If you happen to see the following (from Jon Rynn’s article in Grist describing Lester Brown’s proposal), I’d love to know your take on it.

thanks!

Brown’s plan consists of three main goals: raising efficiency, moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and biosequestration — or basically, increasing the Earth’s forest cover. Most of his talk focused on moving to renewables.

The core of the plan is to replace 40 percent of the world’s electricity that is generated by coal — there are currently about 2,400 coal-fired electricity generation plants in the world — with wind power. This would mean, roughly, the construction of 1.5 million 2 MW wind turbines, which he said could be done over the next 12 years, using just the production capacity of idle U.S. auto factories. Although it seems like a huge amount of turbines, considering that the world produces 65 million automobiles a year, it’s really quite doable.

Brown noted that Texas is aiming to supply 60 percent of residential electricity with the construction of huge wind complexes in that state. Brown travels quite a bit to China, and he says that the Chinese could supply twice the total electricity they now generate, which is currently mostly coal plants, with the enormous wind potential that they have. As for the U.S., he pointed out that Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota contain enough wind potential to replace all of our energy needs, much less electricity.

Solar energy has three main potentialities, according to Brown: solar water heaters (40 million of which have been installed in China alone), solar cells, and solar thermal plants (concentrating solar plants). He pointed out that Algeria wants to construct a 6,000 MW CSP plant in their desert; they plan to be a major of exporter of electricity, which will replace their oil exports when those run dry.

[snip]

In addition, since 42 percent of U.S. freight rail is currently used to transport coal, when we eliminate the use of coal, we will free-up freight rail to be used to transport goods between cities — not from coal mine to coal plant.

I really hope he can see that clean coal is a disaster of perhaps global consequence, and realize that progressive environmentalism is as American as his self-vaunted service employment proposals.

There is no such thing as clean coal!

- “negawatts”: decreased demand coming from higher efficiency

- total renewables (excluding hydro): that would include wind / solar (PV and CSP), geothermal (home/industrial)

[Yet another factor I’d look at in costs (and L or A may have, for all I know) is the health costs associated with each means of energy production. Of course, that wouldn’t affect the need for new power you describe….]

That’s the equivalent of 3,200,000 5 megawatt wind turbines. Over the next 10 years. That’s roughly one installed every 10 minutes.

5 Gigawatts of electrical generating power installed every 10 minutes. It takes about 250 man years to build & install a 5 megawatt wind turbine (About $25 million).

So if we start tomorrow, we need to apply 8,000,000 people, RIGHT NOW, to building and install wind turbines.

Good luck with that.

WTF do you think are a power station’s flue gases? Co2, So2, flyash, and some other noxious products (Hg).

Over 90% of the emission are Co2. The “remove” the Co2 requires compressing 90% of the flue gas. That’s one f…… big compressor plant. Then the Co2 has to be pumped deep into the ground (good luck keeping it there).

Ok, the the numbers. A heat engine, such as a power plan converts 30% of the energy from coal into electricity. The other 70% is blown off as heat (typically as steam — a lot of water is required). Oh there’s a water shortage? Oh shit!

So we are going to use 30% of the energy to compress the flue gases and pump them underground. That will use 15-20% of the total energy input into the power station. The remaining 10% is available for us; 50% of this is lost in transmission, leaving 5% for us. Oh joy! a fourfold increase in electrikery prices!

After going through all the efficiency numbers, I predict that a “clean coal” power plant will produce enough energy to keep itself running, and NONE, for use outside the plant. Well maybe enough for one 60w light.

Clean Coal is a marketing campaign the Electrikery companies and The Coal Companies use to get “clean coal” plants built. Then when the “clean” does not work, will say “well we built the plant, so can we please run it until the “clean” part works”?

And then pollute away…

I have heard that criticism should be after the fact…that is folly. The forces pushing for coal and nuclear need our push back. Sorry RevBev your argument does not hold water.
I vote for the Doc.

What nuclear would do is displace coal, our most abundant domestic fuel. And this sounds good for climate, but actually, expanding nuclear makes climate change worse, for a very simple reason. Nuclear is incredibly expensive. The costs have just stood up on end lately. Wall Street Journal recently reported that they’re about two to four times the cost that the industry was talking about just a year ago. And the result of that is that if you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about twenty to forty times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas, all kinds of central plans, in the marketplace. And those competitors are efficient use of electricity and what’s called micropower, which is both renewables, except big hydro, and making electricity and heat together, in fact, recent buildings, which takes about half of the money, fuel and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do.

[snip]

[W]ind power….is booming.

Let me give you some numbers about what’s happening in the marketplace, because that’s reality, as far as I’m concerned. I really take markets seriously. 2006, the last full year of data we have, nuclear worldwide added a little bit of capacity, more than all of it from upgrading old plants, because the new ones they built were smaller than the retirements of old plants. So they added 1.4 billion watts. Sounds like a lot. Well, it’s about one big plant’s worth worldwide. That was less than photovoltaics, solar cells added in capacity. It was a tenth what wind power added. It was a thirtieth to a fortieth of what micropower added.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s micropower?

AMORY LOVINS: Again, it’s renewables, other than big hydro, plus co-generating electricity and heat together, usually in industry.

In 2006, micropower, for the first time, produced more electricity worldwide than nuclear did. A sixth of the world’s electricity is now micropower, a third of the new electricity. In a dozen industrial countries, micropower makes anywhere from a sixth to over half of all the electricity elsewhere. This is not a fringe activity anymore.

[snip]Take a look at 2007, in which the US or Spain or China added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. The US added more wind capacity last year than we’ve added coal capacity in the past five years put together.

if having been right matters, then those of us who were are the ones who should be getting the benefit of the doubt now. not the guy who’s already sold us out on fisa (and lied to us about it) and sold us out on the bailout. it’s not about giving the guy a chance, it’s about paying attention to what he’s done with the chances he’s already had.

The complete universe of energy options is not circumscribed by the CSM’s comment section.

Lester Brown’s Earth Policy Institute has more information about just one such option:

With concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) capacity expected to double every 16 months over the next five years, worldwide installed CSP capacity will reach 6,400 megawatts in 2012—14 times the current capacity. (See data.)

Unlike solar photovoltaics (PVs), which use semiconductors to convert sunlight directly into electricity, CSP plants generate electricity using heat. Much like a magnifying glass, reflectors focus sunlight onto a fluid-filled vessel. The heat absorbed by the fluid is used to generate steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity. Power generation after sunset is possible by storing excess heat in large, insulated tanks filled with molten salt. Since CSP plants require high levels of direct solar radiation to operate efficiently, deserts make ideal locations.

Two big advantages of CSP over conventional power plants are that the electricity generation is clean and carbon-free and, since the sun is the energy source, there are no fuel costs. Energy storage in the form of heat is also significantly cheaper than battery storage of electricity, providing CSP with an economical means to overcome intermittency and deliver dispatchable power.

[snip]

over 90 percent of fossil fuel–generated electricity in the United States and the majority of U.S. oil usage for transportation could be eliminated using solar thermal power plants—and for less than it would cost to continue importing oil. The land requirement for the CSP plants would be roughly 15,000 square miles (38,850 square kilometers, the equivalent of 15 percent of the land area of Nevada). While this may sound like a large tract, CSP plants use less land per equivalent electrical output than large hydroelectric dams when flooded land is included, or than coal plants when factoring in land used for coal mining. Another study, published in Scientific American in January 2008, proposes using CSP and PV plants to produce 69 percent of U.S. electricity and 35 percent of total U.S. energy, including transportation, by 2050.