Two excerpts from the article:
"The math is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of
solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah,
covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as
Manhattan."
"The Roscoe wind farm in Texas, which has a
capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154 square miles. Again, the math is
straightforward: to have 8,500 megawatts of wind generation capacity, California
would likely need to set aside an area equivalent to more than 70 Manhattans.
Apart from the impact on the environment itself, few if any people could live on
the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which is
inaudible
to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the
turbines." (emphasis added- F.Y.)
-----------------------------------------
Frank's commentary- If we are going
to mathematically render uninhabitable all lands on which "inaudible"
but harmful effects emanate from power generating facilities, we would
include all areas downwind of coal fired generating facilities that generate
particulate matter- because such particulates are demonstrably responsible
for thousands of premature human deaths.
"In 2000 and again in 2004, Abt Associates issued a
study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force quantifying the deaths and other
health affects attributable to the fine particle pollution from power plants. In
this newly updated study, CATF examines the progress towards cleaning up one of
the nation's leading sources of pollution. The report finds that over 13,000
deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power
plants."
"Simple" and "straightforward" math-
indeed!
Frank
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 9:00 AM
Subject: [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar
energy
Robert Bryce ("Power Hungry" author) is back w/ some figures
on
"energy sprawl." Once again, he's good at debunking the notion
that
wind and solar are "free"--but five words from the end of the piece
he
gets to his pet alternatives, natural gas and nuclear power.
Op-Ed
Contributor
The Gas Is Greener: The Cost of Renewable Energy Sources
By
ROBERT BRYCE
Published: June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08bryce.html
IN April, Gov. Jerry Brown made headlines by signing into law
an
ambitious mandate that requires California to obtain one-third of
its
electricity from renewable energy sources like sunlight and wind
by
2020. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now
have
renewable electricity mandates. President Obama and several members
of
Congress have supported one at the federal level. Polls routinely
show
strong support among voters for renewable energy projects — as long
as
they don’t cost too much.
But there’s the rub: while energy sources
like sunlight and wind are
free and naturally replenished, converting them
into large quantities
of electricity requires vast amounts of natural
resources — most
notably, land. Even a cursory look at these costs exposes
the deep
contradictions in the renewable energy movement.
Consider
California’s new mandate. The state’s peak electricity demand
is about 52,000
megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require
(if you oversimplify a
bit) about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy
capacity. Let’s assume that
California will get half of that capacity
from solar and half from wind. Most
of its large-scale solar
electricity production will presumably come from
projects like the $2
billion Ivanpah solar plant, which is now under
construction in the
Mojave Desert in southern California. When completed,
Ivanpah, which
aims to provide 370 megawatts of solar generation capacity,
will cover
3,600 acres — about five and a half square miles.
The math
is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity,
California would need
at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah,
covering about 129 square miles, an
area more than five times as large
as Manhattan. While there’s plenty of land
in the Mojave, projects as
big as Ivanpah raise environmental concerns. In
April, the federal
Bureau of Land Management ordered a halt to construction
on part of
the facility out of concern for the desert tortoise, which
is
protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Wind energy projects
require even more land. The Roscoe wind farm in
Texas, which has a capacity
of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154
square miles. Again, the math is
straightforward: to have 8,500
megawatts of wind generation capacity,
California would likely need to
set aside an area equivalent to more than 70
Manhattans. Apart from
the impact on the environment itself, few if any
people could live on
the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which
is inaudible
to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the
turbines.
Industrial solar and wind projects also require long swaths of
land
for power lines. Last year, despite opposition from
environmental
groups, San Diego Gas & Electric started construction on
the 117-mile
Sunrise Powerlink, which will carry electricity from solar, wind
and
geothermal projects located in Imperial County, Calif., to
customers
in and around San Diego. In January, environmental groups filed
a
federal lawsuit to prevent the $1.9 billion line from cutting through
a
nearby national forest.
Not all environmentalists ignore renewable
energy’s land requirements.
The Nature Conservancy has coined the term
“energy sprawl” to describe
it. Unfortunately, energy sprawl is only one of
the ways that
renewable energy makes heavy demands on natural
resources.
Consider the massive quantities of steel required for wind
projects.
The production and transportation of steel are both expensive
and
energy-intensive, and installing a single wind turbine requires
about
200 tons of it. Many turbines have capacities of 3 or 4 megawatts,
so
you can assume that each megawatt of wind capacity requires roughly
50
tons of steel. By contrast, a typical natural gas turbine can
produce
nearly 43 megawatts while weighing only 9 tons. Thus, each megawatt
of
capacity requires less than a quarter of a ton of steel.
Obviously
these are ballpark figures, but however you crunch the
numbers, the takeaway
is the same: the amount of steel needed to
generate a given amount of
electricity from a wind turbine is greater
by several orders of
magnitude.
Such profligate use of resources is the antithesis of
the
environmental ideal. Nearly four decades ago, the economist E.
F.
Schumacher distilled the essence of environmental protection down
to
three words: “Small is beautiful.” In the rush to do something
—
anything — to deal with the intractable problem of greenhouse
gas
emissions, environmental groups and policy makers have determined
that
renewable energy is the answer. But in doing so they’ve
tossed
Schumacher’s dictum into the ditch.
All energy and power
systems exact a toll. If we are to take
Schumacher’s phrase to heart while
also reducing the rate of growth of
greenhouse gas emissions, we must exploit
the low-carbon energy
sources — natural gas and, yes, nuclear — that have
smaller
footprints.
Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan
Institute, is the
author, most recently, of “Power Hungry: The Myths of
‘Green’ Energy
and the Real Fuels of the
Future.”
------------------------------------
Working since
1967 for the conservation and wise management of West Virginia's natural
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