…is losing air. Too bad this didn’t happen a couple years ago, when the Democrats got elected on that kind of economic lunacy. I hope that this will reduce their support in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, the California electorate remains clueless, as demonstrated by the failure of Prop 23.
And I could never understand why if, as its opponents told us on commercials every five minutes, it was an evil plot by “Texas oil companies,” we never saw or heard any commercials supporting it, paid for by those evil Texas oil companies. But then, logic has never been a California voters’ strong suit, at least not in the past couple decades.
Those Texas Oil companies aren’t stopping general energy companies in Texas from building huge wind farms in west Texas.
Wait, hold up. You’re telling me that using political-technocracy to choose economic winners, and using mass taxation to subsidize mass consumption, aren’t successful strategies for technological change? Why did no one tell me this before???
Somehow this is Jim’s fault. He didn’t warn me.
Silicon Valley is in the tank on “green” energy. This is why they supported Obama in ’08. The silicon valley of today bears no resemblance to the silicon valley of the early 80’s where there were entrepreneurs building businesses in a real free market.
The valley has been political before. Many of the silicon valley semiconductor companies became defense contractors during the second-half of the 1980’s (following the 1985 semiconductor crash).
Also, do not forget that Lockheed was the biggest employer in San Jose county during the 1960’s and up to 1972, when the massive layoffs occurred.
The silicon valley venture capitalists are definitely in the tank of the “green energy” bubble.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228806/planning-next-bubble/kling
The Washington DC public transit system is wallpapered with ads by Shell Oil urging us to adopt unspecified green technology. Every one of these obnoxious posts ends with the phrase: “Let’s go!”
My mental response to each of these is: “Who’s stopping you?”
Green energy is based on subsidies (e.g. rent-seeking parasitism). Eliminate the subsidies and the whole thing will collapse on its own.
“Green” energy is a misnomer. Often it not cleaner. Solar panels are particularly dirty to manufacture for example. Solar panels have their uses of course. If you need small amounts of power in a remote location away from the grid (like say in space, or in the wilderness) it can be economic. It allows you to survive off the fat of the land. It is one of our first technologies which has proved fundamental for expanding our presence in space. Most satellites use them. Space stations use them. What it is not however is a panacea.
Wind power is economic today. Even the oil companies admit this and are investing in the market even when the subsidies provided are less than stellar. It is still intermittent but it is cheap. It was used to provide mechanical energy for doing work for centuries just fine. Windmills still had many applications just a couple of centuries ago. A couple of improvements, done with no small thanks to NASA, helped create the industry we see today by grounding it in actual aerodynamics.
What I do think is interesting and will shape the next century: nuclear power, batteries, capacitors, superconductors, beamed power transmission, smarter controllers to reduce energy consumption, etc.
Energy is like disk space. It is never enough. So the more ways we figure out for doing energy generation, storage, transmission, the richer we will become. Because with energy and a machine, you can generate useful work.
In my opinion battery electric vehicles would be an amazing product and a great market equalizer (provided they figure out the kinks, which I think they are doing). Imagine being able to fill your car with anything: hydroelectric power (dams), thermal power (coal, natural gas), nuclear power (fission), once, get small energy consumption in grid locked cities thanks to regenerative breaking, and no on-site emissions from the nasty exhaust. Which is nasty for the proper reasons which have a measurable effect on human life: carbon monoxide, particulates, etc.
The Chinese are building nuclear plants in China and shipping windmills to California. It’s a good business for China.
My father has just got back from China – electric bicycles are taking over urban areas. This is my kind of green technology, the economically superior kind.
“Wind power is economic today.”
Well, it costs the same per installed kilowatt as a coal fired power plant (actually, it costs a little more, but that’s not important). What is not the same is the fact that a coal-fired power plant generates all the time, while a windmill does so only when the wind blows. Most places, that’s not much. Maintenance of windmills is expensive, and they need a lot of it. So, no, windmills are not “economic” now, and probably never will be.
“Wind power is economic today.”
Well, it costs the same per installed kilowatt as a coal fired power plant (actually, it costs a little more, but that’s not important). What is not the same is the fact that a coal-fired power plant generates all the time, while a windmill does so only when the wind blows. Most places, that’s not much. Maintenance of windmills is expensive, and they need a lot of it. So, no, windmills are not “economic” now, and probably never will be.
And the ongoing cost of the coal.
I am not exactly sure how much power stations pay for coal but a $100/ton would equate to around $0.03/kWhr of electricity for the coal cost component only. Presumably they are paying a bit less than that.
Coal is generally cheaper than wind, but I would not assume it to always stay that way. Wind is getting cheaper while coal is getting more expensive. Considering the long payback times, I would be a little nervous about investing in new coal power stations.
We did a pretty intensive look at the business case for wind at the last company I worked for. GE and Siemens, the two biggies, are in it solely for political reasons — and wouldn’t be able to afford even that if it were not for various subsidies not available to newcomers.
Wind is currently about three times more expensive than coal on an on-going basis. Since it relies heavily on hydrocarbons to achieve structural efficiencies, the capital cost will only rise as fossil fuels become more expensive.
Another aspect that I have speculated about for some time is its adverse environmental effect. Interrupting the main transport mechanism for heat and water doesn’t seem very climate friendly to me. Wind is also the main transport mechanism for biological material (yeast, bacteria, fungal spores, pollen, etc.), which makes interruptions more alarming in a broader environmental sense.
Well, it turns out that the environmentalists realized that about 6 years ago. They were alerted to the fact that windmills affect climate by the fact that climate has measurably changed around large wind farms. But it’s okay. The models say that it’s a good kind of climate change…
If memory serves (I could probably track down the paper) if all the world’s energy was coming from wind turbines there would just be a noticeable cooling effect on global climate (something like 0.25C global temperature reduction). Interesting water current power comparatively has around a thousand times the thermal effect – best method of climate control I have come across (temperature, rainfall, sea level, hurricanes, etc., for mere billions of dollars and at local and global scales). This is close to my favored method:
http://minesto.com/
I am expecting significant cost reductions in carbon fiber in the not to distant future and the commercialization of various disruptive wind power technologies (of the above type). A halving of wind power costs seems not unlikely to me in the next 10-20 years.
The purpose of proposition 23 is to make electricity in California so expensive that battery-electric vehicles are uneconomical even if the batteries cost nothing. 😉
I am a strong supporter of alternative energy technologies, but primarily for economic reasons. One of my great annoyances is the funding of alternative energy technologies that do not have the potential to be commercially competitive with coal/oil/gas power (poisoning the well) – many can be and I am not inclined to bring them off the drawing board until they have that potential.
Cheap energy can be a huge enabler of global growth and increased standards of living, it seems a very worthy goal. However an Apollo/NASA approach to alternative energy is no more going to bring about cheap energy than it brought about cheap space.
“If memory serves (I could probably track down the paper) if all the world’s energy was coming from wind turbines there would just be a noticeable cooling effect on global climate (something like 0.25C global temperature reduction).”
The paper I read said that there would be warming at the equator, and cooling at the poles.
None of these models can predict anything. They’re complete B.S.
The paper I read said that there would be warming at the equator, and cooling at the poles.
Yes, as one would expect. Less wind means reduced mixing of thermal reservoirs (averaging of temperatures), the equator getting warmer and the poles getting cooler. Due to radiative heat transfer going with the fourth power of temperature this means more extra heat will be radiated from the equator than not radiated from the poles – reducing overall average temperature. It was noted that the climate model reflected this, still it would be embarrassing if the model did not get this simple relationship right.
“Yes, as one would expect.”
Actually, I misquoted the paper. It predicts exactly the opposite.
But that’s probably as one would – with a little incoherent arm-waving – expect, too.
Are you sure about that? I have not actually read the paper – heard about it directly (maybe I heard wrong?). Actually the paper I am thinking of was written last year, is it the same one?
Extracting energy from the wind does take energy/heat out of the global system, but then when that energy is used it goes back in – sort of no net effect.