This is the first in an occasional series on reframing the energy and climate debate. I welcome all ideas on how we can improve our language in what is now the central front in the war to protect the health and well-being of American families and all future generations.
The phrase "renewable energy" is often used by the media and conservatives to give lip service to clean energy sources -- by lumping them all together in order to trivialize them or diminish their individual potential. For instance, the "bunch of bland old guys" had just one bullet for renewables (and one for efficiency), thereby making them equivalent to expanded domestic oil and gas production, expanded nuclear production, and "clean coal."
Progressives, I think, should stop using the phrase "renewable energy" entirely. It is lazy and fits into the conservative frame of renewable energy sources as individually insignificant. We should go out of our way to specify them, since several of them have come of age.
Take concentrated solar thermal power. No, I'm not thrilled with the name -- how about baseload solar thermal? (Yes, I realize that solar thermal with storage isn't so much baseload as it is load following (peaking during midday), but, heck, that is even better than baseload. In any case, conservatives keep dismissing renewables as non-baseload, and the phrase is certainly more accurate than "clean coal." Yes, not all solar thermal has storage, but it is the stuff with storage that has the big upside. And while nobody knows what baseload solar thermal is, based on my media interviews, few people know what concentrated solar power is either, so you're going to have to explain it either way.)
Baseload solar thermal is almost certainly going to provide more power every year this century than "clean coal" does."
And new windpower in this country could easily exceed new nuclear power. Indeed, if we're smart, it will greatly exceed it.
I have long used the phrase "solar photovoltaics" for clarity, but since we have a completely different type of solar and since PV has come of age, I would recommend just saying "photovoltaics."
Thus, my recommendation is to give them individually equal weight, as in "windpower, photovoltaics, and baseload solar thermal." And if you want to throw in geothermal, that is fine with me, though I tend to think that would require a bigger effort to achieve significant post-2020 capacity, and I personally think the first three are enough, along with energy efficiency, for now.
I would also avoid the use of the word "balance," since it is principally used by the same people who lump all of renewables together. For conservatives, a balanced energy policy includes shale! Note also Sen. Jon Kyl's (R-Ariz.) statement: "I just want to briefly note that Senator McCain's energy policy is a balanced policy."
When I was at the Department of Energy in the 1990s, the administration made us use the word 'balance.' Now we have to deliver the message, as Vice President Gore did, that we need an unbalanced energy policy, one that is focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy windpower, photovoltaics, and baseload solar thermal.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
Comments
View as Flat
Matt G Posted 8:52 am
21 Jul 2008
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David Roberts Posted 9:11 am
21 Jul 2008
That's going to set the American people on fire!
For the record, actual polls and surveys show that people by and large prefer the term "clean energy":
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/12/91046/6008
grist.org
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:08 pm
21 Jul 2008
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sunflower Posted 12:28 pm
21 Jul 2008
Solar is the word most liked.
Heat, peak, following, base, desalination,,, are words for the wonks.
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perk Posted 1:00 pm
21 Jul 2008
We need to reduce carbon emissions on the order of 80%. That is simply not possible with hybrid or even fully electric cars and our current size homes.
Improving energy efficiency and alternative sources like wind and solar, even nuclear is very capital-intensive-- great for the rich, not so easy for the rest of us.
Re-framing the issue should be considering ruthless conservation methods, not incremental, capital-intensive, technologies.
Ideas like neighborhood shared buildings - churches may be schools by day, civic meeting halls in evenings and places of worship on the Sabbath.
Working from home is more than just possible for many, many occupations. Back to neighborhood shops and mail order large goods.
We have to re-structure our lives, not just invent new toys.
Ruthless conservation is cheap, difficult and guaranteed to work.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:00 pm
21 Jul 2008
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:14 pm
21 Jul 2008
Gore-voice: "With 'Solar Heat Storage', we can create steam powered electricity whenever we want. Day and Night."
(Another fun thing, there's no "SHS" out there eating up the acronym thought space)
http://www.google.com/search?q=shs
_
By the way while we're word smithing.
One of our gristers came up with a good turn of phrase.
You have your Climate Skeptic.
How about your Climate Realist.
Right now, we don't really have parity with the simplicity of "Skeptics".
-David Ahlport
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JeffB Posted 2:41 pm
21 Jul 2008
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Zephaniah Posted 2:45 pm
21 Jul 2008
I like the way people respond to 'clean energy', when I use the term in explaining the solution to climate change. It's a cheerful term, reminiscent of gingham tablecloths and air dried towels. It advances our case that CO2 should be termed a pollutant. Not many folks are willing to argue that they are for something dirty, which I guess is why the greedheads use the phrase 'clean coal' when they know perfectly well that there is, at this time, no such thing with any existing technology. I hate giving up a perfectly good term like 'clean' just because other people use it inaccurately, but there are some arguments against it. 'Clean energy' may confuse people who don't know that the problem is more than just dirt and chemicals in air. Confusion with the hole in the ozone layer and the chemicals (chlorofluorocarbons) that cause it is very common.
How about 'low-carbon power'???
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gzuckier Posted 12:45 am
22 Jul 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:04 am
22 Jul 2008
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sunflower Posted 1:06 am
22 Jul 2008
We put the heads in the lunar focus of huge concentrating dishes, a cold ashen gray light, and exposed a couple of lunatics, went completely mad and required a rescue team.
(No disrespect intended.)
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sunflower Posted 1:11 am
22 Jul 2008
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sunflower Posted 1:19 am
22 Jul 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:22 am
22 Jul 2008
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RDMiller Posted 1:49 am
22 Jul 2008
The use of biomass as energy far exceeded the use of solar and wind.... COMBINED... according to the latest government figures in 2007 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelrenewable.html). Most folks just don't realize how energy self-reliant the forest products sector is, and tend to leave this out of the equation. But it's as valid a source and use of energy as any other.
Since the standing volume of timber available today exceeds the volume of timber available yesterday, and last year, and the year before (this has been the trend for years), it's fair to say no significant GHG's were added to the Earth because of this biomass energy. Trees are pulling out the CO2 from the atmosphere just as fast (or faster) than any burning of them (in the US) is putting CO2 back in.
All of this biomass displaced a great deal of energy which would otherwise have come from burning coal, oil or natural gas.
The use of biomass as energy is growing fast. The potential is very large. It can be done sustainably. Leaving it out of the equation you are discussing in this thread may be convenient, but it is incorrect.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:00 am
22 Jul 2008
If you think it's safe to go over there, I'd be happy to look, or if you have other links for sustainable biomass, please provide.
I guess an advantage to saying "solar/wind/geothermal" is that you make it explicit about what you're talking about. If an agreed on term such as "sustainable biomass", or some such, could be found, to easily distinguish it from deforestation or ecosystem loss, that would help too.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:04 am
22 Jul 2008
Since it is a common error to conflate ground source heat pump heating/cooling with geothermal electric power generation, this is where a reframe is needed.
Building heating/cooling produces 36% of GHG, that is a relatively quick and easy source of conservation using ground source heat pumps. When solar or wind electricity is peaking it can be used to run ground source heat pumps and store heat or cold in building mass for a 24 hour cycle.
That provides storage too, a huge amount of storage since it is the main use of electricity. Other big building loads are pressurizing water systems, refrigeration, and water heating. These uses can all use 24 hour cycle storage too. And heating/cooling for refrigeration and water heating can come from ground source heat pumping.
A lot of natural gas is used for building heat, that could be displaced for better uses with ground source heat pumps.
Geothermal electric power generation is too water intensive to be scaled up to a useful percentage of energy demand. It not only uses a lot of fresh water, the water coming up the pipe carries mineral contamination that pollutes aquifers, multiplying the effect on scarce water resources manyfold.
Then thee is the increased earthquake activity related to gethermal. Injecting water deep underground into cracks in the rock tends to lubricate the sliding rock with the steam pressure, making this whole process very dangerous.
Furthermore the heat gets used up after a decade or so necessitating that the geithermal plant be moved top a new location. The ultra-expensive drilling and construction repeated again in a new spot, along with the contamination of ground water.
Forget gemthermal power generation, reframe this aspect of the debate into ground source heat pump heating/cooling and building mass energy storage.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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perk Posted 2:20 am
22 Jul 2008
In many areas of the country like the deep south, pine forests fully mature in 20- 25 years from planting, providing up to 3 cords/acre/year.
( http://www.bugwood.org/factsheets/98-028.html )
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amazingdrx Posted 2:25 am
22 Jul 2008
Waste biomass, that is a key point to stress. Use the waste first, the dead and dying wood vulnerable to forest fires. The new biodiesel from trees plant here will not be using the slash and dead wood. It will use healthy living trees, cut for the express purpose of continuing to guzzle gas in 6% efficient ICEs.
Use the waste first, for building materials and paper, then as biodigestor fuel, then and only then use the waste wood for electric power generation and charcoal (for carbon filters only, no combustion)production. After that resource is exhausted harvest the living trees for building material and paper.
Plenty of dead trees that could make fine lumber are being left to rot and burn because bottomline corporate operations just do not want to deal with it.
We don't need to use live trees for motor fuel or electric power. Enough solar, wind, wave, current, and biogas energy and conservation potential via plugin hybrid drivetrains, ground source heat pumps, and cogeneration exists in order to do the job.
We need all the live trees we can get to absorb and sequester GHG.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Hal 9000 Posted 3:54 am
22 Jul 2008
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RDMiller Posted 4:40 am
22 Jul 2008
We've just been through this at length in the previous thread I was involved with. I thought you were getting it. Guess not.
You say, "we don't need to use live trees for motor fuel or electric power".
This is the problem with so many in the environmental community who have become divorced from the realities of living in rural, forested areas. In fact, John, people who own forests DO need to harvest trees periodically in order to offset taxes and the general cost of owning their land (unless they are quite wealthy... in which case they don't need the money, but should still steward the forest properly).
As it turns out, the return to the landowner these days from thinning their forests (it's called an "improvement cut") is higher if a large part of the wood is used to replace oil, as opposed to turning it into paper or something else. This is simply a reflection of how valuable wood is as an alternative energy source, and how inexpensive it is compared to oil and natural gas.
Fact is, this process is carbon neutral, if not carbon negative. Let's not argue about this... it's a fact no expert would argue with. Wood harvested correctly regrows in a short period of time and is often replaced by an even higher level of growth.
If forests are not maintained as productive forests (because we don't give enough value to the products these forests produce), they very commonly get converted into shopping malls and housing complexes. Is that what we want?
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:49 am
22 Jul 2008
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sunflower Posted 5:09 am
22 Jul 2008
Driving skidders through the forest really tears things up. Firewood collection from natural tree death is pretty much limited by road access plus, at most, 75 yards.
A couple decades ago I did a calculation that Washington State would be completely deforested in 3 years for energy. So, maybe 10% could be offset with sustainable firewood - maximum with extensive road building.
I have never seen logging block housing and strip malls, often just the opposite.
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RDMiller Posted 6:06 am
22 Jul 2008
The point is, if there was no market (or a much poorer market) for wood, landowners would need to convert their properties into something else that earned money... like houses and strip malls. It's a simply reality of our capitalist system. It costs money to own land. Something needs to come in for income to offset that (not for everyone, but for many). Fortunately, wood is valuable as a product (along with the many other values it carries), so you never get to see how much destruction of forested land there would be otherwise.
Also, were it not for all that wood, your home would be full of far more plastic objects and rather ugly furniture, and you'd probably be reading a newspaper made from oil (if you could afford it!).
I could point you to dozens of sustainable forestry operations in Washington where you could see a type of commercial forestry taking place that would likely impress you. This is the only kind of forestry I support.
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sunflower Posted 6:21 am
22 Jul 2008
Firewood is a small wedge, useful for the rural blessed.
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stopgreenpath Posted 6:41 am
22 Jul 2008
Yes, we need to reduce carbon emissions, but there is a right way and a wrong way, both from an environmental and an economic perspective. We have seen what Big Energy (and make no mistake, Big Wind and Big Solar are absolutely Big Energy) does: builds out monopolistic infrastructure on our land and on our dime, then hijacks us with supply and price manipulations.
These "wind farms" and "solar farms" will PERMANENTLY OBLITERATE MILLIONS OF ACRES of intact ecosystem (owned by us), which means they are inherently NON-RENEWABLE. Now you may not care, if it's not in your back yard, but it still really hurts you, because your rates will continue increasing, and your planet will continue declining, if this is a model that is pursued. If it was our only choice, we might have to hold our noses and do it, but since it's not, why are we letting Big Energy frame the debate as "Big Fossils vs Big Renewables?" The real debate is between "Big Energy vs Ratepayers/The Planet." I know which side I'm on - do you?
Your choice, of course, is to support LOCAL, POINT OF USE RENEWABLES, and everything that goes into those - Feed-in tariffs, tax breaks, subsidies, system oversizing, RECs, R & D into increased storage, conservation, generation efficiency, smart grids, etc. For the same amount of money (once you factor in the true costs of millions of acres of dead ecosystem, rate hijackings, families forced from their homes and the socialization of all costs onto us) we could build out a massive DISTRIBUTED infrastructure that WE OWN, and save all our open spaces, groundwater and the wildlife which will all be lost as "collateral damage" in a Big Energy gold rush.
A better name for CSP might be "gigantic, blinding, scorching, billion - gallon - groundwater - depleting bug zappers which run mostly on natural gas." Is that too wordy? Doesn't make people feel all good about themselves? Good. This is a tremendously destructive, largely unproven, wasteful technology that is a lousy choice to replace other tremendously destructive, wasteful technologies, and it only benefits Big Energy.
Why not work harder on point of use storage solutions? Increased efficiency? Incentives for US to participate in the Green Economy? And why do all these so-called "solutions" that Big Enviros cheerlead end up in devastating losses of ecosystem and ratepayer independence? We need to reframe the debate alright, but let's think bigger.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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SanfordSilver Posted 6:51 am
22 Jul 2008
By that I mean I want the windmill on my roof along with my photovoltaic cells and my storage in the attic.
The point to make here is that while coal and oil have inherent problems with the cleanliness of use and the finite nature of supply the real culprits in this debacle have been the corporations and their political stooges who control those sources of energy.
They fight any and all attempts to free ourselves from that control unless they see the opportunity to remain in control of the next generation energy sources. Not a surprise that Bush pushes hydrogen powered cars from centrally produced sources and distributed through pumps the same way gas is now and bio-fuels grown by Archer Daniels Midland with massive Federal subsidies.
I may have to buy the tools for getting at my personal energy sources (the sun/wind/water for hydrogen for my car(it is great stuff)) from corporations but once that's done I'm done with them.
So rather than continue to villianize the substance let's take advantage of the nations' re-discovered distrust of corporate power and put the blame for the problem where it really lies then point to solutions that leave the real villians out of the equation.
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amazingdrx Posted 6:55 am
22 Jul 2008
This is why most forests are under forest crop law tax breaks or owned by paper companies or the government. Private forest land owners just can't make much money from the wood that should be removed for forest safety and healthy growth rates.
Why are prices so low for timber, pulp, and chips? Because such a huge unharvested surplus exists on public land, and the government is a not for profit organization. As we see from the trillions in debt we are wallowing in from a Reagan and two Bush administrations. Hehey.
But you are right, that extra wood ought to be utilized for fiber and energy.
Our main argument is on the process used. I prefer biogas and fuel cell electricity. And fuel cell electricity and wood gas to power logging equipment for rest.
And only after all the high nitrogen waste (manure, green crop waste, sewage, and so forth) is exhausted at the 30 parts carbon (wood waste) to 1 part nitrogen ratio that optimizes biogas production.
Wherever wood waste is too expensive to transport to a digestor it could go into the wood gas/fuel cell electric process too.
Ethanol and biodiesel from wood comes last in my calculation. At least we know where we disagree. Where liquid fuel loses it's edge is at the point where soil nutrients go out of a tailptpe or up a smokestack.
Biodigestion puts those organic compounds back into the soil, offsetting the huge release of GHG from chemical fertilizer.
But we'll see, I want to visit the tree to fuel plant here and check it out in construction and operation. I'll get video and interviews if possible.
I think great green things will come from improved forest managment and innovation. The potential is staggering.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:22 am
22 Jul 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 7:44 am
22 Jul 2008
I can see the bumperstickers now. No trees for fuel! Don't send our forests out your tailpipe!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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RDMiller Posted 7:47 am
22 Jul 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:08 am
22 Jul 2008
Trees (and attendant biomass) make a certain amount of sense, and they've been harvested, some sustainably even, for a long time, so I think that sounds like a more reasonable place to look.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:12 am
22 Jul 2008
The wood chips would sit in a bin until they were fed into the apparatus. The methane would be stored for power backup for the grid and excess gas would be sold into the pipeline system.
Logging equipment and trucks could be methane/diesel powered flex fuel, then over a couple of decades transitioning to plugin hybrid drivetrains with fuel cell/methane backup power for their batteries.
This truck and equipment fuel element is important, loggers can not afford to keep on using diesel. It is bankrupting families around here.
I would be interested to see if the effluent could be safely used in soil, I doubt it. that is why biodigestion is so far ahead from a GHG standpoint, it replaces fossil fertilizer and it's huge carbon footprint.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Colin Wright Posted 10:14 am
22 Jul 2008
Then I had a look at David's MacKay online book on renewables (http://www.withouthotair.com) and found that trees can produce about 0.15 - 0.3 W/m2, which compares to 0.2 for switchgrass and 0.02 for ethanol.
So my first reaction is that the same problems for biofuels will turn up for bioenergy in general. That is, the unforeseen consequences: the competition for land will push up prices for food (and land and forest products), etc. And if the world energy consumption continues to grow as it does, doubling every 20 years or so (I don't have the exact figure on hand), we can say goodbye to the biological diversity of the world's tropical rainforests and hello "monoculture earth".
There could be some room for "sustainable" bioenergy, but it can only produce a fraction of our energy needs. The problem is that as oil depletion sets in, market forces will overwhelm all sense of balance and proportion. The cheapest sources of new energy will be "mined" first. I'm thinking of Papua New Guinea, and other poor countries where multinationals can get forest rights by handing out beads. Then those multinationals sell the wood to the biodigestors that spring up in the oil refineries.
Meanwhile, we can imagine the bumper-stickers on the smug environmentalists' cars, "My car runs on FSC-certifed wood."
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Jon Rynn Posted 11:25 am
22 Jul 2008
I guess the problem is that we don't know if forests can be harvested responsibly. The Menominee seem to have pulled it off. So maybe only indigenous peoples could do it, I don't know.
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:09 pm
22 Jul 2008
When you talk about "waste" forest biomass you have to very careful. Part of forest soil health comes from rotting logs. The main fire hazard is young thin trees and brush. And I'm not saying all waste is safe. Some is also a fire hazard. But gathering 100% of wood "waste" or anything like it is not sustainable in most cases. (There are probably exceptions.) It is not true that if living biomass is the same, harvesting is necessarily carbon neutral. What we have to understand is that outside of tropical rainforests a lot of carbon is stored in the SOIL. Short rotation harvesting, and sometimes even medium or long rotation harvesting may disrupt soil storage as opposed to what is in trees. Also I'm somewhat suspicious of all these biomass stats. Unless they are measured in very expensive ways, there is a whole lot of imprecision and inaccuracy in them. At the moment I'm guessing that 14% of current world energy supply is an upper limit of sustainable biomass harvest, in other words getting what we get now but sustainably rather than un. And I'm guessing that the lower limit is 3%. And I'm further guessing that the right figure is closer to the bottom than the top.
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RDMiller Posted 12:21 pm
22 Jul 2008
The people producing hybrid energy-grade trees tell us they're heading towards yields of 20 tons per acre per year. The cellulosic ethanol people are already at 100 gallons of liquid fuel per ton. So each acre of ground can produce 2000 gallons of liquid fuel per year.
We use 21,000,000 barrels per day total oil in the US, or around 900 million gallons per day. At 365 days, that's 330 billion gallons per year.
Divide that by 2000 gallons means you'd need 165 million acres to replace all the oil we use in the US each year. We have around 750 million acres of forest land alone... plus another 300+ million acres of farm land... plus 100 million or so acres of marginal non-crop land.
Plenty of land... and that's just in the US.
Again.. this is just an exercise. Let's not argue the merits of it.
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RDMiller Posted 12:49 pm
22 Jul 2008
Vermont, for example, was 90% virgin forest before the "white man" arrived (again, let's not focus too much on fine details, because many would argue even the Native Americans disrupted forests before "we" got here). Let's say all the original biodiversity was intact at that time.
By the turn of the 20th century, Vermont was 90% OPEN LAND. It was all cut down or burned. Same was true for dozens and dozens of other states. Original forests, all gone. Biodiversity... mostly lost.
Today, Vermont is 90% wooded again. How? The farmers left and moved to the mid-west. The forests re-grew on their own. Did the biodiversity return? Certainly not all of it... not to mention most of the current forest land since 1900 has been logged 2,3 or 4 times (and often times with little care). And still, despite it all, today's forests here don't look all that bad.
The point is, when we look across great expanses of forests in the US today, these forests have little to do with what was here originally. We cut them all down, and they've mostly grown back up.
So... again, just to make a point... if we decided oil was a really bad thing and we wanted to replace it... we could convert 200 million acres of the lowest-grade forest to energy plantations for 20-30 years, until... say, all the cars were electric... then start to back off on the plantations and revert these lands back into forests again.
It could be done... that's all I'm saying. And maybe the trade-off for eliminating oil usage entirely would be worth it.
I'm simply throwing ideas out for consideration. I'm NOT advocating we do this.
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Colin Wright Posted 1:00 pm
22 Jul 2008
For one, there in no intermediate energy conversion process: the heat released goes directly into homes. And heating by electricity is wasteful (high-grade energy used for a low-grade purpose).
In tandem with Gore's plan to "renew" electicity, there could be a national program to phase out fossil-fuel home heating (as another wedge) in favor of an "FSC-certified wood" stove program.
In addition, there would have to be a government ban on "wood-to-car-fuel". Otherwise, the wood would (sorry) be used to fuel rich people's cars, while poor people would be left to freeze because of inflated wood prices.
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sunflower Posted 1:14 pm
22 Jul 2008
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:36 pm
22 Jul 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 2:17 pm
22 Jul 2008
Completely bypassing real renewable energy. And reneweable electric transportation. this is why it is impossible to compromise. you can't give the biofuel advocates that hypothetical "Again.. this is just an exercise. Let's not argue the merits of it."
Don't do it, once the false premise is accepted they lead you down the garden path to the horrific conclusion. Tree farms from sea to shining sea interspersed with fuel farm crops, all fertilized chemically, monocrop GMO, with herbicides and pesticides.
The hidden false premise though, that is really dangerous? that fuel farming, trees or switchgrass is carbon neutral. It is not, that land they use to grow gas to send out their tailpipes used to sequester carbon, after they convert it to fuel farms it doesn't.
So you plan to convert the tree farms back into biodiverse forests in 20 or 30 years? Riiight. Restore all the biodiversity from micro to macro organism? Hogwash.
Now I know why you were so abusive and defensive, calling everyone you disagreed with "ignorant".
But no one picked on backcut, I wonder why he joined in the abuse? Hehey, just wanted to get in on the party?
Sorry all, never give the fuel farmers a break, tree or crop fuel farmers, I learned my lesson once again.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 2:23 pm
22 Jul 2008
What about the most efficient ground source heat pump, in cooling mode? Compare pumping heat into 95 degree air with pumping heat into 55 degree groudwater.
This doesn't seem reasonable. In fact direct circulation to 55 degree ground water would work just fine without a heat pump for cooling buildings. Are you claiming that an air source heat pump (an air conditioner) can beat direct circulation for cooling a building?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Gar Lipow Posted 2:28 pm
22 Jul 2008
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Gar Lipow Posted 2:52 pm
22 Jul 2008
The people producing hybrid energy-grade trees tell us they're heading towards yields of 20 tons per acre per year. The cellulosic ethanol people are already at 100 gallons of liquid fuel per ton. So each acre of ground can produce 2000 gallons of liquid fuel per yea
I'll agree that if they could do all that sustainably, with high net energy, and low net greenhouse gas emissions that this could indeed replace oil. (Mind you your gallon for gallon substitution of ethanol for oil ignores differences in energy content, but I won't quibble.) You will in turn agree, I hope, that if my Grandmother had balls she'd be my grandfather.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:58 pm
22 Jul 2008
You know the rest, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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RDMiller Posted 8:00 pm
22 Jul 2008
This response of your ignores everything we've been discussing in the past few days, and actually coming to increasingly greater agreement on. Very disappointing. That's enough for me. I prefer not to engage with you again. I'm not that great a fool.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:27 pm
22 Jul 2008
They should not be allowed to pass anywhere near our forests and fields. Using their own duuhbyaist regime precedents that destroyed our constitution, they ought to be secretly declared enemy combatants and rendered unto gitmo for the duration of the "war on terror".
It's the only way to stop the bushwacking. Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 9:03 pm
22 Jul 2008
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/space_heati ...
Even at 75 degrees ground temp, the 90 to 120 degree heat in those southern areas could be brought down to a livable 80 degrees with a dehumifdifier working on direct circulation too, that would lower humidity enough to make 80 degrees comfortable. The 75 degree ground heat exchange water would circulate through the dehumidifier condensor coil. No heat pump needed.
Those who live in 100 degree heat for months, would be ok with 80 degree dry air.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:08 pm
22 Jul 2008
One of the problems with some acronyms is the mixup between solar/geo heating, versus solar/geo thermal electric.
-David Ahlport
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dajson Posted 1:31 am
23 Jul 2008
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Jonas Posted 7:10 pm
24 Jul 2008
According to all scientists with a moderate understanding of the future of climate policy and renewable energy (from, say, James Hansen to the Bellona Foundation, to the IEA), see a major role for biomass.
Biomass offers:
-pure baseloads, today
-it can replace coal by using existing coal plant infrastructures; so no need to build entirely new infrastructures that take up costly materials
-largely because of this it is the most affordable of all the renewables; currenlty less expensive than coal; two to three times less costly than wind; five to twenty times less expensive than photovoltaics and geothermal; according to the EU, the difference will be even bigger by 2030, because of major improvements in global biomass logistics, processing technologies (e.g. torrefaction), and markets
-it can restore entire ecosystems (improving their biodiversity and ecosystem services - e.g. by turning the 1.5 billion hectares of highly degraded and destroyed land back into biodiversity hotspots by growing original prairies, grasslands, savannas, shrub and woodlands, etc...)
-and best of all, it offers the only option to go carbon-negative; non-biomass 'renewables' are all carbon-positive: they contribute CO2 emissions over their lifecycle. According to some scientists, we need to get our act together and start pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. Only biomass achieves this.
You cannot take climate change serious and not mention biomass.
According to most think tanks of any clout (say IEA, Copernicus Institute, Bellona, EU's JRC, Ecofys,... you name it) biomass will be the leading form of renewable energy, globally.
But Mr Fromm, for some bizarre reason, refuses even to mention it.
I thought that one of the key hallmarks of being 'progressive' consisted of being inclusive and rational. Apparently not according to his definition.
It must be that he's fallen prey to the ignorance of lumping all forms of bioenergy together. Exactly the ignorance he asks all 'progressives' to set aside.
It's a rather sad sight.
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RDMiller Posted 9:22 pm
24 Jul 2008
Thanks for this excellent post. Now let's hear folks refute these points with studies and facts, if any believe differently. If not, readers should take in what Jonas has said, because biomass is already big, will grow much bigger, and has an important role to play in the alternative, renewable energy sector.
Richard
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amazingdrx Posted 12:28 am
25 Jul 2008
How does this say anything useful about what is possible with "sustainable" forestry feeding tree to fuel plants?
This would be like a solar power advocate claiming that all the sunlight falling on the earth in a few minutes, if converted to electricity, would power human needs for a year. How is either at all relevant?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:17 am
25 Jul 2008
Ignoring Jonas' normal Trotskyist style hectoring (and he's Romm, not Fromm), cost, while an issue, is not the issue when we are discussing whether or not something is sustainable. If something is low cost for a period of time, and then ecosystems collapse, then the measure of cost is a bad one to make the priority measure.
There certainly are degraded lands, degraded I assume because they were overgrazed or overirrigated or overfertilized or over-cropped(sp?). So they all need restoration, the question is how much can sustainably harvested, not how much can be mined from the land for a number of years before it once again collapses. And, one would need to know the energy-return-on-energy-invested (EROEI), not simply how much energy a particular plot of land can return, because the harvesting, processing, and transport can use up most of the energy (this is way oil is such a miracle fuel -- relatively easy to get out, very easy to transport).
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RDMiller Posted 1:20 am
25 Jul 2008
The intent in me describing what is happening now with energy plantations and cellulosic ethanol is simply to inform people here that this is becoming real. Hundreds of millions are being invested into it, and many influential individuals (government and financial) are involved with it.
I am NOT endorsing this. But if we don't understand what is happening and why, there's no chance of being able to do anything about it.
Your comparison to solar is silly. What I described... or at least some variation to it... is going to happen in the next few years.
The fact is, folks involved in this sector are basing what they are doing on being able to produce something like 2000 gallons per acre per year of an oil substitute. Unlike algae (which sounds very promising to me), this CE and energy farm technology is very close... just a couple of years away. Algae is thought to be at least 10 years away.
Something you need to understand is that there are (again, influential) people who are considering what we would do if oil imports are greatly curtailed (for geopolitical reasons of one kind or another... like a war, perhaps) and/or if our access to domestic oil is substantially restricted (for example, because of one or more major hurricanes)... or if the price of oil simply goes sky high. Solar and wind cannot replace what we get from oil... like liquid fuels, plastics, chemicals, etc. These would be critical to US survival in the relative short term. Cellulosic ethanol is one important source to look to for these items. This is just reality, John... much as I'm not thrilled about such scenarios.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:43 am
25 Jul 2008
As I've I've argued before, and plenty of people argue, it will be necessary eventually to move transportation and other ICE uses to electricity, which is obviously a huge undertaking. And of course the hour is getting late.
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RDMiller Posted 3:12 am
25 Jul 2008
I agree with everything in your last post.
Richard
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amazingdrx Posted 2:10 am
27 Jul 2008
A subsidy diversion (from fossil, nuclear to renewable), carbon tax/income tax cut, and government orders for mass produced plugin hybrids, solar cogeneration systems, and ground source heat pumps.
Then filling the inevitable renewable energy gap over the intervening years first from waste biomass, manure, garbage, sewage, wood waste in forests prone to fire, plant overgrowth in fertilizer polluted waterways, digested to prodice energy, GHG offset, and GHG saving organic fertilizer.
Relying on first natural gas, then coal, and oil for the rest of the gap, reducing this use to 10% of energy needs over 10 years.
Allow biomass to fuel production only from biomass waste leftover after all waste nitrogen sources are utilized. At the 30 parts carbon rich waste to one part nitrogen waste ratio.
Another great source of green manure combined with dead carbon rich biomass would be natural praire grass mown in strips to prevent wildfires, a huge Prairie Naytional Park covering area in 3 or 4 great plain's states could be a great source, as well as a great national wind farm site.
This prairie source, combined with waste sources, would provide enough biogas backup for a renewable grid. And enough organic fertilizer to convert all chemical ag farm land to organic GHG sequestering soil again. That GHG uptake would surely reverse GHG climate disaster.
Make liquid fuel or energy from biomass (without biodigestion)? I think experimental projects are ok, as long as they only use leftover waste biomass. No trees or crops devoted to this effort.
Maybe after oil runs out, airplanes will still need liquid fuel? There will probably be enough extra biomass waste to do that. Plugin hybrid airplanes are coming though. Greatly reducing that fuel use.
Biogas production builds the soil. Tree or crop to fuel or energy robs from the soil, stored carbon and nutrients, and increases GHG. Biogas, methane/natural gas is just as practical a transportation fuel as liquid fuels are.
So let the tree to fuel guys experiment with waste wood. No living tree to fuel operations until they prove the process. Just as with nuclear advocates, no new nukes until all the old problems are solved. Show us a new, safer, waste recycling nuke that is cost effective.
Show us a waste wood to fuel plant that is cost effective, GHG reducing, and builds soil. Seeing is believing.
Farm, landfill, and sewage biogas plants are already in operation all over the world.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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RDMiller Posted 4:49 am
27 Jul 2008
I'm sure there are many in positions of influence within government and business that are keenly interested in following your prescription here. I'll just bet they are already changing their business plans, stopping the chain saws, shutting down the wood pellet mills, selling their log skidders and writing off their billions in investments.
I haven't done any drugs in a long time, but whatever you're on, I want some...
Richard
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amazingdrx Posted 5:26 am
27 Jul 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:36 am
27 Jul 2008
Restoring the prairie means relocalizing agriculture so that the prairie areas are not providing the bulk of grains. All of these problems are interconnected, and just to throw in another "nutty" idea, I don't know that the market will be able to do all of this rearranging in a rational way. Probably some of the Great Plains states could even revert to forest, if they weren't used for pasture, but then, our meat-eating habits might have to change also.
Apparently, John, wood is being used now for electricity, as the Vermont example shows, although if you look at their site, it seems to be predominantly "waste". As far as the Menominee are concerned, all of their timber sales seem to be for lumber -- which may continue to fetch the highest price for wood anyway, especially if overseas wood becomes more expensive as cargo ship fuel skyrockets. But that's a whole other conversation.
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RDMiller Posted 5:51 am
27 Jul 2008
My comment about John smoking drugs wasn't to be taken literally, but to suggest that he could be more helpful by debating fairly, listening better, being a tad bit more realistic and taking into consideration that others have different interests and orientations to nature and the Earth... and that these are not necessarily bad just because he doesn't share them.
After all the debating back and forth, John still has the nerve to make a statement like this, which he has not been able to back up with even one study:
"Tree [or crop] to fuel or energy robs from the soil, stored carbon and nutrients, and increases GHG."
I've asked him several times to document that sustainable forestry, even if practiced on hundreds of millions of acres, would decrease soil quality and increase GHG. He cannot do this, but he still makes the statement. No one can take that kind of debating seriously. Accordingly, the rest of his statements lose credibility.
I know John's heart is in the right place. I can sense his passion for the Earth and his intense desire to see it cared for. I can also sense his frustration with the lack of progress so far, and I share that. But he would be more effective in bringing about change if he states facts that can be documented, debates fairly, never twists the words of others, and admits when he's said something incorrect. I'm still waiting for the latter.
Richard
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