This would carry a lot more weight if Al Gore wasn’t running around spouting all of his global warming lies with the full blessing of the Democratic party. I don’t think either party has a lock on stupid.

I’ve voiced my concerns about Obama’s energy plan here already — we don’t have the ability to build that amount of power generation from solar electric, wind, or other popular renewables — but, yes, Mr. Will appears to have misunderstood that phrase.

I think you’re overestimating the ability to place and create, or underestimating the power draw from electric cars. The Tesla Roadster charges over three and a half hours from a 220 volt 80 amp circuit, and that’s not an unusual energy draw; the Roadster has similar battery capacity as earlier electric cars. That’s a good 61,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity, more than twice what a reasonably sized house uses over the same time. Obviously you’re not going to drain the whole thing dry daily — that’d take 200+ miles of driving — but you can probably hit a good third of that with a typical commute, and a half of it if you work around D.C. or similar areas.

Even assuming that we do manage to move over to the whole renewable numbers he gives (and some form or renewable with no carbon production) — which is not a given — that’s still a boatload of extra electrical power, in a lot of places that normal electrical infrastructure isn’t built around. I don’t have the tools on me to do the exact math, but the back-of-the-napkin calculations don’t look too great.

Sorry, that should be 61,600 watt-hours, or 61.6 kilowatt-hours. My apologies for the typo.

The thing about recharging electric cars is typically it will occur late at night, when overall energy use is way down, so the load does not get superimposed on existing capacity, but rather fills in underutilized periods of use.
(I come home, plug my car in, and at 3:00 AM the system fires up the charge.) Clearly electric cars are not a one-to-one substitute for the entire fleet, but for short trip and stop and go travel, they will help.

As others have stated, nuclear (or nucular as Jimmy Carter would say) is not generally classified as “renewable”. Silly mistake by Will. If you take all the deaths from coal mining, oil drilling an shipment, plus cancer from the pollution that carbon-based fuels, you can probably get into the 100,000s of deaths per year associated with that energy source. Every year. The potential concentrated effect of a nuclear disaster results in a over-emphasis on its relative risk. IMO.

if Al Gore wasn’t running around spouting all of his global warming lies with the full blessing of the Democratic party

…and something like 99+% of the scientific community. But hey, what the hell do they know?

tgirsch, 99% of the scientific community does not run around suggesting an ocean rise of 20 feet in any meaningful timeframe, or using footage from The Day After Tomorrow as a description of what global warming could do.

I mean, seriously, it’s a movie where people outrun cold and hide behind a wooden door. I think most scientists have a bit too much dignity for that.

Ted, I hear that assumption made a lot, but I’m not sure if it’s as meaningful as you can suggest. A lot of manufacturers will set up their charging stations to charge in the post-midnight hours as a default, but especially in homes with only 30 amp 120 volt circuits, people are going to have to set things up differently. Some power company equipment, and a lot of actual power generation equipment, is not built around a 24-hour full duty cycle, and that’s a best case scenario here.

gatt:

Yes, and I’m sure that because Reagan said that he was injured in battle (when that actually only happened to a character he played in a movie), not only does that invalidate everything good you think he ever did, you’d immediately dismiss out of hand any cause he ever advocated vociferously for.

Bottom line is, I doubt Big U was referring to a couple of gaffes and absolute-worst-case scenarios as “global warming lies.” He was referring to the entire concept of global warming as a “lie” — a lie which better than 99+% of the scientific community really and truly believes to be true, and a problem, no matter what you and Big U think of Al Gore.

Actually tgirsch, what I was referring to was a lot of the material in his movie which has been proven to be false or incorrect and yet still gets presented as facts. More later.

Gatt, power companies are right now striving to balance loads through various programs, including reduced rates at night. Peak capacity generation is always the most expensive. An ideal load platform for a utility is absolutely flat. I’m not just blowing smoke on this, I have been involved in several extensive studies.

As for a 30 amp circuits, adding a heavier duty circuit is no big deal. And the Tesla is by no means a typical electric car. It is unfair to use its charge rate a typical for an electric fleet.

I know they are, and I think it’s a good idea. I know that the ideal load is flat, since that allows the cheapest plants (currently coal, in ObamaFuture probably concentrated solar thermal) with little extra parts or maintenance. I still think you’re overestimating how much consumers are going to change those patterns, especially given the time value of money and the very low cost of a given unit of electricity, and the rather indirect aspect of electrical costs. Even if the user who can afford an electrical car cares about the pennies in difference,

The Tesla isn’t typical, that’s true. But the GenMot EV1 ran around 18-26 kilowatt-hours, charging to 80% over three hours (the lead and nickel hydride tech they used has to slow down for the last quarter or so), with less than 70% charge efficiency. Is 38 kilowatt-hours that much better? Thanks to the EV1’s lesser range, it’s almost certainly going to be more constant, where a Tesla probably won’t run down near as far. I guess we could bring in the Aptera’s mere 10 kilowatt-hours, too, but I’m not sure how meaningful that ‘motorcycle’ is to the idea of an electric fleet, and it’s certainly unrealistic for most users.

61 kilowatt-hours per charge isn’t typical for an electric fleet, and I’ve already said it wasn’t typical for most users of the Tesla. It, and typical usage numbers relating to it, are still numbers we need to be aware of.

And the issue with running 80 amp 220 volt circuits isn’t running a line from a main line is a little complicated (and expensive in some states), but not bad at all. Running the extra capacity to houses that previous did not have it, however, is rather costly and a large-scale alteration; there are a lot of neighborhoods where a couple cars of this methodology would require significant changes going back to the nearest transformer station.

Grr… That should have been : Even if the user who can afford an electrical car cares about the pennies in difference in price, there will be points in the year where that price isn’t valuable compared to the lost opportunities involved.

Scooters and motorcycles sure have caught on in Europe and Asia, especially in urban areas. I could see them really taking off over here – with the possible exception of Minneapolis…

Big U:

Maybe you’ve seen something more recent (and less nakedly partisan) than what I’ve seen, but most of the legitimate criticisms of Gore’s movie essentially amount to nitpicking. From what I understand, the bulk of it remains valid, and most of the ideas presented there are still overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community. Is it perfect? No, but then, nothing ever is. Is it largely accurate and correct? Unless and until you can show that a large chunk of the scientific community believes otherwise, I say yes. (I don’t care what Lindzen and a few other prominent AGW deniers say, unless they can convince at least a sizable minority of scientists to agree with them.)

gatt:
there are a lot of neighborhoods where a couple cars of this methodology would require significant changes going back to the nearest transformer station.

I wonder how widespread that problem is. My house was built in the 1950’s and it has a 480v source. In any case, any energy policy we pursue is going to require substantial changes, if we’re serious about getting off of fossil fuels (and especially oil) — and as I’ve pointed out before, there are good reasons to do so even if one ignores the global warming issue.

Tgrisch, again, Al Gore presents the cause that global warming could cause 20 feet worth of ocean flooding. That’s so far from even the IPCC’s hockey-stick enabled graphs as to be laughable, unless the man was assuming ten centuries of future progress was remotely meaningful for his presentation. There’s some other rather exceptionally alarmist stuff, if I remember correctly, such as playing footage of Hurricane Katrina in the background, and misrepresented the Oreskes study that had its own issues to start with. An Inconvenient Truth was not merely about something as blase as a scientific theory — the film spends surprisingly little time on the basics — and focuses on what disasters await and what consensus there must be. The errors on these portions were not trivial, and came at a cost to those seeking to confront the problem rather than get a lot of people interested.

Electrical sources are not just the voltage, but also what amount of current can be safely drawn at that voltage. Wires and magnetic transformers can take a lot of variation in voltage (plain electric company juice tends to go up and down a good 10%), but increasing the amperage causes excess heat build up and either blown fuses or melted insulation. Getting the right voltage is actually rather simple, since transformers are pretty well proven technologies at this point, but getting enough amperage to support 17kW is tough. Most small homes today only have 100 amp or 150 amp panels and electrical service. The former won’t charge the Tesla at full rate while the AC and fridge is running, and the latter will probably fizzle out if you have an electrical oven or the starting drawn on a fridge and central air. It’s not hard to upgrade this, but it usually involves running AWG 2 or 4 copper wire to the pole — that means the electric company gets involved and request that you slap a thousand or more down.

They usually don’t expect a lot of people to do this at once. There’s a good amount of overhead in a circuit, if only for safety purposes, but running two or more people in a small neighborhood at higher services can involve replacing wire through the neighborhood, and even potentially upgrading the big green boxes.

Frustratingly, you can’t really tell what results you’ll get without trying.

Going to a slower charge cycle fixes this — so I expect most people to pick that particular solution — but then we’re talking eight hours of charging time, and a lot less potential for use-shifting like Ted was talking about.

Ted, even gasoline scooters and motorcycles are outliers here, partly due to legal issues but mostly thanks to cultural ones. Electric scooters, ‘mopeds’ (technically not mopeds by law, but by appearance), and motorcycles are already a developed and viable product, with examples like the Vectrix and the EVT Z-20. They’re still very much niche products, even with reasonable prices and typical ranges.

There’s just too many places — even in cities — where the extra mileage and speed is important. Europe, Asia, not so much; you’re more likely to need the extra manuverability and smaller parking space. It might change, as the device’s prices continue to decrease, but with less than eight million motorcycles and mopeds out there in the first place, I can’t see a million electrical ones popping out of the woodwork.

On the scooter/cycle thing, I was not even addressing the power source. The reduction in gas consumption is huge regardless.

I would think that most folks would be able to live with an 8 hour overnight charge cycle. And of course parking garages can install charging stations so you can charge while at work. It’s not a no-brainer, but the potential is there for a nice 10% reduction in gas use.

That does depend on the cycle. Moving from a Toyota Prius to a touring class bike like a BMW k100 might even cost you gas. It’s an outlier, but it is present, especially since people tend to think less about cycle MPG than car MPGs.

An eight-hour night cycle would probably need to be started by 10 o’clock. That’s at least away from peak usage during the summer, but it’s still going to require some extra capacity if put in place on a large scale.

If I understand it properly, Obama’s energy plan request 10% of all power come from “renewable” sources, and that 1 million plug-in hybrid or (non-fossil) flex fuel vehicles go on the road. That’s almost certainly not going to reduce gas use by 10% — we’re talking 250+ million registered vehicles to start with, and the ones using the most gas are the ones where full electric or other non-gasoline fuel aren’t viable — although it is still a major step.

I don’t think it’s realistic, though, or convinced it’s the best step to take with what we know.

You know, when Kennedy had the audacity to suggest we should put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, I bet a lot of people didn’t think that was realistic, either. Compared to that, a 10% reduction in energy use doesn’t seem all that difficult to tackle.

Also, is Obama saying 10% across the board, or a 10% average? If the latter, you could reduce fossil fuel use in the electrical sector by more, while reducing oil use less, and still hit the target.

Oh, and on An Inconvenient Truth, I think this is a fair assessment of the documentary’s pros and cons.

I think that link missed a few of the criticisms, and handwaves some of the others by putting them under “good to warn people about” rather than “suggesting as a real danger”. But it does a fairly good job, all things considered.

I’m sure a lot of people thought putting a man on the moon was unrealistic. I’m doubtful many of them did the math on the underlying technologies. On this matter, I have.

If I’ve read his numbers correctly, Obama’s said only 10% of all electrical generation alone come from renewable sources. His energy plan doesn’t say a thing about fossil fuel use in terms of electrical generation, although I think it’s fair to assume that an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions might reduce electrical generation from fossil fuels significantly (or increase prices).

10% of electrical generation is more than difficult enough if not impossible; 10% of energy use would be laughably ridiculous.

10% of electrical capacity is 320,000 megawatts of reliable (100% uptime) power, over four years. For comparison, we’ve only produced 3,400 megawatts of solar cells, each of which only provide ~30% uptime, globally. That number’s been jumping roughly 50% annually, as more silicon fabrication (especially polysilicons) and indium access has been developed, but that’s still not going to reach even 50,000 megawatts of potential capacity by 2012, saying we grab every single panel that makes it to the market.

Even shutting down every single computer production plant and magically finding stockpiles of refined indium and gallium sitting around somewhere, that’d less than double the number, and it goes from fanciful to socialistic control of the economy. You can’t build fresh polysilicon development in a year or two, and even three will cost you an arm, leg, and firstborn child. It’s not a simple stuff.

That’s, honestly, not realistic. A realistic example would be to look at the amount of panel generation, but then we go from ridiculous to laughably far off. The entire United States market for photovoltaic is in the ballpark of 220 megawatts annually.

Wind power is better, today, assuming that Ted Kennedy isn’t near it; annual global production of wind power is at 19,000 megawatts. That’s more than we currently have sitting around the United States, though, and where photovoltaic power is growing 50% per year, wind power has only grown by 20-26% per year for the last five years. We can go on the optimistic side and aim for 32%, or so, if you don’t mind buggering the whole copper economy, but that’s still not enough. It’s close, at 230,000 megawatts, or so (if you ignore the whole downtime numbers), but even with the above ridiculous numbers for photovoltaic power, that’s not going to do it.

That estimate’s also ridiculous. The best the United States has done so far was 5,000 megawatts of power generation in a year, even with ludicrous tax incentives.

Even with a lot of best case assumptions, it just doesn’t work. This isn’t sending a man to the moon in 1968; that was something we didn’t have any experience with. This is sending 2,500 people to the moon in 1970.

And yet, and yet the simple fact that gasoline rising a buck a gallon in one year has had a significant impact on gasoline demand. Raise it three more bucks and I bet gasoline use goes down 30%.

Before WWII, the US had a slowly ticking ship building capability. At the height of the war, we could build a ship in 42 days, and the fastest one built took 5 days (with a bit of cheating). We built 2710 of these ships in the span of a few years, and just plain overwhelmed the U boats. Rosie became a riveter. Lips were never loose lest ships be sunk. People made changes in their lives. It worked.

At some point, like it or not, energy and/or global warming will present the world with a similar situation. I for one am all in favor of Al Gore raising awareness on a general level (which is not done subtly and we semi-cognescetti should be able to accept this) and politicians pushing for aggressive plans to get started now. Just think. If original CAFE standards legislation had not been defeated by the big three plus oil, we might still have a viable automobile industry in this country and our gas use would already be down 10%. Now it is going to happen in a semi-crisis mode. But at least the libertarians are happy…

What Ted said. In any case, I don’t claim to have done as much “math” as gatt claims to have, but I find it very hard to believe that, with the proper commitment, we couldn’t get 10% of our electricity generated by wind, photovoltaic, solar heat, hydroelectric, geothermal, and wave (and probably other renewable sources that I’ve simply failed to mention) by 2012.

Then there are advances in some of those technologies that could be more widely exploited with the proper investment and commitment. The solar panels that power the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are twice as efficient as most of those that are out there today. Start mass producing these and letting economies of scale take over, and you have the potential to better than double photovoltaic capacity just by replacing existing panels, never mind putting in new ones. Today’s wind turbines are safer and more efficient than those deployed in the 1970s and 1980s. I don’t see why these and other advancements can’t be widely leveraged.

And, of course, there are other things we can do from the fossil fuel side, too. Increase efficiency requirements (like the CAFE stuff Ted mentioned); require existing coal power plants to retrofit to the latest technology for efficiency and cleanliness; that sort of thing.

Suffice it to say, I don’t share your pessimism about American ingenuity.

Tgirsch
No matter how efficient, switching from one coal power plant to another does not make it a renewable power source. I think making *cleaner and more efficient* power plants is a good idea, since we’ve got several centuries worth of coal, but Barack says we need to have less than 90% of power come from fossil fuels and nuclear power by 2012, and less than 75% not long after.

No matter how efficient, likewise, does not make solar cells economically or mechanically viable. There could be boxes of 100% efficient solar cells, but if they cost several hundred dollars per watt, no sane individual is going to buy them or deploy them on the ground. Spare acreage is cheeeeeap, especially anywhere solar is useful in the first place. The best we can get today is still in the area of four dollars per watt, and most people interested don’t care whether that’s at 7% or 40% — that’s why thin film solar has been popular in the first place. Efficiency doesn’t mean jack. Cost per watt does, and companies are already using the best examples.

And if you think hydroelectric, geothermal, or wave technology on any large scale can be brought to net positive power within four years, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Solar Tres alone is suffering a projected five year completion cycle, and it’s about as basic and heavily subsidized a concept as the thing gets.

Ted
First, I’d like to point out that World War II involved seventy million deaths, several groups which thought wide-scale eugenics and genocide was a huggy great idea, and a few other things that don’t quite compare. Correct me if Gore’s suggested global warming will kill seventy million people over the next decade, of course. If you want to sell snake oil, that’s a wonderful idea.

The rest of us will remember that the big Three have been making craptastic cars, incredibly poor build quality, been strangled by stupid entitlement plans, and other things that have fried their bottom line long before gas prices made consumers do double takes, and that not picking up CAFE did not somehow force Chevy or Ford to toss F350s and Suburbans all over the roads. The Big Three have been collapsing since 1992, if not longer. The rest of us will remember that non-military ship construction in the pre-WWII time period was massive, with many WWI-era shipyards being highly active and churning out amazing civilian boats.

It’s a bit of a different thing than pulling a technology out of the ground.

Gatt, you are right. We can’t do shit. Let’s just ignore the issue.

Ted’s response was a lot more concise than mine would have been, but I like it.

Anyway,

switching from one coal power plant to another does not make it a renewable power source.

I didn’t say that it did. Only that doing so supports Obama’s (and my) larger overall energy plan by reducing our use of fossil fuels.

Barack says we need to have less than 90% of power come from fossil fuels and nuclear power by 2012, and less than 75% not long after.

When was the last time someone solved a serious and complicated problem by setting modest, iterative goals? There are plenty of valid reasons for setting ambitious objectives, even if you ultimately fail to achieve them. And surprisingly often, the optimism pays off, and we do achieve them.

There could be boxes of 100% efficient solar cells, but if they cost several hundred dollars per watt, no sane individual is going to buy them or deploy them on the ground.

A business model is starting to pop up in which a company puts solar panels on your rooftop and maintains them in exchange for a long-term contract for the homeowner to buy the power they generate at a fixed rate. Over the life of the panels, the panel owner knows almost exactly how much money they’ll make. Imagine if this model were supported and expanded with government involvement, even if it’s something as simple as low-interest loans to start such businesses.

But, as Ted points out, you seem to be more interested in poo-pooing ideas than with actually offering alternate solutions.

There could be boxes of 100% efficient solar cells, but if they cost several hundred dollars per watt, no sane individual is going to buy them or deploy them on the ground.

Which is why — horror of horrors! — government investment needs to be a big part of the plan moving forward. If you just wait for the “invisible hand of the market” to do something about it, you’ll be waiting a long damn time, as everyone takes a “you first” approach. Mandate it and finance it, on the other hand, and you could see some great results.

One more thing on “cost per watt”: nobody’s using the actual cost per watt. Future costs (e.g., long-term effects of pollution) are wholly ignored, while the only costs considered are the costs of getting the fossil fuel out of the ground and to the plant. And those costs are steadily increasing anyway. In any case, fossil fuels are yet another example of where the market does a typically shitty job of accounting for externalities when determining “cost.”

not picking up CAFE did not somehow force Chevy or Ford to toss F350s and Suburbans all over the roads

And not banning DDT and PCBs doesn’t “somehow force” people to use them, either. I swear, libertarians insist we should all be complete and total fucking idiots when it comes to predicting what people are likely to do under various circumstances. “Hey, I just gave the murderer a loaded gun, I didn’t force him to kill anybody!” There’s such a thing as predicting likely outcomes, and libertarianism absolutely insists that we NOT do this, under ANY circumstances…

By the way, it seems to me that gattsuru’s line of argumentation in this thread is a perfect example of why AGW deniers cannot and will not ever acknowledge that AGW is a serious problem, no matter how compelling the evidence may become: because they’re convinced that if it is a real problem, any possible solution will necessarily involve the sort of government intervention that they despise. And it least in the case of gatt, it seems that he thinks that if AGW is a real problem, we’re pretty much all fucked, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it, so we may as well just burn the candle at both ends and enjoy it while it lasts.

This is also why in two years now, nobody has seriously answered my challenge to provide a viable libertarian and/or conservative solution to global warming, if one assumes for the sake of argument that the problem is real and that the outcomes are as bad as the IPCC (for example) suggests.

Agreed.

And it least in the case of gatt, it seems that he thinks that if AGW is a real problem, we’re pretty much all fucked, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it, so we may as well just burn the candle at both ends and enjoy it while it lasts.

Oh, hell no, I haven’t said that. I think concentrated solar thermal is a good idea whose time has come. I think efficient thermonuclear fusion may be just around the corner in, and I’ve been an advocate of wind power since it pissed off Kennedy. (Solar cells are nice toy, but CST seems more reasonable in large scales).

But there’s a difference between rational attempts to change things and irrational ones.

Obama’s energy plan isn’t rational. You and Ted are talking about massive, wide-scale changes in society (and drawing comparisons to the second World War) over a matter that will cause, according to the IPCC, approximately 0.5 degrees change, with a corresponding 2.3 inch rise in ocean levels, with the worst reasonable estimate over the next decade.

That just doesn’t justify trying to buy up every drop of wind and solar cell power on the planet. That’s especially true if you actually want to fix the problem, since doing so requires you demonstrate that this can be done economically to places like China and India, who will have very little problem picking up the slack in demand (at least until China’s population collapses in a couple generations).

If you’re going to provide incentives for non-carbon power, and need to get a lot quick, you’d need to go nuclear. Obama’s mostly focused on making things more complicated for nuclear power plants without closing off the option entirely; I think that’s really not the right tack to take here. 30+ year old nuclear power plant designs were running at an (inflation adjusted) 5 USD per watt, even with ridiculous delays (which are rather expensive); modern designs are looking at ~1.4 USD per watt to 2.8 USD per watt, with practical units in Japan running at 2 USD/watt. Not perfect for competing with coal, but better, especially since concrete, steel, and basic electronics are pretty reliable to mass-produce.

There are lots of good solutions, and many paths that we should be taking either friggen way. The reliance on the unusual, unpredictable, or plain impossible, however, makes me wonder a bit about the underlying motivations, here. The incredibly far-reaching goals don’t help; Kyoto’s far-reaching goals only encouraged those who didn’t have a chance, like the UK, to not even try.

That’s not to say irrational solutions have no place in this world. A lot of the Cold War and WWII involved rather irrational solutions that still were better than none at all. We’re not looking at similar stakes, or similarly lackluster rational solutions, though. A lot of the rational solutions are as effective or more effective.

You and Ted are talking about massive, wide-scale changes in society (and drawing comparisons to the second World War) over a matter that will cause, according to the IPCC, approximately 0.5 degrees change, with a corresponding 2.3 inch rise in ocean levels, with the worst reasonable estimate over the next decade.

Gee, I wasn’t aware that I had argued that this was solely about global warming. It’s an important factor, yes, but not the only one. The pollution introduced by burning coal (and, in particular, the mercury it puts into the atmosphere and ultimately the ground water) is reason enough to try to get away from it. So, too, is the environmental impact of getting at the coal (they’re blowing the tops off of mountains, for the love of Pete!), and the human toll it takes on miners, etc. (I’m sure the invisible hand of the market is going to do a cracker jack job of taking care of black lung, one of these days…)

All that said, however, global warming is hugely important, despite your attempts to lie with statistics to undermine the urgency. It’s not just about the temperature increases but what potentially happens because of them, and that’s not limited to sea level rise. There are a whole host of problems caused by global warming, not the least of which is the likelihood of extended droughts and the shortage of clean, fresh water that would come with that. Of course, far better to wait until we’re all absolutely sure it’s an irreversible disaster before we try and slow it down or stop it.

If you’re going to provide incentives for non-carbon power, and need to get a lot quick, you’d need to go nuclear.

I don’t see how this works. Even if you could wave a magic wand and have the NIMBY problem go away, nuclear power plants take a Long Damn Time to bring on-line. How long does it take to put up panels or erect windmills? Unlike many, I don’t rule out nuclear (and, for his part, neither does Obama), but it’s a stop-gap solution at best, and a potentially very risky one at that. And, comparatively speaking, it’s not terribly economical, either (as you note).

The reliance on the unusual, unpredictable, or plain impossible, however, makes me wonder a bit about the underlying motivations, here.

One could say the same thing about the poo-poohing of any potential source of energy that doesn’t rely on currently well-entrenched financial interests…

I’m sure I’ve said it a dozen times, but there will be no magic bullet. It’s not going to be solar OR wind OR wave OR hydro OR geothermal OR efficiency. It’s going to be some combination of ALL of those things. You seem to be taking an either-or view, and I don’t see why it needs to be that way. Why photovoltaics or CST? Why not both? Leverage what works best, where it works best, in any combination necessary.

What irks me about your line of argumentation is that you seem to be taking a giant crap on all of it because you personally believe Obama’s plan is too ambitious. That seems to me like throwing out the baby with the bath water. In any case, there’s one other viable candidate in this election. How do his energy plans stack up? If you think Obama’s plans are unrealistic, I can’t imagine how you can look at McCain’s with a straight face.

As I’ve said before, McCain’s plan is little more than a combination of vague platitudes and wishful thinking. If we offer up a cash prize, the Battery Fairy will come and save us all! If we drill off the OCS and in ANWR — not in the areas where we currently can but choose not to, mind you, but in the areas where we currently can’t — it will magically obscure the fact that only about 3% of the world’s remaining oil is under US territory!

Why photovoltaics or CST? Why not both? Leverage what works best, where it works best, in any combination necessary.

Because there’s not an infinite supply of money, and encouraging the development of any one type will automatically discourage other types. If you spend 100 million on incentives for CST/CSP, CST/CSP is going to end up 100 million closer to the market points where it and photovoltaics overlap (which is surprisingly large, as even single-household sized CST/CSP looks to be viable). Put 50 million each in CST/CSP and photovoltaic, and they’ll each get only half the progress.

Implementing both of them isn’t a bad idea, if the capacity for production of both doesn’t fill the market demand, but as I’ve already pointed out, taking all of these methods combined still isn’t going to hit the Obama plan, even with unrealistic assumptions about increased capacity.

It’s really not a matter of what works best where. At large plants concentrated solar and photovoltaic look for and work from the same things, and that carries down for nearly all power generation sizes until you hit the sub-5kW range (where you have to switch engines for concentrated solar).

Even if you could wave a magic wand and have the NIMBY problem go away, nuclear power plants take a Long Damn Time to bring on-line. How long does it take to put up panels or erect windmills? Unlike many, I don’t rule out nuclear (and, for his part, neither does Obama), but it’s a stop-gap solution at best, and a potentially very risky one at that. And, comparatively speaking, it’s not terribly economical, either (as you note).

1960s style plants do take forever to build. Modern ones, not so much. Typical build times come in the ~10 year ranges these days, such as the above mentioned Japanese plants, and that’s without any ridiculous sort of development or taking up the entire planet’s construction capacity. Look at, of all places, China, where they’ve already planned out 22 gigawatts by 2020, and are putting up to 300 gigawatts by 2030 if nothing else changes. Most of that comes from the reliance on older-style plants that require ’specialized’ metal machining; pebble-bed plants are even faster.

It’s not as economical as coal, but if the MIT numbers are correct, new generation nuclear plants should be viable from a kilowatt-hour perspective, something that no other low-carbon electrical generation method has been able to reliably do. You’ll have to work hard to sell the concept to businesses, but no harder than CSP or photovoltaic from this viewpoint, and it will look better on the pricing sheets to consumers.

How do his energy plans stack up? If you think Obama’s plans are unrealistic, I can’t imagine how you can look at McCain’s with a straight face. As I’ve said before, McCain’s plan is little more than a combination of vague platitudes and wishful thinking.

I’m not quite sure how vague platitudes and wishful thinking is comparable to outright unreachable goals. I’ve got my (many) criticisms of McCain’s energy ‘policy’, such as it is (again, etha*hic*nol!), but none of it is remotely impossible. The only mandates he’s pulled out of his backside are the tax credit for low-emissions cars, the Battery Fairy prize, and 50% of new cars going to flex fuel. The former two are pretty typical government acts, and the last one is probably overreaching government authority, but in a method that most car manufacturers could already meet today (going flex-fuel is essentially a software upgrade and a spare ABC valve sensor). All dotGov vehicles are already flex-fuel.

You can certainly argue this is pointless or boring, but it’s rather realistic.

If we offer up a cash prize, the Battery Fairy will come and save us all! If we drill off the OCS and in ANWR — not in the areas where we currently can but choose not to, mind you, but in the areas where we currently can’t — it will magically obscure the fact that only about 3% of the world’s remaining oil is under US territory.

That number is not correct. The 3% of world oil value is based on reserves, which the United States reports within rather specific criteria, while other countries have varied numbers. It’s not really easy to predict how much oil there is under US ground, especially without knowing what value of proven you need and federal law prohibits even researching many areas, but the 3% number requires you to agree that oil shale never could produce oil and that thirty+ year old equipment and estimates of recoverable oil are still accurate. Canada claims roughly 70% of the reserves of Saudi Arabia in oil sands and similar unconventional sources, so yes, there can be a rather dramatic difference between current output and real reserves.

Sorry, that particular NRDC talking point bugs the hell out of me.

Oh, and so does the one about land just laying around unused. Most of that is in the exploration, environmental paperwork, and building stages, while a lot of other land was found to have little or no economically recoverable oil. Sometimes there’s blocks due to the environmental paperwork or environmental lawsuits.

Things are more complicated than the Evil Oil conspiracy theory suggests.

gatt:

On the oil supplies, crude oil is what’s most important, and the 3% figure is essentially accurate for that purpose. Oil shale is available in quantity, but it’s a lot harder (and more expensive) to get to, and is lower-grade, meaning it can’t be used for things like gasoline. It can, as I understand it, be used to make low-grade diesel fuel. But even with the latest technology, extracting and refining it to even that low level is a very expensive and time-consuming process.

There are basically two concerns with oil: meeting demand, and price. Most voters support expanded drilling only because they think it will have the effect of noticeably lowering prices; but even drilling’s most staunch proponents admit that the effect of such drilling on domestic oil prices will be negligible. And from the demand side, once again, there just isn’t enough domestic crude to substantially change the equation, or detract from the incontrovertible fact that as long as we are dependent upon oil as an energy source, we’re going to remain dependent upon foreign oil. Barring the Oil Fairy showing up with a truly gigantic find, that’s simply not going to change, no matter how much we drill.

As it is, the primary reason why energy companies and investors want expanded drilling rights isn’t to bring prices down; it’s precisely because prices are high. There’s a shitload of money to be made off of oil, even if it doesn’t make a dent in US demand. Indeed, we export around 13% of what we produce domestically, even today; if having domestic oil sources was going to help us, you’d think we’d start by keeping our own oil. As it is, though, there’s more money to be made shipping that oil elsewhere than keeping it here, and I fail to see how additional domestic production would change that equation.

As for the unused land laying around, if what you say is true about the lack of “economically recoverable” oil, then why not relinquish the leases? (Probable answers: they get tax benefits for the unproductive land, or they expect that the oil there WILL be economically recoverable at some foreseeable future, higher oil price.)

As for whether or not Obama’s 10% by the end of his first term figure is “impossible” or “realistic,” upon further research, I’d say it’s actually pretty modest. If hydroelectric power is considered renewable (I don’t see why it shouldn’t be), then renewable energy already accounts for a little less than 11% of domestic electricity production, according to April 2008 figures. It’s clever, really. The goal is already achieved before he takes office! But, of course, it’s still impossible to achieve…

Finally, as for CSP vs. Photovoltaic, the government wouldn’t have to foot the entire bill. As I pointed out, the solar panel business model is already starting to crop up on its own. Throw some subsidization in there and/or some tax credits, and I don’t see why the industry couldn’t really take off, especially in places like the Southwest. Can it replace grid power? Of course not, but then no single thing can. Can it make a significant dent? Absolutely.

[...] Nate Silver calls bullshit on George Will’s latest foray into scientific commentary. And he’s got a lot of good points in there. However, blog solidarity requires me to point out that pointing out Will’s stupidity and dishonesty on matters scientific is sooooo six months ago. [...]