Renewable Energy - Let's Look at Some Numbers

If you’re one of those people who has trouble understanding the numbers regarding renewable energy, you're certainly not alone.  And perhaps the reason isn’t that you’re simply bad at math. Maybe it’s that there are many different ways to use numbers to express the actual value of each of our many competing energy alternatives.

Here’s an excerpt from an article I came across in the Washington Post whose author eagerly dispels some of the myths associated with clean energy:

Myth #1: Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.

Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats… A nuclear power plant cranks out about 56 watts per square meter, eight times as much as is derived from solar photovoltaic installations.

Holy cow! A PV array is 8 times less efficient per square meter than a nuclear power plant?

But wait a minute. Let's assume it's true.  But does it have any real meaning? Is the issue with power plants that we’re running out of room for them? Isn’t it far more important in the scheme of things that our current fossil fuel and nuclear solutions produce waste products that are destroying the planet?

Now, if I’m expecting this author to be fair in use of statistics, I need to be as well. I grant that the space required for the plant in question has a certain degree of meaning; there are "tough realities" (as I call them) that apply to natural habitats, i.e., that wind and solar farms are indeed encroaching on wilderness areas. But, again in the interest of fairness, I’d ask this author to acknowledge a few ideas that seem to have some importance in the equation:

1) What are the costs of building the array vs. the nuke – in dollars, as well as environmental factors?

2) What about the fact that a PV array uses no fuel (except for sunlight)? Aren't there issues that surround the fuel supply for nuclear plants?

3) Isn’t it at least somewhat important that operational disasters like Chernobyl are not possible with PV?

4) Aren’t we concerned that refining nuclear fuel puts a country at a huge advantage in the development of nuclear weapons?

5) Doesn’t it count that PV doesn’t make waste that needs to be stored -- far away from all living things -- for half a million years?

Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that we’re all drowning in data. It’s possible, after all, that the author of the article actually meant well, but fell victim to the same gotcha that affects all of us: information overload. We’re swimming in information with no way to sort out the important from the trivial.

I’m not sure. Personally, I think that a fair analysis of all this isn’t asking too much. In any case, I understand the thinking of those who impute a deliberate attempt on the part of some to ignore even the most obvious externalities of fossil fuels and nukes. Maybe there will be a day, as some people claim, in which those who conspired to cover them up will become just as reviled as the tobacco companies of today. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. 

In the meanwhile, I think I'll just try to be a voice for reason: we owe it ourselves and our descendents to examine all the facts on both sides -- fairly and dispassionately. 

-- Craig Shields is editor of 2GreenEnergy.com, and author of Renewable Energy -- Facts and Fantasies (published by Clean Energy Press - 2010)