Notebook of things worth noting, pertaining to powering our lives.
Sun belt power. It seems a large share of federal funds destined to help us weatherize and stimulate the economy are headed for the sun belt. It use to be that 16 percent of the federal money used to weatherize went to southern climes to help keep air conditioning from floating out into the hot sky. Now, that percentage is us to 31 percent of the unprecedented $5 billion of Washington money dedicated to weatherize homes. You may ask, what sense does that make, when Americans spend twice as much to heat their homes as to cool them? It makes political sense - and cents. Washington is about politics, and sun belt legislators are getting their due - horse politics - trading their support for other things. Maybe cap and trade. Maybe health care.
It seems that estimates of coal reserves in the US may be vastly overstated - according to recent studies and experts - and a front page Wall Street Journal article on Monday. The share of US coal reserves that is recoverable may be half - half - of government estimates, some now say. In the largest coal field in the nation, in Wyoming, only 6 percent of its coal beds can be extracted at a profit. So global warming skeptics who love to wrap their dreams around unending supplies of domestic coal - are you still sure you want to pooh-pooh wind, solar, tidal and other new approaches to generating power?
Good for Maryland utility regulators who want to spend more time studying Electricite de France's bid to buy half of Constellation Energy Group's nuclear assets. The test should be a simple one. Is it conceivable that American company could pursue acquisition of similar French government-owned nuclear assets? Non? Then the deal should be tossed in the Seine.
Try to get your hands on a copy of the July issue of Popular Science. The cover shows wind turbines. If you hold up a copy to a web camera, the computer will magically convert it into a 3-D image of a wind farm. Now get this. Blow on your web cam microphone and the turbines will spin - reports today's New York Times.
[Next Tuesday you can go to www.popsci.com/imagination to print out a copy of the cover and test this all out.]
Popular Science teamed up with General Electric on the cover. What is next? Can we reverse the process? Can a spinning turbine in Minnesota direct a stream of air out of my web cam to cool my over-heated imagination as I blog?
I am looking for the amount of recoverable resources of coal - is this number verifiable? Available? what happens if [when] carbon cap-and-trade comes in? How will that effect the recoverable resources?
The study I referenced was done by a leading economist of a premier university of Spain: Gabriel Calzada Alvarez et al of Spain's leading- University Rey Juan Carlos. Spain is the country the current Waxman-Markey energy bill is modeled after. Spain's Kyoto clean renewable energy plan has failed miserably to achieve even it's emission goals. They actually imported windmills from China because the local labor costs made it impossible to budget for them. He showed that for every green job 2 regular jobs where lost. And this is not just in Spain but typical for all of Europe that has invested in solar and wind while escuing coal or nuclear. The unemployemnt rate in Spain is 17%. Gee I wonder why?
In Germany, where they retired 8 old technology nuclear reactors, they are building 8 new replacement coal plants. The Green party over there deemed nuclear reactors so dangerous to the environment that the country has no future plans for replacing their old nuclear reactors. The result, they can't keep up with their energy demands with just wind and solar. So they are moving whole towns so that they can mine their remaining coal lignite reserves. Lignite is a very dirty form of coal. http://www.depletedcranium.com/?p=2140
Closer to Home, state auditors have announced that California's 30% renewable energy mandates pose a "high risk" to the state's economy, and the California Energy Commission warned of power shortages in 2011 if current trends continue. Energy officials also report that the state will miss its renewable energy targets by 5 years or more. According to the state energy authorities, this stricter mandate could double the cost of achieving the previous 20% requirement, at a total exceeding $114 billion. Blissfully oblivious to the looming collision between reality and environmental utopianism, Governor Schwarzenegger proudly proclaimed, "this will be the most aggressive target in the nation." This, a state that is handing out IOU's, closing state parks, laying off workers right and left.
If California is the bell weather for the nations economy then there must be serious flaws with these renewable schemes. In fact, since the IPCC's climate models have failed to predict the past couple of years of global cooling, there must some serious flaws in the IPCC's assessment of climate change. About 15 years ago an engineer was lauding the potential technology of fuel cells and it would be the standard power source for the next century. 15 years later, still waiting for said fuel cells. Now it's electric storage devices and renewable energy.
How long will the wait be before that technology matures and becomes practical, if ever? I think it would be prudent to go with the most viable technologies at hand and that is still coal, oil and especially nuclear, with it's potential for renewable fuel recycling and breeding. Windmills currently are better for pumping water and PV solar is good for remote power. Passive solar is technology now and very doable. Get a handle on reality, it may be something other than wind, bio and solar for many decades, maybe something not even on the radar screen for the future. Your speculating on technology that hasn't proved itself, except as an over subsidized, expensive, unreliable alternative.