Wind, Water and Sun Beat Biofuels, Nuclear and Coal for Energy Generation, Study Says

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Wind power is the most promising alternative source of energy, according to Mark Jacobson.
by Louis Bergeron, Stanford University News Service

The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

"That is exactly the wrong place to be spending our money. Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels. We should be spending to promote energy technologies that cause significant reductions in carbon emissions and air-pollution mortality, not technologies that have either marginal benefits or no benefits at all."

-- Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford

And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.

Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science and is available online here http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c . Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.

"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," Jacobson said. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels." He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.

The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.

To place the various alternatives on an equal footing, Jacobson first made his comparisons among the energy sources by calculating the impacts as if each alternative alone were used to power all the vehicles in the United States, assuming only "new-technology" vehicles were being used. Such vehicles include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and "flex-fuel" vehicles that could run on a high blend of ethanol called E85.

Wind was by far the most promising, Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99 percent reduction in carbon and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles); the saving of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the United States; and virtually no water consumption. By contrast, corn and cellulosic ethanol will continue to cause more than 15,000 air pollution-related deaths in the country per year, Jacobson asserted.

Because the wind turbines would require a modest amount of spacing between them to allow room for the blades to spin, wind farms would occupy about 0.5 percent of all U.S. land, but this amount is more than 30 times less than that required for growing corn or grasses for ethanol. Land between turbines on wind farms would be simultaneously available as farmland or pasture or could be left as open space.

Indeed, a battery-powered U.S. vehicle fleet could be charged by 73,000 to 144,000 5-megawatt wind turbines, fewer than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II and far easier to build. Additional turbines could provide electricity for other energy needs.

"There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession," Jacobson said. "Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power."

Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users.

Jacobson's research is particularly timely in light of the growing push to develop biofuels, which he calculated to be the worst of the available alternatives. In their effort to obtain a federal bailout, the Big Three Detroit automakers are increasingly touting their efforts and programs in the biofuels realm, and federal research dollars have been supporting a growing number of biofuel-research efforts.

"That is exactly the wrong place to be spending our money. Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels," Jacobson said. "We should be spending to promote energy technologies that cause significant reductions in carbon emissions and air-pollution mortality, not technologies that have either marginal benefits or no benefits at all."

"Obviously, wind alone isn't the solution," Jacobson said. "It's got to be a package deal, with energy also being produced by other sources such as solar, tidal, wave and geothermal power."

During the recent presidential campaign, nuclear power and clean coal were often touted as energy solutions that should be pursued, but nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration were Jacobson's lowest-ranked choices after biofuels. "Coal with carbon sequestration emits 60- to 110-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy, and nuclear emits about 25-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy," Jacobson said. Although carbon-capture equipment reduces 85-90 percent of the carbon exhaust from a coal-fired power plant, it has no impact on the carbon resulting from the mining or transport of the coal or on the exhaust of other air pollutants. In fact, because carbon capture requires a roughly 25-percent increase in energy from the coal plant, about 25 percent more coal is needed, increasing mountaintop removal and increasing non-carbon air pollution from power plants, he said.

Nuclear power poses other risks. Jacobson said it is likely that if the United States were to move more heavily into nuclear power, then other nations would demand to be able to use that option.

"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.

Finally, both coal and nuclear energy plants take much longer to plan, permit and construct than do most of the other new energy sources that Jacobson's study recommends. The result would be even more emissions from existing nuclear and coal power sources as people continue to use comparatively "dirty" electricity while waiting for the new energy sources to come online, Jacobson said.

Jacobson received no funding from any interest group, company or government agency.

Energy and vehicle options, from best to worst, according to Jacobson's calculations:

Best to worst electric power sources:

1. Wind power 2. concentrated solar power (CSP) 3. geothermal power 4. tidal power 5. solar photovoltaics (PV) 6. wave power 7. hydroelectric power 8. a tie between nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

Best to worst vehicle options:

1. Wind-BEVs (battery electric vehicles) 2. wind-HFCVs (hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) 3.CSP-BEVs 4. geothermal-BEVs 5. tidal-BEVs 6. solar PV-BEVs 7. Wave-BEVs 8.hydroelectric-BEVs 9. a tie between nuclear-BEVs and coal-CCS-BEVs 11. corn-E85 12.cellulosic-E85.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were examined only when powered by wind energy, but they could be combined with other electric power sources. Although HFCVs require about three times more energy than do BEVs (BEVs are very efficient), HFCVs are still very clean and more efficient than pure gasoline, and wind-HFCVs still resulted in the second-highest overall ranking. HFCVs have an advantage in that they can be refueled faster than can BEVs (although BEV charging is getting faster). Thus, HFCVs may be useful for long trips (more than 250 miles) while BEVs more useful for trips less than 250 miles. An ideal combination may be a BEV-HFCV hybrid.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=54292&src=rss

derry

Merde what a big read to read all the stuff

Confirmed your using selective edits to hammer home your point

Lots of nice geeky stuff there but misses the point on lots of issies

One quote from

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article

will help explain

" Converting to corn-E85 could cause either no change in or increase CO2 emissions by up to 9.1% with 30% E85 penetration (ESI, I37). Converting to cellulosic-E85 could change CO2 emissions by +4.9 to −4.9% relative to gasoline with 30% penetration (ESI, J16). Running 100% of vehicles on electricity provided by wind, on the other hand, could reduce US carbon by 32.5–32.7% since wind turbines are 99.2–99.8% carbon free over a 30 yr lifetime and the maximum reduction possible from the vehicle sector is 32.73%."

end quote

If we take this simple qoute we find that biofuel is not much worse than petrol for CO2 emmisinons what we already use and sometimes less damaging than petrol


Now Wind power can reduce CO2 emmision buy 30 to 40% so we can say wind power is superiour to Biofuels when the wind blows

So when there is no wind the energy case drops as other methods of back up kick in often oil based so reducing the advantage wind power has.

The bio fuels work just like petrol fill the tank and go.The bio fuel can happen quickly plough the ground drop the seeds and harvest all in one year .The when the Bio fuel is made send it to petrol stations all ready there to fill cars with fuel with no need to change all the cars in the fleet as kits can change petrol cars to E85 cheaply. Bio fuels are less capital intensive and use a lot of infrastructure already there

The wind power will take longer to get online and still suffer some intermitent power outputs and be capital intensive and take 10 years to get onstream as major power solutions and require a majority of cars to be electric types

Real world changes in fuel and power solutions looks like bio fuels will be best for the next ten to twenty years and as more wind or similar solutions arrive will help to reduce bio fuel and oil fuel demands


Derry

Húrin

derry wrote: »

Real world changes in fuel and power solutions looks like bio fuels will be best for the next ten to twenty years and as more wind or similar solutions arrive will help to reduce bio fuel and oil fuel demands


Derry

Why do we need to reduce oil demand if there is, as you report, 1000 years of supply left?

derry

H&#250 wrote: »

Why do we need to reduce oil demand if there is, as you report, 1000 years of supply left?

To Big a question so it requires a slimmed down reply if I can do that

Basic fact
The stone age didn't stop because they ran out of stone .

The oil age will stop long before they run out of oil

I would prefer it stopped for many reasons soon as possible and CO2 emissions is not one of the top good reasons


Facts are that oil production and refining and uses are often very polluting and often this pollution will be in third party countries

To save rewritting the pollution of oil companies I will take a similar information from this thread


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=58413851&postcount=14

derry wrote:

Oil burning requires oil extraction.This is often in third world countries and makes lots of local pollution from regimes worse than ours who don't care about local pollution. It often wrecks local water tables for hundreds some times thousands of years with heavy metal pollution.The transporting of the oil poses hazards when there are large accidents and the clean up leaves behind many chemicals and heavy metals.The refining of the oil products requires lots of nasty chemical inputs which are often shipped back to third world countries to create even more pollution.The oil companies have certian types of issues with fuels so if they have some type of useless excess they can decide to dump the excess often with burning it badly so it pollutes everything .These excesses are to be found in petrol everyday we drive our cars mixed in the petrol fuel .If petrol was pure petrol it would have ten hydro carbon chemicals and burn cleanly and not require a cat to burn up unburnt carbon molicules.If your rich eneogh you can buy this cleaner petrol fuel and do your bit to save the planet from toxic crap going out the exhast pipe when the cat is cold and doesn't work for the first few miles .Cost like 10 euros a liter to get it to ROI.About ~5 euros a liter in the UK
In petrol refining the the oil companies could be left with a whole load of lighter and heavier oil products often closely related to kerosene but not pure enough to be kerosene such as benzene .So oil refineries add some extra crap to our petrol.This extra crap doesn't burn properly and so we need cats to clean up that mess
If we bitch about that they will supply us with more pure clean burning petrol.However the price for the petrol will increase a lot .The refineries will probably just ship the crap back to the third world and throw it into river s there or make third world petrol have more crap in it to be thrown out exhast pipes there

The refineries cant possibly use all the complex molicules that crude Oil gives as different crude oils have different qualities.Oil makes lots of stuff like plastics and food stuffs for animals and medicines
Some of the chemicals they make is insectisdes .When that stuff has accidents it kills everything .If it catches fire it makes a nerve gas agent that kills for miles around .My friend once has seen some people die from insectide factory fire accident in Africa .So nasty chemical accidents happens a lot in the third world .
Whole stretches of rivers are dead or highly toxic .Whole villages like India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
BHopal accident get poisened to death while they sleep. So often a few % of the now refined crude oil often toxic extremely complex carbon and heavy metal agents is dumped somewhere else either in rivers in the third world or burnt badly somewhere in the planet whatever.

Bio fuels are not pollution free either .However they are often more easy to control the pollution and ensure the affects are limited in size . Bio ethanol fuels are not particulary toxic if they spill into the rivers or water tables with the biggest risk to get a bad hangover from drinking the local water.The bio ethanol fuel tends to burn very cleanly compared to most routine oil based petrols except for highly expensive highly refined petrols.Modern cats in cars will scrubb up the majority of any few chemicals coming out the exhast a lot better than they do for most petrol fuels.


Yes in some way in the future time we may have unlimited Hydrogen Heluim fussion power from fussion reactors but that might be 100 or 200 years away or may never happen .Yes in the future we might have cheaper solar cells that catch solar power .Yes in the future we might have enough power from wind power . All those renewables will take long periods to make happen and require huge capital inputs .In the mean time Bio fuels often do not require such big capital inputs .They can be implemented quickly with every growing season .The infrastructure from petrol filling stations is already there.The solutions to make the Bio ethenol is well known and many element already exist in redundant breweries .
Bio diesel is also a straight forward switch .Most engines will run a 50% mix with no modifiications engines suitably modified can run pure 100% bio diesel.
Now its not a solution for every country .Maybe Spain has too many water food resource issues to grow bio fuels .For ROI with 1/3 the good farming land paid to do nothing from mad EU policy there is no food growing land lost for ROI to do Bio fuels .ROi also has another 15% of maginal land which seems well suited to bio fuel production.Thats not taking into account we also got another 15% of land that is classed as generaly only suitable for forestry which can do fast crop rotation and feed power stations with wood fuels .ROI is a bio fuel bonanza waiting to happen but the regime has been bought out and suppresses these solution

However that is only part the story .
WE still need to maybe tax oil at a higher rate like Brazil did to keep oil products from killing off the bio fuel change over .Brazil proved over the last 30 years that Bio fuels work very well


Bio fuels and oil fuels share a similar issue power inputs or energy inputs .Bio fuels will often require ~30% energy inputs such as fertiilisers tractors etc to get the fuel returns from the activity .What this means the 7 liters of fuel you put in the tank required a hidden 3 liters of fuel to make it happen .That's the whole process refining manufactueriing transport whatever

What advantage in oil had in the past iit seems is now disappearing compared to bio fuels.Oil nowadays often requires 30% fuel inputs to make the fuel happen at the fuel tank.What this means the 7 liters of fuel you put in the tank required a hidden 3 liters of fuel to make it happen .That's the whole process refining manufactueriing transport whatever



The difference is that Bio fuels will probably remain at 30% but it more likely that oil will increase to 40% and 50% and over several thousand years could even reach negitives of 10 liters of fuel inputs to get one liter of fuel to the fuel tank

How this happens is oil is a mining operation.When they first find a oil field the energy requirements to extract the oil is low and often one energy input will return 9 units of fuel to the fuel tank. Often older oil fields of which many exist today require 10 units of energy to extract and return 10 units of fuel to the car fuel tank.When we look the worlds oil fields averages in this time it is about ~30% between new fields young fields mature fields and very old fields.The future projections are that it will stay like this for probably 50 plus years maybe even 100 but is unlikely to ever be less than 30%.It is possible that ratio of 40% or more might happen sooner but that another story which I don't believe in.

This 30% includes a few % of very toxic not easy to dispose chemicals that Bio fuels don't tend to suffer from.

Needless to say Oil companies prefer to say that bio fuels require 30% energy inputs where as oil is a lot less .This is often seen in mistruth oil owned media outlets who wish to stir up food shortage scares and stop everyone switching to these solutions
The green brigade get hoodwinked with the CO2 emissions issues .Bio fuels are roughly the same CO2 emissions as Oil based fuels. If worse they are often marginally worse than oil based fuels.I for one don't buy into this co2 global warming story .If we are going to make CO2 emissions I figure its preferable to have home made types of CO2 like burning Irish sugar beet . At least keep Irish farmers working instead of on the dole instead to enrich greedy oil companies and non Irish like Arabs and Russiians

Bio fuels often shake of the shackels of enslavement that Oil companies have over us .Therefore the oil companies pay a fortune to many regimes in kick backs to suppress bio fuel solutions .Brazil saw those fickers off.

It even a lot more complex but that's a short example
Basically whoever controls energy controls everything including ost all the worlds regimes

A bunch of farmers in the ROI making bio fuels would eventually be a powerfull power block but probably never on the same scale as oil companies who control the taps of oil


Oil will not go away without a big fight and will strive to keep us on this toxic **** for another few hundred years if they can


Derry