The renewable delusion? Or is it the solution?

[FabianPattberg]

I wanted to kick of this new forum with a question on renewable energy.

There are people who argue that wind farms will devastate the landscape and biofuel is even worse then fossil fuels. Their argument on wind farms is that
will need enourmous amounts of land to produce the necessary energy. And they go on by saying that damming rivers for hydro power dams are amoung the most harmful to the lanscape and only prodoce low amounts of watts of power per square metre.

What is your opinion? Do you know of any other research? What is your experience in living close to wind turbines or hydro power stations?

[Corey]

I think the energy sources would not be an issue if there were a couple of factors that were addressed.

Sheer number of humans and the over consumption by the living humans.

If these two things were addressed I could see these renewable energy being feasible. I have witnessed a renewable resource being over exploited and thus become devastating to the environment.

This specific example: It has to do with the wood pellet burning stoves for heating homes.

The demand for the stoves exceeded the renewable levels of the waste wood from industry.

In stead of having the industry saying that that is enough people using said energy(due to greed and pursuit of profit) Industry looked for alternatives. Cash crop, particularly, corn.

Unintended consequences as a result. Competition for food, land use being dedicated to heating that was not when only using waste saw dust. Everything associated with raising corn, in that if they had capped the market at the energy limit of saw dust there would be no need to grow the corn specific to heating.
This is how a renewable energy became unsustainable and NOT green.

In case of wind mills consider that concrete is extremely environmentally unfriendly. Off shore windmills will cause sound pollution especially when installing. If there is any vibration in the windmill the vibrations will transfer to the ocean as noise disrupting animal communications.

The key to having a renewable resource is simplify, reduce consumption, if it can't be simplified then don't use it.

Think I need to join a think tank , I am willing to address the hard issues, that people do not want to talk about or take action. Only problem is others don't take me seriously in that Where are my credentials, education and measurable experience.:(:peace:

[Cvanmilligen]

In a free market, capitalist system how does one cap the market for wood pellet stoves? When the consumer purchases more heating units than there is fuel available the price of the fuel increases and alternatives are sought. Both happened in this example.

44 new wood pellet production facilities are being built in the USA right now. Soon the supply of wood pellets will approach the local demand. What is driving demand in the USA now is the purchasing of pellets by EU countries, especially Italy and Germany for large scale power plant fuel.

Perhaps new technologies in the EU will reduce the demand for pellets and permit the reliance on alternative fuels on the continent. I can suggest biomass in other forms as clean and reliable fuel. This would include animal manure, soiled cardboard, waxed materials, rice hulls, cotton gin trash, and other byproducts currently difficult to recycle.

As long as landfills, open burning and ocean dumping are used to dispose of unwanted materials there will be a need for recycling for feed, fertilizer and fuel. They might was well be used to produce clean energy. Yes, we know of the technologies to employ these fuels. In fact we own some of them.

Regards,

Cornelius A. Van Milligen
Kentucky Enrichment Inc
Kentucky Enrichment Inc. / Rural Innovations Inc.
cavm@aol.com

[NatMitchelo]

Even vehicles running on 100% bioethanol or biodiesels would offer only small improvements to the net addition of atmospheric carbon. As it is, many biofuel blends are less than 10% bioethanol/biodiesel. The publicized advantages of this technology are offset by negative environmental impacts such as the energy required to harvest and transport biomass to production facilities, the energy intensive conversion of biomass to usable fuel, and further transport post production. The volume of biomass required to produce biofuel on a large enough scale would require vast amounts of land, possibly lead to further deforestation and production of biofuel crops would compete with food production. And in the end we still churn out the carbon dioxide!

I believe that biofuels have given environmentally-minded people a false sense of reassurance that they are making a positive contribution. Instead of investing in more bioethanol production plants, why not perfect the cleanest and most direct renewable energy technology we have available - photo voltaic or solar cells?

Sure, the Earth's population is placing a huge demand on resources and is unsustainable, but who can choose who has the right to live on it? Maybe people who place little demand on our energy would be best, or maybe only people with an IQ over 150 with a college degree...?

These 'hard issues' have no obvious solutions, and so far we have proven ourselves too immature to unite to consider the future, independent from the economics of it all.

[Cvanmilligen]

Mat, while PV cells in economical systems woud be an excellent alternative to fossil fuels and CO2 output, I don't make PV cells. I don't know anybody who does and if I did, I don't know what I could do to encourage them.

I suppose I could lobby for a government solution but while we are all doing without electricity and diesel fuel waiting for that to come about I thought I might make a little of both.

My friends in California took it upon themselves to install PV cells at no charge on homes in the state. They relied upon the state program on incentives which effectively make the PV cell, material and labor, free to the home owner. These fellows are going broke since the state and the utility company have decided to hang onto the reimbursement money and delay the payment of the incentive.

As for me, I will do what I can do and let the government do what it wants.
What I can do is design, build and install gasifiers, methane generators, hydrogen generators, and biomass power plants. In addition we test and explore innovative methods to produce oil for biodiesel from animal waste, algae, water weeds, saline crops, new plants and waste products.

Cornelius A. Van Milligen
Kentucky Enrichment Inc
Kentucky Enrichment Inc. / Rural Innovations Inc.
cavm@aol.com

[sustenergy]

@administrator:
I guess my take on it is that a great many renewable energy technologies work well in individual projects, but in the big picture, the numbers do not add up yet. The growth in renewable energy production is still well below our annual increase in energy use, meaning that we use in absolute numbers more carbon & nuclear energy every year.

Recently, there have been some debates in the energy blogosphere that renewable energy is not necessarily 'green' (an argument which will depend on one's definition of green). Also, application of selected renewable energy technologies is not necessarily unlimited - siting for one becomes a major issue for wind power.

@Corey:
While I don't see much scope in a debate on population control (a bit of a taboo subject), the question of how much energy per person is justified, though rarely asked. The best figure I could find so far is about 70-80 GJ/pp/year, which means that a future world of 10 billion people would require about 800 Exajoules (about twice today's amount), which gives me hope.

@NatMichel:
I'm fascinated by the land-use debate, and in particular, the work by S Nonhebel in this context - see Renewable energy and food supply: will there be enough land? | Sustainable Energy for All

Last month, there was a bit of hype in the energy blogosphere that the use of solar energy through photovoltaics is much more efficient than its use through biomass, but that story is at least 10 years old: Buried sunshine | Leonardo ENERGY

@CvanMilligen:
I fully agree that PV business follows subsidy regimes for the moment, and hence a business model which is based on it is highly risky. But if the PV technology platform in Europe realises its short-term ambitions, things may change dramatically - SRA

A more promising model of the 'building america' project suggests to reduce a homes energy costs through better insulation, and use part of the proceeds to invest in photovoltaics for zero energy homes:
Energy efficiency, photovoltaics & near zero-energy homes | Leonardo ENERGY

[Corey]

Originally Posted by Cvanmilligen

In a free market, capitalist system how does one cap the market for wood pellet stoves? When the consumer purchases more heating units than there is fuel available the price of the fuel increases and alternatives are sought. Both happened in this example.

44 new wood pellet production facilities are being built in the USA right now. Soon the supply of wood pellets will approach the local demand. What is driving demand in the USA now is the purchasing of pellets by EU countries, especially Italy and Germany for large scale power plant fuel.

Perhaps new technologies in the EU will reduce the demand for pellets and permit the reliance on alternative fuels on the continent. I can suggest biomass in other forms as clean and reliable fuel. This would include animal manure, soiled cardboard, waxed materials, rice hulls, cotton gin trash, and other byproducts currently difficult to recycle.

As long as landfills, open burning and ocean dumping are used to dispose of unwanted materials there will be a need for recycling for feed, fertilizer and fuel. They might was well be used to produce clean energy. Yes, we know of the technologies to employ these fuels. In fact we own some of them.

Regards,

Cornelius A. Van Milligen
Kentucky Enrichment Inc
Kentucky Enrichment Inc. / Rural Innovations Inc.
cavm@aol.com

Simple the cooperate sector needs to limit users by communicating with each other, AS part of CSR. Thats if they are serious about CSR. In a way, I see the cooperate sector as the "parents" who need to tell the children "us" when we had enough candy "energy/ resources." It has to start some where and it has to be at the top for the "role down hill effect" to happen with as little effort as possible.

The problem with alternative fuels for the wood pellet stove is that the cheapest alternative is to grow the fuel. That is when it turns unsustainable. The key that made wood pellet stoves so environmentally successful was that it relied entirely on waste from another sector. The waste from another sector was what made it so sustainable. So long as they limit the number of people to the out put of the waste energy.
Free market and capitalism is in its self is unsustainable in that there is no set limits to prevent abuse of energy and resources. The reality is if we want sustainability they need and must limit energy and resources use. We can't grow in quantity as being demonstrated now. So we have to grow in responsibility , efficiency. These two thing does not necessarily mean unlimited growth that is the current capitalist motto. (More is not better.)

We need to seriously reline our moral and ethical bearings. We need to realize that freedom is not really about doing anything we want. For a very simple reason. "Our freedom ends at the next person face." So our actions in using energy and resources is no exception! Impacting others indirectly is the same as punching them in the face. Only more sinister for the person getting punched in the face is unaware it happened until it is too late to do any thing about it.
I won't shy away from taboo topics as part of taking "personal responsibility". Population, taboo or not must be addressed, especially in regards to planing the infrastructure for energy in that a energy infrastructure for 10 billion vs 3 billion may not be all that sustainable. Sprawling is another issue when you have 10 billion vs 3 billion.
I abstain from breeding for example, in doing my part regarding population.
:peace:

[Cvanmilligen]

"...the cooperate sector needs to limit users by communicating with each other, AS part of CSR. Thats if they are serious about CSR. In a way, I see the cooperate sector as the "parents" who need to tell the children "us" when we had enough candy "energy/ resources." It has to start some where and it has to be at the top for the "role down hill effect" to happen with as little effort as possible."

Corey, this is not only not practical it is illegal in the USA. Collusion among competitors to restrict the market or increase prices would land them all in jail.

I am afraid this is a Hillary Clinton solution not a practical application of free enterprise.

Neal Van Milligen

[Corey]

Originally Posted by Cvanmilligen

"...the cooperate sector needs to limit users by communicating with each other, AS part of CSR. Thats if they are serious about CSR. In a way, I see the cooperate sector as the "parents" who need to tell the children "us" when we had enough candy "energy/ resources." It has to start some where and it has to be at the top for the "role down hill effect" to happen with as little effort as possible."

Corey, this is not only not practical it is illegal in the USA. Collusion among competitors to restrict the market or increase prices would land them all in jail.

I am afraid this is a Hillary Clinton solution not a practical application of free enterprise.

Neal Van Milligen

I am not talking that kind collusion. I am talking about the companies that make the wood pellet stoves need to communicate with the public and tell us that they have peaked out a technology energy and tell us they can't sell anymore stoves for the available energy source (waste saw dust) they make no more profit when they do not sell anymore due to the limited number based on limited resources..

This is not the same as collusion where you only give less than the resource can support. this forcibly drives up demand thus price. The issue of the illegal collusion you refer to only applies when let say a car company can make 50,000 cars a year and only makes 30,000 in order to drive price up.


Sorry free, enterprise is what is killing us by exceeding resource levels there has to be limits. Put yourself in the shuttle and go up in space then eat to your hearts content lets see how long you last. or do you manage your resources to last for the whole trip.

Our earth is a shuttle in a way that there is only so much resources to go around the more people we have the more we need to ration.



Wood pellet stove company talking to wood pellet provider is not competitors they go hand in hand. If you consider this collusion then you would have to take every major company to court in that most major companies talk to retailers and making it more efficient and consumer friendly to streamline product demand and resource use.

I never said I was for free enterprise, I object to it in its excessive use of resources. I do believe in competition in order to keep price down but un regulated compitition as we have now is wasteful. especially in the USA.

[Metyu]

I don't live near either of those. I don't think wind or hydro can meet demand, although they can help towards. I don't think calls for demand to fall is logical or feasible.

I'm a fan of gas-fired CCGT CHP connected to community heating and cooling. I think this is the most feasible and long-term solution (although it will upset some people who think we're running out of gas).