Chinese banks to fund $1.5B Texas wind farm

[Frank Booth]

China took a big leap into the U.S. renewable energy market Thursday, putting up $1.5 billion for a 36,000-acre wind farm in Texas with the power to light up 180,000 homes.'

The project is a joint venture with U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a private equity firm, Austin, Texas-based Cielo Wind Power LP and Shenyang Power Group of China.

The announcement Thursday shows how much China's own wind industry has burgeoned and comes two days after U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told lawmakers that the U.S. was falling behind China and others in alternative energy investment.

---

Chinese wind turbine manufacturer A-Power Energy Generation Systems Ltd. will begin shipping the 2.5-megawatt turbines in March 2010, built in the company's plant in the city of Shenyang.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Chinese-banks-to-fund-15B-apf-1680362160.html?x=0&.v=3

I'd rather have American banks and companies doing this, of course, but if they're not willing to invest in clean energy I'm glad China is.

[AdHocSolver]

1. There is more profit in hedge funds, Credit Default Swaps, and speculation. n/t

[w4rma]

2. In other words, there is more profit ripping off Americans who work in non-financial industries.(nt)

[NNadir]

3. The surface area of New York City is about 195,000 acres.

It is home to about 8.4 million people.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/landusefacts/landusefactshome.shtml

We can assume, therefore that running all of New York City on wind power, assuming 2.1 million households at 4 persons per household, would involve the surface area of two New York Cities, ignoring the fact that the wind doesn't always blow.

Adirondack Mountains, look out!

Someone is now about to use 20% of the surface area of New York's 5 boroughs to build a plant, for 1.5 billion dollars that will have a useful lifetime of about 20 years, ignoring the fact that Vestas almost went bankrupt from trying to honor 5 year warranties on wind turbines.

The physical plant, not counting transmission and spinning reserve and back up with redundant dangerous natural gas plants, will cost almost $9000 per "home" although the "home" is NOT, decidedly, an energy unit, much to the surprise of our media.

One unit of energy is the kwh. According to the EIA, as of 2001, the average household uses about 10,700 kwh per year, and not as a function of when the wind is blowing.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html

This is about 38 trillion joules, meaning that the average power consumption of an American household, not counting their stupid cars but just their electrical consumption is about 1.2 kW. It follows, ignoring the fact that these plants have ridiculously low reliability, since they operate at capacity utilization of 25% and thus rely on gas, gas, gas, gas and more gas, that this $1.5B plant would be the equivalent of a 220 MW plant.

Again, it is very unlikely that it will last 20 years, even though most power plants are designed to last 60 years or more.

There is no plan to dispose of the wastes from this plant, including lubricants, heavy metals or to restore the land from having heavy equipment trapsing over 36,000 acres carrying heavy equipment.

This is a joke, no?

[kristopher]

4. Offshore wind for the East Coast

http://ocsenergy.anl.gov/guide/index.cfm

Alternative Energy and Alternate Use Guide

An introduction to ocean energy resources, the Outer Continental Shelf, offshore renewable energy technologies, with photos, maps, and links.

A basic understanding of ocean energy resources, the Outer Continental Shelf, and offshore renewable energy technologies is important to informed participation in the EIS process. The Alternative Energy and Alternate Use Guide section provides background information about ocean energy resources and the Outer Continental Shelf, an introduction to the renewable energy technologies discussed in the Programmatic EIS, the use of hydrogen to store and transport energy, and alternate uses for oil and gas platforms.
Guide resources include basic information about:

* the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS);
* ocean energy resources;
* ocean wave energy;
* ocean current energy;
* offshore wind energy;
* offshore solar energy;
* use of hydrogen for energy storage and transport;
* alternate uses for existing oil and gas platforms;
* Photos of offshore renewable energy technologies;
* Maps relating to the OCS and other topics covered in the Programmatic EIS; and
* Links to related resources on the Web.

The following presentation from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory also provides information on ocean-based renewable energy technologies. This presentation was shown at scoping meetings for the OCS Alternative Energy Programmatic EIS.

Oh, and don't forget how well wind rates and how poor of a choice is nuclear power for meeting our energy security and climate change needs.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[excess_3]

5. the wind doesn't blow, when you need it the most .nt

[AdHocSolver]

6. There is plenty of hot air blowing on DU 24-7. n/t