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Personally, I think hydropower is a better long term solution, because
1: it doesn't produce waste, which is a minor issue, since toilets can get clogged
2: it doesn't rely on fuel, such as coal, gas, or uranium (or some other type of radioactive goop)
3: it's really, really clean, I mean it's about as clean as it gets
4: it has no disposability issues– wind turbines are nearly impossible to recycle, so they just get junked in a landfill
5: it lasts a really, really long time– think Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, etc
6: it generates a bucketload of power– more than most wind farms or solar arrays
That's just my take on it from various things I've read on the Web.
1: it doesn't produce waste, which is a minor issue, since toilets can get clogged
2: it doesn't rely on fuel, such as coal, gas, or uranium (or some other type of radioactive goop)
3: it's really, really clean, I mean it's about as clean as it gets
4: it has no disposability issues– wind turbines are nearly impossible to recycle, so they just get junked in a landfill
5: it lasts a really, really long time– think Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, etc
6: it generates a bucketload of power– more than most wind farms or solar arrays
That's just my take on it from various things I've read on the Web.
wind and solar are feel good stuff. They make virtually 0 power in the grand scheme.
some newer, larger, hydro is pretty potent, but the trouble there is that there are only a few sites where you can DO that, so you can't make enough of them to power the world. Dams have an environmental and logistical impact ... getting up and down for boat transports is a hassle, and the dammed area is now flooded, so everyone would have to leave to make a new one in many areas. Hoover generates very little power, but its very old, we can do better now.
nukes have their own brand of waste, security, and problems. So, I sort of agree... dam where you can, as much as you can. But where you can't nukes are probably the answer until we invent something better (power from space? better solar? chemical (eg hydrogen to burn)? Waste heat recovery? Whatever the future holds on those.
some newer, larger, hydro is pretty potent, but the trouble there is that there are only a few sites where you can DO that, so you can't make enough of them to power the world. Dams have an environmental and logistical impact ... getting up and down for boat transports is a hassle, and the dammed area is now flooded, so everyone would have to leave to make a new one in many areas. Hoover generates very little power, but its very old, we can do better now.
nukes have their own brand of waste, security, and problems. So, I sort of agree... dam where you can, as much as you can. But where you can't nukes are probably the answer until we invent something better (power from space? better solar? chemical (eg hydrogen to burn)? Waste heat recovery? Whatever the future holds on those.
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| wind and solar are feel good stuff |
It makes sense to me to have solar power for individual homes and such - where people can save on electricity bills and just to have every home less dependent on the electric company.
Should be utilizing all forms of energy producing options where logical.
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| wind and solar are feel good stuff. They make virtually 0 power in the grand scheme. |
https://www.renewableuk.com/page/UKWEDhome
Actually, windpower generated 24.8% of UK electricity in 2020, more than coal or nuclear.
hmm. I didn't think they had enough land to do that. Acers per megawatt, that would take up a ton of space... but its good to know! It looks like 1/5 of Scotland on their map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom lol, and they have since started sticking them out at sea.
home solar, sure, ok. Like wind, its acres per megawatt is poor, but your roof is totally free space, its not doing anything else.
home solar, sure, ok. Like wind, its acres per megawatt is poor, but your roof is totally free space, its not doing anything else.
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I have an array of 6KW solar panels on my roof. On a good sunny day in Summer I can generate about 33KW of electricity - most of which is exported to the National Grid.
| zapshe wrote: |
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| It makes sense to me to have solar power for individual homes and such - where people can save on electricity bills and just to have every home less dependent on the electric company. |
Definitely. My house is close to a small river (or big creek, if you think that way), and it actually has a waterwheel built into it, which is pretty cool. The waterwheel actually generates most of our electricity– although we don't use a whole lot, especially in the summer– and there's a cutoff at the main breaker panel to prevent feeding the electricity into the main grid, which can cause problems in an outage.
| lastchance wrote: |
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| Actually, windpower generated 24.8% of UK electricity in 2020, more than coal or nuclear. |
I will point out that the UK is a tiny fraction of the size of the US: (https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/united-states/united-kingdom), so 24.8% of the UK would be a mere drop in the bucket Across The Pond. Admittedly though, 24,000 megawatts is a fairly decent amount of power.
| jonnin wrote: |
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| But where you can't nukes are probably the answer until we invent something better |
Agreed. Personally, I'm holding out for some sort of nuclear fusion– like ITER in Japan, I think that's one of the Russian tokamak (essentially means donut-shaped) designs. There's a really interesting book on the subject, titled Sun in a Bottle. I forget who wrote it, it's been too long, and so the author's name has succumbed to CRS (cognitive relapse syndrome, otherwise known as Can't Remember Sh*T).
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| agent max wrote: |
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| I'm holding out for some sort of nuclear fusion |
Throughout my lifetime nuclear fusion has always been 20 years away.
| agent max wrote: |
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| I will point out that the UK is a tiny fraction of the size of the US |
True enough - the US has a lot of space to put windpower in. However, the really high and reliable winds are offshore. The UK has a lot of large turbines on monopiles in about 10-20m depth of water. The next generation will be floating in water of much greater depth. Some of them are already deployed: https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/floating-wind.html
Wind and solar are probably the optimal "first converters". They can then be used to split water (for the hydrogen - good for transmission and storage). If we can get past the engineering challenges then tidal-stream power (not tidal barrages, which are environmentally damaging) could produce a lot of electricity, with the advantage of reliable generation times.
"Run of the current" hydropower is probably a bit limited for most people. Big dams have their problems - some physical (they trap sediment and so cause downstream erosion of river deltas - e.g. the Aswan High Dam causing the depletion of the Nile delta) and they may cause geopolitical problems over water supply:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam
Note the "The second phase of filling was completed on 19 July 2021, without the agreement of Egypt and Sudan". Even Donald Trump weighed in:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54674313
For energy storage it's difficult to beat simply pumping water up a hill:
https://www.electricmountain.co.uk/Dinorwig-Power-Station
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| some sort of nuclear fusion |
Excluding gravitation and dark energy, the ultimate source of all energy on planet Earth comes from nuclear fusion. We call it The Sun, at the center (focus for purists) of our Solar System.
Nuclear fusion drives wind, solar, coal, gas, tidal and any other aspect of energy sources we like to mention. There is no magic.
BTW the clear colorless CO2 from burning coal and gas is a greenhouse gas. Clearing the flue gas coming out of coal-fired power stations via electrostatic or any other type of particulate precipitator is very old technology designed for a completely different purpose than addressing carbon emissions.
Pulverized coal does not explode and that combustion technology is used whether its low grade brown coal or high grade black coal.
| againtry wrote: |
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| Clearing the flue gas coming out of coal-fired power stations via electrostatic or any other type of particulate precipitator is very old technology designed for a completely different purpose than addressing carbon emissions. |
I beg to differ. Filtering the gas products from a coal power station is specifically to remove carbon particulate (aka soot) from the emissions.
Solid carbon particles, in other words unburnt coal, is not what is meant by the term ‘carbon emission’. Gaseous carbon dioxide is a carbon emission and it passes straight through a precipitator. That’s why carbon capture and storage is one new technology that might have a future.
The main product of precipitators is fly ash, yet another waste disposal problem.
The main product of precipitators is fly ash, yet another waste disposal problem.
Fly ash as one waste product from coal combustion, specially in power stations, has been used for many decades in concrete as a cheap, useful and very available pozzolan.
Trouble is there is too much fly ash and not enough concrete to make full use of it. Besides, the only nice thing to say about fly-ash is it isn't a direct contributor to greenhouse gases. Beyond that it contains many dangerous chemicals and even potentially dangerous levels of radioactive materials.
Nobody has found a complete answer and use for carbon dioxide yet and probably never will. The problematic stuff comes from trees growing in vast quantities for literally millions of years. Same goes for wherever/whatever oil is.
A smart and developing, but not here yet, solar->electricity->hydrogen cycle combined with various current and new storage and distribution systems seems to me to be the most likely future, giving 2 sources of workable energy - electricity and hydrogen. The only waste is what to do with used silicon etc and maybe non-reusable H2 fuel storage containers.
The main 'waste product' to consider is people in these old technology industries, particularly their jobs. That's why the steps taken should be carefully transitioned.
CO2? Drink more Coke and never burp?
Trouble is there is too much fly ash and not enough concrete to make full use of it. Besides, the only nice thing to say about fly-ash is it isn't a direct contributor to greenhouse gases. Beyond that it contains many dangerous chemicals and even potentially dangerous levels of radioactive materials.
Nobody has found a complete answer and use for carbon dioxide yet and probably never will. The problematic stuff comes from trees growing in vast quantities for literally millions of years. Same goes for wherever/whatever oil is.
A smart and developing, but not here yet, solar->electricity->hydrogen cycle combined with various current and new storage and distribution systems seems to me to be the most likely future, giving 2 sources of workable energy - electricity and hydrogen. The only waste is what to do with used silicon etc and maybe non-reusable H2 fuel storage containers.
The main 'waste product' to consider is people in these old technology industries, particularly their jobs. That's why the steps taken should be carefully transitioned.
CO2? Drink more Coke and never burp?
You know what CO2 does though, it makes the planet greener, because it feeds plants. If we had more trees, they could absorb basically all the CO2 and we wouldn't have an issue.
Isn't silicon recyclable? I can't recall, but I read an article a while back on recycling something, might have been silicon.
| The only waste is what to do with used silicon etc and maybe non-reusable H2 fuel storage containers. |
Isn't silicon recyclable? I can't recall, but I read an article a while back on recycling something, might have been silicon.
silicon is an element. It is, by definition, recycled. I can't speak for things made of compounds of it, though. Chips are pretty pure I believe, but like those plasticish things you can throw in the oven? No clue.
The paranoid and sarcastic guy in me says that the "oh noes C02!!" stuff is how government plans to tax breathing; that its all a scam to play off a generation raised to believe the end is near.
The paranoid and sarcastic guy in me says that the "oh noes C02!!" stuff is how government plans to tax breathing; that its all a scam to play off a generation raised to believe the end is near.
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Government wants to tax plant food (CO2), Warm temperatures encourage plants to grow more and bigger.
Yet more CO2 and warmer temps are supposed to be bad.
Yet more CO2 and warmer temps are supposed to be bad.
| If we had more trees, they could absorb basically all the CO2 and we wouldn't have an issue. |
Trees are in fact one sensible but not complete solution. (In any case cutting down native forests to make way for oil palms or for making wood chips etc is borderline, if not outright, criminal. We should be planting new trees worldwide regardless.
To put a handle on trees and CO2 read https://iee.psu.edu/news/blog/how-many-trees-are-needed-take-carbon-dioxide-i-release-every-day
| So how many trees are needed to take up the carbon dioxide we emit every day? The answer is about 15 trees for the carbon dioxide that a person releases based on the food they eat. |
Of course, if the predictions and experience so far is correct there is plenty of gravel to be processed in the aftermath of glaciers as they retreat and eventually disappear. Let's face it, gravel is glacier waste, that obviously needs to be recycled too.
| jonnin wrote: |
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| its all a scam to play off a generation raised to believe the end is near. |
Got that right. Here in the US of A, we were told back in the 70's that "OH NO THE EARTH IS WARMING WE'RE ALL GONNA BE ROASTED IN ABOUT 5 YEARS!!!" Fast-forward to 2000 and Al Gore runs his entire presidential campaign on "The earth is going to be unlivable in 10 years." Fast-forward to today and the government is predicting "sometime in the mid-21st century."
I think most ordinary people stopped believing that stuff a long time ago. Or maybe I'm just optimistic...
The 1970's was all about Global COOLING, another Ice Age was gonna happen. The flip to Global Warming was in the very late 1970's/early 1980's.