Clean coal is the process of trapping carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal to prevent those emissions from entering the atmosphere. Local expert John Harborne, in a recent article, notes that the energy cost of trapping the emissions is almost equal to the energy produced from burning the coal and the area required to store the trapped emissions exceeds the area of the mined coal. 

For its part the Federal government has introduced the Renewable Energy Target [RET] to combat the alleged problem of AGW. The RET mandates that twenty per cent of base-load energy must come from renewable energy [RE] by 2020. The Greens support this and with the fallacy of clean coal now revealed are demanding that all base-load energy come from RE.  

The two main types of RE are solar and wind power. According to Professor Gary Willgoose the main form of solar power will be private residence solar panels. This is not a source of base-load power but the cost of these panels will impact on base-load power costs. They will do so because the cost of the panels will determine the cost of carbon emissions. A recent article by journalist Mark Davis shows that each solar panel will save twenty six tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 20 years at a net cost of $9000. This works out at $350 per ton. With the amount of carbon dioxide emissions being limited by government legislation this means the price of power from carbon emitting sources will have to increase by $350 per ton of emissions to enable the cost of the panels to be competitive. This will be achieved either by direct pricing to consumers or through subsidies paid by tax-payers.

In addition, most of the solar panels are imported from China. China is still expanding its fossil fuel energy network so coal power from Australia will be used to build the Chinese solar panels. There will therefore be no net saving of carbon dioxide emissions from the greater use of solar panels in Australia.

Wind power is also unlikely to be able to supply base-load power. Wind power is intermittent and to replace the twenty per cent or six mega watt of coal power with RE will necessitate the construction of twenty mega watt of wind capacity. Over twelve years this will mean two wind towers per day will have to be built at a cost of $34 billion. But even with this large oversupply of potential wind power there will be times when no power can be supplied by wind. Two studies by Dr Tom Quirk and Peter Lang showed that power from where the wind is blowing cannot be transferred to wind-free areas because wind-free conditions are usually simultaneously widespread over most areas of Australia.

The position of the Greens is that computer modeling shows that the construction of RE will be an economic and employment bonanza. But we do not have to rely on modeling to see whether this is true. Over the last decade many other countries have invested in RE. Spain and Germany have both invested in solar power and now have high unemployment and national debt. Both countries are continuing to invest in fossil fuels and Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power. A similar situation exists in Denmark which had invested heavily in wind power.

In fact nuclear power is the only feasible and proven alternative to fossil fuels. France has had the bulk of it power from nuclear for over thirty years and has the cheapest power costs in Europe. Nuclear power is cheaper than any other power source except coal and natural gas. The fourth generation Fast Integral Reactors are ninety nine percent efficient and produce small amounts of low radioactive, non-weapon grade waste. Fifth generation reactors will be ninety nine point nine per cent efficient and run on thorium as well as uranium. The efficiency of this power would mean that Australia’s resources of thorium and uranium could provide base-load power to the world for centuries.

The coal industry must either dispute the science of AGW or concede that the continued use of coal will acerbate AGW.  The Greens and Government must abandon their opposition to nuclear power. By limiting RE to solar and wind and excluding nuclear, the government and the Greens will be condemning Australia to a drastically reduced standard of living and far less prosperous future.

Cohenite lives in Newscastle.

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Notes and Links

Cartoon by Nicholson from “The Australian” newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au .

The John Harborne link is;

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8408

The Mark Davis link is;

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/touched-by-sun-stroke-20090605-byim.html

The Tom Quirk article is here;

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8559&page=0

The Peter Lang article is here;

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-wind-power.pdf

A discussion of the Baseload Fallacy in respect of wind power by Peter Lang is here;

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/13/wind-and-carbon-emissions-peter-lang-responds/

Professor Gary Willgooses’s details are here;

http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/engineering/our_staff/profiles/willgoose_garry.html

Professor Willgoose made his comments about solar panels in an ABC interview on the 19/8/09 morning session in Newcastle.

The announcement was made at the Frankfurt Motor Show with the cars to be built for drivers in Israel and Denmark.  

The success of electric vehicles will depend on the development of a network of charging points and swapping stations.  The Danish and Israeli governments have apparently committed to this infrastructure working with electric-vehicle recharging specialists, Better Place.  

Presumably Renault also believes that the price of oil will rise.  

Following is yesterday’s media release from Better Place:

“FRANKFURT (September 15, 2009) – Today, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Better Place marked its next major technology milestone by demonstrating its electric vehicle (EV) services platform for making electric cars more convenient and affordable than internal combustion engine cars, unleashing a new era for wide-scale EV adoption.    In conjunction with Renault’s unveiling of the world’s first switchable battery EV for Israel and Denmark, Better Place announced a newly expanded agreement with Renault, committing both companies to a volume of at least 100,000 electric cars in both countries by 2016.

“As global demand for EVs builds and production scales so must the infrastructure.  As a result, Better Place also named additional ecosystem players including Continental of Germany, Flextronics, Intel, Microsoft, and TÜV Rheinland as Better Place seeks to scale up global production of its EV services platform and infrastructure deployment capabilities.

“Next year will be an exciting year for the auto industry and for consumers as the first wave of electric cars hit the streets,” said Shai Agassi, Better Place Founder and CEO. “The industry needs to continue to overcome the obstacles of extended range, price and impact on the grid if we’re going to be able to deliver a better experience than what consumers currently get.  Better Place is committed to working with existing and emerging players in this exciting new category, which has the potential to drive the industry to sustainable growth in the near term and beyond.”
 
“Better Place showcased its EV services platform, which manages at scale the charging of electric cars and the impact on the grid, moments after Renault unveiled its five-seat, electric sedan designed and developed for initial introduction for Better Place subscribers in Israel and Denmark in 2011. Additional switchable EV models from Renault are currently under review.
 
“To enable mass market EV adoption, the Better Place solution includes interfaces designed to support all kinds of electric vehicles announced and under development, thereby providing a comprehensive infrastructure that the automotive and utility industry can count on for the transition to EVs.  It’s the combination of infrastructure – to physically charge the car – and the “information train” of data – which is used to optimize the charging and manage the grid – that forms the heart of the EV services platform. 

“Inside the car, Better Place manages the vehicle’s energy plan through an on-board computing platform, codenamed “AutOS.”  The AutOS platform performs complex energy calculations to create a personalized energy plan for each driver.

“Outside of the car, Better Place has architected a master data center, which acts as the “brain” of the network.  The Better Place data center enables “smart charging” of all electric cars on the network by optimizing and prioritizing when, where and how much each car is charged.  Doing so minimizes the impact on local utilities while carefully orchestrating the state of charge for all batteries on the network so that every car is “topped up.”

“As a centrally controlled function, the data center integrates any data across the entire network including: the availability of charge spots and battery switch stations; the state of charge of each battery; the ability to harness peak levels of renewable energy generation; topography maps and traffic patterns; and driving habits and patterns.

“By integrating the data, Better Place has a 360-degree view across the entire network of charge spots, battery switch stations, electric cars, batteries and local utilities, enabling an entire ecosystem of industry players to deliver a more convenient and affordable electric car…
 
“To date, Better Place has signed up orders from more than 50 Vision Partners in Israel – representing a total car park of approximately 35,000 ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles – which have committed to convert a portion of their ICE fleets to Better Place when commercially available in 2011.  These fleet customers include the Israel operations for multi-national companies including Cisco, FedEx and IBM, among others.
 
“In Denmark, Better Place is currently building similar demand among visionary companies. Better Place already has announced several partnerships with municipalities and a partnership with the local insurance company, TrygVesta, which will offer a 40% discount on insurance premiums for owners of EVs. For the UN Summit on Climate Change (COP15) in Copenhagen in December, Better Place will build a showcase to celebrate the EV as a scalable solution for fighting climate change.”
 
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Notes and Links
 
About Better Place: http://www.betterplace.com.
 
Picture from http://www.renault.com/en/innovation/eco-technologies/pages/eco-technologies.aspx

That’s according to their own media release which continues:   

“WITH the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth’s crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

He adds that there is no chance that fossil oils, with the help of gravity or other forces, would have been able to seep down to a depth of 10.5 kilometres in, for example the US state of Texas, which is rich in oil deposits. This is, according to Vladimir Kutcherov, in addition to his own research results, further evidence that this energy sources can occur other than via fossils – something which will cause a lively discussion among researchers for a considerable period of time.

“There is no doubt that our research has shown that raw oil and natural gas occur without the inclusion of fossils. All types of rock formations can act as hosts for oil deposits,” asserts Vladimir and adds that this applies to areas of land that have previously remained unexplored as possible sources of this type of energy.

This discovery has several positive aspects. Rate of success as concerns finding oil increases dramatically – from 20 till 70 percent. As drilling for oil and natural gas is an extremely expensive process, costs levels will be radically changed for the petroleum companies and eventually also for the end user.

“This means savings of many billions of kronor,” says Vladimir.

In order to identify where it is worth drilling for natural gas and oil, Professor Kutcherov has, via his research, developed a new method. The world is divided into a fine-meshed grid. This grid is the equivalent of cracks, known as migration channels, through strata underlying the earth’s crust. Good places to drill are where these cracks meet.

According to Professor Kutcherov, these research results are extremely important not least as 61 percent of the world’s energy consumption is currently based on raw oil and natural gas.

The next stage in this research is more experiments, especially to refine the method that makes it easier to locate drilling points for oil and natural gas.
The research results produced by Vladimir Kutcherov, Anton Kolesnikov and Alexander Goncharov were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, Volume 2, August.

http://www.kth.se/aktuellt/1.43372?l=en_uk

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Notes and Links

The above media release is via Benny Peiser – thanks.

Of course Louis Hissink has been telling us about Abiotic Oil at this blog since at least 2006:

“There is a widely held belief that coal and oil are the result of a conversion from organic matter, both vegetable and biotic, that accumulated in sedimentary basins over geological time to become fossil fuels. It is presumed that vast periods of geological time converted the raw buried organic material into petroleum at the base of the sedimentary piles in the earth’s crust. An alternative theory proposes that coal and oil are abiotic in origin and derived from upper mantle processes as suggested by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil, but also popularised by the late Tommy Gold in his controversial book, ‘The Deep Hot Biosphere’.*

In this guest blog post Louis Hissink explains the alternative theory, but begins by explaining how the current consensus came to be …

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/11/abiotic-oil-a-note-from-louis-hissink/  

And…

An article published in Science on 1st February 2008 entitled, ‘Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at Lost City Hydrothermal Field’ states in the Abstract that, ” Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water, and moderate amounts of heat.”
So, there is now evidence of a mechanism for the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons. This is not to say that significant amounts of oil are abiotic in origin, but it is interesting nevertheless.

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/02/evidence-for-abiogenic-oil-from-a-new-paper-published-in-the-journal-science/ 

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[TC and JM I have posts from you which I will get up ... but have a few other things on at the moment ... so don't hold your breathes... but over next few days]

Not so long ago the company got some money to make Canberra Australia’s first city with an electric vehicle infrastructure. 
 
The Tokyo electric taxi pilot will involve the construction of a permanent Better Place battery switch site in Central Tokyo.  This project will allow for testing of battery switching duration, vehicle range, and vehicle battery life under heavy use operating conditions.  

Following is the media release: 
 
TOKYO (August 26, 2009) – Better Place today announced that it has received an award from the Japanese government to conduct a pilot project in Tokyo for the world’s first electric taxis with switchable batteries.  Better Place will partner with Tokyo’s largest taxi operator, Nihon Kotsu, in the project commissioned by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry’s Natural Resources and Energy Agency.  The project, which comes on the heels of the company’s successful battery switch demonstration earlier this year in Yokohama, is slated to begin in January 2010.
 
“Japan continues to be a leader in automotive engineering and innovation, and the government’s funding of Better Place for the world’s first battery switchable electric taxis is a testament to the country’s commitment to sustainable transportation,” said Kiyotaka Fujii, President of Better Place Japan and Head of Business Development for Asia Pacific.  “This puts the Better Place battery switch system to use in a real-world application involving heavy-use vehicles that drive much more than the average passenger car.  It also enables us to begin to convert taxis to clean, zero emission transportation.”
 
Japanese taxis represent a mere two percent of all passenger vehicles on the road in Japan, yet they emit approximately 20 percent of all carbon dioxide (CO2) from vehicles due to their average distance traveled in a given day.  In Tokyo alone, there are approximately 60,000 taxis, a far greater number than in New York, Paris, or Hong Kong.  The outcome of the Tokyo pilot program for electric taxis could point to opportunities in other urban centers.  Additionally, success within the heavy use taxi industry will help to ensure efficient technology transfer to the mass market, where daily mileage is far less on average.
 
The electric taxi pilot will showcase the everyday use applications of the Better Place model, and will involve the construction of a Better Place battery switch site at a location in the Roppongi Hills area in Central Tokyo.  Up to four newly modified and fully operational electric taxis will be operated from an existing taxi lane for environmentally-friendly vehicles at the Roppongi Hills complex.
 
Tokyo R&D Co., a specialist in automotive engineering and production, will supply the EVs based on commercially available vehicles with the necessary battery latch mechanisms and switchable batteries. Tokyo R&D also will be involved with building the battery switch site and provide diagnostic software for the pilot.
 
The vehicles will be put into standard taxi service by the Nihon Kotsu taxi company.  Battery switching duration, vehicle range, and battery resistance to degradation will be tested under actual operating conditions.
 
The Tokyo taxi pilot brings Better Place one step closer to delivering a cleaner and more convenient refuelling experience for drivers worldwide.

It seems this legislation is likely to be passed sometime this week and according to many pundits the big winner will be wind farms.  

Wind is available now, is relatively cheap, and could snap up all the relevant concessions under the new legislation before emerging technologies like geothermal and solar thermal are ready for rolling out. 

Is this good news? 

According to the following article… wind farms in South East Australia are unlikely to supply any significant power output that system operators can rely upon, rather they will load the distribution system with sudden variations in power that are not predictable and are of a size that is ten times larger than the random variations of user demand. 

Wind Farming in South East Australia
By Andrew Miskelly and Tom Quirk

IT is often claimed by their advocates that wind farms can be a reliable source of electrical power if they are dispersed over a sufficiently wide area. The wind will be blowing somewhere, it is claimed. There is now a sufficient number of wind farms in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania for an assessment of the value of wind farms as a source of reliable electricity generation..

This analysis is based on the performance of 11 wind farms listed in the table below for June 2009. The data was sourced from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO formerly NEMMCO) website. The power output is recorded in 5 minute intervals and this allows the performance of the wind farms to be examined in detail. An example of the behaviour of two South Australian wind farms and the summed behaviour of all six South Australian wind farms is shown in the above chart.

These curves show that, for example, 80 percent of the time, all SA windfarms provided more than 8 percent of rated output, and that 8 percent of the time they provided just 80 percent or more of their rated output.

These power curves are representative of the general behaviour of wind farms. The performance of all the wind farms is given in the following table. 

The capacity factor, the average output relative to the installed capacity shows an overall average of 30 per cent for a total installed capacity of 833 Mw. The capacity factor varies from month to month throughout the year and varies from year to year. But these values are indicative of the performance to be expected from new wind farms as they are brought on line. A modest decline in the capacity factor for new farms might be expected if the best sites have already been taken.

The 90 per cent reliability figure represents the amount of energy that can be relied on for 90 per cent of the time. It is given as a percentage of the installed capacity so that comparative performance can be assessed. 90 per cent reliability for conventional coal fired power stations or gas turbine generators is greater than 90 per cent of the rated output. It is clear that the one benefit of grouping wind farms is that the 90 per cent reliability point is increased from 6 per cent for SA, 5 per cent for Victoria, to 10 per cent overall. Again this figure should be expected to vary from month to month and from year to year.

One of the most important details of this analysis is the geographical separation of the wind farms. This is shown in the map below. In fact the windfarms extend over 900 km North-South and East-West. This separation can be used to investigate if any significant benefit is gained by such a spread of wind farms. 

The next three figures show the June 2009 performance of the wind farms in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania compared to that of South Australia. South Australian wind power generation has been used as the standard as it is the largest sample and despite having 6 wind farms added together performs as if it were one farm despite a spread of some 500 km.  

It is clear that the responses in each area are correlated. The correlation of South Australia with Victoria is the clearest example. This has been refined in the next three figures that show a measure of this correlation. This is a running correlation with a sliding 24 hour window that shows the extensive variations over time.  

These figures show the strong positive correlation of South Australia with Victoria. However it is important to note that the other two states do not provide any significant comfort from their geographical separation: that is they show no significant inverse of the South Australian-Victorian correlation.

Another demonstration of this general wind correlation is to look at the total wind power profile and compare that to a profile assuming equal installed capacity in all four states.

The figure below shows that no great change occurs and the geographical spread does not enhance performance. 
 
The conclusion is that the only benefit from a large geographical spread is an increase in the 90 per cent reliability point from typically 5 per cent to 10 per cent

The other issue that can be examined is the short term fluctuations in the outputs of wind generators. These fluctuations add to the difficulties of maintaining voltage and frequency in the power system. Sudden changes in the demand for power raise similar problems but long experience with the daily load curve enables system operators to prepare for these changes. Fluctuations in output from the wind generators are, contrariwise, completely unpredictable. 

The variations have been assessed by looking at the difference of wind farm output from one 5 minute interval to the next. By sampling over some 8,000 5 minute intervals it is possible to build up a measure of the performance of all wind farms and their aggregate output, rather like calculating a standard deviation(1) .  This can be extended to looking at differences 10 minutes apart and so with increasing separation it is possible to see the time development of wind variations. A complete picture, extending over seven days, is shown below. It has been standardised to the installed capacity of the wind farms as it a measure of the wind’s behaviour, not the behaviour of the wind farm.

The conclusion from this is that the wind has some consistency for up to about 48 hours but with increasing fluctuations. Beyond that time the fluctuations are some 25 per cent of the installed capacity. This does not imply that the wind varies smoothly. On the contrary, this is the average performance of a generator with greatly varying output.

The general conclusion from this analysis is that wind farms in South East Australia are not likely to supply any significant power that can be relied upon, and thus system operators will have to schedule generators as if there were no wind power at all. Wind farms will load the distribution system with variations in power that are not predictable and are ten times larger than the random variations of user demand.

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1.

The decision was announced by Better Place founder and Chief Executive Officer, Shai Agassi, with Evan Thornley, head of Better Place Australia and ActewAGL Chief Executive Officer, Michael Costello, the ACT’s electricity retailer and distributor.
 
“Canberra is a great city to start deploying our vision of zero-emissions mobility. Canberra has a mobile population that demands a viable alternative to allow for both short commutes and longer trips” said Mr Agassi. “There’s proven demand for EVs in Australia and the people of Canberra are ready for a more sustainable future. That future is electric.”
 
The initial roll out will involve an investment by Better Place, which will go towards building out the infrastructure, services and systems to support the first several hundred electric vehicles in Canberra. The investment will cover:
•    safe and completely recyclable lithium-ion batteries that will power the electric vehicles and be provided as part of the service to drivers, reducing the up-front costs of purchasing an electric vehicle;
•   charge spots in homes, offices, shopping centres and other car parks where drivers can plug in to keep their battery fully charged; and
•   “Battery Swap Stations” where motorists can simply drive in and have a depleted battery automatically exchanged for a fresh, fully charged one.
 
“We aim to start construction on our charge spots and battery swap stations in 2011 and start supporting customers in 2012” said Mr Thornley. “From Canberra we will then begin to roll out across the whole country.”
 
Better Place will work closely with ActewAGL to plan the infrastructure deployment. “A significant influence on our decision to choose Canberra was the enthusiasm and support we have received from Michael Costello and his team at ActewAGL” said Evan Thornley, Chief Executive Officer of Better Place Australia.
 
ActewAGL will be responsible for sourcing and distributing the renewable energy that Better Place will use to power its electric vehicles within the ACT. “It’s important that we work together closely so that we can be sure we have the right levels of power available in the car parks and similar locations where the electric vehicles will be charging” said ActewAGL Chief Executive Officer, Michael Costello.  “But this is a great opportunity for Canberra to make a huge dent on its greenhouse gas emissions, so we’re very keen to co-operate to help make it a reality.”
 
For further information on Better Place’s plans for Australia please visit www.betterplace.com.

“It has become commonplace to say that we are at the beginning of a global revitalization of the nuclear energy enterprise. The scope and timing of this “nuclear renaissance,” however, remain somewhat uncertain. What is known is that in countries around the globe, including the United States, significant numbers of new nuclear energy projects are under way or in various stages of planning, and this activity represents a departure from that of recent decades…

“The major trend is toward larger plant size. This is easy to understand in light of the high capital costs associated with nuclear energy plants. Given the large capital outlay, and the fact that costs do not scale linearly, there seems to be a relentless pressure toward increasing plant size.

“But is bigger necessarily better? While new conventional nuclear plants trend toward larger size, there has also been continuing and growing interest in small and medium size plants. Nuclear generating stations that can operate at that smaller scale could enable broader use of this source of clean, abundant energy in a rapidly growing world economy. Such plants could be installed in locations that would not be able to accept the large quantity of electricity generated by a gigawatt-scale reactor, and there is some indication that, properly designed, a small plant could be cost competitive with the larger ones currently planned…

“The International Atomic Energy Agency indicates that more than 50 new concepts and designs for advanced small or moderate-size reactors are under development in more than 15 IAEA member states. Proponents of such designs believe they have the potential to meet such needs as providing energy for islands that are not served by a national grid or for regions lacking the infrastructures and grid capacity needed for large plants. Small reactors could also power such energy-intensive industrial activities as water desalinization…

“One frequently cited drawback to widespread use of nuclear power is the risk of fissionable material being diverted to produce weapons. In the 1990s, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory began looking at reactor system designs intended to minimize the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation. The initial research effort concluded that this goal could be met by a sealed reactor that was transportable and autonomous in operation and that would have a very long reactor core lifetime. Such a reactor would eliminate the need for handling or processing fresh or spent nuclear fuel and otherwise minimize the potential for any possible misuse of the reactor…”

Extracts from Nuclear’s Model T., By Craig F. Smith:  http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2009/July/Nuclears_Model_T.cfm

Indeed few of today’s leaders will still be alive in 2050 and none of them will be in power.

So what will the world be like in 2050 and will this target have been achieved?

I am going to be my usual optimistic self and suggest that the target will be achieved and that earth won’t have experienced a climate crisis in the meantime. But I hesitate to predict whether the average global temperature will be slightly warmer or cooler in 2050 than it is now in 2009.

Global warming will still be an issue, but not the key issue that it is now. Indeed I suspect it might still be on the agenda at meetings of world leaders, but their declarations on this issue won’t make the evening news.

Sometime in between now and 2050 there will be praise for President Barrack Obama for supporting a nuclear future for the world. Following the US President’s leadership, Julia Gillard, one of the longest reigning Australia Prime Ministers, will support a nuclear future for Australia.

The history books will claim that carbon trading was a useful first step towards avoiding the climate crisis, but that it was new nuclear technologies that eventually solved the problem and averted the crisis.

Al Gore will have had a huge statue built to his memory in London. But Beijing will, by 2050, be the financial capital of the world.

In Australia most people will be vegan and taking iron supplements. There will be no whaling, no zoos and the right to ride a horse will be under threat because of concerns about cruelty. Indeed there will be a need for permits for horse riding and rules about horse to rider weight ratios. There will be tough regulations for cat owners and following a severe bird flu pandemic backyard chickens banned.

The big environmental issue will be population. China, now the super power, will have imposed a one child policy on the rest of the world. But the most contentious issue won’t be the one child policy, but whether we have a right to live beyond say 100 years old and the extent to which ‘life extensions’, possible because of medical break throughs, should be subsidized by government.

We will still use oil, especially to make plastics, but the world will be primarily powered by uranium.

I will be 87 years old - fit, happy and still blogging.

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Notes and Links

World leaders, including US President Barrack Obama, are meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, and climate change is a priority agenda item:

“The struggle against climate changes is one of the Italian Presidency’s priorities on the G8 Agenda. It is necessary to define a global response in which the leadership and commitment of the industrially advanced countries is paralleled by an active contribution from the emerging and developing countries on the basis of a balanced sharing of responsibilities. In that sense, the L’Aquila G8 Summit, which will also be hosting the first ever meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) at leadership level, is going to be a vital step in paving the way for the success of the United Nations Conference in Copenhagen next December.”

And today the leaders declared:

“We reaffirm the importance of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and notably of its Fourth Assessment Report, which constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of the science. We recognise the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2°C. Because this global challenge can only be met by a global response, we reiterate our willingness to share with all countries the goal of achieving at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050…

http://www.g8italia2009.it/static/G8_Allegato/G8_Declaration_08_07_09_final,2.pdf  

Around the world carbon trading is emerging as an integral part of capitalism:

http://www.carbonexpo.com.au/

http://carbonexpo.com.au/uploads/file/09/Carbon%20Market%20Expo%20-%20Draft%20Program.pdf   

The photograph was taken by Neil Hewett, from Cooper Creek Wilderness, earlier this year at Matilda Way, Queensland, Australia.

Solar power can never produce continuous, predictable, low cost power. It must always be supported by expensive power storage systems or by reliable power sources such as coal, gas, hydro or nuclear.

No matter how many millions of taxpayer money is poured into “research”, it can never solve the two fatal flaws of solar power.

Firstly, sunlight energy arrives in very dilute form, and thus needs vast areas of collectors to harvest significant energy. This results in high capital costs and much environmental disturbance. Solar power can light one 75-watt bulb for every card table of collectors (in the middle of the day only). How many card tables do we need to run the trains, factories, fridges, homes, heaters, hospitals and tools of a big city?

Secondly, the solar energy produced during daylight hours is constantly variable and unpredictable, and zero power is generated at night. As a result, solar power farms seldom produce more than an average of 15% of their rated capacity over a year and as low as 1% for a day or so.

In Australia, the maximum electricity demand occurs at about 6.30 pm in mid-winter in the big southern cities. However, the maximum solar power is generated at noon in mid-summer in clear northern deserts. If the nightly solar curfew is to be supplied by solar power, this necessitates a vast area of collectors to provide daytime grid power as well as charging a storage backup which supplies power at night. The scattered solar collectors also need a huge new transmission network. Such a system is inefficient and very costly.

More likely, however, is that the solar farms will be backed up by gas or coal power stations on standby, wasting fuel and capital until they are needed to supply power on cloudy days or during the nightly solar blackouts.

Solar energy has useful applications, but supplying the power grid is NOT one of them. Solar power can never supply the reliable low cost electricity needed for Australian cities and industries. In that application, it can only exist as a subsidised and troublesome appendage propped up by serious power sources such as coal, gas, nuclear or hydro.

Viv Forbes,  Chairman 
The Carbon Sense Coalition

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Notes and Links

For a detailed look at Solar Power Realities, with actual performance figures see: 
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/07/04/solar-realities/

And some home solar economics:
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/06/06/solar-energy-costs-economics/

And to reread this post: Link to this statement: http://carbon-sense.com/2009/07/05/solar-appendage/

I recently visited nuclear power plants and a fuel reprocessing plant in France, which gets almost 80% of its electricity from uranium. And I’ve read some shockingly ill-informed claims about nuclear power and its supposed alternatives. Here are some essential facts.

1. Reliability.

Nuclear plants generate electricity over 90% of every year, shutting down only occasionally for maintenance, repairs and changing fuel rods. Wind turbines can be relied on just 30% of the time, on average – and just 10% of the time during hot summer days, when air conditioners are on high, but there’s barely a breeze.

2. Operational safety.

Three Mile Island was the “worst accident in US history.” But it injured no one and exposed neighboring residents to the radioactive equivalent of getting a CT scan or living in Denver for a year. It led to major improvements in nuclear plant management, operation and training.

The Chernobyl disaster was due to its shoddy design, construction, maintenance and management. According to the World Health Organization, “fewer than 50” people died as a direct result of this massive meltdown and fire, and nearly all were employees and rescue workers.

3. Storage of used nuclear fuel.

The Energy Department spent 25 years and $10 billion studying the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, before concluding that it will meet all safety standards. In fact, the largest expected annual radiation dose for someone living near this geologically stable site would be less than 1 millirem – compared to 1,000 millirem from an abdominal CT scan.

America’s 104 nuclear plants generate enough electricity for nearly 75,000,000 homes – and produce about 2,000 tons of “spent” uranium fuel annually. So Yucca will be able to hold all the used fuel from the past 50 years, plus another 35 years of used fuel, without expanding on the original design.

Spent fuel and other wastes (high-level defense wastes, plus low-level wastes like protective clothing) are solid materials. There is no liquid that can leak into rocks or groundwater. Liquid wastes, like water used in reactors, are treated and reused.

4. Transportation safety.

Shipping containers are constructed from layers of steel and lead, nearly a foot thick, and carried on trucks or rail cars. (The 25 to 125-ton containers are too heavy to go in airplanes.) They’ve been slammed into concrete walls at 85 mph, dropped 30 feet, burned 30 minutes in 1475-degree fires, and submerged in water for hours. They haven’t broken or leaked.

Over 3,000 shipments of spent fuel have traversed 1.7 million miles, with no injuries, deaths or environmental damage. Only one significant accident occurred. A semi-truck overturned while avoiding a head-on collision, and the trailer and attached container crashed into a ditch. No harmful releases of radioactivity ever occurred.

That hasn’t stopped imaginative writers from saying “catastrophic” accidents could put “millions” of Americans at risk of exposure to “deadly radiation” or even death, especially if an airplane crashed a cargo of nuclear wastes into a city. They’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies, where every car accident becomes a raging inferno.

5. Theft and terrorism.

The notion that spent (or even fresh) power plant fuel could be stolen and turned into a powerful bomb is likewise more Hollywood than reality.

Those pesky little atomic numbers and enrichment levels are confusing, but important. Weapons grade materials are plutonium, uranium 233 and highly enriched (better than 20%) U235. Power plant fuel is slightly enriched (under 4%) U235. Spent fuel is U238, which cannot cause a chain reaction.

Turning spent fuel into a bomb would require sophisticated reprocessing facilities, which terrorists are unlikely to have. Even a “dirty bomb” (radioactive materials around a non-nuclear explosive) would cause more fear than actual damage. And the US nuclear industry’s commitment to safety applies to plant design and management, shipping and storing wastes, and guarding against theft and terrorism.

The bottom line? We need the electricity that nuclear power provides, and we can get it safely. Just try to imagine life without all the things that require electricity. Remember the pain, inconvenience and financial losses you or people you know suffered when storms or blackouts knocked out the electrical power.

Consider the warnings of experts: We are dangerously close to experiencing major brownouts and blackouts in many parts of the United States, especially in our western states, because we haven’t built the power plants and transmission lines we need for a growing population that depends on electricity 24/7/365.

We need to conserve more, install more insulation and better windows, and use more efficient light bulbs, computers, servers, heaters and air-conditioners. We need more wind and solar power, where those sources make economic, practical and environmental sense. But we also need a lot more affordable, reliable electricity from nuclear power plants.

Ponder how far our heating, cooling, communication and other technologies have come in just 100 years – and where we’re likely to be 50 or 100 years from now. However, we’re not there yet.

Futuristic technologies – like solar generators orbiting above the Earth, beaming electrical power to urban receivers – for now are pure science fiction. They’ll be reality about when Scotty beams Captain Kirk back to the Enterprise. We need to work on them. But we need real energy for real people, today.

Otherwise, homes, factories, offices, schools and hospitals will go dark. Bread winners will go jobless. Energy prices will soar even higher. Families won’t have basic necessities, much less luxuries. And poor and minority citizens will see civil rights gains rolled back, because only energy and a vibrant economy can turn constitutionally protected rights into rights we actually enjoy.

Roy Innis is chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, co-chair of the Campaign to Stop the War on the Poor, and author of Energy Keepers – Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle.