Jan 12
10

So what's the problem with sustainable/green energy?

6 Comments

I’ve never understood this ardent opposition to sustainable energy. Global warming/climate change or not, what exactly is the problem with sustainable energy. I can understand why people oppose higher fossil fuel taxes and carbon caps and all…it pisses me off too. But honestly, what would be the harm in offering people tax breaks for installing solar panels or a wind turbine on their property? Or offering tax breaks to energy corporations if they build a geothermal power plant or wind farm or something. I just don’t understand why anyone could be against sustainable energy sources. Is it because it’s always associated with liberals? I’m pretty conservative personally, but I think sustainable/renewable/green energy is a wonderful idea.

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This entry was posted on January 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Uncategorized by admin 6 Comments

6 Responses to "So what's the problem with sustainable/green energy?"

  • John W says:
    January 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    Load following. With the exception of small scale hydro, renewable energy sources are not available on demand, solar power flows when the sun shines, wind power flows when the wind blows, this may or may not be when you want the power. Batteries are extremely inefficient and expensive so we really didn’t make any head way till we had net metering where we can sell the power to the grid and buy it back when we need it. However this means that only a certain percentage of our power can be from alternative power sources, what we call base load and for every kilowatt of renewable energy we put on to the grid we have to have a kilowatt of on demand generation ability in case the renewable energy source doesn’t deliver. Unfortunately the on demand generation is usually the most expensive sources of energy, currently natural gas turbines and hydro are really the only ones that can load follow. Nuclear can’t load follow if it’s solid fuel nuclear due to the Xenon gas problem, if it’s a Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor then it can load follow but the industry is almost entirely solid uranium fuel. Coal can’t load follow, it takes days to start up a coal plant. And of course wind and solar can’t load follow unless you can command the wind and sun. So the more wind and solar you tie to the grid, the more gas turbine plants you have to build. Keep in mind they don’t make any money off these gas turbine plants as the idea is to not use them plus they’re probably so expensive that the utilities will lose money if they turn them on.

  • RowingGeek says:
    January 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    Relatively recently, we thought "Oh crap! We should turn to alternative energy" so the stuff isn’t up to par yet. All the systems have there downs but we are working to figure them out.

  • Harald says:
    January 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    Part of the problem is that many times libs want to use green energy in place of fossil fuels not in conjunction with fossil fuels. Some green energy sources are not consistently reliable such as wind power and others such as wind farms kill large amounts of birds. Note too that when wind farms were proposed off the coast of Cape Cod the libs went nuts-it was the old not in my back yard syndrome.

  • UK Guy says:
    January 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    There are huge tax breaks and subsidies for wind generation and solar panels.

    Wind turbines are an absolute nightmare for bird but they are even worse for bats. I have seen bats killed by wind turbines even though they didn’t get hit – the vortex close to the blade is such it can burst their lungs.

    Wind, Wave, and Solar power in the UK are not in any way shape or form predictable or consistent. You cant wait for it to get windy or sunny for everyone to put their kettle on. As yet the UK has very limited energy storage capabilities. For these green sources to be used the UK would probably have to be able to store enough power for the equivalent of 3 whole days. That’s a colossal amount of power. Also Wind / Wave / Solar does not work well in conjunction with current generation methods. EG when the wind drops conventional generating has to take over. If the wind drops fast this can cause a problem as conventional power stations cannot ramp up just like flicking a switch.

    Wedefinitely need more storage like the hollowed out mountain in wales that pumps water in to store electricity and then runs as a hydroelectric plant to get it back again. However we would need several thousand of them at least (I’d estimate possibly 20,000 such plants) to cover for overcast days with no wind in winter.

  • the eco warrior says:
    January 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    i think the opposition is due to the fact that ppl dont want to change their extravagant lifestyle. They want cheap gasoline so they can continue using their gas guzzling cars. Also more than that if electric cars come then consumption of oil would reduce and therefore loss for the oil companies so they oppose th sustainable clean energy. Also the automibile companies want to continue to produce gas cars. And all these big oil and automobile companies sponsor the anti sustainable energy propanganda and their puppets continue to spread that propoganda.

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