil wars and global climate disaster.

And since the cost of electric transportation is about one dollar for an equivalent amount of power provided by one gallon of oil or biofuel energy, merely removing the subsidies from fossil fuels and nuclear and applying even a fraction of that wasted capital to kick start this green electric revolution, will have 5 major problem solving effects.

1.  Jobs.  Manufacturing jobs will return along with the buildout of green energy.  Millions of electric cars, heat pumps, solar and wind installations, and electric vehicles woll need to be manufactured.
2.  Global climate change from CO2 greenhouse gas due to fossil fuel combustion will be halted.  The costs in terms of storm damage and lost economic growth may be the biggest hidden expense of ALL from fossil fuelishness.  100's of trillions, Katrina's costs are rumored at 2 trillion now?
3.  The US economy will boom without the endless oil wars and ever increasing oil prices draining effect.  Stable energy prices for decades to come will dispell fear of fear itself and restore investor, consumer, and business confidence.  Fear of terror over oil has a huge negative effect on confidence in the economy.
4.  Standard of living.  Having ones own solar panels, wind generator, and electric car will be like owning ones own home instead of renting.  Buying increasingly expensive energy from corporate monopolists is like renting and having the rent double every few years, natural gas, heating oil,gasloine, and diesel all doubled in recent years.

And that "rent" money is GONE!  Money invested in solar, wind, and electric vehicles just keeps on yielding higher and higher dividends over the years, restoring the standard of living lost to job outsourcing and soaring transportation and heating and cooling costs.

5.  Quality of life.  All life on planet earth will benefit from an end to the devestation that fossil and nuclear power wreak upon nature.  We are all a part of the natural world, as inseparable as our individual breath from the breath of mother earth.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydro_develops_.html#comment-12614499

These large floating platforms can have wave power generators built into the base in order to double the power output per platform. And tidal current generators extending below them.

For energy storage try this idea, electric plugin cars, trucks, trains, buses... as a national distributed battery. Each home or business with plugin vehicles would also have it's own emergency power ... grid outage due to increasing weather volatility is a very signifigant fact eroding economic health.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/12/19/1455214.html.html

Floating platforms are also further offshore where NIMBYs will not see them. And placed in the path of pond net fishing fleets could save the national fisheries from this destructive industrial fishing that is scouring the seas of life... killing off 1000s of species in order to harvest a few to extinction for short term bottonline considerations.

No other solution...negotiation, threats.. have been effective in stopping this grave threat to all ocean based life.

The more selective, careful fishing techniques of responsible fishermen, regulated by environmental laws, will then protect a stable, sustainable food resource.

These smaller operators are being shut out by the illegal pond net fishing.

Posted by: amazingdrx | Jan 6, 2006 2:57:13 AM

 

http://msmith.typepad.com/smithelectricco/2005/07/one_year_lets_r.html

A huge part of this quick payback is the New jersey policy of letting homeowners sell their own clean energy credits.

Serious campaigning needs to be done to get this incorporated into every states energy policy for green energy.

Here in Wisconsin the power company gets those credits, but are they the ones who pay for the system?  nope.

It's little details of public policy hardly even noticed by legislators that make the difference to a green energy revolution.  Our representatives do not even read the legislation they vote on.  So maybe a public campaign that makes them stand up and do the right thing might help.

Almost all legislation is written by industry lobbyists, that's the sad truth.  Corporate "citizens" are the only ones represented by politics for hire.  And they are not even real citizens.

Has a corporate "citizen", like enron or halliburton, ever been sentenced to prison?  That's impossible right?

So why do these "citizens" have more rights than the rest of US?  A perrmanent get out of jail free card.  No wonder they steal the mega sums they do.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/12/25/22501/989#2

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?ex=1135746000&en=85c1fc6177dd927f& ei=5070

"Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html?ex=1135746000&en=53334bb47adc9f11&e i=5070

"Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html?ex=1135746000&en=0184c4f98727565d&ei=5 070

"The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/politics/25wiretap.html?ex=1135746000&en=d2ae725096562244& ei=5070

"Congressional officials said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National Security Agency had gained access to some of the country's main telephone arteries to glean data on possible terrorists."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25bamford.html?ex=1135746000&en=0267ffdbbdeb2c92& amp;ei=5070

"Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country."

The Bush administration war on the US constitution.  Be afraid!

http://www.sprol.com/?p=291#more-291

There were five radionuclides that contributed the most to radiation dose from the river pathway (dose is the amount of radiation absorbed by a person's body). The five radionuclides were phosphorus-32, zinc-65, arsenic-76, neptunium-239 and sodium-24. The Dose Reconstruction Project estimated that these radionuclides accounted for more than 94 percent of the potential radiation dose from the river pathway. There were many other radioactive materials released into the river as well.

The nuclear fuel consisted of fuel "elements" which were less than two feet long and encased in metal. There were thousands of fuel elements in each reactor. The increase in the reactor power levels put more stress on the fuel elements. Under this stress, the metal covering could split and allow small chunks of the radioactive fuel to be flushed into the river with the cooling water. The largest chunk weighed more than a pound. There were nearly 2,000 fuel element failures during the operation of the eight original plutonium production reactors.

Were any terrorist organization to acomplish sabotage on even a fraction of the scale of this one disaster caused by the nuclear industry, the secret prisons operated by the duuhbyaist regime would be filled to the brim overnight.

Does anyone doubt that?

And yet no one has ever been held responsible for even one of these nuclewar waste disasters. 

How about a nuclear plant in your backyard?  No?  Not even if your beloved leader whom gaaawd speaks through commands it?  Hehey.

New plants are being planned right now in the faithfilled southland.  They need the jobs.

 

The beauty of electric plugin vehicles is that they would also serve as a huge national distributed battery.

All connected to the grid when parked, 100s of millions of cars would provide energy storage to buffer inconstant wind and solar power inputs. 

And when your local power went out from a storm (it happens 4 or 5 times per year here) threatening to freeze your home in winter, the  huge capacity (80 kwh or more, enough to power your home for days) in your electric car's battery has you covered until things are repaired.

When 50% of the US does drive plugin electric cars, that will amount to days worth of energy storage across the country, allowing renewable energy and electric power demand fluctuations to be adjusted with backup fossil and hydroelectric sources.

Even the American Wind energy Asociation, an advocate for wind power, admits the supply interuption problems with going over 20% renewable power use on the grid.  These car batteries would push that theoretical limit way up!

Maybe only 20% of power will come from fossil fuel someday?  That would be very good for mother earth.

http://www.gvea.com/projects/bess.php

This proves it, utility scale battery energy storage is practical and cost effective.  Now bring on the wind power.

This Alaska based utility company is doing that also.  How will it all work together?  It will be fascinating to find out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/opinion/16kennedy.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors

The capital invested in this project, financial and political, would be better spent on wind installations and power distribution upgrade in the northern midwestern plains.  No NIMBYs, hardly any people in fact!

His idea for siting farther off shore is a good one, but will not beat the low cost of plains based energy.  And distribution grid upgrade on the plains can form a loop to attach thousands of wind machines to the grid, more efficient and cheaper than a really long cable way out in the ocean.

And what about the crucial invention for renewable energy?  Energy storage.  High profile spokespersons for green energy ought to be pushing reserach in this area.  Superconducting energy storage is a practical technology that needs capital intensive government and private industry backing.

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=825

Energy CS's 150 mpg Prius plug-in hybrid. Valence Saphion (tm) lithium-ion batteries were installed in place of the Prius' 1kWh NiMH battery pack, which is located under the rear passenger seat. The car is a proof-of-concept prototype, which will make its official debut at the 21st Electric Vehicle Symposium in Monaco next month. The plug-in hybrid concept lets the car run further on electricity stored from the electric power grid instead of gasoline for the first 50-60 miles, effectively tripling the miles per gallon performance of the car.

With ever improving battery technology plugin hybrids will soon gove way to full plugin electric cars.  With no infernal sombustion or greenhouse gas emissions.  But these plugin hybrids at 150 mpg are exactly right at this moment in time.

 http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14294&hed=Battery+Pumps+Up+Power+Toolshttp

A123 uses a nanotech material called doped nano-phosphate, and the Watertown, Massachusetts-based company says its battery will recharge 90 percent of its capacity in five minutes. The battery is also lightweight, weighing in at less than 1 kilogram for a battery that provides 1.5 kilowatts of power, according to A123.

This lithium ion battery installed in vehicles will replace gasoline and diesel fuel.  A 5 minute recharge gets you back on the road.  Just as convenient as filling up with gas, but the equivalent to a gallon of gas in electricity  only costs one dollar.

That's with high electric costs that come from fossil fuel and nuclear power too.  Wind power costs a fraction of the price of the dirty power we use now.

Mass production, by an american company, of these batteries installed in plugin electric cars manufactured right here in the USA would have the manufacturing base growing back up to healthy levels.

And no more need to pay higher and higher prices for imported oil, in lives and huge national debt!

amazingdrx - 10:40 AM ET December 4, 2005 (#45718 of 45718)

Saddam is being tried for murdering a couple 100 Iraqis after an assasination atempt.

Bush was reelected after murdering 10s of thousands of people because "Saddam tried to kill my (his) dad".

That fictional assasination attempt was a lie cooked up by Chalabi.

As were all the other excuses for the Iraq fiasco. Notice Chalabi's snickering and gloating when asked about his lies?

Rape rooms, humans shredded in plastic shredders, WMDs, people fed to dogs, Saddam complicity in 911.... all part of bushco inc lies to get their corporate hands on Iraqi oil?    

By murdering 10s of thousands of people, most completely innocent.

According to McNamara in the documentary,"Fog Of War", General Lemay told him that if the allies had lost WW 2 the two of them  would be tried as war criminals for instituting fire bombing of civilians.

Of course the enemies in WW 2, the axis powers, were a REAL threat to the free world.  Iraq was a fake threat to the free world.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/12/2/123612/225#5

There it is.  The half joking comments by the nut wing that once the arctic ice is gone, oil tankers will have shorter routes.  And think of all that Siberian and Canadian arctic coastal and offshore oil that will become available.

They neglect the important fact, that those past ice ages were caused by natural phenomena like volcanoes and meteor strikes.

This current climate disaster IS a result of human activity and thus preventable.

Limbaugh's argument is very powerful, maybe he has switched his drug intake to more natural sources.  No more oxycontin rants?  Hehey.

What he should say about arctic ice and ocean currents is that when the gulf stream slows the heating effect in the northern regions will be diminished and the ice restored.  Nature is self correcting.  Look for that next.

Of course we can still defeat that argument against green energy by pointing out that it is economically and culturally beneficial to halt the human contribution to this global climate emergency.

In purely capitalist terms, the cost in reduced economic growth from storm, drought,energy wars, and rising ocean levels justifies the shift to green energy that eliminates the human contribution to global climate change from greenhouse gas emmisions.

It's the best course for business as well as each traveler on spaceship earth.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/11/25/202912/19#2

Biofuel from the waste stream made with wind and solar power are still a great idea.  I am opposed to agrichem biofuel too, even though I'm in favor of biofuel from waste.

When the waste stream biofuel runs short of demand, then coal can be refined cleanly with the same wind and solar powered technology to produce a blended fuel that will work in regular gasoline and diesel motors.

This would eliminate imported oil.

As plugin electric cars come into wide use, the percentage of transportation energy obtained from fuel combustion can be reduced so that eventually oil and even coal are no longer needed.

And with the mass production of the new lithium ion nano tech quick charge batteries, a fillup of a plugin electric "gas tank" will take only a little longer than filling a regular gas tank.

That means no more fuel will be needed.  The remaining biofuel production can be reserved for specialized uses like air travel.

A distinction needs to be made between agrichem based biofuel and boifuel produced from waste with green energy.   Regional green biofuel and coal extracted fuel would establish freedom from the economic tyranny of monopoly based neo-corporate empire and it's krazy kristian oil krusade.

Region by region progressive areas could get off their oil addiction and leave the regions paying 5 bucks per gallon for fuel and yearly double digit increases in heating and cooling bills in the financial dustbin of history.

Let 'em fund bushco and its saudi/opec cronies.  See how long that lasts in free economic competition with whole regions powered with inexpensive, clean, green energy.

Only when this starts happening will politicos be forced to level the playing field for alternative energy.  Until large numbers of voters actually see the benefits of green energy, the system of subsidizing big oil, nukes, and coal backed by bribery will surely continue.  And no real reform energy policy will be instituted.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/11/3/92411/0383#1

If VW does it, can mass production of lithium ion hybrid batteries be far behind?  Maybe even mass production of the fast charge Hitachi lithium ion battery?

That paves the way for affordable plugin electric cars that have the range and performance needed to compete with hybrids.

But the final blow to hybrids that use infernal combustion as the main power source is a plugin biofueled generator that substitutes for half the batteries in a plugin electric vehicle so that long trips without stopping to recharge become possible.

A battery pack in the trunk, for instance, that slides out and the biofuel generator slides in.  No more main oil burning power source needed.

You visit your dealership and do the swap out for your vacation trip then swap back when the trip is over.  That would leave maybe 1 in 10 cars actually needing the generator pack at any one time.

People who drive more miles than the plugin system would accomadate without recharge could just leave the generator in place permanently.

Well well, we were right all along.  Somehow this disaster disguised as an administration has taken the joy out of being right.

Mass death over lies tends to do that.

Yes it's true. 

He believes in choice...between semi-auto and full automatic fire for all americans.

He ruled that the federal government has no authority to outlaw the ownership of machine guns.  Back to the roaring 20's you all, neeehaaaawww.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/10/5/15453/7223#2

This sort of system lends itself to local power producers, those with wind, solar, and biofuel resources, teaming up with consumers in electrical cooperatives.

Producers and consumers, many members both producing and consuming owning and controlling local area power grids.

Think of farmers with manure digestors that produce natural gas, running generators to sell power to their neighbors with wind or solar power systems when the wind isn't blowing or the sun is not shining.

This could all fit together, even to the point of members producing ethanol or biodiesel from the waste stream to sell to other coop members.

And lots of small businesses would build and install the systems.

Starting out with small solar or wind systems that only replace a fraction of grid power in the home, reducing energy bills while paying their way in a few years from savings.  As people become more comfortable with small inexpensive systems, they could then add on capacity, until gradually a local area grid supports itself with no outside input.

Given the complete and utter incompetence and corruption of government and big monopoly business, especially when they work fist in glove as this neoconman regime does, locally is the only way this energy revolution will ever get started.

Eventually local coops could pool resources to invest in larger wind, biofuel, and solar projects, replacing the old monopoly companies completely.

Practical problem solving political action on the local level sells itself.  There is where the poltical base lives.

If  local green energy groups helps people convert to solar, wind, and biofuel energy and cut energy bills at the same time, that trumps lofty political principles.

If a political party supports government policy to make a more friendly financial environment for this to happen, votes will surely follow.

And small businesses building and installing the systems with equipment supplied by a revived american manufacturing base will result.  Remember the 90s?  The internet boom funded a pay down of the national debt.

But that boom went bust, only so many people needed the latest greatest internet technology.

This green energy boom is huge, replacing all that ever more expensive oil and natural gas.  It is more than a bubble.  It's a huge wave of prosperity, earth friendly prosperity.

Economic growth from biulding quality rather than consumption and quantity.  Energy conservation and human productivity driving this wave.  Let it roll.