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.
See the related map and narrative data here: http://www.catf.us/coal/problems/power_plants/existing/
"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 ----- From: "Hugh Rogers" hugh.rogers@gmail.com To: "WVHCBOARD" WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com 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.”
------------------------------------
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I would like to add a few points. First the Texas wind project does cover about 154 Sq miles but most of this land is still in production as farm land or unimproved as it was before the wind farm, and it is still used as residents for the owners of this land. Only about 19 sq miles was actually used building the sites "this includes access roads and laydown areas". Second the Ivanpah site is large but we must also remember this also includes the power lines connecting to the nearby distribution system, reserve park lands set up to build this plant. The most noticeable item in this discussion was the tortoise which at this point is being found under the collectors and seems to be happy. The downside is increased beading may be going on during the construction phase of this project.
Several comments that was made to me a year or two ago puts some prospective on this subject. We don't want windmills here put them out west where it wont hurt anything. About the same time I was told by some people who live in Columbus OH mine the coal in WV and burn it there where the want to do that kind of stuff and the damage has already been done. Some people call this NIMBY. We all want to use power we just don't want to see it in our back yard.
Kevin Fooce fooce@hotmail.com 304-751-1448 work 304-675-6687 home 304-593-2875 cell
From: fyoung@mountain.net To: WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 11:11:40 -0400 CC: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
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.
See the related map and narrative data here: http://www.catf.us/coal/problems/power_plants/existing/
"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 ----- From: "Hugh Rogers" hugh.rogers@gmail.com To: "WVHCBOARD" WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com 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 resourcesYahoo! Groups Links
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If I may, I would offer theses added thoughts.
Wind farms on existing agricultural land actually increases the financial productivity of the farm fields while having minimal impact on the original use...whether it was growing crops or raising animals. Germany has shown that to be the case with their farm lands rather well.
Why not here?
Germany has also installed solar cells along their equivalent to our Interstate highways...primarily in the medians but along the side banks as well. And obviously the service access is excellent.
Of course Germany, Ontario and many other jurisdictions are making progress towards renewable energy with F.I.T. Programs.
Why not here?
Another area that is available as a site resource are all the roofs of buildings that are South facing, flat and without shade. Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) has a 10 + year history of avoiding power plant expansion by making their customers their partners...financing the installation of solar cells all over Sacramento on homes, apartments, Churches, shopping centers, etc. With their net metering, it's a good deal for everyone.
Why not here?
Allan
Sent from my iPhone
Allan
On Jun 8, 2011, at 7:06 PM, kevin fooce fmoose39@hotmail.com wrote:
I would like to add a few points. First the Texas wind project does cover about 154 Sq miles but most of this land is still in production as farm land or unimproved as it was before the wind farm, and it is still used as residents for the owners of this land. Only about 19 sq miles was actually used building the sites "this includes access roads and laydown areas". Second the Ivanpah site is large but we must also remember this also includes the power lines connecting to the nearby distribution system, reserve park lands set up to build this plant. The most noticeable item in this discussion was the tortoise which at this point is being found under the collectors and seems to be happy. The downside is increased beading may be going on during the construction phase of this project.
Several comments that was made to me a year or two ago puts some prospective on this subject. We don't want windmills here put them out west where it wont hurt anything. About the same time I was told by some people who live in Columbus OH mine the coal in WV and burn it there where the want to do that kind of stuff and the damage has already been done. Some people call this NIMBY. We all want to use power we just don't want to see it in our back yard.
Kevin Fooce fooce@hotmail.com 304-751-1448 work 304-675-6687 home 304-593-2875 cell
From: fyoung@mountain.net To: WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 11:11:40 -0400 CC: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
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.
See the related map and narrative data here: http://www.catf.us/coal/problems/power_plants/existing/
"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 ----- From: "Hugh Rogers" hugh.rogers@gmail.com To: "WVHCBOARD" WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com 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 resourcesYahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WVHCBOARD/
<*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional
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_______________________________________________ EC mailing list EC@osenergy.org http://osenergy.org/mailman/listinfo/ec _______________________________________________ EC mailing list EC@osenergy.org http://osenergy.org/mailman/listinfo/ec
The author makes some subtle but incorrect/biased assumptions. A critical one is that, while "Small" may be "beautiful", the author assumes that all renewables will come from industrial scale facilities, which requires industrial scale infrastructure, powerlines, etc. But dispersed generation such as home-scale solar panes and windmills can make a significant contribution without requiring the land use or infrastructure he describes.
Of course, the real answer has to be energy efficiency. Instead of investing billions into industrial-scale renewables, we should invest the majority of those funds in energy efficiency now. The money saved could then lead to on-site generation and largely eliminate the need for new power plants, gas, nuke or otherwise.
Unfortunately, a massive build-out of industrial scale renewables will not avert climate change. The resource being harvested is too diffuse, and it can not keep up with the ever-increasing demand for electricity. A 10-year mass deployment effort could still only generate a fraction of the electricity needed, and by then demand will have swallowed up all that generation. The key has to be to create an ever-increasing demand for efficiency to REDUCE total electricity demand. The good news is that this can be done faster, cheaper, cleaner and safer than any other energy alternative.
JBK
kevin fooce fmoose39@hotmail.com 6/8/2011 7:06 PM >>>
I would like to add a few points. First the Texas wind project does cover about 154 Sq miles but most of this land is still in production as farm land or unimproved as it was before the wind farm, and it is still used as residents for the owners of this land. Only about 19 sq miles was actually used building the sites "this includes access roads and laydown areas". Second the Ivanpah site is large but we must also remember this also includes the power lines connecting to the nearby distribution system, reserve park lands set up to build this plant. The most noticeable item in this discussion was the tortoise which at this point is being found under the collectors and seems to be happy. The downside is increased beading may be going on during the construction phase of this project.
Several comments that was made to me a year or two ago puts some prospective on this subject. We don't want windmills here put them out west where it wont hurt anything. About the same time I was told by some people who live in Columbus OH mine the coal in WV and burn it there where the want to do that kind of stuff and the damage has already been done. Some people call this NIMBY. We all want to use power we just don't want to see it in our back yard.
Kevin Fooce fooce@hotmail.com 304-751-1448 work 304-675-6687 home 304-593-2875 cell
From: fyoung@mountain.net To: WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 11:11:40 -0400 CC: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
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.
See the related map and narrative data here: http://www.catf.us/coal/problems/power_plants/existing/
"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 ----- From: "Hugh Rogers" hugh.rogers@gmail.com To: "WVHCBOARD" WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com 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.”
------------------------------------
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Jim is certainly right....energy efficiency is certainly the low hanging fruit, and from all that I have read, the USA is one of the most inefficient and highest per person energy user on the planet. But while the Utilities pay lip service to "efficiency", they really want us to continue using at the rates that we do.
Distributed power makes so much sense. My colleagues and I are in the process of planning our aerospace composites manufacturing plant with solar for the electric, the HVAC and the process heat. Our goal is to have a minimal carbon footprint, as our customers, the world's airlines, are about to be under mandate in Europe to reduce their carbon footprint on an annually increasing basis, auditable and very real legal requirements for any and all airlines flying into Europe. That includes reaching to their suppliers, and their suppliers, etc. And the irony is for us and them is that doing so is more profitable!
Our system, which costs about twice what the existing technology costs, reduces the fuel consumption at a rate that the investment is recovered in 9 months. On a Boeing 777F, we can save on average 453,000 gallons of jet fuel per year. And it continues year after year.
My point in boring you with this is not to pitch what my colleagues and I are doing, but to point out that this whole argument that advancing to clean and renewable energy, is laced with narrow minded opposition arguments that fail to take a holistic approach...and just focusing upon the economic and societal benefits beyond the narrow debate between energy systems. Most of that debate is disguised opposition to change.
(I tried to send the following from my i-Phone, but the Yahoo spam filter kept rejecting it.)
If I may, I would offer theses added thoughts.
Wind farms on existing agricultural land actually increases the financial productivity of the farm fields while having minimal impact on the original use...whether it was growing crops or raising animals. Germany has shown that to be the case with their farm lands rather well.
Why not here?
Germany has also installed solar cells along their equivalent to our Interstate highways...primarily in the medians but along the side banks as well. And obviously the service access is excellent.
Of course Germany, Ontario and many other jurisdictions are making progress towards renewable energy with F.I.T. Programs.
Why not here?
Another area that is available as a site resource are all the roofs of buildings that are South facing, flat and without shade. Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) has a 10 + year history of avoiding power plant expansion by making their customers their partners...financing the installation of solar cells all over Sacramento on homes, apartments, Churches, shopping centers, etc. With their net metering, it's a good deal for everyone.
Why not here?
Allan
-------------------------------------------------- From: "James Kotcon" jkotcon@wvu.edu Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 11:02 AM To: "kevin fooce" fmoose39@hotmail.com; "Frank Young" fyoung@mountain.net; wvhcboard@yahoogroups.com Cc: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
The author makes some subtle but incorrect/biased assumptions. A critical one is that, while "Small" may be "beautiful", the author assumes that all renewables will come from industrial scale facilities, which requires industrial scale infrastructure, powerlines, etc. But dispersed generation such as home-scale solar panes and windmills can make a significant contribution without requiring the land use or infrastructure he describes.
Of course, the real answer has to be energy efficiency. Instead of investing billions into industrial-scale renewables, we should invest the majority of those funds in energy efficiency now. The money saved could then lead to on-site generation and largely eliminate the need for new power plants, gas, nuke or otherwise.
Unfortunately, a massive build-out of industrial scale renewables will not avert climate change. The resource being harvested is too diffuse, and it can not keep up with the ever-increasing demand for electricity. A 10-year mass deployment effort could still only generate a fraction of the electricity needed, and by then demand will have swallowed up all that generation. The key has to be to create an ever-increasing demand for efficiency to REDUCE total electricity demand. The good news is that this can be done faster, cheaper, cleaner and safer than any other energy alternative.
JBK
kevin fooce fmoose39@hotmail.com 6/8/2011 7:06 PM >>>
I would like to add a few points. First the Texas wind project does cover about 154 Sq miles but most of this land is still in production as farm land or unimproved as it was before the wind farm, and it is still used as residents for the owners of this land. Only about 19 sq miles was actually used building the sites "this includes access roads and laydown areas". Second the Ivanpah site is large but we must also remember this also includes the power lines connecting to the nearby distribution system, reserve park lands set up to build this plant. The most noticeable item in this discussion was the tortoise which at this point is being found under the collectors and seems to be happy. The downside is increased beading may be going on during the construction phase of this project.
Several comments that was made to me a year or two ago puts some prospective on this subject. We don't want windmills here put them out west where it wont hurt anything. About the same time I was told by some people who live in Columbus OH mine the coal in WV and burn it there where the want to do that kind of stuff and the damage has already been done. Some people call this NIMBY. We all want to use power we just don't want to see it in our back yard.
Kevin Fooce fooce@hotmail.com 304-751-1448 work 304-675-6687 home 304-593-2875 cell
From: fyoung@mountain.net To: WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 11:11:40 -0400 CC: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
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.
See the related map and narrative data here: http://www.catf.us/coal/problems/power_plants/existing/
"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 ----- From: "Hugh Rogers" hugh.rogers@gmail.com To: "WVHCBOARD" WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com 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 resourcesYahoo! Groups Links
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An example of efficiency is a job we are doing now. This is at the Huntington Mall which is undergoing a major remodel. This project will cost in the $12m range, but will actually have a payback of around 7 years if my understanding is correct. Does anything else need to be said about efficiency?
Kevin Fooce fooce@hotmail.com 304-751-1448 work 304-675-6687 home 304-593-2875 cell
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:02:31 -0400 From: jkotcon@wvu.edu To: fmoose39@hotmail.com; fyoung@mountain.net; wvhcboard@yahoogroups.com CC: ec@osenergy.org; wvec-board@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
The author makes some subtle but incorrect/biased assumptions. A critical one is that, while "Small" may be "beautiful", the author assumes that all renewables will come from industrial scale facilities, which requires industrial scale infrastructure, powerlines, etc. But dispersed generation such as home-scale solar panes and windmills can make a significant contribution without requiring the land use or infrastructure he describes.
Of course, the real answer has to be energy efficiency. Instead of investing billions into industrial-scale renewables, we should invest the majority of those funds in energy efficiency now. The money saved could then lead to on-site generation and largely eliminate the need for new power plants, gas, nuke or otherwise.
Unfortunately, a massive build-out of industrial scale renewables will not avert climate change. The resource being harvested is too diffuse, and it can not keep up with the ever-increasing demand for electricity. A 10-year mass deployment effort could still only generate a fraction of the electricity needed, and by then demand will have swallowed up all that generation. The key has to be to create an ever-increasing demand for efficiency to REDUCE total electricity demand. The good news is that this can be done faster, cheaper, cleaner and safer than any other energy alternative.
JBK
kevin fooce fmoose39@hotmail.com 6/8/2011 7:06 PM >>>
In other words - efficiency pays!
Jim Sconyers jim_scon@yahoo.com 304.698.9628
Remember: Mother Nature bats last.
________________________________ From: kevin fooce fmoose39@hotmail.com To: Jim Kotcon jkotcon@wvu.edu; Frank Young fyoung@mountain.net; wvhcboard@yahoogroups.com Cc: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org Sent: Fri, June 10, 2011 5:05:43 PM Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
An example of efficiency is a job we are doing now. This is at the Huntington Mall which is undergoing a major remodel. This project will cost in the $12m range, but will actually have a payback of around 7 years if my understanding is correct. Does anything else need to be said about efficiency?
Kevin Fooce fooce@hotmail.com 304-751-1448 work 304-675-6687 home 304-593-2875 cell
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:02:31 -0400 From: jkotcon@wvu.edu To: fmoose39@hotmail.com; fyoung@mountain.net; wvhcboard@yahoogroups.com CC: ec@osenergy.org; wvec-board@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
The author makes some subtle but incorrect/biased assumptions. A critical one is that, while "Small" may be "beautiful", the author assumes that all renewables will come from industrial scale facilities, which requires industrial scale infrastructure, powerlines, etc. But dispersed generation such as home-scale solar panes and windmills can make a significant contribution without requiring the land use or infrastructure he describes.
Of course, the real answer has to be energy efficiency. Instead of investing billions into industrial-scale renewables, we should invest the majority of those funds in energy efficiency now. The money saved could then lead to on-site generation and largely eliminate the need for new power plants, gas, nuke or otherwise.
Unfortunately, a massive build-out of industrial scale renewables will not avert climate change. The resource being harvested is too diffuse, and it can not keep up with the ever-increasing demand for electricity. A 10-year mass deployment effort could still only generate a fraction of the electricity needed, and by then demand will have swallowed up all that generation. The key has to be to create an ever-increasing demand for efficiency to REDUCE total electricity demand. The good news is that this can be done faster, cheaper, cleaner and safer than any other energy alternative.
JBK
kevin fooce fmoose39@hotmail.com 6/8/2011 7:06 PM >>>
-
Allan Tweddle -
Frank Young -
James Kotcon -
Jim Sconyers -
kevin fooce