Are any renewable energy sources actually a serious alternative?

[Tricky]

There may be renewables, but even at their best, they cannot replace fossil fuels. Our best bet is to get used to conserving. Damn fast.

 

[macdoc]

It will require ALL of

renewables, nuclear, lower intensity, conservation to even hope to meet the needs of 2 billion more people and the 2 billion upwardly mobile already here without cooking the damn planet.....which we are doing all too rapidly

 

[brantc]

Everything pretty much gets transformed into electricity. If you have direct generation that would be the most "renewable". The mindset that only the accepted forms of centralized power exist is ludicrous.
The idea that we need gasoline(oil) because its convenient is total baloney.

A generator inside your house would be the most efficient instead of some sort of distribution system from a wind farm, nuclear plant or any other host of centralized schemes..

The cat is out of the bag.
Anomalies exist and people are creating technology based on these anomalies.

Steorn.

PM Orbo

Orbo started its life as a measurement anomaly during the course of the development of a permanent magnetic micro-wind turbine. The anomaly in question related to a simple rotary interaction between permanent magnetic components. Rotation in one direction lead to a loss of the system's kinetic energy; rotation in the opposite direction lead to a gain in the system's kinetic energy.
http://www.steorn.com/orbo/pm/

Asymmetry and Energy in Magnetic Systems [490k pdf]
http://www.steorn.com/images/asymmetry-and-energy-in-magnetic-systems.pdf

 

[macdoc]

Almost anyone can be off grid and carbon neutral now - but it still does not entirely eliminate the need for the grid even for individuals.
I prefer to buy carbon neutral power than invest in a system for a home I do not own.

It's industry that is the issue on a large scale.
Personal transport will change over the next decade with EV and PHEV tech growing.

Agriculture and industry are much larger challenges.

••

This kind of approach on an industrial scale to change our ways of doing things is ideal

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18885-green-machine-cementing-greener-construction.html

••

 

[Nosi]

sorry but clean coal is an oxymoron

How bout we skip the coal step ....there are better things to get bacteria to do...like turn algae and other stuff into fuel.

I never said coal was clean. I am referring to the waste that's already here and polluting. I agree with you, we need to switch to cleaner, we just need to clean up after ourselves. We did leave a mess.

 

[Furcifer]

The idea that we need gasoline(oil) because its convenient is total baloney.

This is a little short sighted. How are you going to harvest your wheat, fly your jets or run up your turbines without fuel? The logistics of getting off of fossil fuels goes well beyond household use.

 

[MRC_Hans]

This is a little short sighted. How are you going to harvest your wheat, fly your jets or run up your turbines without fuel? The logistics of getting off of fossil fuels goes well beyond household use.

Yeah, and how are you going to produce plastics? A huge and increasing amount of oil is used to produce plasic materials. There are alternatives, but they are all competing with either energy sources, food sources, or both.

Hans

 

[DC]

should we use our recourses to develop renewable [energy sources]?

yes sure we should.

 

[Supernovae]

There may be renewables, but even at their best, they cannot replace fossil fuels. Our best bet is to get used to conserving. Damn fast.

If you mix renewables with conservation its easy to meet in the middle. Oddly enough if more people bought into renewables then the prices would improve. We're just so stuck on only making the jump if the government or state gives us a tax incentive to do so and thus the market is built around incentives and doesn't acheive what it can out of economy of scale and supply and demand.

I know i can't afford a 30,000 dollar solar system up front, but if i could sign a 100.00/month contract to install 2 panels a year and grow my system through micro-inverters i would because in 4-5 short years my bill would be reduced 25-40% and in 10-15 years i could potentially be self sufficient and if MORE people started small and scaled up then the demand would force competitive pricing further increasing the capabilities of solar systems and reducing the prices.

 

[Furcifer]

Yeah, and how are you going to produce plastics? A huge and increasing amount of oil is used to produce plasic materials. There are alternatives, but they are all competing with either energy sources, food sources, or both.

Hans

That's another huge industry I overlooked.

We're a long way away from getting rid of oil and its derivatives. I hate bursting bubbles but I'm just trying to be realistic.

On a more upbeat note, nano tech might open doors in terms of batteries and fuel cells. If that were to happen we could seriously put a dent in our fossil fuel use. Not only that but it would make renewables significantly more viable.

 

[Cainkane1]

You can make a fuel similar to gasoline from coal. Of course gasoline isn't clean either.

 

[macdoc]

There are viable alternatives for plastics even on an industrial scale as they are high value products.

SASOil has been turning coal to oil and gas ( thanks to the boycott ) but are now leading in industrial level bio-fuels.

Plastics are not burned in general so while their pollution as plastics is regrettable the carbon is effectively sequestered.

Brazil has moved into bio-fuel for transport very effectively and that will only get stronger - sugar cane is a very good candidate as the dry stalks fuel the boilers turning sugar to ethanol.

Still, greater efficiency in bio-fuel production is highly desired. Now the US Military is engaged in that expect rapid progress.

 

[DC]

bio fuel... growing food, and then instead of feeding hungry humans, we burn it to drive around and have a good feeling because you are driving with green bio fuel..... i hate bio fuel even more than fuel from oil.

 

[macdoc]

Bio-fuel will come from waste cellulose as a feedstock which there is plenty of.
It will never be competitive with food crops. Many of the corn to ethanol ventures are failing and of course the subsidies are ludicrous.

 

[Supernovae]

On a more upbeat note, nano tech might open doors in terms of batteries and fuel cells. If that were to happen we could seriously put a dent in our fossil fuel use. Not only that but it would make renewables significantly more viable.

I always wonder why we don't do the interesting things that other countries attempt.. from sidewalks that use all the kinetic energy of people walking on it to running pipes in roads to warm them up and store the warmth in salt-storage energy tanks in the ground so on and so forth.

These sub floor things would be great for families with dogs and cats constantly running around or kids that can't calm down I theory they would be awesome for warehouse/high rise use.. using the energy of constant motion to make some of the power - if not for anything but to supplement HVAC requirements so on and so forth.. (more people moving, the more you need cooling thus it works..)

 

[Cuddles]

And even if it is over the entire lifetime, that is a bit more significant than saying 'oh it only killed 56 people', that is a misrepresentation of the incident.

As already noted, it's a bit of a derail so I won't carry that on here. The reason it came up in the first place was in response to the claim that nuclear energy is extremely dangerous, and the specific claim that an accident similar in scope to Chernobyl caused by a plane crash would result in millions dead and a large portion of the US becoming uninhabitable. The exact number is irrelevant. It could be 50, 500, 5,000, or even much higher, and it would still demonstrate just how ridiculously exaggerated such claims are. Nuclear power may not be the answer to everything, but the point is that a large part of the opposition to it consists of nothing more than baseless fearmongering.

BTW, I'd be interested in seeing exactly where you 56 number actually comes from.

For the record, that would be the original report by the Chernobyl Forum - http://www.preventionweb.net/files/5516_Chernobyllegacy.pdf
Page 10. My mistake though, it actually says 59, not 56. The updated version released in 2006 no longer contains those specific numbers, and seems to have replaced that part with a more lengthy assessment of the potential health impacts without committing to any hard numbers.

You can make a fuel similar to gasoline from coal. Of course gasoline isn't clean either.

And coal isn't renewable, which kind of defeats the whole point of trying to make oil out of something else.

 

[Tony]

Why can't solar panels be integrated into the construction of every building, house and skyscraper? That would be a good supplemental source of energy.

Forget about cold fusion, what about hot fusion?

 

[Cuddles]

Why can't solar panels be integrated into the construction of every building, house and skyscraper? That would be a good supplemental source of energy.

Partly expense, partly apathy. However, this is actually a good reason for not pushing forward with micro-generation as much as possible - the grid simply can't take it. The national grid, or whatever the equivalent other countries, has to be held at as constant voltage and frequency as possible. That's generally not too hard with relatively few large power sources, although even then failure of a couple can result in losing power to significant areas. But given thousands of small generators spread all over the place, especially unreliable ones like solar power that will fluctuate all over the place depending on weather, regulation becomes much, much harder.

If localised micro-generation became widespread rather than just a fairly minor niche, it would require massive upgrades to the whole structure of the national grid, and that would not be at all cheap.

Forget about cold fusion, what about hot fusion?

It's being worked on. ITER and NIF are the two major projects at the moment, although there are various others around as well. The problem is simply that we haven't got it working yet, and it's possible that it will never be commercially viable.

 

[DC]

afaik in my City Basel, it is now law that every new building has to have solar panels.

 

[Tony]

If localised micro-generation became widespread rather than just a fairly minor niche, it would require massive upgrades to the whole structure of the national grid, and that would not be at all cheap.

Progress always has costs, I'm not terribly worried about that. It will be cheaper in the long run. The good thing is that there is nothing fundamentally unrealistic about going that route.

It's being worked on. ITER and NIF are the two major projects at the moment, although there are various others around as well. The problem is simply that we haven't got it working yet, and it's possible that it will never be commercially viable.

Do you know what issues there are to making it viable?