The recent AAAS meeting, as has been well-blogged about, was on the theme of sustainability. In parallel, there were a series of sustainability related articles in the accompanying issue of Science that week (9 February 2007). One that caught my eye was about the growth increase in wind power in Europe over the past ten years.
Germany had negligible amounts in 1995; they now have close to 50,000 MW from wind "installed."
Daniel Clery writes:
Concern about carbon emissions and a desire to become world leaders in renewables technology spurred the European Union (E.U.) and some national governments to invest in wind energy R&D as well as provide subsidies and tax incentives to energy companies to set up wind farms. The result has been a phenomenal growth in installed wind capacity (see figure) that is now equivalent to 50 coal-fired power stations. The E.U.'s renewables industry now has an annual turnover of $20 billion, half the world market, and employs 300,000 people.
Here in the US, the National Academies recently spoke out on the need for a "new body" of research akin to DARPA, but dubbed ARPA-E (E for energy, that is):
An ambitious report released in 2005 by the U.S. National Academies entitled Rising Above the Gathering Storm aimed to identify actions to help the United States compete and prosper in the 21st century. Among a number of recommendations, it advocated the creation of a new agency within DOE, akin to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to fund energy R&D. This new body, dubbed ARPA-E, should start with $300 million a year and build up to $1 billion annually over 5 or 6 years. A bill to set up ARPA-E was presented to Congress in December 2005 by Representative Bart Gordon (D-TN). Gordon, now the House science committee chair, reintroduced the bill last month.
(I'm not sure why they say "An ambitious report released in 2005 by the U.S. National Academies entitled Rising Above the Gathering Storm..." because that report is actually being published just this month, in 2007.)
The answer isn't easy -- just catch more wind -- but that's part of it. As World's Fair readers know, I'm not a fan of promoting the possibility of more energy consumption.* But if we're going to consume something, is it better wind than coal smoke?**
*requisite understatement for the day
** answer: in reality, the choice is not a simple either/or, and I shouldn't portray it as such. Forgive me. I just wanted to put up that figure with all those colors.
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Before someone else calls you out on this point, you may want to make some edits that properly discern between 'capacity' and 'production'. 50,000 MW of capacity is NOT the same as 50,000 MW/hours of production.
right on, bob. and it's even less clear than that. as i shut down the computer and looked at the article, i saw the claim was not as specific as either capacity or production, but "installed." now corrected above to indicate the article's claim. also, i scanned in a more legible version.
I believe 'installed' is short-hand for installed capacity. I pointed out the distinction because wind capacity will not produce the same energy as coal capacity; we ned to recognize that it takes 2X the installed capacity of wind (at 35% efficiency) to equal the same energy output of a coal plant with the same capacity (at 70%). Although the growing installation is encouraging, we need to temper our enthusiasm until wind is actually replacing significant coal use.
I'm still waiting for someone to move beyond wind farms to wind communities - at least that's what I've been calling them during my internal monologues. I keep looking at the block I live on, and there isn't much potential for wind here on our tiny street in Philadelphia. But you've got about 12 houses all three stories plus a cupola. Why not throw up a small wind turbine on the top of each of the cupolas and get a small wind community running? My completely uneducated guess would be that you couldn't offset more than half of the energy consumed by the block, but my hope is that it would get people thinking small, thinking local, and thinking personally responsible. And if you need encouragement around here, all you need to do is drive over the Schuylkill one night and see the flares burning over at the Sunoco refinery. Or check out the national listing of Superfund sites which has one of the largest clumpings anywhere in the nation (http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/pa.htm).
installed is also used at times to indicate that the machinery is there, but not yet capable of use. on that point, not much enthusiasm from my side either way -- i was more interested to see that actual dedicated political action was leading to something.
Clearly discontinuous sources have their problems with capacity utilization. Nevertheless it is startling how strongly the EU has gotten serious about greenhouse emmisions, while we can't get to the point of starting -at least at the national level. By ceeding a critical decade or two of the technology developement cycle to Europe
(and elsewhere) we have lost technological and industrial leadership in just this sort of high growth-rate future industry.
jody: Both for the sake of economics, and even net environmental harm/benefit some types of renewables only make sense at favorable sites -and in large scale implementations. Wind is one of these, small scale residential wind turbines likely won't pay for themselves. Large commercial windfarms, which are now approaching 2.5MW/turbine, and nearly 100M in height have become cost competitive largely because of their great scale. Photovoltaics doesn't suffer nearly as much from the economy of scale (of a site) issue, but is currently still a bit pricy. The best way for concerned individuals to participate is via efficiency of usage, and/or purchasing green power -or carbon offsets.
And to add to Bob's comments, by it's intermittant nature wind power tends to displace Natural gas generation rather than baseload coal plants, which halves the CO2 savings.
Also given that the 35% and 70% figures are excessively optomistic (30 and 90% more like), then you might at best be displacing 17GW of wind, or at best 10 coal plants worth of CO2.
Of course, since Germany decided to phase out it's nuclear plants, these coal plants are not going to get turned off for the next few decades. Indeed, more are being built including such hideous ideas as burning lignite.
http://www3.rwecom.geber.at/factbook/en/servicepages/downloads/files/el…
I apologise if reality refuses to conform...
Thanks bigTom for the comment. Part of my concern, though, is precisely with the big, centralized power generation/distribution infrastructure. I'm not too concerned about things like "cost competitive" when thinking about this. The �market� has everything at an artificial price right now anyhow. I suppose I'm thinking more along the lines of how I can completely re-imagine the system. In my re-imagined system, we can produce most of the energy we need on site. Little wind turbines won't do that, I know, but I'm thinking about what might be, rather than substituting one big energy supplier for another. I like to think that in a not too distant future a small wind turbine on my landlady's house as well as her neighbors along with a small solar panel on each of the roofs will be enough, diversity of sources and otherwise, to make something like local generation possible.
A key to this, of course, is reduced consumption - as you point out. Hey I've changed my light bulbs. I don't have ac. Most, but not all, of what my wife and I can do we do. There are systemic problems in the consumption area as well. This isn�t just a matter for individuals. Transmission across distances is inherently inefficient. Lights that stay on in buildings endlessly are inefficient. Making stuff (which requires energy) that is purposefully designed to be thrown away and then replaced for one more use is inherently inefficient. That's a whole different area that we need to start re-imagining.
Addressing both of these areas (home generation and systemic inefficiencies), I might add, would be wonderful because we could stop this insane march towards nuclear power as somehow the "green" alternative of the future.
Well Jody, good stuf. We still have to be concerned about efficiency. A while back certain circles were pushing high-tech fuel cells for consumers. Unfortuantely the conversion efficiency power/fuel is not very good at such small unit sizes, i.e. we would consume more fuel than a traditional approach.
The point about intermittent sources like wind displacing natural gas, instead of coal is a good one. I suspect the argument is flawed. Natural gas is essentially constrained by supply (or price acting through supply), so not consuming NG here, makes more available elsewhere. Also NG is somewhat useful as a peaking supply (low capitalcost/MW, some ability to cacahe fuel) which makes it a naturally good complement to intermittient supplies.
Jody -
Techically, even fully local production is simply swapping out buying power from a big, distant company with buying generation equipment from a big, distant company.
Long distance transmission is not particularly inefficient, although it's often picked on. Running a diesel generator as backup IS very inefficient. And if you are relying on wind and solar, then you will either find youself using some form of backup system or sitting in the dark, as it were.
And the revival of nuclear is certainly not 'insane', if you actually care about the environment. Sheesh; CO2 levels are rising faster than ever, the Arctic ice cap will be gone in a couple of decades, Australia is in it's biggest drought ever and this is going to get worse, and you oppose the only realistic chance of stopping this? Is this some kind of parlour game to you?
(Sorry if I appear angry, but I don't see how I can feel otherwise when faced with a position that effecively makes ideology more important than the planet).
BigTom -
I'm not sure how this argument is flawed; NG consumption is extremely variable compared to (for instance) Coal on a year-to-year (or even month-to-month) basis. So yes, Wind (andother intermittant renewables) displaced natural gas. The exception would be in countries with a large hydropower component to the mix, where this would generally be displaced (although that gets even more complex, since hydropower is not entirely on-demand).
In any case, Europe and North America are already seeing very tight NG supplies due to depletion, and a corresponding switch to coal where possible.
bigTom: Thanks again for the comments, although I heard a fantastic presentation at a workshop organized by my organization two years ago about the possibility for home and business based fuel cells. The presenter, a German, claimed that the unfortunate fact was that everyone was focusing on vehicles, a bad distraction, when in fact we should think about stationary units, a real possibility in the next 5-10 years. Maybe the Europeans are just better at imagining possibilities?
AD: I just absolutely disagree with the very premise of almost all of your comments. First, why do I have to swap big distant for big distant? Why can't solar cells be produced locally, as they are here in the Delaware Valley (and installed locally by local companies)? Why can't small wind turbines be produced locally? I don't see why these aren't possibilities. Second, nuclear is insane precisely because I care about the environment - for everyone, everything, and for a long time. CO2 is rising - and will rise with the construction of nuclear plants - lots o' concrete means lots o' CO2. Not to mention the mining. Oh and the transportation. And the enrichment. And that whole terrorism target. And the centralization of the power industry. And government control. And the 10000 or so years thing with the waste. And the arctic ice cap will be gone in a few years, but how long will it take to get the nuclear power plants up and running and making an actual contribution (leaving aside all of the other entanglements). You can call it ideological, but the narrow perspective taken on these issues is only keeping us from looking at other possible solutions. Why solve one problem with another? I'd rather go down fighting in a radioactive cloud of dust than jump on the bandwagon of everyone loving nuclear.
AD -- I cannot understand the narrow vehemence of your position, and I find Jody's far more ecologically sensible and responsible. You suggest that a concern for the absolute and inevitable dangers of nuclear radiation is somehow a matter of ideology over planet? I just can't make sense of that. More surprising is your continued use of the trope "the only realistic chance," and then resting on that phrase without supporting it, even worse, continuing to utter the phrase even in the face of more suggestions and ideas for alternative paths of research (alternative paths, as it were, that many, many social scientists, engineers, and other analysts are working on). From what I can tell, your position has always been that nuclear is the answer, you apparently work in the nuclear industry, and yet you claim that someone arguing *against* the unmitigated curse of nuclear waste is being ideological and working against the environment? I too am frustrated, but I have to leave it there for now.