The following is a Web comment in response to “Solar energy key to U.S. energy independenceâ€
As a parent of a UK junior, I like to read the Kernel to see what’s happening. It is disappointing that Melissa Warren, as a journalism major, did not present a fair and balanced article (Solar energy key to U.S. energy independence). However, I’m responding not just as a parent but as someone who works for an association dealing with these issues every day — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
Solar power only works when the sun shines. It is expensive and does not provide a baseload or around-the-clock power source.
Solar now provides only a fraction of the nation’s electricity. As the National Center for Policy Analysis estimated, it could take more than 90 years to create equivalent wind and solar to replace 200 coal-fired electric generation facilities.
The amount of land and money needed for large scale solar is daunting. A 10 megawatt facility in the Northeast might take 43,000 solar panels on 130 acres with an investment of $80 million to power only about 1,450 homes, which still will need baseload power.
Because solar is not competitively priced with other energy sources, especially coal, it generally must be heavily subsidized with government grants and loans.
In addition, solar requires expensive expansion of the electric grid to link to areas where the power is needed. Estimates for national grid expansion run into the billions of dollars.
Cost is important since we simply can’t price families, businesses or university students out of the energy market. Everything we do, including getting a college education, has a power cost component.
This is not to make light of the environmental concerns we have with energy sources. America’s coal-based electricity providers have invested nearly $100 billion in technologies since 1990 to reduce emissions to make coal cleaner and more efficient, while still keeping prices affordable. Scientists, energy companies and governments are working now to develop and deploy the next generation of advanced technologies that will make it possible to reduce regulated emissions even further to near-zero levels and to capture and store greenhouse gases. In that way, we can have affordable coal and have it even cleaner, too.
Cathy Coffey
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Actually solar power at night – 24 hour solar power or baseload solar power is operating in Spain right now. The guys at Lockheed Martin / Sandia Laboratories have done a lot of the work in bringing this technology to the world. Check out Spanish Company Torresol, or US Company Solar Reserve — in fact Solar Reserve is owned by United Technologies Corporation, they have licensed the Sandia Technology and they also put the Apollo rockets in Space — So they know a lot more about the future than someone touting oxymoronic clean coal — there is nothing clean about coal, it is dirty and not one light bulb anywhere in the world is powered by clean coal carbon capture and storage NOT ONE LIGHT BULB.
Matt
There is no ‘clean coal’ technology. It’s still dirty, and the coal companies are still ripping up mountaintops to get at it.
http://www.funnyordie.com/thisisreality
Hey Matt: Go to AEP.com and read about a carbon capture and storage project underway just up the road from UK in WV. Also, go to americaspower.org and view a map with over 80 projects in the US underway developing this technology now. No one technology will solve the CO2 issue but a host of technologies are moving out of the labs and into full scale testing that will help us solve this issue.
Cathy, you just claimed that Solar power only works when the sun shines and I proved you wrong. I stated that not one light bulb in the world is powered by clean coal carbon capture and storage where a plant is capturing it’s CO2 transporting all of it and injecting it. NOT ONE LIGHT BULB. You have not proved me wrong – You have listed a nubmer of projects that do not power any light bulbs and are not end to end carbon capture and storage.
This hypothetical technology with little support from the coal industry (who are smart enough to do the numbers and realise it’s not financial) can not compete with Wind power which is about to halve in price with the entry of the Chinese Large turbine manufacturesr (SEE ‘Three Gorges of Wind Project’ Twice the Power of the world’s biggest dam project (Three gorges dam) for half the price. And with the drop in Solar Thermal Power Tower prices.. See Sargent and Lundy Report for NRC on the Sandai Laboratories Solar 220 Power Towers based on Solar Two.
Search Youtube for Solar Reserve, Torresol — I have provided the vdieos. Also if you look at my website Beyond Zero Emissions we have a Flickr album link as I just got back from touring all the construction sites and REAL LIVE plants in Spain .
Coal energy only seems to work when you blow up mountains and destroy streams an valleys… so let’s call it a draw at the very best.
Come on – there’s no such thing as clean coal.
Scientists working in laboratories to figure out a solution? Unless they have a plan to conjure coal from thin air, they’re only looking at part of the problem.
I have family in Eastern KY who live with constant blasting, destroyed water resources, and constant fear from speeding, overweight coal trucks – one of which killed their neighbor a few years ago.
Really? You’re saying that a 10 megawatt solar array would just take up 130 acres. I doubt your numbers, but even if it’s true, do you have any idea how much space we’ve given up to be destroyed by the coal industry in KY?
This article indicates that the KY Coal Industry has destroyed an estimated 466,667 acres of land
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/981954.html
If we put solar panels on that destroyed, unused land, even by your own numbers, that would generate 35,897 megawatts or electricity! – enough for 5.2 million homes, even by your own numbers.
That’s a lot more homes than exist in KY, but let’s not stop there because much of the solution is simple energy conservation – having decent insulation, appliances, and lights that don’t use as much power.
Oh – and in that same 90 years you’re saying it would take to develop solar infrastructure. Again, I doubt your numbers, but in that time-frame, there won’t be any more coal left on the face of the earth.
There will always be wind and sunlight.
Oh – and one last thing. The “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity” is a green washing campaign paid for entirely by coal companies as a public relations tactic. So, hey – at least you know who’s paying your salary and you’re speaking out for them instead of for common sense.
Alice, do you know there are other mines that mine coal and does not utilize the top of a mountain? So many uneducated people believe that a coal mine only mines on top of a mountain. Ignorant people!
Does anyone have the figures on how much coal fired electricity it would take to make solar panels? How long to the break even point on cost? If cost is not an issue—wait until the electric bills go up 10 fold! It will! I like to spend my hard earned money on other things besides to stay warm—don’t you?
“There will always be wind and sunlight.”
That is unless we keep polluting our air and skies ;)
Pimentel is convinced, based on his research that when all fourteen types of energy inputs are included in the production of biofuels — especially ethanol from corn — that there is a net energy loss, not a gain, however modest, as others contend. He sees ethanol production as “relatively energy intensive.”
Pimentel is just a pessimistic about wood waste and switch grass, neither of which he contends are positive energy producers when compared to oil and gas.
The term “Renewable Energy†is commonly used these days and everybody seems to have a pretty good idea what it means or stands for. Instant associations of this term include solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity and perhaps biomass and biofuels. Renewable Energy is heralded as the saviour of our planet for a power hungry civilization who is currently burning fossil fuels to meet an ever increasing power demand. But is it true that we could go about business as usual, continue on the same road of ever increasing energy demand, if only we switched to 100% Renewable Energy? To answer this question, let’s go back to the basics of physics: consider, energy cannot be produced, generated, recycled or renewed. It can only be converted (from one state into another). However, every time we perform a conversion, it comes at a cost called entropy, which is a loss of useful or available energy. In thermodynamics, energy is made up of two components: entropy and enthalpy. Entropy is diffuse heat energy, many times associated with waste heat from mechanical or chemical processes and represents – to the largest extent – the useless component of energy that is unavailable to carry out work. Entropy is also associated with the level of disorder in a system. Enthalpy on the other side is the useful (non-diffuse) energy component that we can readily use to carry out work. Thermodynamics teach us that every time we use enthalpic energy (eg change it from a state of stored chemical energy into mechanical work) the total entropy of the system in which it occurs (our planet) increases. The larger the energy potentia, the larger is the amount of useful work we get from it. And here we are at the core of the problem: the entropy of a system (heat and disorder) increases over time as enthalpic energy is spent. This process is irreversible and forever reduces the usability of useful energy that remains. For this reason, fundamentally and despite popular believe, there is no such thing as “Renewable Energyâ€. Out of all sustainable energy initiatives available, the drastic reduction of our energy demand, also know as “demand side abatement†is the single most important one. If we continue to increase our energy consumption, even if we use “renewable†sources exclusively, we will necessarily also continue to increase the entropy, waste heat and resulting temperature in our planet’s atmosphere. Before we started burning fossil fuels, our planet was in good balance between the sun’s radiation absorbed and the heat earth re-radiated into space. This balance depends on many factors, including the gas composition of the atmosphere and cloud cover, however their individual roles and interdependencies in context with radiation absorbed and re-radiated are complex and still poorly understood. As we are running out of time to fix the problems associated with climate change, we cannot afford to take new chances and make assumptions about the safe and abundant use of “renewable†energies. Instead, we should take the more conservative view that we live on a planet with limited, finite resources, the use of which produces an ever increasing entropy. Since this process is irreversible, the best strategy for us is to reduce our energy consumption and thereby extend our lease.
Cornell professor Dr. David Pimentel’s address to the Sustainable Energy Forum’s 2006 Peak Oil and Environment conference.
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is a coal-industry front group. It lobbys for coal under the false nation that coal can be clean. IT CANNOT. That’s not opinion, it’s science.
On another note, I will not be lectured by people who mine coal for a living. They are the most uneducated, backwards among us.
Power monitoring power strips… know how much energy you are using…
There will not always be room for solar panels and wind turbines…No matter what happens in the US, China, and other countries that want cheap energy will rely on Coal.
the cost of Solar Cells for Solar Energy utilization has been decreasing over the past years. pretty soon, solar energy would be a more viable alternative than fossil fuels.