Scott's Comments

I support this, but would also like to have some reassurance that we are doing our utmost to shift power use from peak to off-peak hours, as that does the same thing as storing power, but without the need for quite so many batteries. For example, should we be building more watertowers, so that we can recharge the systems during off-peak hours and reduce the need for pumping during peak hours. Water towers also provide greater assurance that pressure will be maintained during emergencies. We also need to make greater use of pricing power to reduce out and out waste. I still see far too many stores and restaurants, blasting air conditioning, while windows and doors are wide open. Clearly, they aren't paying enough for power to make them feel the need to use it intelligently. To ensure that we don't punish responsible users, a two-tier system would work best, in which a basic minimum amount of electricity is provided at a very reasonable cost, with significantly higher rates for usage over and above the minimum. Even if the average cost per kwh doesn't increase, the energy incentive to conserve power can still be increased significantly.

Mr. Blakeslee,

Are there circumstances in which you would recommend HVDC for use along existing above ground power rights of way (augmenting or replacing AC).

Also, I still occasionally hear claims that magnetic radiation from high tension lines is a significant health hazard for people living near lines. Do below ground and / or DC lines offer any advantages in that respect? And, are we ever likely to use HVDC in through densely populated ares, in any case.

Jim Tanner, I read your post, but am not sure what conclusions you want people to draw from it. It sounds to me as though you are saying that all modes of energy transmission entail some degree of risk, which I accept; but unless we stop using energy (which isn't going to happen), we still have to make some choices. Which choices are you advocating?

I'm sure that there is a great deal of merit to what Mr. Farrell has to say, but there also seems to be some incoherence from the perspective of energy policy and I would suggest that is because Mr. Farrell's primary concern appears to be rural development, rather than reducing carbon emmissions and / or foreign oil dependency. For example, he lauds policies that have led to a large expansion in ethanol and biodiesel made from food crops, despite the fact that most of the research I have seen suggests that these very expensive, politically motivated subsidy programs are yielding minimal carbon reduction benefits, while fueling a food crisis in much of the world. If that much money were being spent in to subsidize jobs of such dubious economic value in cities, I might well be calling it workfare.

He points out that big projects have problematic implications for the transmission grid, but then goes on to complain that rules prevent small communities from owning big projects, leaving the impression that his concerns about the grid might suddenly evaporate, if new rules made it easy for small communities to own very big projects. In fact, the grid is / should be a large concern, especially from a national security perspective, so we need large highly redundant grids from centralized sources and / or more distributed sources. However, we need to be clear that those concerns need to be addressed regardless of who owns the projects.

It is definitely important to level the playing field so the cards are not stacked against local ownership and distributed generation, and considerations such as national security and net carbon emissions must also be factored in. However, we also need to be careful (or at least very explicit) about layering on social engineering considerations that are peripheral to the primary targets of emission reductions and energy security.

Corn ethanol is primarilly a farm subsidy program, NOT an environmental program. It is expensive to the treasury, is causing rapid inflation in food prices and is doing little to reduce CO2 emissions. That makes flex fuel cars an expensive and environmentally ineffective gimmick. What we need from GM (and all manufacturers) are cars that get SIGNIFICANTLY more miles per gallon and emit SIGNIFICANTLY less CO2 per mile, period.

Tennessee Cornstoves - your comments are quite confused / confusing. This IS a case of a private company buying and refurbishing the turbines. What is wrong with that?

While I agree with some of the other posters (and Aeronautica, itself) that it seems logical for Aeronautica to set up a plant closer to the source of the turbines (AFTER it irons out the bugs in a central location), your assertion that it would be better if the turbines were bought and refurbed independently in many different places ignores the benefits of specialization (within companies and within geographic regions).

I agree with the people who argue that this is not a long term solution (even halving the emissions from coal is not that great). I also agree that coal is going to be around for a while, so it makes sense to find ways to reduce the damage it does. Whether this is the best way to go about this remains to be seen. However, rather than trying to prescribe fixes, we should be pushing for government to put a price on carbon (via a carbon tax and / or caps), then let the market decide which technologies to implement.

The problem at present is that in the absence of such a price, the market behaves as though pollution creates no (or, at least, minimal) costs. That is known in economic terms as a "market failure" caused by a real cost that is not taken into consideration by the market. Fix the failure and the market can fix the problem. In political terms, this is far more easily said than done, but the simple truth is that anything other policy is still going to cost a lot, but is doomed to fail and may even be worse for people and the environment than doing nothing. Corn ethanol and biodiesel mandates are object lessons on why we should steer politicians away from trying to pick winners and toward pricing carbon and letting the market do the picking.

I agree with the people who argue that this is not a long term solution (even halving the emissions from coal is not that great). I also agree that coal is going to be around for a while, so it makes sense to find ways to reduce the damage it does. Whether this is the best way to go about this remains to be seen. However, rather than trying to prescribe fixes, we should be pushing for government to put a price on carbon (via a carbon tax and / or caps), then let the market decide which technologies to implement.

The problem at present is that in the absence of such a price, the market behaves as though pollution creates no (or, at least, minimal) costs. That is known in economic terms as a "market failure" caused by a real cost that is not taken into consideration by the market. Fix the failure and the market can fix the problem.

In political terms, this is far more easily said than done, but the simple truth is that any other policy is still going to cost a lot, but is doomed to fail and may even be worse for people and the environment than doing nothing. Simplistic corn ethanol and biodiesel mandates are object lessons on why we should steer politicians away from trying to pick winners (and / or dressing up potically motivated farm subsidies as environmental policies) and toward pricing carbon and letting the market do the picking. The former is costing billions, driving up food prices and doing almost nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The latter is accellerating rain forest destruction and it will take several decades or more for the GHGs released thereby to be balanced by reductions in fuel emmisions (if breakeven ever happens). If politicians had put the emphasis on emissions rather than specific technologies, it is certain that neither of these disasters would have taken off as they have.

In the long term, there will be a limit to the reductions we can make in transportation emissions, unless we a) find an extremely high volume way to sequester CO2 from fossil power plants or b) generate transportation energy from renewable sources. One of the big problems with renewables is intermittancy and one of the benefits of plug in or H2 vehicles is that they provide a means of storing energy, increasing the yield and stability of systems with large amounts of intermittent renewables in them. Both require massive investment in new infrastructure. It looks extremely daunting, if our definition of success is to complete the transition overnight, but if we take a more realistic view it is not only realistic but quasi-certain. Several massive changes have occurred over the past 300 years and none of them have happened overnight.

Tom Pritchard, I think you are missing a key point. As long as the number of permits available decrease over time, the permits available to companies that would rather keep polluting and buy permits declines and their value increases. The rising price of the permits increases the incentive and reward for companies that act. Ultimately, the fat dumb and happy companies will no longer be able to buy enough permits and will be forced to take action or cease to exist. In the meantime the permits they have purchased will have helped more proactive companies leap frog them. In a Darwinian sense, permit simply adds to the pressure on companies to evolve or die out. As this article points out, the systems need to be well designed and well administered, but as long as they are, they will work. The proof of concept is that this approach has already been used to (relatively) quickly and cost efficiently reduce acid emissions.

Excellent article! Maybe people should be cutting and pasting it to send it to their elected representatives!

To all the people who keep saying that the technology isn't available and nothing can work economically to bring down emissions, please explain why a country like Norway can emit about 40%-50% less CO2 per person than the US or Canada and why Sweden can emit less than 1/3rd as much as us. Both are: rich, lightly populated, northern countries (Norway is the richest in the world), both have high heating and cooling degree days, both have large resource (relative to its population, Norway produces 7x as much oil as Canada) and industrial sectors (Canada and the US have slightly larger "service sectors" than Sweden & Norway); being far north, they have higher need for lighting; etc. Some of the differences can be explained by Norway's greater hydro resource, but Sweden has less hydro per person than Canada. And both are highly competitive economies (Sweden is ranked 4th in the world by the World Economic Forum). There is no single reason that do better, EXCEPT that they are committed to doing better and have the confidence to try.

Most importantly, they demonstrate that we can do better, too.

I'm not opposed to bioheat, as long as it is using waste; but am very uneasy about the idea of using cropland and tons of fertilizer to grow fuel. At best it can only solve a tiny fraction of the problem and, at worst, it greatly worsens the food shortage. It seems to me that geothermal (i.e., ground source heatpumps) can be scaled up much quicker. However, as heat pumps increase electricity demands, the best possible combination might be to use waste for biofuel at central locations, large enough for combined heat and power plants with very high efficiencies. The heat from the plants can then be used locally (ideally for uses that are year round) and the additional electricity can be used to power heat pumps.

Jim Berry writes "Oh God, this guy is a kool-aid drinking greenie.  Kite for Sail?  Does the writer realize the cost of interest on the ship or the cargo will exceed the value of the oil saved for the addiitional time at sea?"

Jim, did you happen to notice that IKEA, Toyota and Home Depot are pushing this?  Are you under the impression that they are naive of logistics costs?

If you check out some of the sites on kites you will find that they increase fuel efficiency and / or speed.  If you think of it, it kind of makes sense that that would happen when you you add more power, ... right?

Eugene Lucas writes "Where is the electric energy coming from to charge up all those electric cars' batteries?"

That is a good question, Eugene.  In the short run, it could come from traditional sources, which would not necessarilly be all that good.  However, it the long term, it could come from renewables.  It's worth remembering that one of the big criticisms of things like wind power is that we can't make it blow hardest when we need the energy most.  However, if power can be stored, that problem becomes much less of an issue.  A fleet of electric cars set to charge when renewable energy production is outstripping demand for other needs is, in effect, an enormous energy storage reservoir.  I am not a power engineer, but would think that if the demand response is fast enough, this could also help stabilize the energy grid.