If you are worried about Lake Mead drying up, think that reduced snowpack due to climate change might have something to do with it, and are looking for some answers, you could do a lot worse than listen to David Berry of the Western Resource Advocates. I always do, and he's never steered me wrong. See his timely "Clean Electric Energy Strategy for Arizona" (PDF).
Solutions
When ‘hand wringing’ isn’t enough 4
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Posted 4:21 PM on 13 Feb 2008
by Adam Browning -
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amazingdrx Posted 11:31 pm
13 Feb 2008
Interesting Adam
Great to see biogas from the waste stream mentioned in this proposal.
20% of retail electricty from renewables by 2025, 30% of that to consist of distributed sources, like roof top solar and farm biogas. I think that's an accurate summary. So roughly 2% from renewable distributed sources by 2025?
Residential (retail electricity) is roughly 30% of grid power, times 20%, times 30%. No where near good enough.
Conservation to cut 20% of grid power use? Amory Lovins' home uses 120 watts, 10% of normal home power consumption, that includes his heating/cooling. Futhermore he gets more power than he uses from roof mounted solar.
No mention of geo heat exchange heating/cooling, a huge conservation advantage in very hot areas like Arizona. Retrofitted on all buildings over the next 12 years? Huge savings. Building heating/cooling accounts for 36% of GHG production on average in the US.
A better goal and bargaining position for greens?
100% of grid from a renewable distributed smart grid, conservation including geo heat exchange heating/cooling, and plugin hybrid vehicles and electric mass transit.
Shutter all nuclear and coal plants. Convert natural gas fired capacity to emergency backup. Use solid oxide fuel cell/turbine cogeneration with distributed generators powered by biogas as regular backup for wind and solar sources.
Forget about "clean" coal IGCC and geothermal. Geothermal uses too much water and IGCC is far too expensive as it (does not, no IGCC with cO2 sequestration has ever been built, not even experimentally) exists now.
Recycle water with a switch to drip irrigation coming from recycled grey water, composting toilets, and biogas plants that recycle waste water.
That's a better goal for 2025.
It can happen with a 10 cent per kwh subsidy direct to utility customers who invest in distributed wind, solar, or biogas. Homeowners with solar panels, businesses and farms with solar wind and biogas manure and crop waste recycling.
Try to get the author to visit and comment if you could Adam? It would be interesting.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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sfj4076 Posted 6:28 am
14 Feb 2008
There IS IGCC with CCS
Sorry to comment on a comment, but:
"no IGCC with cO2 sequestration has ever been built, not even experimentally"
Technically speaking, that is not correct. The Great Plains gasification facility, that feeds the Weybourne CO2 sequestration project, is a gasification based synthetic natural gas plant, but that the plant has it's own power block, which technically speaking is it's own internal IGCC plant. It matters not that the primary output of the facility is synthetic natural gas, as it is just a change in process equipment, but effectively the Great Plains Synfuels Plant can be considered to be a working example of a full scale IGCC plant process doing co2 sequestration. (It just happens to be using all of the electricity it generates internally, and then putting most of the facility's energy output into synthetic natural gas).
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stopgreenpath Posted 6:26 pm
15 Feb 2008
amazing is right!
thanks for that brilliant summary. i, too, am so sick of half-assed, half-hearted "solutions" like those the Sierra Club and NRDC support, while true visionaries like Amory Lovins get ignored because they aren't in the pockets of the utilities.
the constant, falsified, underestimations of what passive solar, smart grids, distributed generation and greywater systems could do right now, today, even if the technology stood still (which it won't), truly piss me off! not one inch of wilderness should be killed for solar and wind "farms" (more like battlefields) unless and until every other means is exhausted.
oh, and don't forget cisterns and rooftop water collection. i inch of rain = 1,000 gallons of greywater on a medium sized house!
thanks for your great comment!
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:37 pm
16 Feb 2008
Thanks stop
We have to keep hammering away on these themes, trying hard not to become monotonous.
A study of San diego county's roof top solar potential found that 53% of the power use could be covered by the standard 10 to 12% PV panels. Imagine Amory's conservation along with geo heat exchange cooling taking over there.
They would be exporting power. Now consider the concentrating PV at 3 times that 10 to 12% efficiency. NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) has verified it at only 10 sun concentration.
We are looking at powering the whole grid, including plugin hybrids with roof PV. It's possible right now.
I believe other renewables ought to be in the mix too, working through a renewable smart grid to match supply and demand.
Water conservation has really great solutions available now too. Rain water collection is excellent.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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