Next Generation Energy is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Let's see. My colleagues have already covered most of nuclear power's weakness. No good waste disposal solution, it costs too much, and it poses serious safety concerns. That should be enough to dispense with the subject. But against the threat of climate change, we can't be too hasty abandoning any alternative to fossil fuels, so for the sake of the argument, let's pretend that each objection so far does not present sufficient cause for rejection of the nuclear option.
There are still compelling reasons not to build any more nukes, though. At the top of my list is it represent old-school thinking on how to power a nation. Specifically, it's big and centralized instead of small and decentralized. This is important for several reasons.
First, decentralization of power generation — which is what wind farms, roof-top PV arrays, and small-scale hydro are all about — is more efficient. Electricity can be generated closer to where it is consumed and so avoid transmission loss on the grid. One could, of course, replace our aging and increasingly unreliable grid with a new high-voltage DC network, and this would not necessarily be a bad thing. But it would increase costs and is probably something that we can think about doing a few decades from now, after we've solved the more immediate problem of choosing the best clean generating technology for each locality.
Local power generation can also take advantage of the varying geological, meteorological and geographical characteristics of each region. (Solar in low latitudes, geothermal for Iceland, and so forth.) Nuclear, as Erin wrote when posing the question, is a one-size- fits-all approach. And that means too tight for some and too lose for others. And that means inefficiency
Second, local power gives communities control, doing away with the need for large electrical utility companies and their need for generous profit margins. This is not an attack on capitalism for per se, but given the failure of the marketplace to anticipate and prepare for a post-carbon age, it seems to me that local cooperatives and municipally owned generation would be able to deal with changing demands, pollutions pressure and technologies much faster. We've all been told not to put all our eggs in one basket, haven't we?
Third, there is the risk of deliberate sabotage. I don't give this one a lot of thought, but cannot ignore the fact that tonnes of radioactive material close to large urban centers (or surrounded by thousands of acres of prime agriculture land) does present an attractive target to those that would like to make life miserable for the rest of us. In addition to making large portions of the country unlivable for long periods of time, destroying a large nuclear facility leaves consumers with an electricity shortfall for extended periods. Widely dispersed wind turbines, solar-thermal, or PV arrays are nowhere near as attractive targets, and can be replaced within a matter of months, instead of decades.
So, even if you're willing to accumulate lots of radioactive waste, pay much higher power bills and live with the risk of contamination in order to help bring down our greenhouse-gas emissions, you're still going to have to explain to your grandchildren why you saddled the country with 20th-century, bigger-is-better centralized technology that can't possibly keep up with 21st-century thinking.
For example, this past week came news, in the form of a paper in Science that an MIT team has found a way to make "natural photosynthesis" cheap enough to consider widescale deployment of solar-power water-splitting equipment. This, if it turns out to be what the researchers hope it is, would give every household the means to store excess electricity generated during the day as hydrogen, which could then power the house at night (or a car) with a fuel cell. Is the much-touted, and much denounced, "hydrogen economy" around the corner?
If so, the argument over nuclear power's costs, wastes and risks become moot.
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Comments
It doesn't even take deliberate sabotage - the capacity factor for the UK reactor fleet over the last couple of years is about 70% (from memory). They have an unpleasant habit of dropping off the grid suddenly, and when they do, it's usually for weeks (if not months) at a time. Not a characteristic that's especially desirable in base-load kit.
Of course, all the shiny new reactors will all work perfectly, all the time, we promise! This time really will be different!
Posted by: Dunc | August 4, 2008 12:36 PM
The latest figures of wastage of power through transfer of power over the grid is around 7.5% (in both the US and the UK). Having power that is safe and clean to be near the place it's going to be consumed is just too obvious.
Posted by: Fair Trade | August 4, 2008 1:05 PM
I'm sorry, but the fact that a technology isn't stylish is not a good reason to reject it, and focusing on local production to the exclusion of a regional grid is dumb. The existence of a grid in no way prevents you from building local power plants, nor does it make those local power plants less efficient. However, the simple facts are:
1) Scale matters. For many technologies, bigger is better. There are exceptions of course (PV doesn't scale much), but it's unwise to limit yourself to technology that doesn't scale.
2) Location matters. If you're building a solar power plant, you build it in a place with 350 days of sunlight per year, not a place with 200, unless for some reason you simply can't build it in the better location.
3) Load balancing matters. Not all areas use the same amount of energy at the same time. You need less excess power generation capacity with a regional grid.
Posted by: Anthony | August 4, 2008 1:33 PM
The post is not arguing against a regional grid - it's just arguing against supplying that grid with a small number of large generating units.
Posted by: Dunc | August 4, 2008 1:43 PM
This is a really excellent addition to the discussion. I hadn't really thought about the unwieldy-ness of the model itself.... More food for thought...
Posted by: Jennifer Ouellette | August 4, 2008 1:45 PM
James,
Are you in a position to offer an idea of how local 'local' might be?
Posted by: Grant | August 4, 2008 2:34 PM
Grant: That's the kind of thing has to emerge from a discussion among technology experts, politicians and business executives. I am reluctant to slap an arbitrary number on any definition of local. That number may also change over time as distribution technology improves in terms of efficiency and reliability.
Ultimately, it is more useful to use relative terms. The closer a generator is to the consumer, the better. That number will change with the technology, number of consumers and state of the distribution network.
It's the same as the local food movement. There's no way to justify slapping a maximum limit on how far food can be shipped before it's environmentally kosher. But if we are honest about exploring all options, then food that can be consumed within X km of consumption should be preferred to comparable products X+n km from consumption.
Posted by: James Hrynyshyn | August 4, 2008 2:43 PM
James,
Thanks for the rapid response.
I sincerely hope that the interested parties and experience base watching here can inform this debate and in particular the 'local' question since the options are very different as one considers different parts of the globe.
Posted by: Grant | August 4, 2008 3:11 PM
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | August 4, 2008 3:12 PM
I'm sorry, but this just seems silly. /Obviously/ it's more efficient to be closer to the generator than farther away. But equally obviously it's not possible for every existing premises to generate its own electricity: some centralisation is necessary. Uless you can provide some numbers to describe different degrees of centralisation the discussion is pointless.
Posted by: SimonG | August 4, 2008 3:34 PM
Actually, since electricity is a simple commodity, there's actually a pretty easy way to measure: find the relative efficiency of a local power plant and a centralized power plant; due to scaling effects, the centralized power plant will be better. How much better depends on the technology used; for a fossil fuel plant the centralized system will probably be 25-50% more efficient, for solar systems 50-100% would not be surprising, for more unusual systems it's usually totally pointless to build them at a suboptimal location.
Now, figure out how many miles of wiring it takes to consume that efficiency advantage. Strangely enough, you will come up with something that substantially resembles the modern grid.
Localization only makes sense with technologies that lack significant economies of scale and/or site-based benefits, unless by 'local' you mean 'try to keep transmission distances under a thousand miles'.
Posted by: Anthony | August 4, 2008 4:42 PM
These points about locality and centralization are interesting. Is there evidence to back up what you are saying? It is very difficult to evaluate claims like "more efficient" without data.
By the way, the claims of previous posts that you allude to (about waste, economics, etc.) are very controversial at best as evidenced by some of the comments in those threads. Is anyone going to respond to the points made by commenters who do not agree with the posted opinions? Without more data and discussion, I am concerned you may risk alienating some of your readers.
Posted by: Erik D Johnson | August 4, 2008 6:01 PM
Efficiency: The US nuclear power fleet operates with an average plant capacity factor of 92%. This means that on average a plant engineered to produce 1000 MW will produce 920 MW. Solar is generally less than 20% efficient because efficiency dependent on the amount of sun light and temperature. Desert sites get a lot of sun, but high temperatures reduce their efficiency.
Cost: US Electricity Production Costs 1995-2007 (in 2007 cents per kilowatt-hour) (Source: Global Energy Decisions): Coal = 2.47, Gas = 6.78, nuclear = 1.76, petroleum = 10.26.
Safety: Nuclear energy occupational injury rate = 0.13 per 200,000 hours; US office worker injury rate 1.7 per 200,000 hours.
Disposal: Spent fuel is a problem but current on-site storage practices have had no impact on human health.
Risk: There are hundreds of thousands of targets in our communities. Do we stop producing chemicals? Do we not work in high-rises? Do we not visit the Hover Dam? There are 104 nuclear power plants producing 20% of the power in the US. That’s less than 0.2% per plant. Lost of a plant or two would not cause a serious disruption of the grid. Contamination may be a problem after an incident, but no one really knows what the impact would be. But I am an educated nuclear professional and my family and I will continue to support nuclear power and live in areas that are supported by nuclear power without worry.
Posted by: Kevin | August 5, 2008 12:46 AM
Again I would ask the people parroting the anti-nuclear line to examine the arguments typically rolled out against global warming..
And in the typical style of the denialist, all opposing arguments are not dealt with, we simply ignore them, declare ourselves correct and change the subject. I'm sorry, but you really should take a look at your arguments with a scientific eye. Are the arguments made correct, or are they what you wish to be correct? Do you automatically assume that people arguing against you have an agenda and so can be safely dismissed?
Posted by: Andrew Dodds | August 5, 2008 4:58 AM
Kevin: Capacity factor and Efficiency are not quite the same thing. For a nuclear plant the capacity factor is the percentage of the plants full rated Megawatt-Electric power that the plant is producing on average. The plant's actual efficiency is a measure of Megawatts-Thermal produced by the reactor versus the Megawatts-Electric produced by the turbine(s). Most plants these days can get around 35-40% efficiency - still much better than solar, though.
The capacity factor is more an indication of the plants ability to maintain high operating powers. US plants' high capacity is an indication of the significant time and effort invested in making US nuclear plants safer, more reliable, and in good condition.
All that said, I'd still say that localized power generation is not an effective strategy. Scaling, as mentioned above, makes larger plants much more efficient than smaller ones. Additionally, businesses, industries, and cities in general require more power than small-scale local generation can supply.
Looking at it economically, it's also much more efficient for a company to run a few large power plants than dozens of small local ones.
While distributed energy will certainly be a strong contributor to the future energy supply on the individual level, it will never be strong or reliable enough to become a primary supplier of power.
-Mike G, Nuclear Engineer
Posted by: Mike | August 5, 2008 7:11 AM
Dunc:
As I recall, the UK nuclear fleet largely uses Advanced Gas-cooled reactors, which is a design unique to the UK. It's not used at all elsewhere. It's a bit of an awkward design and likely will not be used again.
And if you don't believe that plants designed in the 2000's using modern digital technology and 60 years of experience in nuclear power will be better than plants designed in the 1970s that have been running almost constantly SINCE the '70s, I suggest you go back and take another look at the way advances in technology work.
Posted by: Mike | August 5, 2008 7:18 AM
Of course they're better. The question is "how much better?" Yes AGRs have some problems - but at least they've been in service long enough that we know what the problems are. These wonderful new reactors so far only exist on paper. AGRs once looked pretty good on paper.
Efficiency is not the only consideration - there is also resilience. A grid with a single generating unit may be highly efficient, but it's not at all resilient. Where does the most appropriate balance between efficiency and resilience lie? Given the major outages experienced by some major regional grids over the last few years, I'd argue that more resilience would definitely be A Good Thing.
Posted by: Dunc | August 5, 2008 7:40 AM
I'll grant resilience, while saying that no grid has a single generating unit. The North American grid is shared across almost the entire US, and if there's a failure in one portion of the grid other parts can pick up the slack. This actually happens regularly, every time a nuclear plant shuts down for a refueling outage.
Also, most of the major outages I know of were the result of failures of the extremely outdated and overburdened transmission grid itself, not the plants. That's something that needs to be fixed regardless of an ultimate power generation solution.
Posted by: Mike | August 5, 2008 7:58 AM
Well, obviously no real grid has only one generating unit, I was just trying to illustrate the concept.
The last major grid problem we had in the UK was the result of the Sizewell B PWR (1200MW) and the Longannet-1 coal-fired power station (2,600MW - although it was only producing 350MW at the time due to maintenance shut-downs)) going down within minutes of each other.
Posted by: Dunc | August 5, 2008 8:22 AM
Based on reading that, it sounds like crap luck combined with lack of sufficient excess capacity. Also, why the heck would you bring your units down for maintenance during the summer? That's usually the time of highest demand.
Posted by: Mike | August 5, 2008 8:28 AM
Bad luck, sure - but having a smaller number of larger generating units increases the risk of such events. It's hard to think of a scenario that would result in 1200MW of wind generation dropping off the grid instantaneously.
Summer is not the time of highest demand in Scotland. We're above 50 degrees North here - almost nobody runs air conditioning.
Posted by: Dunc | August 5, 2008 9:19 AM
Fair enough. It does get significantly warmer 'round here.
True, but I'd think it'd be much hard to get significant excess capacity using wind or solar sources, and they're limited to whether or not the sun is out or the wind is blowing. Larger generating units aren't as vulnerable to environmental conditions.
If you're running on minimum overhead (as you appear to be based on that one article) any loss of capacity is dangerous.
Posted by: Mike | August 5, 2008 10:21 AM
"It's hard to think of a scenario that would result in 1200MW of wind generation dropping off the grid instantaneously."
No that is exactly the problem with wind power. It can disappear totally for days on end and even when present can vary drastically. Predicting how much power you will have is a little like predicting the weather. A lot like. Is.
Posted by: ppnl | August 5, 2008 10:31 AM
Funny - even Joe Romm doesn't agree with this. You guys really need to get your story straight.
Posted by: Skeptico | August 5, 2008 10:58 AM
Way to miss the point, dude. The point is that it doesn't happen completely unexpectedly or instantaneously. Wind is inherently variable, and everybody knows it, so you have to design for it. Nuke is supposed to be reliable base-load, so when 3% of your total generating capacity disappears in an instant, you have a major problem.
Of course I'm not arguing that wind is absolutely reliable. Only a straw-stuffed moron would do that.
Well, that's where you get into the politics. Scotland has a significant generating surplus (somewhere in the region of 30%, IIRC), but the UK as a whole does not. Scotland also has the best (and most reliable) wind resource in Europe, and we're building new wind capacity at a pretty impressive rate. Between wind and hydro, we're already pretty well on the way to having a good renewables mix, and we're developing some interesting new wave and tidal technologies as well. If we were just trying to power ourselves, we could do it. Having to power half of England as well is where it gets really tricky. (This is also partly why there is so much opposition to new nukes in Scotland - we don't need them. England does - or at least, needs something big, and urgently. Build them in your own damn country if you want them.)
Posted by: Dunc | August 5, 2008 11:10 AM
I was going to comment about the three points, specifically how:
- decentrilization is less efficient and is harder to match to the grid,
- "reacting to changing demands" in the foreseeable future pretty much involves creating more power more efficiently, and
- I can's see how loss or sabotage of a unit will affect widely dispersed nuclear plants on a national grid more than, say, large PV arrays on a grid. The US at least is a target-rich country with lots of shipping ports, dams, and dense population centers.
But it looks like the points have pretty much been addressed.
Posted by: Ken | August 5, 2008 1:15 PM
Even more anti-nucular posts? Well, that's to be expected from Shell-sponsored blog...
I don't understand why you think that extreme decentralization is good. Decentralized systems are more expensive AND you still need a pretty good grid, because solar/wind power is not constant.
Of course, extremely centralized systems are bad.
Posted by: Alex Besogonov | August 5, 2008 1:39 PM
I'm back again. Sorry.
Are you sure about that? How does the economy of scale compare for large base-load units compare with reducing transmission and distribution losses? Surely someone like NERC or EPRI has considered distributed generation models and compared them to the current generation scheme and have publications you can reference to back up this statement.
I take issue with two points here, first that the grid is "increasingly unreliable" (references, trends please), and second that you seem to be conflating high-voltage DC transmission technology with grid distribution. HVDC makes sense in a few areas (e.g. long-haul transmission with few interconnects) but it's not clear it's suitable for replacing the bulk of the grid. To quote the ever-semi-reliable Wikipedia:
What's missing from the original article is the overt statement that it is necessary and desirable to change the structure and management of the electrical grid to incorporate a vast expansion of distributed small-scale generation. However there's no background given on the existing transmission and distribution network (aka "the grid."), specifically:
You need to show some understanding of these issues before you proclaim it is wise and desirable to modify or replace critical societal infrastructure to support a massive increase in local generation.
One place to start is with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) For example, a lot of the issues mentioned in the original post are covered in extensive detail in NERC's 2007 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (2007-2016)
Massively-distributed generation poses severe challenges to the reliable delivery of electricity to all customers. While the memes of 'local control' and 'smaller is better' are very attractive to some, the reality is there are huge drawbacks to restructuring international power infrastructure to meet those political goals. To blithely ignore these problems with a wave of one's hand shows either great ignorance or great arrogance or some combination of the two.
Local generation may be effective at maintaining personal energy security but it cannot replace base-load generation for society in the foreseeable future, if ever.
Hopefully this will be the last post of Ignorant Antinuclear Strawman Week. My disagreements with the articles here are not about politics as much as they are about facts, research, logic, and analytical skills (or maddening lack thereof.) Seed Media should put out a call for people who actually have some understanding and experience in the electric power field because for a blog ostensibly about the future of energy, it's been little more than a wellspring of wishful thinking, awful rhetoric, bad science, and propaganda. We deserve better.
Posted by: Bob | August 5, 2008 2:02 PM
Dunc reminds me that I must soon make another trip to enjoy the magnificent scenery in Scotland whilst some if it is still unspoiled.
Separating Scotland's power needs from the rest of the UK, so long as there was associated political separation, could make some sense.
For a start there would the the saving of not having to build a grid connection to get the wind generated output south. The last estimate I saw was for about $6 billion but normally it is better to assume at least double the estimate.
Secondly the argument for wind would, as dunc points out, sort of, be reduced since the current UK wide strategy is, presumably, based on soaking up Scotland's excess capacity. That should mean that the rest of the UK will be exposed to more reliable outputs since the mix estimate would need to be adapted.
Thirdly there are a number of politicians, notably our current incumbent Prime Minister and his Chancellor (responsible for government budgets), who would no longer be part of the scene. Indeed quite a few politicos would disappear.
And finally 'discussions' about whether or not the tax take is balanced and equitably re-distributed would be resolved by its obsolescence.
The rules of the game would be quite changed and, hopefully, would result in a more focused consideration of the real needs and possible solutions for England and Wales.
Posted by: Grant | August 5, 2008 3:51 PM
"Decentralized systems are more expensive AND you still need a pretty good grid, because solar/wind power is not constant."
Exactly! You're dreaming if you think you can rely on solar and wind as decentralized power, at least in most areas. The wind doesn't always blow, even on days when you need the power most (or it blows too hard, which also shuts down generation). And the sun doesn't help much on cold, cloudy winter days,... or at all at night (even hot summer evenings).
And the fact is, utilities already must count on losing their biggest unit at any time. This isn't a disaster, though it might force them to buy more expensive power elsewhere. You NEED a solid, reliable grid. And there's little reason to prefer small generating units over large ones (the outage difficulties easily matched by economies of scale).
"Old-school technology"? Don't make me laugh. We're not talking about fashion here. Will our neighbors laugh at us if we don't use cutting edge generation?
Posted by: WCG | August 5, 2008 5:05 PM
"The point is that it doesn't happen completely unexpectedly or instantaneously. Wind is inherently variable, and everybody knows it, so you have to design for it. Nuke is supposed to be reliable base-load, so when 3% of your total generating capacity disappears in an instant, you have a major problem."
So designing a system tolerant to constant large fluctuation in supply including almost total loss over large geographical regions is no problem. But designing a system to handle an unexpected 3% loss of supply is difficult?
That's just strange dude.
Here we have nuke backed by hydro power. I don't know if there has ever been an unexpected loss of a nuke plant here. But the hydro power is very good at load balancing.
Posted by: ppnl | August 5, 2008 6:23 PM
Joe Romm FTW!
Posted by: TomJoe | August 5, 2008 7:06 PM
As my last comment is still in the moderation queue, I'll just point out that generation technology is independent of the transmission and distribution model, so it's not clear what point there is in starting this article with a demonstrably false strawman.
Second, while massively distributed generation may be good for the individual generator operators (for the sake of argument; I have no data to back up that assertion and apparently neither do the authors), it makes the current electrical grid system unmanageable, thus reducing electrical reliability for everyone else.
Consider that existing generators go offline due to both planned and unplanned outages (something as simple as a squirrel or a cat getting into switchgear.) The people who manage power distribution have to find a way to meet load with reduced capacity either by shedding load, firing up a peaking unit, adjusting output of a load-following plant, or getting power from a different part of the grid. And while automated to a great degree, the grid is still managed manually - that's not going change any time soon.
Now consider the posited rosy scenario of massively-distributed renewable generation. With no good energy storage schemes at present, there's no good way to buffer output fluctuations from solar and wind stations. And that considers the best case with current technology; it gets worse as outages strike (planned maintenance, unplanned outages from weather, equipment failure, human error, etc.) Imagine the communications problems a regional load management center would have, communicating with 10,000 small generating units instead of a dozen regional utilities. Massively-distributed generation is not compatible with a centrally- or regionally-managed grid.
So we change that. It may cost a couple billion dollars, but that's cool, it's someone else's money and it's public infrastructure so everyone benefits. It's a small price to pay for locally-controlled small-scale renewable generation instead of the horrors of centralized big-money generating stations run by huge faceless corporations (am I getting the politics right on this?) So we change the grid to avoid the bottleneck of centralized management. Question: Does everyone who currently gets reliable power still get reliable power under the new system? And if they don't, what higher power do they appeal to to make things right?
Hm.
You've made a political decision to get rid of centralized management and large base-load units (unless I'm misunderstanding what you intend when you write "decentralization of power generation" and "doing away with the need for large electrical utility companies.") In the process, you also have thrown away any means of ensuring there's enough margin in the system to handle outages let alone expected demand. You've just thrown away a huge societal safety net for ... what, precisely?
Remember, this post is about adding distributed small-scale renewable generation (IMO, a good thing) to the existing grid, it's about replacing the centralized managed-grid model with a poorly-thought-out not-demonstrated-to-work unmanaged grid model. Hint: distributing electric power is not similar to distributing vegetables at a farmers' market and it is not like routing packets on the Internet.
Before suggesting such drastic changes to the international power grid (yes, Canada, Mexico, and the US are all connected), you might consider learning how the existing grid works, how distributed renewable generation is being added to the grid, and what the identified real-world consequences of that are. There are people who are paid to actually make this stuff work and believe it or not, they make their results public.
Why the last week's worth of articles here are so badly researched boggles the mind. Search Google for "NERC", dig up their 2007 grid reliability report (10yr projection) and see why Alberta has put a provisional 950MWe cap on wind power entering their section of the grid. Answer: because they're worried about grid stability due to output fluctuation. Politics is all well and good but if you're going to take on the responsibility for ensuring society has reliable power, you damned well keep your political sensibility from interfering with the duty you've taken on.
Could we please get some articles written by people who actually know what the hell they're talking about?
Posted by: Bob | August 6, 2008 2:37 AM
Everyone should go read Bob's blog post on this topic. Also, please take the time to respond to the reader survey that all the Seed bloggers have been hawking and let them know what you think about this bold blog experiment.
Posted by: df | August 6, 2008 3:48 AM
I'm sorry, but the claim that 'centralized is more efficient' is just dumb. It is dependent on the underlying technology and distribution model (duh).
More over, decentralized options can be matched to the local/regional conditions. "Site specific" is, and has always, been the most efficient approach (definitional actually).
Current energy production options include a wide variety of techs that really do work well at small scales. However, because of the economic, political, legal, and implementation constraints we have built up over the last century or two of fossil fuel based power generation, small scale systems face significant disadvantages.
For fossil fuel power generation, large scale centralization does result in higher efficiencies. Even in a broader sense which includes externalities and other (non efficiency) costs, bigger is almost always better for fossil fuel based generation. That, especially the broader sense, does not hold for a lot of alternative technologies.
An easy example... PV units installed on a rooftop won't be terribly efficient. However, they also impose very little total cost. If those PV units are cheap ones like printed unites that don't consume a lot of resources to produce, the calculation becomes even easier.
Yeah, a big solar farm (or large solar-thermal) plant would be more efficient, and possibly even produce power at a lower total delivered cost. That is if you have a place to put the big plant. But that does not mean that rooftop PV units are not worthwhile... especially since most places don't have a Mojave Desert sitting nearby.
Large scale hydro vs micro-hydro may be a more obvious example to people with traditional engineering training. Very simply, there are only a few places to put a big hydroelectric dam, and they have a huge impact on the environment. Micro-hydro may be less efficient, but it can be sited a lot more places with much much lower impact.
In short, it is pretty stupid to discount much less ignore options that work well at a small scale because we have a legacy of using technology that doesn't.
Posted by: travc | August 11, 2008 1:22 AM
I'd also like to add...
We routinely spend money in a less than 'most efficient' way. Including small scale decentralized power generation systems as a big part of our 'future energy mix' may well cost more overall. But it also comes with many less actuarial benefits. These include some very real economic ones like stability and lower barriers to innovation, along with some less tangible one like a more broad sense of ownership and participation.
It is not at all irrational to pay something for those benefits. I personally think the economic benefits of decentralization (especially the essentially liberal (like Adam Smith) aspect of lowering barriers to entry and facilitating innovation) will more than make up any 'less efficient' cost.
And this argument is even ignoring the elephant in the room of externalities. Typically, many small scale 'alternative energy' generators produce much fewer externalized costs than large scale facilities.
Posted by: travc | August 11, 2008 1:36 AM