Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to You've made a couple interesting points.

re: You've made a couple interesting points.
EnergyExpert — (archived)

I see you are moving into Arthur Clarke’s second stage – its possible but not sure yet if its worth doing.

The number of wind turbines is feasible with emerging mass production techniques. The number of generators is increasing as fast as plants are able to produce them simply because consumer demand for green energy is so strong. New plants to produce them are being built and the increased demand allows them to take advantages of the economies of scale to lower costs for the systems.

Opposition is from people like Senator Kennedy who stopped a Cape Cod project because of visual pollution. Bird strikes are a problem when they are located in mountain passes used for migration as was the early case in California, but is minimal on the great plains or offshore. Here is a recent CNN article on it.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/03/wind.power/index.html
Support for wind power picking up speed
POSTED: 11:50 a.m. EDT, October 9, 2006
By Gary Nurenberg
CNN

20% is a conservative estimate as this is a great revenue source for Midwest farmers who are able to produce wind power while still farming the land. The 1,000 Gwh figure will probably be reached even without the need for hydrogen generation. And keep in mind that the people who buy a H2 Car will also likely pay extra for green energy to charge it on. Below is an estimate of the total wind power available in the world from a NASA funded study.

http://www.physorg.com/news4117.html
Published: 15:30, May 16, 2005
Global wind map identifies wind power potential

It found that global potential was 72 terawatts. One terrawatt is equal to the output of 500 nuclear power plants. But big oil and major utilities are fighting wind because like HT it’s a distributed source of power that doesn’t need nay major concentrations of resources to produce it. But it’s a great revenue source for rural America to supply in place of the Mideast energy to meet America’s energy needs. It why its expanding so fast driven by small entrepreneurs and farmers.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/wind_maps.asp

H2 autos, or ones with advance battery technology are a natural match to it. This is why many big corporations oppose it, and spread myths about it, because the result is an energy economy difficult for a few large corporations to control as is the case with oil, coal or even ethanol.

Yes, reducing weight does help improve gas mileage and the auto industry has been doing it for 30 years. The limitation is that you generally need four seats, two at the very least for the way people use cars. The popular Prius and Honda Civic hybrid have 4 seats and dealers are selling them like hotcakes. The two seat Honda Insight has much lower sales.

I have been in the auto industry for over twenty years and have seen the weight of vehicles drop. But the federal mandated crash tests and the need to make the cars rugged enough for the consumer to abuse them are key limitations. Not to mention the stress of potholes and dirt roads taken at speeds higher then the speed limit - more dirver abuse of autos.

The real value of hydrogen is for the mini-vans and SUV market where hybrid technology doesn't offer as much fuel saving. I expect nera-term most of the small cars will go to plug-in hybrids. E85 fuel or, even better, biodiesel from waste biomass. Then H2 will take over as the technology matures on larger vehicles. Again it won’t be a single solution in the beginning but a mix that provides us with energy independence and a solution to global warming. Then the market will move the mix to an optimal level.

The key economic incentive I would use to enable the market to work faster would be a high and accelerating carbon tax, one with NO exceptions for ethanol which does produce carbon both in combustion, production and distilling (most ethanol plants run on NG or even coal to cook the biomass). Below is one article showing some of the carbon problems with ethanol.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html
March 23, 2006 edition

Carbon cloud over a green fuel

An Iowa corn refinery, open since December, uses 300 tons of coal a day to make ethanol.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Late last year in Goldfield, Iowa, a refinery began pumping out a stream of ethanol, which supporters call the clean, renewable fuel of the future.

There's just one twist: The plant is burning 300 tons of coal a day to turn corn into ethanol - the first US plant of its kind to use coal instead of cleaner natural gas.

I feel that argument that ethanol is carbon netural is misleading as it assumes NOTHING would be growing on the land if it wasn't producing biomass for ethanol. This is false as the land would still be used for pasture, wildlife habitat or crops for food that would still be pulling CO2 from the air.

A high carbon tax would place H2 on a level playing field with the subsidies that ethanol gets and allow the market to decide the best mix of energy sources and auto fuels, and even optimal auto weights via the carbon tax impact on gasoline prices compared to alternatives.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (132 posts)