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Author Topic: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE 🌟  (Read 3467 times)

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AGelbert

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Phantom Eye hydrogen powered surveillance UAV

In the video at the link, Boeing OPENLY ADMITS that they took an off the shelf Ford Ranger Truck engine which Ford had converted to run on Hydrogen 10 YEARS AGO and made use of it for the Phantom Eye drone which can NOW stay aloft for 4 days and eventually will be able to fly continuously for 10 days. Boeing's contribution has been to perfect the fuel cell technology needed to provide the engine with hydrogen and oxygen at 65,000 feet.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? TEN YEARS AGO Ford had a RELIABLE engine that ran on hydrogen!



hydrogen Strato Engine
 

With a solar powered hydrolyzer at your home you would NEVER run out of fuel. Hydrogen tanks are EASY to build safely by engineering a water jacket around the tank. We've come a long way since the Hindenburg. You wouldn't need a fancy fuel cell because there is no oxygen deficiency at the elevations cars operate in.

YOU DO NOT NEED PETROLEUM TO RUN A CAR ICE (internal combustion engine) OR ANY OTHER ICE OUT THERE! It's ALL Big Oil Bullshit!

Lubricants and plastics also can be obtained from plant matter WITHOUT polluting the atmosphere.

For anyone from The Anal Oil Drum that wants to claim hydrogen does this, that and the other damage to an engine, I have to ask how stupidly stubborn, mendacious, evasive and cravenly loyal to Big Oil do you have to be to believe an engine that RUNS CONTINUOUSLY for FOUR F U C K I N G DAYS in a surveillance drone is going to be allowed to run a fuel that ruins the engine!!?

If you try to get that Ford ICE converted to running on hydrogen for your vehicle, you will not be able to do so. Free country, MY ASS! Energy crisis, MY ASS! This is an Oil Oligarchy DICTATORSHIP!

Quote
Boeing unveiled its hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye unmanned airborne system during a ceremony in St. Louis on July 12. The demonstrator, which will stay aloft at 65,000 feet for up to four days, is powered by two 2-liter, four-cylinder engines that provide 150 horsepower each. It has a 150-foot wingspan, will cruise at approximately 150 knots and can carry up to a 450-pound payload.

Video at the link:
http://www.boeing.com/Features/2010/07/bds_feat_phantom_eye_07_12_10.html

We do not have an ENERGY crisis;   We have a GREED crisis.

Hope for a viable biosphere of Renewables, why they work and fossil and nuclear fuels never did


The "Green Revolution' fossil fuel Industry LIE
« Last Edit: July 19, 2018, 01:18:03 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Quote
Thursday, September 20, 2012

Nuclear experimentation killed free power part II

Jimmy Midnight
Activist Post

Ethan Indigo Smith is my son, and I did help him with some scientific issues in the previously released, Nuclear Experimentation Killed Free Power Part I. I’m writing to defend on scientific, technical, statistical, rhetorical, and political grounds, his basic thesis. Allow me here to paraphrase: “To understand that nuclear experimentation is The Rabbit Hole of Death requires only minimal scientific knowledge.”

Thanks to Tom Bedlam for his attentive reply, and for pointing out that, as far as anyone knows, there are no magnetic field disruption issues peculiar to nukes. The name Bedlam serendipitously highlights the fact that nuclear experimentation has always been, is now, and will forever remain, a bedlamite way to boil water.

Bedlam attempts to quantify the accidents at Simi Valley, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Let’s step back just long enough to notice that the first three were meltdowns at large facilities while Fukushima is a meltdown of at least three such facilities, with the impending compromise of a spent fuel pool. So if Chernobyl, a nuke built with marvelous hubris but without secondary containment, really is worse than Fuku, it has to be with the modifier, “So far.”


The relative size of TMI in this regard is also problematic. In view of the secrecy inherent in nukes, and inconsistencies in measurement, a difference of at least five orders of magnitude in admitted total radio-releases would clearly be significant; of three or less, maybe not. The data from Simi Valley, about a 1959 mishap, is actually the most telling because it’s down the great American memory hole; for instance nowhere to be found in a list of “nuclear plant accidents” that contains incidents going back to 1957 in my 2002 World Almanac, a generally reliable source of factual information.

Which highlights the secrecy aspect of nuclear experimentation, spawned in secrecy, born in secrecy, (because it was nuclear weapons related) raised in secrecy, nurtured in secrecy, alive in secrecy, and really dependent on secrecy for its continued existence. An example is the continuing secret, (well, it’s public information, but de-emphasized until it functions as a secret) that, thanks to the good ol’ Price-Anderson Act, nuke operators don’t have to carry liability insurance, like ordinary Americans of modest means would have to in their businesses. Well, operators do have to have a not-adjusted-for-inflation-since-1957 $560 million dollars worth. Extrapolate what they’re paying for that coverage to what rendering a 10? 15? 30? 60?-mile radius of uninhabitable area would cost, and get an idea of the size of one form of nuclear subsidy.

Bedlam’s also partial to serving up figures for the release of Iodine-131 and Cesium-137, which symbolize the problem Ethan points up in The Matrix of Four. As two of the three known isotopes whose devastating health effects are well-documented (the other is Strontium-90) these are the known knowns of nuclear experimentation (well, some of them.) There are also known unknowns; for example, how much radioactive oxide dust is being plumed and blown around? How much steam? Cadmium 115? Tellurium 127, 129, 131, 132? Neobium, Molybdenum, Zirconium, Niobium 95? Barium 140? Etc. etc.?


Reactors operate on fissions that break Uranium down into myriad radioisotopes, most of which finally stop emitting their alphas, betas, gammas, neutrons, and occasional antineutrinos after at last becoming the stable Pb-208, Lead. What about the water/chemicals used to fight the meltdown fires? And of course there are unknown unknowns, a concept that speaks for itself in an industry run by people who think it’s all just dandy to use extremely dangerous metallic Sodium as a circulating coolant around superultrahyper dangerous nuclear fuel, and to place spent fuel pools on the roofs of reactors. (Talk about being analogous to a two- or three-story outhouse! ‘cept what’s likely to dump on you is more than just rather disgusting.) In response to Bedlam’s critique, I researched other industrial uses of metallic Sodium. All of those I could find take advantage of its chemical reactivity; only in nuclear experimentation is it used as a circulating coolant.

Which brings us, at last, to the unknown knowns. These are the secrets kept through conscious silence or obfuscation on the one hand, and the lies that people tell themselves about the secrets they possess, and the unexamined assumptions they carry around, on the other. Reactor operators are sure it’s safe, which is why I’m sure they’re insane. F’rinstance, Bedlam has somehow convinced himself that a nuclear experiment station is no worse than a fossil-fuel burner. But it is. Even in the case of a coal-burner, fueled by mountaintop removal, vile as that is, at least the greenhouse gasses and toxic ashes and immediate environmental damage are about the limit of its destructiveness. Choose a legacy of ashes, which can be stored safely on an indefinite basis given a watertight roof; or of spent fuel that will remain dangerously radioactive for a longer time, going forward, than from here back to the dawn of recorded history. Add that to the cumulative effects of ever-increasing levels of nuclear radiation.

Unknown knowns are also an important dynamic in the whole American political system. Any little group of people who get a certain level of public privilege will eventually become its own special interest group, with interest in preserving what’s already been gained. Part of what got the nuclear experimentation industry really going was the possibility of reprocessing spent fuel to make Plutonium, a better material for nuclear warheads than the “old fashioned” Uranium-235. Now, there are way too many warheads, but the spent-fuel headache just keeps growing—a disposal problem as insoluble as polyethylene in water. When the best available solution might be to put it aboard nearly useless ocean vessels and scuttle it in the Arctic, as the Russians are doing, the situation speaks for itself.

Another industry byproduct is “depleted Uranium,” some of which is used in munitions. These are pretty terrible weapons that burst into flame when penetrating armor, spewing oxide dust all around. And only about two-thirds of the original highly radioactive U-235 has been removed. Yet even this use leaves a huge surplus of U-238 and/or depleted yellowcake and/or Uranium hexafluoride that no one really knows what to do with. Some of the Fluoride, stripped of Uranium, ends up in municipal water supplies, so that two super privileged industries get to work together momentarily.

There are about 400 nukes in the world, and six of them (counting three at Fukushima) have already had disastrous accidents. Or maybe we should multiply by years of operation. Say they’ve been running for an average of 25 years. So that would be ten thousand reactor-years, and six major accidents. Not a terrible record for, say, an experimental aircraft, but imagine a passenger jet that crashed six one hundredths of one percent of the time. There’d be disasters every cussed day! And of course with these nukes, everyone within a radius of some double-digit number of miles is necessarily on board for rides with this six one hundredths of one percent chance of crashing.

Ethan’s piece had a secondary thesis, the idea that: “Nuclear experimentation also prevents the development of better, safer, cheaper, more sustainable alternatives.” Though I remain without an advanced academic degree, I am pretty fluent in the language of mathematics and the natural sciences. Areas in which I have more extensive knowledge are Chemistry, Molecular Biology, and maybe Statistics, rather than Nuclear Physics. In Chemistry, orbital electrons (which we now understand is a quaintly inaccurate term) are the only subatomic particles with which we generally are dealing. Also in Chemistry, we know that mass action really makes the wheels turn and the (chemical) world go around. The mass action concept is also a very useful notion in economic analysis. Applied in the field of energy production, it means that all subsidies to these dinosaur sources, these Eisenhower-era methodologies, because they are thus artificially cheapened, necessarily also suppress the renewables upon which all humanity must someday depend. Fossil fuels and nuclear plants also get a free ride on the environmental and health problems which their operations entail.

What’s clearly needed are the reggae song energy sources, “I and I and I and I,” in which imagination, invention, ingenuity, and innovation are unleashed to work with wind, solar, tidal, ocean current, cultivated diatoms, geothermal (and here I’m talking about drilling holes deep enough to get down to magma, to produce high-pressure steam for electric turbines) and also exotic, eccentric schemes, typified by various notions for Hydrogen generators. I came up with one of these myself, of course just at the imagination level, noting that if the Higgs boson had a wave nature, it might be possible to render large objects weightless, or drastically reduce their weight in some temporary way, by generating a counter-wave.


Yeah, I know there are possible conservation of energy problems with such a scheme, but there’s no thermodynamic difference between particle nature and wave nature as far as anyone knows, so if an anti-wave could be generated, there might be a way to get a net energy gain from this sort of method, just sayin’. In Chemistry, we imagine “energy hills,” which have to be climbed, to start certain reactions.Typically this is achieved by applying a lot of heat. But sometimes, instead of climbing the hill or tunneling through it, a way around it can be found. For example, some chemical processes can be catalyzed by light, using   less energy  than the heat that would otherwise be required, and in certain instances, just the addition of a catalyst can bring about spontaneous chemical changes, some even exothermic.

The poor Bedlamite also manages to repeat canards about how windmills will mess up migratory birds, or that ocean currents could be adversely affected by current power; and also casts doubt on the discovery of the Higgs boson. There is a chance that the recently-trumpeted data point isn’t Higgs. It is a chance in something like ten billion. Contrast this probability with the chance that all radio-release data from nuclear meltdowns are accurate and reliable.

Meanwhile, let’s get the rumor going that all these chain reactions are making fissures and fractures in the time/space continuum that are making the free power we could get from anti-Higgs wheels impossible to obtain. It’s no more dishonest than the idea that atomic energy can have peaceful uses. And you can’t prove it isn’t so, because you can’t prove a negative. Furthermore, we know that the law of energy conservation can be violated at sub-photon levels for very short periods of time, and this speculation is all about some sort of light beam or time beam. So if electromagnetic pulses from detonations also cause cracks in time/space, and controlled chain reactions little fissures, that could easily mess up such a beam. Just sayin’.

Jimmy Midnight is a blues musician and an organic farmer in Maine. Find out more about The Maine Blues Society HERE:
http://www.mainebluessociety.com/?attachment_id=95

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/09/nuclear-experimentation-killed-free_20.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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How do you transition from a waste based society to a ZERO WASTE sustainable society?

I'm glad you asked.  ;D





Am glad you posted!

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: Zach has been a guiding light for Renewable energy for many years, as you can see from this 2013 post. He used to live in Germany but moved to Florida this year.

His cleantechnica.com web site is, now more than ever, the Go To place for all things Renewable. He is a man of integrity and can be relied upon to tell the unvarnished truth.  👍

100%, 99%, 80%, 70% — How Much Can & Should The World Be Powered By Renewable Energy?
 
February 24, 2013 Zachary Shahan

How much can/should the world be powered by renewable energy? Or how about your country or region? A number of studies have tackled this question, and I recently realized that we hadn’t stuck them all together in one easy-to-find place.

So, I created this page specifically for that purpose: 70%, 80%, 99.9%, 100% Renewables — Study Central.

Keep that page bookmarked — it will be updated with new major studies on this topic as they are.

Full article here:

http://cleantechnica.com/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Alexander Hamilton called government subsidies "bounties to support new industries". Thom Hartmann makes the case for government subsidies of renewables with quotes from Alexander Hamilton and informs us that George Washington, not only supported this view, but actually put the first government subsidies for new industries in place!

Better yet, Thom repeats my argument (and Robert F. Kennedy Jr also called it a theft of the commons) that fossil fuel was never actually cheaper than renewables. It's nice to have smart people agree with my analysis of fossil fuel versus renewable energy costs.
 

Just Say No to Subsidies!


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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The era of energy dinosaurs 🦕🦖  is coming to an end

By David Roberts

Working in clean energy can be frustrating. Tons of exciting things are happening, but elite conventional wisdom isn’t keeping pace and nobody listens to bloggers like me shouting about it.
 
One of the few outlets in the mainstream energy world to consistently stay ahead of the curve is Bloomberg New Energy Finance. (I have interviewed its chief executive, Michael Liebreich, before.) As Exhibit A, I offer this new “VIP brief” written by Liebreich and his able colleague Nathaniel Bullard. It’s a big old chunk of brain food, slightly dense and buzzwordy in a few places but chock-full of insight about dynamics of the energy world in the coming decade. Let’s take a look, shall we?
 
Like too few writers and analysts in this area, Liebreich explicitly takes a systems approach:
 

What happens when you saturate the system with wind or solar depends on what you think is going to happen next with power storage, demand response, electric vehicles, mandated back-up and dozens of other factors. These are all highly dynamic because, of course, they are part of a complex system, and systems exhibit emergent behavior. You can spend a lifetime studying the construction of a single neuron, yet know little of what drives a nematode, let alone a human. Real-life systems exhibit unexpected population surges and crashes, periods of equilibrium punctuated by periods of shattering change, tipping points, phase changes, extinctions.
 
… The value of a solar rooftop in a world of electric vehicles is very different from the value of the same solar rooftop in a world without. The value of demand response is negligible in a world optimised around “baseload-plus-peak” generating capacity. The value of energy efficiency is negligible in a world of fuel subsidies. And so on.
 
You will note that this echoes, somewhat eerily, my widgets vs. systems language. Naturally I agree!
 
Here, in capsule form, is the shift in perspective Liebreich urges for those making decisions in today’s energy markets:
 

This is the reality of the world’s energy transition: it is dynamic, complex, unpredictable and fraught with risk. And it is among these shifting sands that energy decision-makers must plant their feet. Not surprisingly, perhaps, some choose to cling to old certainties, heuristics that worked fine during a long period of strategy stability: demand stimulation, baseload-plus-peak, centralisation, scale, vertical integration, dispatch management, control, confidentiality. But a shifting environment means increasingly replacing dinosaur heuristics with mammal heuristics: efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness, open data, transparency, coalitions.
 
I am stealing “mammal heuristics.”
 
Liebreich is describing the same trend I wrote about the other day: decentralization, the shift from a few big players and technologies (dinosaurs) to a profusion of small, networked ones (mammals).
 
Liebreich breaks this mammalian approach down into three “strategic elements.”
 
1. Resilience
 
The energy world is now subject to more shocks, from more directions, than ever before: “Technological change. Commodity price spikes. Climate-related extreme weather. Financial instability. Policy change.” And so on.
 
These kinds of changes can creep along for years and then suddenly become disruptive. So decisionmakers need to ask themselves not just about the desired or expected outcome of their choices, but about what can go wrong. (I wrote a post about risk management that is consonant with this theme.) From that point of view, certain kinds of solutions suggest themselves:
 

Distributed beats centralised. Diversity beats a mono-culture. Consensus beats confrontation. Local beats distant. Resilience means power storage, to build in tolerance. It means smart grids, to match supply and demand. It also means future-proofing the design and location of assets.
 
Where the old mentality was about optimization, the new one will be redundancy and fault-tolerance.
 
2. Optionality
 
This is about utilities hedging their bets, leaving themselves options rather than locking into a few huge, capital-intensive, one-way bets (like, say, a $6.85 billion nuclear plant). By diversifying investments and breaking them into smaller increments, they can hedge their bets against unexpected changes in “technology, policy, regulation, economics, or environment.”
 

… an electric utility or a fuels distribution company is fundamentally a provider of energy and related services, and not just a coal generator or a gas burner. Optionality allows a company to embrace new opportunities first at the margin, but eventually at the heart of operations. Most century-old firms know this already, as do all technology companies. Today, IBM is a services company; Apple a consumer devices and services company. Asking the counterfactual “what would they be if they still made only mainframes or iMacs?” gives a simple answer: they would be out of business. Energy is a service to meet a need. As technical and societal needs change, so must the service, and that means portfolio options.
 
As I’ve said before, this shift is going to unleash powerful market forces. One electron or gallon of fuel is like another; insofar as energy providers compete, it is purely on price. But when it comes to energy services (heat and cooling, emergency backup, transportation, etc.), there’s much more differentiation possible, and thus much more competition. Where there is more competition, there is more innovation.
 
3. Intelligence
 
This is not only about getting the best information — which is harder than you’d think for energy investors — but about the many ways now possible to get more information and pull meaning out of it.
 

Intelligence is also about collecting, analysing and harnessing data that is several orders of magnitude beyond what was available to energy companies in previous decades. GE chief executive Jeff Immelt recently referred to the emerging world of connected, sensor-imbedded machines and the processing power to analyse it as the “Industrial Internet”. Energy efficiency software applications are allowing building owners to optimise consumption and control costs with greater granularity than ever before. Smart meters make possible the use of detailed information on which consumers use electricity when, and offer the opportunity to shape their consumption habits over time. Smart grid sensors and analytics software allow utilities to pinpoint and correct faults, and optimise energy networks in response to real-time conditions. Opportunities for new intelligence range from managing grid losses to predicting renewable and distributed generation performance, from pricing strategies and maintenance schedules to arbitrage opportunities. Ultimately, new connected and intelligent capacities allow us to, in Immelt’s words, to “find meaning where it did not exist before”. And not only meaning: value.
 
That the key: To pull meaning from data, and value from meaning. I am reminded of something Bill Gross — inventor, entrepreneur, and head of eSolar among other companies — is fond of pointing out: The cost of almost every industrial commodity is rising. Copper, steel, aluminum, concrete, you name it. The one thing that’s steadily getting cheaper is computing power. So they key to getting ahead in the market is substituting computing power for other commodities by making systems smarter and leaner. The more you can do that, the more you can get off the downslope of the Hubbert curve and onto the upslope of Moore’s Law.
 
Anyway, to conclude: As we move from the era of dinosaurs to the era of mammals in the energy world, some players will cling to the old ways and perish; others will diversify, focus on resilience, keep their options open, gather intelligence, and thrive. One thing’s for sure: by the end of the century, there won’t be any dinosaurs left. These are exciting times.


http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-era-of-energy-dinosaurs-is-coming-to-an-end/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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After watching this you will see why Joe and Jane Sixpack ACTUALLY have a small carbon footprint and the USA's HUGE carbon footprint must be attributed to the wealthy and their biosphere destroying ejecutive jets, yachts, petrochemical corporations, factories, mines, utilities, weapons manufacturers and other properties.



This has gone from 80,000 hits yesterday or 800,000 today. Spreading quite nicely, and posted on the DD FB page-- of course.

Surly,
Excellent!   

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Coca-Cola, GE join push for electric vehicle charging stations
Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

Electric charging stations — such as one at Lenox Square — are part of a push to ease pollution and reduce gasoline demand.

By Christopher Seward
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. and General Electric, which also has a major presence in metro Atlanta, are among a growing list of companies joining a federal effort to get more charging stations for electric vehicles at workplaces.

GE was among the first group of joining the Department of Energy’s Workplace Charging Challenge. The other original companies were Google, 3M, Siemens, Verizon, Duke Energy, Eli Lilly, Chrysler Group, Ford, GM, Nissan, San Diego Gas & Electric and Tesla.

In addition to Coca-Cola, the latest group to sign up includes Dell, Facebook, Hertz, AVL, Bentley Systems, Biogen Idec, Bloomberg, Hartford Financial Services Group, National Grid, NRG Energy, Osram Sylvania, Raytheon and Southern California Edison.

According to electricdrive.org, electric vehicle sales accounted for 3 percent of total vehicle sales last year, up from 2 percent in 2011.

The goal is to make workplace charging easily accessible so more people will consider buying electric vehicles, which cost less to power than gasoline vehicles. The Energy Department estimates driving on electricity is generally comparable to roughly $1 per gallon of gasoline equivalent.


The companies have committed to installing a charging infrastructure at a minimum of one major worksite location.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Walgreens Building First Self-Powered Store

Mar 14, 2013 09:24 AM ET // by Nic Halverson

Walgreens — the largest pharmacy retail chain in the United States — has announced plans to reduce its carbon footprint by building a store that generates all of its required electricity on site.

As part of the company’s Net Zero campaign, Walgreens’ green initiative to reduce energy usage by 20 percent across all of its locations by 2020, the new self-sustaining store will be built in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. To generate power, the store will include geothermal generators, two wind turbines and more than 800 solar panels. Energy-efficient building materials, LED lighting and ultra high-efficiency refrigeration will also be used to to help conserve wattage.

According to estimations, engineers expect the the store to generate around 265,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Store operation will only require 200,000 kWh, so perhaps that extra wattage could be pumped back into the grid or used to power nearby utilities.

“We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and leading the retail industry in use of green technology,” Thomas Connolly, Walgreens vice president of facilities development, said in a company statement. “We are investing in developing a net-zero store so we can learn the best way to bring these features to our other stores. Because we operate 8,000 stores, we believe our pursuit of green technology can have a significant positive impact on the nation’s environment.”

Credit: Walgreens, Business Wire

http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/walgreens-building-first-self-powered-store-130314.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1

To generate power, the store will include geothermal generators, two wind turbines and more than 800 solar panels. Energy-efficient building materials, LED lighting and ultra high-efficiency refrigeration will also be used to to help conserve wattage.

According to estimations, engineers expect the the store to generate around 265,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Store operation will only require 200,000 kWh, so perhaps that extra wattage could be pumped back into the grid or used to power nearby utilities.


Seriously worth paying attention to. Thanks for posting, AG.


Surly,
Sir, you are always welcome. I hope I am not publishing too much hopium for some of the more apocalyptically minded diners. 

It ain't over yet.



Evidence trumps belief in every instance.

Even if too little too late, study of the techniques employed will be of benefit to all of us down the road. I am pretty "apocalyptically minded" myself, but I think we may hit Gaia's kill point or The Great Culling before we round Hubbert's curve.

If this is hopium, let's fire up another bowl.


Surly,
Roger, wilco!

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: Solar grew way beyond all the pessimistic predictions of the hydrocarbon 🦖 propagandist hellspawn claiming PV simply 'was not ready for prime time, too costly, yada-yada-yada'. PV continues to grow exponentially to this day in 2018 with no sign of stopping.

Solar power set to shine in 2013

By John Upton
 
This year is shaping up to be a bright one for solar power.
 
New solar generating capacity expected to be installed around the world in 2013 will be capable of producing almost as much electricity as eight nuclear reactors, according to Bloomberg, which interviewed seven analysts and averaged their forecasts.

Full story here:

http://grist.org/news/solar-power-set-to-shine-in-2013//url]


Renewable Energy Clean Energy tech cost reductions up to and including 2017

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Hi Golden Oxen,
Quote
Wish I was a kid again because I still have that same idea, but think investments in that area might really pay off big in the coming decades this time around, and not just in a financial sense but in a bonanza for the environment as well. It sure could use a break.

I think you are right! I've got a few posts I will now share that indicate solar is finally catching that break. 

9 out of 10 Americans Think Solar Has Increased Role to Play in US Energy Mix

A new poll suggests nearly 9 out of 10 American adults think solar energy should play a bigger role in the energy supply mix.

The Ipsos-Reid Poll done for Sungevity recognized 89% of respondents favor more solar power in the US energy supply.

Meanwhile, 81% of those surveyed (see infograph) said that, despite whatever political stripe is in power, solar energy should be used in state and federal residences

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2012/09/27/9-out-of-10-americans-think-solar-has-increased-role-to-play-in-us-energy-mix/#7RVAV2CDPHCxRDd8.99


U.S. Solar PV Market Grew 76% In 2012

March 14, 2013 Adam Johnston
 
Last year was a record-breaking year for U.S. solar energy, as the PV industry grew by 76% in 2012 compared to 2011.

The U.S. Solar Market Insight Report: Year In Review, co-authored by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that 2012 PV solar installations were 3.31 GW, more than 40% all previous U.S. solar online capacity.
Last year’s strong installation numbers provided a value of $11.5 billion in solar PV, $2.9 billion more than in 2011 ($8.6 billion), and almost double new installations’ value in 2010 ($5.6 billion).

Much of the firmness in the U.S. solar market is attributed to continuing falling costs. For example, the blended average price in the fourth quarter of 2012 for PV modules was $0.68/watt, a sharp decline of 41% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 when it was $1.15/watt.

Factor retail electricity prices skyrocketing by 35% since the start of 2000, and the average price of solar systems dropping by 70% in the same period, and it’s quite obvious why solar is growing so rapidly in the 21st century.

While last year was very strong, the fourth quarter blew out all the others, with 1.3 GW of new solar PV systems coming online that quarter, far surpassing the 684 MW in the third quarter.

All of these factors help to boost the U.S. solar market, which is producing 11% of all solar installations globally.

Besides strong growth being a key highlight of the solar energy industry in 2012, other market events shaping the industry included: consolidation of manufacturers, trade dispute resolutions, third-party solar leasing becoming a popular choice, and large-scale solar projects starting to take shape.

At the domestic level, California again led all states in PV installations, followed by Arizona, New Jersey, Nevada, and North Carolina (see graphic below).

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/14/u-s-solar-pv-market-grew-76-in-2012-charts/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Debunking The Myth Of The Inadequacy Of ‘Current Renewables’

March 13, 2013 Guest Contributor
 
This article was originally published on Climate Progress.

Snippet 1: Last month, I was on a panel with someone who kept kept saying “current renewables” were inadequate to address the climate problem and what we needed to do is invest in ”future renewables.” By that he meant increased research and development, of course, and not continued aggressive deployment.

I began my comments with this metaphor:

“There’s no useful intellectual distinction between ‘current’ and ‘future’ renewables. It’s like saying my daughter, who’s six, is not the same person once she becomes an adult. The only way she won’t grow is if I don’t feed her.”

The point is that continuing the amazing price drops and learning curves for renewables requires that we keep feeding them and help them keep learning – by expanding production, as the International Energy Agency has explained (see “The breakthrough technology illusion“). Many other studies back this up (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“).

[In fairness to renewables, solar power is at least a junior in college, and wind power has already graduated. My daughter just happens to be six.]

Snippet 2:If you’d like to see a study of how New York could go 100% renewable in two decades, see ”Examining the Feasibility of Converting New York State’s All-Purpose Energy Infrastructure to One Using Wind, Water and Sunlight” by Stanford’s Marc Jacobson et al.

As for the U.S. as a whole, here are the key points to needed the 450 ppm pathway:

1. We don’t need to be 100% carbon-free by 2030 — though that would be a good idea.

2. We can keep nuclear for baseload and yes we can even keep much of current gas power through 2030 — we just shouldn’t build a lot of new gas-fired plants.

3. We could easily keep demand flat using the most cost-effective source of energy there is — efficiency.

4. New renewables can back out coal over the next couple of decades (assuming the coal industry continues to commit suicide by failing to develop carbon capture and storage)

5. Our renewable penetration rate is considerably lower than that of many European countries, so we have a long way to go before increased renewables would cause us problems.

6. As we get to higher and higher levels of renewable penetration, we deal with intermittency through a combination of demand response, grid storage (which is steadily improving and dropping in price), and plugged in elective vehicles (whose already paid-for batteries are not being used >90% of the time).

7. Half or more of the “intermittency problem” is really a “predictability problem” — that is, if we could predict with high accuracy wind availability and solar availability 24 to 36 hours in advance, then we can use demand response (aggregated demand reductions by commercial, industrial, and even residential customers, see “Top 5 Coolest Ways Companies are Integrating Renewable Energy into the Grid“). Fortunately, such prediction capability is already beginning developed (see, for instance, here).


I have discussed these with leading energy analysts and electric grid experts, and they agree this is all doable with existing and near-term technology, assuming we keep feeding our renewable children — and would go even faster if we had a stiff carbon price.

As for why folks don’t get this, Jigar Shah says:

For some people, technology is not their sweet spot. They have other skills. And so when someone tells them, “technology is not ready,” they just eat up those words … hook, line and sinker and then decide that’s what their talking points are going to be. And with those people it’s just sad that they don’t read more.


A major 2000 report by the International Energy Agency, Experience Curves for Energy Technology Policy, analyzed a variety of experience curves for various energy technologies. Their key conclusion has already been demonstrated, in part, by the massive investment in renewables we’ve seen in the past decade, but it bears repeating:

A general message to policy makers comes from the basic philosophy of the experience curve. Learning requires continuous action, and future opportunities are therefore strongly coupled to present activities.

If we want cost-efficient, CO2-mitigation technologies available during the first decades of the new century, these technologies must be given the opportunity to learn in the current marketplace. Deferring decisions on deployment will risk lock-out of these technologies, i.e., lack of opportunities to learn will foreclose these options making them unavailable to the energy system.

Don’t lock our growing kids out of the job market by depriving them of food and learning. Deployment must be ramped up again and again and again (and yes, R&D, too).

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/13/debunking-the-myth-of-the-inadequacy-of-current-renewables/


Agelbert NOTE: I would add that the author is too kind with those that "don't get it". The fossil fuel lobby is expert at buying foot dragging prevaricators always claiming renewables aren't ready for prime time with the continual and duplicitous reference to the "real world". They will go down lying and dissembling all the way but big oil, coal and gas WILL GO DOWN.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelebert NOTE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr was absolutely prophetic 5 years ago.   We ARE in an Armageddon level existential fight with the polluters hell bent to keep us burning hydrocarbon poisons. 

Quote
In the next decade there will be an epic battle for survival for humanity against the forces of ignorance and greed. It’s going to be Armageddon, represented by the oil industry on one side, versus the renewable industry on the other. And people are going to have to choose sides – including politically. They will have to choose sides because oil and coal, they will not be able to survive – they are not going to be able to burn their proven reserves. If they do, then we are all dead. And they are quite willing to burn it. We’re all going to be part of that battle. We are going to watch governments being buffeted by the whims of money and greed on one side, and idealism and hope on the other.


Interview With Robert F Kennedy Jr On Environmental Activism, Democratization Of Energy, & More

February 6, 2013 Giles Parkinson
 
This article was originally published on RenewEconomy:


In January, RenewEconomy (RE) had the opportunity to do an exclusive interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr – son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, veteran environmental activist, lawyer, and renewable energy advocate.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr is head of the Riverkeepers (which has 17 groups in Australia), is the senior counsel for the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and is an appointee as director of Australian renewable energy group CBD Energy, currently in the process of merging with Westinghouse Solar. As a partner in VantagePoint, he has been involved in green technology investments for more than a decade, including as an investor in electric car manufacturer Tesla and the 2.7GW solar PV power plant in the Mojave Desert.

You can read our report on the interview here. Bobby Kennedy is typically robust, and touches on his environmental summit with JFK (his uncle), the disparity in subsidies, the desperation of the fossil fuel industries to burn their “unburnable carbon”, how solar and other renewables can help “democratise” both politics and the energy industry, and his own renewable investments.

Here is an edited transcript.

RE: How did you first get involved in environmental activism?
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: I was interested in it from when I was little. When I was eight years old, I wrote my uncle (John F Kennedy), who was in the White House. I wanted to talk to him about pollution and he invited me into the Oval Office. I spent part of the morning with him – I brought him a salamander as a present, which actually died, and we spent a lot of the meeting talking about the salamander’s health, with him saying it doesn’t look well, and me insisting he was just sleeping. I told him then I wanted to write a book about pollution, and he sent me to Stewart Udall (then Secretary of Interior), and (conservationist) Rachel Carson. I interviewed them both and took a tape recorder. But I didn’t get around to writing the book until I was 29 years old. I have also been kayaking since the same age, training and racing homing pigeons from when I was seven, and training hawks, which I continue to do.

So, I have been involved in the outdoors and always seen pollution as a theft of the commons. It’s always a subsidy, always somebody stealing part of the commons to enrich themselves by disposing of their waste into the public waterways and the public air. I believe in free market capitalism, and I believe in democracy, and pollution is an affront to both of those things. It’s inconsistent with free markets because pollution itself is a subsidy, an externality – it’s a way that corporations can eliminate the cost by putting it on to the public. In a true free market a company has to pay for the cost of bringing a product to market and that includes the cost of cleaning up after itself.

 RE: But so much of the push back against environmental legislation is that it interferes with the free market.

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: I think the opposite is true. First of all, the incumbents are the most heavily subsidised industries in the world. Coal is by far the most heavily subsidised industry, and oil, and if you look at their externalities, if you force them to pay for mercury discharges, for acidification, for acid rain, for ozone particulates, which in the US alone kills 60,000 a year – 20 times the number of people killed in the World Trade Centre – to say nothing of carbon, which is threatening the globe. The (IEA) recently identified that the global subsidies, the direct subsidies from governments to the fossil fuel industry, stood at more than $585 billion a year, whereas the subsidies to renewables are a less than $80 billion.

Why should the oil industry, the most profitable industry in the history of the planet, be getting half a trillion in subsidies a year? A country may want to support an immature industry, some nascent industry they are trying to grow, or for some other national security regions, or cultural reasons, to support, to give subsidies to maybe small farmers, as we did in our country – to grow the auto industry, the steel industry. When they first started we used them to build railroads, canals, but at some point those subsidies stopped.
But the rules by which energy is regulated were written to favour the most poisonous, destructive and addictive fuels from hell, rather than cheap, clean, green, safe, abundant and patriotic fuels from heaven. We need to reverse that dynamic, it’s in our national interest to do so – of Australia and the US. It’s in the global interest of humanity to do so.
 
RE: But that is a very hard thing to do, because the incumbent industry that will protect itself and seems to have political support, particularly in the Conservative camp.
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: That is the problem. I always say wherever you see large-scale pollution, you will also see the subversion of democracy, you will see the compromise of public officials, the capture of the agencies they are supposed to protect, they become sock puppets of the industries they are supposed to regulate. You see that in the political system, the kowtowing of the politicians who become indentured servants in the US and in Canada. The industry is the biggest contributor to political parties, they are able to raise an argument that they are somehow necessary to national security, and economic security, but the opposite is true.

 RE: David Crane (CEO of NRG, the large US generation company) and you wrote a letter to the editor about the democratisation of energy, and the desire to put a solar panel on every rooftop. What is democratisation of energy and why is it important?
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: From a reliability standpoint – it’s much more resilient. It’s easier for a terrorist to blow up a single power plant, or a coal-burning power plant but it’s really hard to blow up a million houses with solar panels on their roof. It is a more resilient source of energy because it is diverse.
It also tends to democratise – the political system tends to reflect the organisation of the financial systems it governs. So if you have a financial system that is controlled by a few large players, you’re going to tend to see the political systems will devolve into plutocracy, away from democracy. But if you have an economic system in which there are millions of participants, the political system will reflect that.

In the case of coal and oil, we see in our country the Koch brothers, the largest privately controlled oil company in the world, contribute something like $200 million to the recent election campaigns – they didn’t do that because they love the US of A, they did that because they believed that capturing and making indentured servants of our political representatives would make them wealthier.

Thomas Jefferson, who was the iconic figure in American democracy, he warned against large aggregations of wealth. He said that was inconsistent with democracy. He opposed industrialisation, because he thought it would create concentrations of wealth and power that would be inconsistent with democracy. And he wanted to spread out the economic wealth, to give American a vested interest in the economic system, so we would all have a vested interest in democracy.

 RE: So you see parallels of that with the energy industry?
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Right now the energy industry is controlled by a handful of global players, global multinationals. They control the oil fields and the coal fields. If, instead, we said we are not going to have a system like that, but we are going to be powered by the sun, or the wind, it is hard for a single corporation to control that. It is in the hands of everyone.

 RE: It is interesting that David Crane shares those views, wouldn’t he benefit from the status quo?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: David Crane is energy agnostic. As a CEO in the service of shareholders, he’s agnostic as to where he gets his energy. NRG controls nuclear plants, coal plants, a lot of gas, as well as wind and solar. What he has said is that the price of solar has come down so far that it is cheaper than even gas – in the US we have $2 gas – so if he has $100 million to spend, in at least 20 states the best investment he would make is in solar, because it is the cheapest way of providing electrons to his clients.

 RE: You work with Vantagepoint, which has invested in BrightSource and Tesla – both disruptive energy technologies. When will the tide turn for clean energy investments, because it’s been a brave person to put their money there?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Governments have got to get it right. A lot of people have hopes in Australia for Prime Minister Gillard – that she will give us the kind of dependability that we need. One of the problems with wind and solar is that we need market certainty, like any business in the nursery stage that has relatively small margins. If you’re going to have a business plan, you need reliability.
In the US we have some of the same problems that you have in Australia, but much worse. We have renewable energy credits, but we don’t get certainty with them. The incumbents know they can’t publicly come out against wind and solar, because that’s unpopular, but they can undermine wind and solar by undermining business reliability. What we really need is long-term faith in some of these government programs. And the incumbents have their subsidies, we are just trying to level the playing field.
If we could get rid of all subsidies, I would do it in a second. If the subsidies for the incumbents disappeared, we would drown them in a marketplace with a level playing field. They have the advantage of incumbency, the advantage of political control, and they are able to regulate the political system, to continue to externalise their cost and get huge subsidies from the government. Even in Australia, which has much a better program than the United States, it’s unclear whether your renewable energy standards will stay in place. Our industry, like any industry, needs certainty.

 RE: You have accepted the offer of a board seat with CBD Energy/Westinghouse Solar. What is the attraction?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: I’ve been associated with Westinghouse for a while. I think the merger makes sense because of the synergies. Westinghouse has got an inventory of technology and patents that will make solar installation safer and quicker to install, and make it more efficient and more reliable. Westinghouse will profit from the diversity that CBD has. Having a much larger customer base, synergistic diversification across geographic lines is the place that renewable energy industry has to go if it is to survive. We are seeing global consolidation in both the solar and the wind industry – companies that can bridge national borders and can share technology and diversify themselves will come out of this current ferment.
 
RE: It is, though, a very tough industry.

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: If you look at the automobile industry in the US – in early 20th Century there were hundreds of hundreds of companies making automobiles. Within a few years they would consolidate, eventually into the big four. You will see a lot of the same consolidation with wind and solar – particularly with globalisation, as we face austerity budgets throughout Europe. It’s the companies that are able to diversify and consolidate that are the ones that will survive.

 RE: Won’t we then face the same problems we have now, of an industry dominated by a few companies, just a different group of companies?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: It’s a different kind of industry than coal or oil. You are going to see a lot of large-scale solar and large-scale wind, but it is not susceptible to the kind of unique control that oil and gas are. Rockefeller owned 80 per cent of the world’s (oil resources) at one point – you won’t be able to do that now because people will be able to source solar on their own roofs. Everybody has access to it. Not everyone has an oil well in their backyard and not everyone has a coal field in their backyard. It is, fundamentally, a more democratic industry.

 RE: But what about the costs?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: You are going to see the kind of technology growth curves that you saw in the computer industry. Not so much in wind, because wind relies more on big infrastructure, lots of steel and poured concrete – those will have stable costs but they are just not going to drop so much. But solar panels are much more akin to computer chips: the more we make, the cheaper they will get. The more technological innovation, the more they will integrate with the industry. And costs will drop further. Those are drops that we see now. But those drops will continue, we will be seeing drops of over 30 per cent. Even if the Chinese slow down production, you will see that continue.
 
RE: Are you optimistic about the world’s environmental outcomes?
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: I think anyone who is a realist will say that the planet… we’re on a trajectory to creating a planet that is a science fiction nightmare. I would urge you to read Bill McKibben’s article in Rolling Stone on the arithmetic behind global warming. It’s one of the best articles ever done. It simplifies it. One of the principal points he makes is that two degrees is what all scientists agree is the maximum we can endure for a world that is roughly recognisable. And that in order to stay in 2°C, the maximum carbon we can add to atmosphere is 500 gigatonnes of CO2. However, the oil industry and coal industry have on their books proven reserves five times that amount – the value of those companies that has already been paid for by investors, that has been traded, borrowed on and mortgaged, etc, is based on the assumption that all of those reserves are going to get burned. If they do that the planet will heat by 11°(F) which will make most of it uninhabitable. If you look at it that way, it’s hard to imagine them as anything other than criminal enterprises willing to destroy the globe for their own greed. It is not radical stuff that I am talking about, it is proven science. It’s math. That’s what we are fighting, that’s what we are up against.

 RE: OK, so how do we get there?
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: I believe we have the technology, if we can rationalise our free market economy, so that we have truly free market capitalism, where everyone is forced to internalise their costs. The market place decides what the cheapest form of energy is. Then we can quickly eliminate coal and oil, because they are so much more expensive than any other fuel. We only have the illusion that they are cheap because they have garnered, through their political clout, so many subsidies.

 RE:
Is it best to use mechanisms like a carbon price, or other means?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: We need to price carbon. Australian does have a carbon tax which we do not have in the US. And we also have to give incentive for good behaviour by utilities. Utilities make money by burning oil and gas, and as much as possible to create electrons from that, so the CEO from that utility has to make a decision every morning about whether he is going to serve the interests of his shareholders or serve the interests of humanity and civilisation. We shouldn’t be be putting CEOs in that position. We should be able to say to them, we are going to design free market rules that allow you to make money by doing good things, rather than forcing you to make money by doing bad things. We did that in California, and there the utilities are make money by installing renewables, and being energy efficient. As a result of that, Californians use half the energy than other Americans use. They use 6,000kWh per year, the rest of America average about 13,000kWh. You can rationalise the system by helping people make money by doing good things, rather than making money doing bad things.

 RE: So how is this going to end up?

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr: In the next decade there will be an epic battle for survival for humanity against the forces of ignorance and greed. It’s going to be Armageddon, represented by the oil industry on one side, versus the renewable industry on the other. And people are going to have to choose sides – including politically. They will have to choose sides because oil and coal, they will not be able to survive – they are not going to be able to burn their proven reserves. If they do, then we are all dead. And they are quite willing to burn it. We’re all going to be part of that battle. We are going to watch governments being buffeted by the whims of money and greed on one side, and idealism and hope on the other.
 
RE: One last thing that I forgot to ask before, do you have solar at your home?
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: My home is a power plant – it produces more energy than it uses – virtually every day of the year. I have a geothermal system, and I have two state-of-the-art solar systems. We get a lot of sunlight in New York (state), not as much as in Australia, but two out of three days it is sunny. There is a book about it – The Kennedy Green House. It was designed by my late wife, who was a green architect.
 
RE: Mr Kennedy, thanks very much for your time today.
 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: It’s been a pleasure.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/06/interview-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-environmental-activism-democratization-of-energy-more/#g6gFdCgG4SdOsWit.99

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: More Textbook Disinformation from the WSJ Propaganda Pushers. Max Baumhener takes them to task for 'too clever by a half' distortions, exaggerations and downright mendacious bullshit.      

Bjorn Lomborg’s 😈 Dirty Little Math
March 17, 2013 NRDC
 
 By Max Baumhefner

A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by Bjorn Lomborg, “Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret,” argues that even though driving on electricity emits half as much pollution as driving on gasoline, it never makes up for the additional energy it takes to build electric cars.

How does Lomborg do the math?

First, he picks an estimate for electric car manufacturing emissions that’s three times higher than conventional estimates.

Second, he imagines electric cars will be prematurely sent to the junkyard, well before they’re even out of warranty.

Everyone likes exposing a fake, but if there’s a hoax here, it’s not the electric car.
Lomborg’s argument rests on the reasoning included in this sentence: “If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime, the huge initial emissions from its manufacture means the car will actually have put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a similar-size gasoline-powered car driven the same number of miles.”

The premise that the typical electric car will only be driven 50,000 miles is fanciful. Both the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf electric powertrains are backed by 100,000-mile warranties and there’s little reason to believe they won’t be driven much further. In fact, many drivers of the electric RAV4 Toyota produced in limited numbers between 1997 and 2003 have logged well over 100,000 miles. Below is a photo (follow thw link at the end for the photos) taken by one such proud owner when his odometer hit six figures in 2009. Today’s much more capable and advanced electric cars will go at least as far.

Turning to the question of “huge initial emissions” from manufacturing, most researchers agree that building electric cars today requires more energy than building gasoline vehicles, but estimates for production emissions from Argonne National Laboratory are roughly three times less than those used by Lomborg. It should also be noted that conventional automobile manufacturing has benefited from over a century of learning-by-doing and economies of scale. Ford plants today bear little resemblance to those that built the first Model-Ts. We should expect and demand similar improvements in the mass production of electric vehicles.

Lomborg also claims that cars charged with electricity made from coal are dirtier than gasoline vehicles. The environmental benefits of driving on electricity do depend on where you plug in and there are a few very coal-dependent states in which the most efficient gasoline hybrid is the better environmental choice. However, there is no region of the United States where driving an electric car is not cleaner than driving the average gasoline vehicle and almost half of Americans live in states where electric cars are by far the best option available today.

And that’s today. The benefits of driving on electricity will only increase in the future as more and more old coal plants are retired and replaced by cleaner and renewable resources. Twenty-nine states have renewable energy procurement targets and coal is increasingly becoming economically unattractive. In other words, electricity will become cleaner over time, while gasoline will only get dirtier as oil companies look to unconventional resources such as tar sands.

Lomborg’s statement that the “current best estimate of the global warming damage of an extra ton of carbon-dioxide is about $5,” is also misleading. He cherry picks the lowest of four values the government uses for such calculations ($5, $21, $35, and $65). By most accounts, the “best” estimate is at least four times higher than Lomborg’s figure.

The Wall Street Journal would do a better service to its audience by reality checking its opinion writers’ facts and asking its readers if they would prefer to remain addicted to oil in perpetuity. I’m guessing most of them would like the idea of driving on a cleaner, domestic fuel at a price that’s equivalent to driving on buck-a-gallon gasoline for life.

Max Baumhefner is an attorney, outdoor enthusiast, and a bread baker. My focus is the juncture of the electricity and transportation sectors. I work on policies designed to integrate electric vehicles into the grid and maximize their environmental benefits. I’m an environmentalist because my parents taught me to be responsible and clean up after myself, and I always do what my parents tell me.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/17/bjorn-lomborg-dirty-little-mistakes/

The dinosaur is thrashing around using its full grab bag of media disinfo experts to tank the popularity and interest in the EV. Don't swallow the iies. Remember, these guys are good at lying. They are expert in conning the American public. Big Oil dropped the price of oil to peanuts in the 1980s for only one reason; to kill renewables using the "they are too expensive" argument. Don't let them do it again. Fact check everything you read. I recently watched a film from 1976 showing CSP technology and solar towers in development. Those technologies were throttled so thoroughly that they didn't resurface until this past decade. That wasn't an accident or a "free market" function; it was disinformation, monopoly power and bribed government officials that pulled the rug out from under the huge promise of renewables back then to the planet's detriment.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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