Carolyn's Comments

energizer wrote,
"1000kwh per household? thats weird... thought the US was famous for energy wasting ^^. Just looked up the values for germany. They state average consumption per year is 1790kwh for single person HH, 3030kwh for 2 persons, 3880 kwh for 3 persons and around 4430kwh for 4 person households."

That's not weird. That's 1000 kWh per US household per month, while your Germany numbers are per year. So at roughly 12,000 kWh per year, a US household uses about 3 times as much electricity as a German household.

As for the lower cost of electricity in the US, I suspect it has something to do with the abundant natural resources in the US. The US imports maybe 10% of its natural gas, and is expected to start being a net exporter of natural gas soon. The US also has lots of coal and has been a net exporter of coal. Meanwhile Germany imports most of its natural gas and about 20% of its coal.

If you seriously want to look at US subsidies, look on the internet for the 100+ page EIA report "Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010"
Divide the 2010 $1,189 million coal-electricity subsidy in Table ES4 by the 1,847,290 million kWh generated by coal in 2010 and you get less than one tenth of a cent per kWh. Divide the $11,873 million electricity production subsidies and support for all fuel sources as well as transmission and distribution by the 4,125,060 million kWh of electricity generated in the US and you get about 0.3 cents/kWh.

Only a small fraction of the concrete used in the US goes towards wind power construction. 97% of the concrete goes towards building homes and non-residential buildings, paving streets and highways, constructing water supply systems and sewers. Wind turbine foundations would fall in the Miscellaneous category which is less than 3% of concrete consumption.
http://imgs.ebuild.com/cms/CONCRETE%20CONSTRUCTION%20MAGAZINE/2005/November/market_table1.jpg
Take your Stone, Clay, Glass and Concrete emissions numbers and multiply it by less than 3% and one can see how miniscule the emissions are, particularly compared with the emissions from the electricity generation sector.

A reasoned open-minded reader can see that you use data that is only half of the story, and that your arguments fall apart when the numbers are put into fuller context. Wind is anything but "the antithesis of a solution to fossil fuel's harmful emissions" as you claimed.

There's no need for me to continue showing the holes in your arguments, so I shall not be posting anymore. The people whose opinions count aren't here and won't fall for your misdirections anyway. The government is in favor of wind. Even the late Senator Kennedy who didn't manage to vote often because of his illness, made the effort and voted to extend the Wind PTC through 2013. He understood the net benefits of wind. He just didn't want Cape Wind to affect the views from the Kennedy's Hyannis compound.

The Audubon Society strongly supports properly-sited wind power as protection for birds and wildlife.
http://www.audubon.org/campaign/windPowerQA.html

Increased energy efficiency definitely helps reduce emissions. Of course there is energy used and emissions associated with that too, such as in manufacturing insulation for buildings. But in most cases the energy used and the emissions released in manufacture are small in comparison to the energy and emissions avoided during the productive life. The same is true for wind power.

Cape Wind is anything but "small wind turbines on houses in urban areas".

The issue mentioned in spiegel.de relates to the sales of carbon credits or "green certificates" and is not a problem specific to wind. It applies to all renewable energy sources that reduce CO2 emissions, including wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydropower, wave and probably even Rowen Negrin's Gulf Stream Turbines. Maybe the carbon trading scheme needs to be changed, but wind farms are not the source of the problem.

Fine then.
The emissions from the small fraction of concrete that goes towards wind turbines is nothing compared to emissions from all current US electricity producing plants (roughly 50% coal, 20% natural gas, 20% nuclear, 10% other).

Reducing carbon emissions by half of what was previously claimed is still reducing carbon emissions. 430g/KWH displaced is still a lot. Life cycle CO2 emissions for wind is only 6 to 37g/KWH including all that steel and concrete and everything.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/comparativeco2.html

Barbara. I am not implying that 100% wind energy is doable. Don't put up straw men. (Our current electricity supply does not come from just one source, and there's no reason why it should in the future.)

I am just saying that your CO2 and air pollution arguments are fallacious.

Barbara Durkins points out that concrete releases pollution.
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/assistance/sectors/notebooks/stclglsnp2.pdf Exhibit 14
Let's compare national emissions by source sector

http://www.epa.gov/air/emissions/co.htm
Electricity Generation - 652,314 Tons CO
Stone, Glass, Concrete - 58,043 Tons CO

http://www.epa.gov/air/emissions/nox.htm
Electricity Generation - 4,668,962 Tons NOx
Stone, Glass, Concrete - 338,482 Tons NO2

http://www.epa.gov/air/emissions/pm.htm
Electricity Generation - 616,801 Tons PM10
Stone, Glass, Concrete - 74,623 Tons PM10

http://www.epa.gov/air/emissions/so2.htm
Electricity Generation - 10,411,906 Tons SO2
Stone, Glass, Concrete - 339,216 Tons SO2

http://www.epa.gov/air/emissions/voc.htm
Electricity Generation - 49,110 Tons VOC
Stone, Glass, Concrete - 30,262 Tons VOC

The emissions from the small fraction of concrete that goes towards wind turbines is nothing compared to emissions from fossil fueled power plants. The concrete for wind has to be installed once and lasts 20 years or more. The fuel at the power plants however, gets burned every year, and fossil fuel power plants also require concrete to build.

Fred, thanks for the model name. It looks like the Passat TSI EcoFuel runs on CNG/gasoline, not CNG/diesel. Though the info is a bit confusing.
http://www.iangv.org/tools-resources/oem-vehicle-directory/Vehicles-by-Type/Cars/Volkswagen-Passat-TSI-EcoFuel-CNG/details.html

Barbara Durkin points out "Energy use in the industrial sector accounts for almost a third of U.S. carbon emissions." While that may be, that means over 2/3rds come from other sources. According to:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
"Electricity generation consumes 40 percent of U.S. primary energy and is responsible for 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions"
As 40% is larger than "almost a third", going after the electricity generation sector seems a pretty good idea.

Life cycle analysis shows that coal generates 974 tonnes of CO2 per GWh of electricity generated, while wind generates only 20 tonnes of CO2 per GWh. That's including materials production (think steel), materials transportation, on-site construction and assembly, operation and maintenance, decommissioning and dismantlement.
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/pdf/fdm1092.pdf Figure 10.
I think going from 974 to 20 is a massive improvement.

Fred, can you give me a link to more information on this diesel/cng bi-fuel engine? I've found VW TDI diesel cars whose warranties are voided by using B100 or anything higher than B5, and I've seen VW bi-fuel cars that run on LPG/CNG, and even CNG/gasoline. I couldn't find diesel/CNG bifuel engine.

Biochar that Tom mentions is interesting for sequestration because algae would be turned to carbon in a solid form and could remain on the ground, and not be oxidized into CO2 gas into the atmosphere. I would like to see more of that. But if it's used as fuel, like Tom suggests, it once again becomes carbon neutral and not carbon sequestering.

Stafford,

Yes, some algae will become food for people, or fish, or livestock, which will use the cellulose, sugar and proteins for energy and breathe out the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or perhaps the acidifying oceans. Some algae will be left to rot on the land, consumed by microbes for energy, and the microbes will release the carbon as CO2 or possibly the stronger greenhouse gas, methane into the atmosphere, as the nitrogen fertilizes the plants.

I'll agree that if it's turned into plastics, that miniscule fraction of the carbon will be sequestered. But if the plastic is truly biodegradable, consumed by microbes, and not just breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, then the microbes again would release the carbon into the atmosphere, and it would not be sequestered. If the plastic is sent as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to be gasified or pyrolysed or otherwise processed and used for energy, the carbon will again be emitted back into the atmosphere.

If carbon is sequestered in the biomass of a forest, you can go and measure the biomass every year and see if the biomass is increasing, or decreasing. If it stays the same, I would consider the carbon to remain sequestered. I the forest grows bigger then more carbon will be sequestered. If the forest is burned to make space for algae farms, then the carbon in the part of the forest that was burned would no longer be sequestered.

If you can show me where the carbon emitters have set aside storage capacity where people can see sequestered algae accumulating from year to year and measure the stored biomass from year to year, then it would be just like the forest. But no one is planning that, are they?

Algae "stores" carbon? I sure hope the large carbon emitters never get away with claiming that algae sequesters carbon. Because that carbon gets right back into the atmosphere the moment the algae gets burned as fuel. Algae recycles the carbon, (which is good) maybe temporarily stores it for a few days or months (which is not very useful), but it does not sequester carbon.

So the 19.1% efficient Sunpower solar modules mentioned in http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2006/10/sunpowers-new-solar-panel-is-22-efficient-46286
aren't mass-produced cells manufactured according to common industrial standards?

I agree with Bart Hibbs and Phil Brooks comments on the previous article on this topic. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2008/03/pv-you-can-drive-on-promising-technology-in-solar-roads-51755

It seems silly to put solar panels where they will get grimy and where vehicles will be shading the solar cells from the sunlight, ruining the efficiency. I'm astonished that the government would spend money on this.

That's interesting. I hadn't realized until now that Verdant Power has been operating a hydrokinetic power project in NYC's East River since 2006 without a license.

Good to see a licensed project going in. Best wishes.