The Real War


The real war is not between renewables and fossil fuels, no, the real war is between renewables and nuclear.

This is somewhat ironic, because nuclear is one of the lowest CO2 emitting energies we have and so, in theory, renewable promoters should be fully on board with nuclear, but this is obviously not the case.

The reasons are very simple: 

1. Renewables need pairing fossil fuel power plants since solar and wind energy are intermittent and unreliable.
2. Even though, in theory, nuclear could be paired with renewables, it would make no sense whatsoever. Nuclear is better suited to produce 24/7 and besides adding renewables to a nuclear grid would increase CO2 emissions so it would be a lose-lose proposition (more expensive and higher emissions).

On the other hand, nuclear doesn't need renewables at all, what is more, they siphon funds that could have been better spent in additional nuclear capacity (if the objective is to reduce the CO2 intensity of a grid).

Thus, it is not surprising at all that renewable promoters spend inordinate amounts of effort attacking nuclear.

At the same time, it is not surprising either that nuclear promoters tend to attack renewables. 

Yes, whether we like it or not, renewables and nuclear are "natural" enemies. Appeasement will not work. This war will only get worse as the penetration of both increases in the energy marketplace.

The result of this war is, and will continue to be, a more gradual replacement of fossil fuels vs. the scenario in which renewables are dumped and nuclear gets most of the alternative energy investment.

The message this war sends is that humanity is not really in a hurry to reduce CO2 emissions. As always, acts speak louder than words.



Feel free to add to the conversation in Twitter.









Comments

Jack Eddyfier said…
The real war seems to have been declared about 1971. I believe this was the year when the term renewable energy can first be found in English; also the year when single-issue anti-nuclear power NGO: Friends of the Earth recruited Amory Lovins. It's been a propaganda, and legal war since then. The term renewable energy is a fake category, invented by deep greens to describe energy sources they particularly approved of. The approved technologies seem to have been specifically selected to tie humanity down to dependence on natural environments. Robert Stone explained the opposition to nuclear power versus support for renewables so: "we also thought that as you provide societies with more energy it enables them to do more environmental destruction. The idea of tying us to the natural forces of the wind and the sun was very appealing in that it would limit and constrain human development." [ref]

We've been told what tidal, wave, solar, wind, biomass, hydro and geothermal have in common. Let's remember how they differ. Nothing emits as much carbon dioxide, damages the environment, is so tedious to gather, and pointless quite so much as biomass. This should have its own special category: idiot energy. Hydro and pumped storage were useful and mature before greens hijacked them and declared them instruments in their unholy war; we mustn't hold it against the technology that greens give it a RE badge. Most of the rest are intermittent sources that only work with dispatchable support; which for me really means fossil fuel, ideally gas, support. I know that nuclear power can load follow, but using it this way costs efficiency; there's nothing really to gain.

ref: Robert Stone, 2014 interview: http://energyforhumanity.org/climate-energy/podcast-robert-stone-interview/
8/28/2015 4:17 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starved for CO2

Image
This article is speculation, and yet, it is something to ponder about. During millions of years, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere had been dropping. Actually the drop had been quite dramatic between the late Jurassic (more than 2,000 ppm) to recent times (less than 400 ppm). This is no fine tuning, the difference is in the range of five to one. Important reserves of carbon in the form of ancient life remains had been trapped "forever" inside the Earth. These reserves were in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. No natural mechanism could pump back to the atmosphere those "forever" sequestered amounts of carbon. No natural mechanism...  but could the Earth naturally create unnatural occurrences to return to the biosphere that long lost carbon or, would the Earth itself slowly starve due to insufficient CO2 in the atmosphere? It was inconceivable for any plant or animal species of the time to actually extract billions of tons of ca...
Read more

550.org

Image
We are launching an alternate organization to 350.org because we believe that just wishing for something to happen (in other words for the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to go back to 350 ppm) is absurd in the light that we break a new CO2 emissions record every year. So, it makes no sense to invest time, effort and money in pursuing an impossible objective.  Let's state here in what we firmly believe: nobody alive today will ever see again 350 ppm. So, if not 350, where are we headed?  We are "easily" headed for 550 ppm, thus the name of our non-profit. Before we proceed further, let us state why we believe our non-profit will be more attractive than 350.org: We will not, ever, under any circumstances ask for donations. Hell, we won't even accept them even if somebody volunteers some money. We won't be dogmatic. We won't believe blindly in models, organizations (e.g. IPCC) or the Pope. We will strive to actually list...
Read more

Going Solar

Image
Some people insist that solar PV has achieved "grid parity" but to claim this they obviously have to consider grid connected PV. The real cost of solar PV is masked when grid connected. In order to better understand the real cost of solar PV, let's make a simplified exercise here. What would be needed to go off grid? The following: Obviously, the solar PV panels. Storage batteries A gasoline electric generator (unless you plan to store heroic amounts of electricity, you would need the backup generator). We'll consider the following parameters in our installation (feel free to substitute your own numbers): Annual solar capacity factor: 18%. Cost of the PV installation (including inverters, installation, etc.): $3 per Watt. We'll use Tesla storage batteries (the 7kW version) at a cost of $6,000 including installation. Solar panel useful life: 20 years. Batteries useful life: 10 years. Annual electricity usage: 8,400 kWh. So, this ho...
Read more