Common Objections to Alternative Energy Generation Systems

[MineralMan]

The Fukushima disaster has renewed discussion about alternative electrical energy generation, and that's a very good thing. Nuclear power generation is unsafe. It has always been unsafe, and can never be made to be safe. Closing existing nuclear facilities and not building any more is the only solution to this dangerous method of generating electricity.

Sadly, other heavily-used current methods of generating electricity have their own major problems. Most burn fuel to create heat that is then used to create steam to run turbines. Each of those methods creates massive amounts of pollution, and requires vast amounts of water for cooling. From coal and oil to natural gas, every one of those methods has serious environmental issues.

So, the answer is, in part, to use alternative ways to generate electricity. Unfortunately, these, too, have opposition, usually on environmental grounds. Here are some of them, and why some environmentalists oppose them:

Hydroelectric Power - In use all over the world, hydroelectric power is environmentally clean and doesn't add pollution to the environment. However, many object to these installations. All large hydroelectric systems require dams, which destroy large ecosystems by flooding. In addition, those dams block the passage of spawning migrations of salmon and other fish. Finally, the risk for flooding large areas should a dam fail is another objection to the building of new hydroelectric projects.

Biomass - These systems use renewable sources to generate power. The objections to the use of biomass power generation include their creation of greenhouse gases when the biomass is burned. That is the same important objection raised for traditional fuel-burning power generation. In addition, the area used to grow the renewable biomass is taken away from food production. Some such plants are designed to burn waste products, though, eliminating that objection, but still burn something, adding to the CO2 load in the atmosphere.

Tidal - Closely related to hydroelectric systems, tidal systems are clean. However, like hydroelectric systems, they can require dams and alter tidal flows, causing serious changes to ecosystems affected. Such systems are large if they are to generate commercial quantities of electricity, and may also interfere with fish migration and shipping.

Solar - Harnessing the power of the sun is hugely popular and clean, but creating commercial quantities of electricity using solar requires large areas of collectors, whatever type of collector is used. These large areas are often objected to due to their altering habitat for animal life, even when located in desert areas. Solar power generation is also not constant, requiring storage if it is to be used continuously. Distributed solar power generation, using smaller collection areas is a popular alternative, but is not currently economically feasible in most cases, and has the same storage requirements for off-grid use. In addition, direct solar collectors require mined and processed silicon, creating impacts.

Wind - Wind power generation is also clean. Objections include the death of some birds, although the actual numbers are quite low. Others object on the grounds of noise and what is called "flicker" caused by the usual equipment currently in use. Some object to the visual impact of large solar farm installations. Storage is also an issue, as it is with solar, since the wind does not always blow reliably.

Geothermal - This system utilizes the earth's heat, particularly in areas where enough heat is available to generate steam, which drives turbines. Such areas are uncommon, and are usually near volcanically active regions. Objections here include the need for large amounts of water for cooling and the impact on the environment, plus the release of hydrogen sulfide gas in some geothermal projects. In general, however, this type of power generation is relatively clean. There are, however, too few suitable geothermal locations in most regions to generate adequate power.

Each method of power generation has its problems, and whenever a project is proposed for a certain area, some of these objections are raised by those affected. That NIMBY effect, and the costly process of building a project and getting it online, often result in projects that are never built.

The solution is going to be a combination of different methods of power generation, but each will have those who object to it. Overall, the very best thing we can do is work very hard to reduce the amount of electrical energy we use. Every kilowatt of electricity that is not used is a kilowatt that does not need to be generated. Reducing energy requirements is the single solution that has zero negative environmental impact. I believe that should be our primary goal in reducing the impact of power generation, regardless of which system is used to generate that power.

[sandyo--ERA]

1. None of these alternative methods is perfect, but

Each of these alternative energy methods is perfect, but don't we need to stop killing ourselves, our planet and ceasing oil wars?

Should the search for Perfect interfere with Better, Efficient, Safer?

Shouldn't we be doing it NOW?!

[MineralMan]

2. Yes, of course we should be doing it now.

My post was not about not using alternative power generation technologies. It was just information. Each of the alternatives has people who object to it, and those objections often prevent entire installations from being built. That's a bad thing.

However, my suggestion about using less electricity is the single way to reduce our dependence on environmentally problematic power generation. That's the single thing that can have no objections raised, and it is the single thing each of us can do, beginning this very minute. Turn something off now! Find alternatives that use less electricity and use those. Every one of us can take those steps, and take them immediately. I believe that is a major part of the solution.

[MineralMan]

3. I won't be able to comment for long on replies to this post.

I have to go get a tooth pulled at noon. It's hell getting old...

But I'll be back afterwards, gauze in mouth and ready for some gum pain.

[madokie]

5. Oh how I hope it hurts,

NOT. Just fun'n ya
Nothing quite like a toothache or ear ache for that matter. I feel for you. Maybe the dentist will give you some pain meds to help the head while the hurt continues. LOL

On the subject. We've been heating with a waste bio renewable product since the winter of '91-'92, wood pellets. Guess what :-) its saved us a ton of money too

[MineralMan]

7. Nah. No big deal. I'm back, gauze in the hole.

It's hardly bleeding, even. Nice dentist, and a cute assistant - Daniela from Poland, with a cute accent.

It'll hurt for a couple of days, a little, but Advil will take care of that. Simple extractions are no big deal.

Wood pellet stoves are pretty cool, really, and use waste products well. Here in Minnestota, it's nice to have the whole house warm, but I wouldn't mind having a pellet stove in the corner of the living room. A little too spendy for our current situation, though. Maybe for next Winter.

[madokie]

14. Happy that everything went well

especially the candy that came with the extraction. I always say that the pain meds is for the head and take aspirin for the pain or whatever a persons preference for pain relief is.

Our house is spread out with our pellet stove in the middle. We have and leave on all year long ceiling fans in all the rooms to help distribute the heat and the plus side of a ceiling fan is all the dust particles they take out of the air we breath. I keep them blowing up and out summer and winter and that top side of the blades sure catches a lot of dust. I think that they should use that fact in their advertising because they do collect lots of whatever is flying in the air.

In the years that we've owned pellet stoves we've saved 5 big ones in fuel cost over propane or no telling if we otherwise heated with electric and we're staying warm like only wood seems to be able to do. In that time we've bought three pellet stoves and passed the older ones down to the kids so they can save money too and because every little bit helps CO2 wise. The first one we bought was an England brand and its still going strong. That 5000 figure is figuring in the cost of the three pellet stoves we've purchased too.
Sometime when you get a hankering too, check out the Harman pellet stoves and feast your eyes on the different models they offer. They all use the same burning technology. We bought the Advance with green tile and nickel trim and its a beauty. It uses a sensor that monitors the temperature in the room so as the day warms up it burns less and vice versa and if the temperature gets so warm that the stove can't go low enough it shuts off then when the temperature later drops it'll re-light itself. It keeps our house at a comfortable 74 degrees, both of us are getting long of tooth so we like the house a little warmer than we did when we were younger, and we'll burn less than three tons of pellets this winter at 225 bucks a ton. It has produced about maybe 3, 5 gallon buckets of ash that is good for the garden. This has been the first winter we've burned this much pellets but this winter has been unusually cold for our neck of the woods with the wind blowing every day and most nights which is unusual in itself.

I clean the glass every few days but could go for weeks if I wanted too before the glass gets very dirty.

Everything in a Harman pellet stove is made in the good ol USA too, no foreign made parts anywhere in them. All top quality stuff. They cost more than the others we've had but they are top quality units.

[MineralMan]

15. Thanks for that info. I'll check it our after the winter season is

over. A guy can get some good deals on stuff that's hanging around and that nobody wants right then.

No candy from the dentist, though. "Take two Advils every four hours." That's always worked just fine in the past, so no problem.

[madokie]

17. I was being sexist and talking about the girl :-)

my bad everyone

[Spike89]

4. Great points

Obviously you've had to simplify, but the points are fair. I think another factor for almost all the alternative power sources is the "early adopter" penalty we all know so well from the early days of the computer industry. Particularly for the intermittent power sources (solar and wind), the pace of innovation in storage and in generation efficiency is only now slowing down enough to make large scale investment a rational choice.

If a utilities manager is given an option to build a $5 billion alternative energy installation that will save $250 million a year over a similar coal/gas/whatever old-energy plant, that 20 year payback might be worth it. However, the real risk to that manager is that a better method costing $3 billion and saving $300 million a year becomes available before the first choice is fully online. Of course, the equation gets really difficult when the actual savings are highly speculative, i.e., it is really, really hard to forecast both the ultimate costs of the new technology and the future costs of the old. For example, "clean coal" isn't a reality, but it potentially could become a political reality and cost of building new coal plants could drop a bunch.

The only solution to the problems are massive government subsidies and protections for utility companies that invest in alternative power sources. Ironically, the parallel need for government to invest heavily in research and development of alternative power actually enters into the other side of the implementation equation. If I'm the utility manager and I hear the government is investing gazillions of research dollars into technology A, I might think twice before committing my utility's future to technology B, even if it appears to be the best choice today.

It's a complex situation and the reasons we aren't making huge strides toward alternative sources aren't all because of evil conspiracies between big oil and corrupt politicians (even though those roadblocks do certainly exist too). There is too much at stake and too much money to be made for advances not to happen, they're just not going to come about as fast as we might want.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. "Nuclear power generation is unsafe."

Seth Godin, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/03/the-triumph-of-coal-marketing.html">The triumph of coal marketing.

--d!

[MineralMan]

9. You know, death rates aren't the only measure, and the figures

that produced your chart are as much speculation as fact. Something kills us all. Depending on which ax you're grinding, the cause can be smoking, or a bad diet, or power plants. Bottom line is that we all die of something. A guy died recently here in Saint Paul. He was homeless and sleeping outdoors, and died of exposure. Which power generation technology would he fall under, do you think?

Coal and oil suck for power generation. They're an ugly business. Natural gas isn't so bad, but the process of getting it is causing more and more problems as the supply dwindles. Nuclear power has long term issues that aren't reflected in a pure death rate per watts generated chart. Nice black graphics though, on your chart.

You didn't comment on the last part of my post, though. Conserving energy and using less in general is, as I said, the single most effective and problem-free way to deal with energy problems. Turn something off.

[The2ndWheel]

8. We're not going to reduce energy requirements

To do so, would mean to actually do less. Less travel. Fewer jobs. Less infrastructure. Less technology. Less food. Fewer people, obviously. For everyone already here, that would mean no more advances in the developed world. Certainly no more advancing in the developing world, where most people are. No more economic growth. No more government stimulus. Hell, no more corporations or governments, at least nowhere close to the scale on which they presently exist. No more keeping people alive longer. Pretty much everything that we've been able to do because of, and during, the last 2, 3, 4, 10 thousand years would need to stop in order for us to reduce our energy requirements.

[MineralMan]

10. Nope. That's not actually correct.

Reduction does not mean elimination. This year, my wife and I lowered the temperature in our house to 64 degrees, and put on sweaters. I like sweaters. We reduced our heating bill by a significant amount, and that directly affects fuel use. It's just one house, of course, but there are lots and lots of houses in the Twin Cities.

I finally replaced the last incandescent bulb with a CFLs. Now, CFLs present their own environmental risk, but we can recycle the old ones at the same place we bought the new ones. Not such a big deal. LEDs are still a little to expensive for me to use throughout the house, but there it is.

Most people here in Minnesota have central air conditioning. We don't. We have fans. Then, we have one 5000 BTU window unit in our bedroom. When it's hard to sleep because of the temperature, we close the bedroom door and use it. It doesn't run very much, actually, on the compressor. I've already added additional insulation to the house, which is a small one, built in the 1950s.

We've also cut down on the use of our vehicles, and will average under 2000 miles per year this year.

Individual steps. Small results. But, if the 2,000,000 people who live in the greater Minneapolis St. Paul area each did something, it would create big results.

Conservation is the single way to cut down on the use of energy to create power. It's something we all can do. Turn something off today.

[The2ndWheel]

13. I didn't say eliminate

I said less and fewer. Which is what you're doing with sweaters and fans. It starts that way. It saves on cost, and reduces this or that. Then it doesn't. Then it starts to cause the problems we have to eventually deal with in the future. We find ways to use more energy. We force ourselves to use more of it, or else why even bother expending the energy it takes to get it in the first place? Where did the money go that you saved by putting on a sweater? Is it sitting under the mattress not doing anything, or is it being circulated through the economy in some manner?

When have we ever said, "ok, we have enough"? Never, we kept digging deeper. Kept mining more. If we put up X amount of solar panels, or Y amount of wind turbines, will we stop at those points? Especially if we find that it's cheap? That's where the environmental impact comes into play. It's what the energy gives us the ability to do, not the type of energy used, which is the larger problem. Hunting with sharp sticks increased our environmental impact. Let alone whatever we end up doing with what we hope is essentially limitless energy.

[WatsonT]

11. "The solution is going to be a combination of different methods of power generation"

Absolutely. Anyone pushing one solution hasn't done their homework.

I also wish that we'd get together relevant scientists and economists to come up with a series of solutions that get the most bang for the buck. Treat this as an economic/engineering problem rather than a political.

We have a finite amount of money which means we have to use it wisely, not simply in whatever way is popular at the moment.

Wind might be great for some coastal and great plains cities, whereas solar is better in the southwest, hydro is ideal wherever it can be implemented and for the rest some combination of coal/nuclear/natural gas is called for.

[MineralMan]

12. Thanks. There's no single solution. Conservation of energy

resources will help, too, if we can get people to do it.

[quaker bill]

16. The cheapest and cleanest

is conservation. It is still almost always cheaper per KWH to build efficiency at the point of use than it is to build equivalent generating capacity of any sort.