Nuclear power is gaining a lot of hype lately as an answer to US energy needs. Proponents of nuclear power are extolling the ability of nuclear generators to produce terawatts of power without carbon emissions and that this will reduce our dependence on foreign resources and thereby improve national security.
As energy demands increase around the globe more and more nations are looking to nuclear power as an answer. After a decades old ban, nuclear supplier countries are reaching an accord with India opening the atomic reactor market worth tens of billions of dollars to companies like France’s state-controlled Areva, Westinghouse and General Electric of the U.S. to Russia’s Rosatom.
Electricity production produces approximately 40% of the world’s carbon emissions the other 60% coming from other sources. Converting all fossil fuel powered plants to nuclear energy would require an increase from 443 operating plants to 4,316 nuclear power plants by 2050 at a cost of $14.4 trillion. Here is the real kicker, according to “Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Reviewâ€, a draft report prepared for the Australia government, using only 1,587 nuclear reactor generators would use all known uranium deposits in less than 40 years. Nuclear is not a renewable energy.
Nor would investing in nuclear power by any means reduce US dependence upon foreign resources. The US, the largest power consumer in the world using half again as much power as China, has a third the uranium reserves of Canada and one seventh those of Australia. Even a nuclear powered US would be heavily dependent upon foreign resources.
There is also the matter of carbon neutrality and nuclear power and the mining of uranium, just like coal, produces carbon emissions. During the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, roughly 40 years, the disposal of radioactive waste, decommissioning, and other continued maintenance adds both carbon emissions and cost.
The numbers quoted in the draft report above are based upon current energy demands. However, investor owned utilities and power generators do not operate on zero growth, quite the contrary they required sustained annual growth of 2, 3 or 5% to justify placing capital into an industry. Using the ‘Rule of 72’ the exponential growth to maintain a 5% annual increase means that power consumption must double every fourteen years.
Doubling means just that, instead of 4,316 nuclear power plants by 2050, the world would require twice as many plants every fourteen years! In other words, uranium supplies would be depleted even sooner and the infrastructure wasted.
There is no substitute for conservation and there is no time left to waste to convert to and improve upon existing renewable sources. Carbon emitted today will last 100 years and only then dissipate to about 37% of its original concentration. Planting trees can help but even a total cessation of carbon pollution would not clear the planet of what has already been produced.
The sun produces, each day, enough energy to run our planet through both solar and wind technologies. It just makes sense to invest our time, energy and resources into sustainable and renewable resources. The last thing we want is to fight wars over uranium.
As energy demands increase around the globe more and more nations are looking to nuclear power as an answer. After a decades old ban, nuclear supplier countries are reaching an accord with India opening the atomic reactor market worth tens of billions of dollars to companies like France’s state-controlled Areva, Westinghouse and General Electric of the U.S. to Russia’s Rosatom.
Electricity production produces approximately 40% of the world’s carbon emissions the other 60% coming from other sources. Converting all fossil fuel powered plants to nuclear energy would require an increase from 443 operating plants to 4,316 nuclear power plants by 2050 at a cost of $14.4 trillion. Here is the real kicker, according to “Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Reviewâ€, a draft report prepared for the Australia government, using only 1,587 nuclear reactor generators would use all known uranium deposits in less than 40 years. Nuclear is not a renewable energy.
Nor would investing in nuclear power by any means reduce US dependence upon foreign resources. The US, the largest power consumer in the world using half again as much power as China, has a third the uranium reserves of Canada and one seventh those of Australia. Even a nuclear powered US would be heavily dependent upon foreign resources.
There is also the matter of carbon neutrality and nuclear power and the mining of uranium, just like coal, produces carbon emissions. During the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, roughly 40 years, the disposal of radioactive waste, decommissioning, and other continued maintenance adds both carbon emissions and cost.
The numbers quoted in the draft report above are based upon current energy demands. However, investor owned utilities and power generators do not operate on zero growth, quite the contrary they required sustained annual growth of 2, 3 or 5% to justify placing capital into an industry. Using the ‘Rule of 72’ the exponential growth to maintain a 5% annual increase means that power consumption must double every fourteen years.
Doubling means just that, instead of 4,316 nuclear power plants by 2050, the world would require twice as many plants every fourteen years! In other words, uranium supplies would be depleted even sooner and the infrastructure wasted.
There is no substitute for conservation and there is no time left to waste to convert to and improve upon existing renewable sources. Carbon emitted today will last 100 years and only then dissipate to about 37% of its original concentration. Planting trees can help but even a total cessation of carbon pollution would not clear the planet of what has already been produced.
The sun produces, each day, enough energy to run our planet through both solar and wind technologies. It just makes sense to invest our time, energy and resources into sustainable and renewable resources. The last thing we want is to fight wars over uranium.
Wind to meet 20% US energy needs by 2030
Recognizing the importance of addressing the climate change crisis and reducing dependence upon foreign oil and gas, the US Department of Energy (USDOE) has launched an aggressive program aiming to meet 20% of America’s energy needs via wind by 2030. In conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the USDOE produced a study assessing the economic and environmental costs and benefits of achieving this goal.
The study can be read in its entirety at 20percentwind.org and concludes more than 500,000 jobs would be supported with an increase of 100,000 jobs in supporting industries and 200,000 more jobs through economic expansion at the local level. Other economic gains are expected annual property tax increases of $1.5B by 2030 and electric price stability.
Deploying wind energy and displacing fossil fuel powered plants will result in 825 million metric tons less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030. Power generation presently accounts for 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Wind energy, unlike fossil fuel or nuclear generated power does not require water so water consumption will drop also.
The study focuses entirely on centralized wind energy or large wind farms despite growing and successful implementation of distributed renewable energy systems in Europe. Nevertheless, the study reveals that successful deployment of an additional 304GW of wind power to meet the 20% goal is dependent upon massive investment in the transmission grid infrastructure. Consequently, 19,000 miles of new 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines, for an estimated price tag of US $60 billion are being proposed to Congress by high powered energy players like T Boone Pickens.
Other challenges to the centralized model include the need to develop larger electric load balancing areas, in tandem with better regional planning to implement generation diversity. According to the study, the US must increase annual wind power installation by 16GW by 2018, within ten years. Obtaining permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other affected agencies in order to build out the transmission infrastructure to support this growth can take up to ten years. This is one reason the European Distributed Energy Partnership (EUDEEP) formed to implement wide scale distributed energy production to avoid many of these barriers and costs.
Significantly, the study acknowledges that a “business-as-usual†approach will not meet these goals. A major national commitment to clean energy, CO2 reductions and independence from foreign resources is required at a grass roots level. From a grass roots level it will also be possible to demonstrate that wide scale distributed energy systems can work in the US not just Europe and elsewhere. Happily, there are several people working on making the South Coast of Oregon a model of energy independence that the rest of the nation can build upon.
Please permit me a little divergence from topic here but I hope that in the inevitable debates to ensue during an election year we can focus on issues and not stoop to exposing verbal gaffes and sartorial faux pas. If you want to criticize Obama, criticize him, a constitutional lawyer, for eviscerating the 4th Amendment with his recent vote on the FISA bill. Or criticize him for his hawkish view on Iran or his votes for emergency defense spending more than five years after the ‘emergency’, not because he said fifty seven states instead of fifty on the campaign trail.
Criticize McCain for not defending the 4th Amendment and not voting on the FISA bill, for voting against an increase in GI benefits and for voting to continuing emergency defense spending five years after the ‘emergency’. Don’t criticize him because he thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a common border, (a really wide border called Iran). The future of this country is worthy of better debate and time is too short to waste on anything less than serious issues.
The study can be read in its entirety at 20percentwind.org and concludes more than 500,000 jobs would be supported with an increase of 100,000 jobs in supporting industries and 200,000 more jobs through economic expansion at the local level. Other economic gains are expected annual property tax increases of $1.5B by 2030 and electric price stability.
Deploying wind energy and displacing fossil fuel powered plants will result in 825 million metric tons less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030. Power generation presently accounts for 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Wind energy, unlike fossil fuel or nuclear generated power does not require water so water consumption will drop also.
The study focuses entirely on centralized wind energy or large wind farms despite growing and successful implementation of distributed renewable energy systems in Europe. Nevertheless, the study reveals that successful deployment of an additional 304GW of wind power to meet the 20% goal is dependent upon massive investment in the transmission grid infrastructure. Consequently, 19,000 miles of new 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines, for an estimated price tag of US $60 billion are being proposed to Congress by high powered energy players like T Boone Pickens.
Other challenges to the centralized model include the need to develop larger electric load balancing areas, in tandem with better regional planning to implement generation diversity. According to the study, the US must increase annual wind power installation by 16GW by 2018, within ten years. Obtaining permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other affected agencies in order to build out the transmission infrastructure to support this growth can take up to ten years. This is one reason the European Distributed Energy Partnership (EUDEEP) formed to implement wide scale distributed energy production to avoid many of these barriers and costs.
Significantly, the study acknowledges that a “business-as-usual†approach will not meet these goals. A major national commitment to clean energy, CO2 reductions and independence from foreign resources is required at a grass roots level. From a grass roots level it will also be possible to demonstrate that wide scale distributed energy systems can work in the US not just Europe and elsewhere. Happily, there are several people working on making the South Coast of Oregon a model of energy independence that the rest of the nation can build upon.
Please permit me a little divergence from topic here but I hope that in the inevitable debates to ensue during an election year we can focus on issues and not stoop to exposing verbal gaffes and sartorial faux pas. If you want to criticize Obama, criticize him, a constitutional lawyer, for eviscerating the 4th Amendment with his recent vote on the FISA bill. Or criticize him for his hawkish view on Iran or his votes for emergency defense spending more than five years after the ‘emergency’, not because he said fifty seven states instead of fifty on the campaign trail.
Criticize McCain for not defending the 4th Amendment and not voting on the FISA bill, for voting against an increase in GI benefits and for voting to continuing emergency defense spending five years after the ‘emergency’. Don’t criticize him because he thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a common border, (a really wide border called Iran). The future of this country is worthy of better debate and time is too short to waste on anything less than serious issues.
Energy deregulation forces wide scale distributed energy
In 1992 electricity began to be viewed less as an essential service and more as a commodity when deregulation was enacted with the passage of the Energy Policy Act. Previously, public and investor owned utilities controlled power generation, transmission and distribution within a set region. The Energy Policy Act, however, allowed for the trading of electricity over wide geographic areas, known as long distance “wheelingâ€, to the highest bidder. The promise of deregulation was that competition in a free market would keep electric rates low.
After four years of litigation, in 2000, FERC Order 888 went into effect mandating the wheeling of electric power over long distances. The ‘single machine’ grid, however, was never designed to manage this type of ‘trading’. Electricity trading jumped immediately upon enactment of Order 888 and so did dangerous levels of transmission line congestion. Transmission loading relief procedures (TLRs) increased by 6 times within a month and the promised lower rates have in fact risen significantly since 2000 in deregulated states.
Another consequence of deregulation was that no incentive remained to build new power generation plants. In fact, investor owned utilities profited from electricity shortages and as we learned from the Enron catastrophe actually induced artificial shortages to drive up wholesale prices. A December 2001, Wall Street Journal article noted, “The profits on the trades… of cubic feet of gas it didn’t extract or burn, of kilowatt-hours it didn’t generate, and of fiber-optic lines it didn’t light… sent Enron’s revenues soaring.â€
Today, there is concern about legitimate electricity shortages across the US. Along the West Coast, Bonneville Power Authority is warning that it may not be able to meet load demands as early as 2011. In Southern California, San Diego Gas & Electric is proposing a 150 mile, $1.4B fossil fuel corridor through sensitive state parks and forest land. The line, which connects coal powered plants in Mexico, is to avert projected rolling blackouts by 2013.
Transmission lines take years to complete and cost $1M per mile. In cities like Chicago and New York the cost can be $10M per mile. Wheeling losses, the inefficiency of electrical transmission is almost 10% globally equaling the combined energy demands of Germany, France and the UK. These costs, the time required and wheeling losses are some of the reasons New York City is installing more distributed CHP generation.
Combined heat and power (CHP) generators capture the heat normally lost in the production of electricity and use it to heat buildings, districts or neighborhoods where the generators are installed. The Christian Science Monitor recently wrote, “A typical electric plant uses only one-third of its fuel’s energy to push turbines. The other two-thirds are lost as waste heat. Boilers, on the other hand, can achieve up to 85 percent efficiency. By combining both processes, CHP can capture between 70 and 80 percent of the energy in the fuel. Theoretically, cogeneration delivers the same energy as separate generation, but with half the fuel and emissions. Because of close proximity to the end-user, relatively little electricity is lost in transmission.â€
Reliability of electric service is another primary benefit of distributed generation. During the 1998 ice storm in Canada hundreds of transmission towers buckled leaving over 4 million people in Canada and parts of the US without power. Multiple deaths were reported, many from hypothermia. Power was restored fairly quickly to urban areas however almost 700,000 rural residents were without power in the middle of winter for over three weeks.CHP generators require fossil fuels but renewable distributed power generators like small wind and solar are viable and once installed not dependent upon the vagaries of foreign policy, market demands, regulatory actions or the expense of maintaining a decaying grid to allow for long distance commodities trading.
Ironically, decentralizing may be forced by the consequences of energy deregulation and the free market theory so dependent upon centralization. An article discussing barriers to centralized wind energy in Energy Biz Magazinestates, “Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Joseph Kelliher said it would require strong regional power grids. Today, there are more than 500 transmission owners, ‘500 sets of hands pulling the levers for those 500 machines,’ he said, in a personal interview. Coordinating an array of relatively small generators spread over a vast expanse for the benefit of far off urban centers will require complex coordination, something made difficult by today’s Balkanized grid. Furthermore, while annual investment in transmission has doubled since 2002, Kelliher said, it is ‘still not adequate’.â€
Rural America including the Southern Oregon coast is uniquely suited to deployment of wide scale distributed energy to relieve already congested transmission lines. The capital costs of installing distributed generators at the local, neighborhood and district level are significantly less than the standard centralized model. The value of energy independence for rural communities is priceless.
The carbon neutrality myth of centralized renewables
Being the inventor of a low profile, high efficiency wind turbine it pains me to have to dispel the myth that centralized renewable energy such as wind and wave reduces carbon emissions. Large amounts of power produced in one location then transmitted via high voltage lines many miles then stepped down to the lower voltage distribution lines before delivery to the end user is centralized generation. Centralized generation relies upon the vast interconnection of transmission and distribution lines that crisscross the country known simply as the grid and herein lays the problem.
The grid network is sometimes referred to as the world’s largest machine and is divided into three parts, Eastern, Western and Texas. Power flows within each section as alternating current (AC) and must be synchronized at 60Hz while the connection between these three parts is direct current (DC). A drop of only 2Hz anywhere along the grid can rapidly heat up lines and trigger a chain reaction leading to massive outages like we witnessed in August 2003 on the east coast.
While it is correct that wind, wave and other renewable energy can save on CO2 emissions synchronizing demand and output to protect the grid comes at a heavy price. In a report by David White, Reduction in Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Estimating the Potential Contribution from Wind-Power, commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation, December 2004, White found that,
“Fossil-fuelled capacity operating as reserve and backup is required to accompany wind generation and stabilize supplies to the consumer. That capacity is placed under particular strains when working in this supporting role because it is being used to balance a reasonably predictable but fluctuating demand with a variable and largely unpredictable output from wind turbines.Consequently, operating fossil capacity in this mode generates more CO2 per kWh generated than if operating normally.â€
Six wave park applications have been made to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed along the Oregon coast. Each wave park is listed at 20 to 180MW output with ties to the mainland via 25kV transmission lines. Wave energy may be somewhat more predictable than wind energy but wave buoy generators have a minimum and maximum swell that they can operate in. Consequently, like wind, centralized wave energy will also require fossil fuel powered generators to idle on standby to maintain grid integrity.
Sadly, electricity cannot reasonably be stored on an industrial scale. So how do we reap the benefits of carbon neutral power generation sources without relying upon a fossil fuel powered grid? The answer may lie in decentralized or distributed energy.
Distributed energy is power produced at or near the point of consumption. It is called distributed energy because this power is generated at the lower voltages carried by the distribution lines we see lining our roadways. Distributed generators can be gas powered or renewable like PV and small wind. All the synchronization problems associated with centralized power are significantly reduced or eliminated.
Power generation at the neighborhood or district scale or just supplying individual homes and businesses is much easier to manage and surprisingly, is less expensive to the rate payer. Studies on distributed generation indicate as much as 44% reduction in capital costs and a 15% savings to the consumer in retail costs.
The transition from centralized to decentralized will not be easy despite a growing global movement toward wide scale distributed energy. One motivating factor toward decentralizing is the aging and deteriorating grid itself. While it is hard to find reliable estimates on the eventual cost of replacing and modernizing the grid at a million dollars a mile and climbing the number could be in the trillions.
Our infrastructure has been ignored and the exorbitant cost of replacing the grid to maintain a costly centralized system makes transitioning to distributed energy almost inevitable. It is the cost to the planet in carbon emissions however, that makes it mandatory.
Canada talks carbon tax
OTTAWA – Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has embraced the idea of a national consumer-based carbon tax as part of a way to fight global warming.In a speech in Vancouver Friday, Dion said it would have to be revenue-neutral like the new system in British Columbia, where carbon taxes collected on gas, propane and other fossil fuels are returned to corporations and individuals through income tax cuts and credits.“We can talk about what the best model for putting a price on carbon across Canada might be – but the fact is we need to just do it,” Dion said. “That is what this provincial government has done, and that is what a Liberal government will do.”
Proposed carbon taxes and the offsetting carbon credits are creating a new realm of investment strategies as well. Nevertheless, the goal of reducing carbon emissions and cleaning up the planet cannot be met too soon or taken too seriously.
Meanwhile the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is proposing another rate increase of 9% to cover the cost of maintaining the infrastructure.
Los Angeles will suffer more blackouts unless the city upgrades its electrical infrastructure, the Department of Water and Power will make the pitch again today to raise rates.Last fall, the City Council sent back the rate proposal amid questions on how the money would be spent.But this time the utility appears to have more support, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has urged the council to hike electric rates by 9 percent over three years and water rates by 6percent over two years.
The electrical grid infrastructure is in dire need of repair and I have seen cost estimates in the trillions of dollars for worldwide upgrades. This is one of the reasons, I believe, that decentralized energy is now coming to the forefront.
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