[peripato]

Ha ha ha...bogus. World Nuclear Org? WTF? Really Pal?

Check out this info from a previous discussion, which gives a WAY MORE ACCURATE picture of things as they stand, today.

Actually your link gives even lower values for solar PV than my link does. My link gave a mean value of 85 tonnes co2 per GWh. Your link gives an average value of 55 grams per KWh(55 tonnes per GWh). The high value in your link is lower than the average value in mine. So thanks for making my point even stronger.

Ha, ha, ha, what are you 5?

Solar panel, windmills, tide generators? What difference does it make? They all need lots of oil, other fossil fuels, minerals plus access to cheap credit to build and maintain them. And you need a SHIT load of them every year...

Just as an example one would need to create, install and maintain about 4.5 billion solar panels over 50 years just to the replace the energy in a cubic mile of oil, which is what we roughly burn in a year...or 1.5 billion windmills...2500 nuclear reactors...or 200 3-Gorges Dams...



In other words, BAU to be maintained for several generations to come. Good luck with all of that...and you still haven't explained what where all the carbon pollution from manufacturing this infrastructure would end up?

[peripato]

Ha, ha, ha. Those renewables are just building themselves, no FF's involved at all...lol


Notice how the uptick in "other renewables" growth (solar panels, windmills and the like) after 2010, another Ponzi, coincides with the same in FF's?

Could it be that you do not get some of the basics?

First of all I would, if I were you, try to understand primary energy and the inconsistencies of these book-keeping rules. Then I would think harder about your FF input argument, it is actually useless for the next two decades, only energetical payback matters, here to use Chinese PV in order to argue against wind turbines is shitty propaganda at it best/worst.

But I understand that somebody with your shallowness uses the easy way.

Energy payback is crap, once you factor in the externalities. At best an EROI of 2 or 3:1.

[hvacman]

kublikhan -

I followed your EIA link. Interesting. Scroll down to the bottom of the chart to the rolling 12 month comparison between 2014 and 2015, which I think most accurately represents the situation. You'll note the following:

208 TWh of coal generation was REMOVED in those 12 months.
186 tWh of natural gas generation was ADDED.
6 tWh of renewables less hydro and solar were ADDED.
34 tWh TOTAL 2015 solar (both distributed and utility). No data for 2014, so we don't have the total ADDED, but it would be less.

I think the previous issue was about relative ADDED generating power and energy contributions of conventional vs renewable. It looks like a whole lot of NEW natural gas generating was added to replace a lot of OLD coal, plus new grid load. At best, the NEW renewables still only contributed 40 tWh of the NEW generation. NEW Natural gas covered the rest - 186 tWh.

I admit it. I was wrong and your link proved it. Originally, I had estimated at-best the renewables was generating 40% of the NEW. Turns out the data shows the % is only 40/(186+40) = 18%. Oops.

[kublikhan]

hvacman thanks for digging deeper into the data. Always nice to have a second set of eyes. Looks like coal is shrinking faster than natural gas is expanding. And as a whole, FFs are losing ground to renewables. As for what are the sources of new generation, the last 10 years worth of data shows new generation as about 1/3rd renewables and about 2/3rds natural gas. Looks like renewables came in slightly below your earlier estimate of 40%. But coal lost more generation than either of them:

changes in US electricity generation 2005 - 2014
natural gas 366 TWh
renewable* 201 TWh
Coal_____ -431 TWh

* excludes hydro, includes solar.

[kublikhan]

Ha, ha, ha, what are you 5?

Says the guy who can't go 1 post with out saying "Ha, ha, ha"

Good luck with all of that...and you still haven't explained what where all the carbon pollution from manufacturing this infrastructure would end up?

Same place it ends up now, except an order of magnitude smaller in quantity vs burning the FFs as a feedstock.

[ralfy]

Following what was mentioned earlier, in order to have BAU, not only will more oil be needed, but on a far higher level, together with other material resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22956470

and will involve diminishing returns:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... to-survive

and in a world with physical limitations:

https://theconversation.com/if-everyone ... uble-43905

With the need for BAU (renewables as technofixes and financial speculation to ensure economic growth), then there will come a point when limits to growth are reached:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... g-collapse

Given that, the title of the thread will take place, but not in a way that most expect.

[kublikhan]

I admit it. I was wrong and your link proved it. Originally, I had estimated at-best the renewables was generating 40% of the NEW. Turns out the data shows the % is only 40/(186+40) = 18%. Oops.

I'm afraid it's not that simple. As I mentioned earlier, fluctuating capacity factor plays a part as well. In 2013 and 2014, Natural Gas CC capacity factory was 48%. However this rose in 2015 to 56%. That means a good chunk of that 186 TWh of "added" natural gas generation was from existing natural gas installations being run longer and not new installations:

Gas and coal capacity factors moved in tandem, with coal-fired generators declining modestly in 2015, and capacity factors for natural gas-fired generators increasing, especially for combined-cycle plants. EIA said that on average, natural gas combined-cycle units across the country operated at capacity factor rates "consistently 5%-11% higher each month than either of the past two years." Through October, capacity factors for combined cycle gas plants averaged 57%, "well above" the 49% averaged in the same period of 2014 and 2013.

EIA: Gas drives wholesale power prices lower, but coal likely retains generation lead

I think using data on a longer horizon can help even out fluctuations like this. Here's how the last 5 years looked:

changes in US electricity generation 2010 - 2014
natural gas 139 TWh
renewable 122 TWh
Coal_____ -266 TWh

renewable 122 TWh
FFs______ -127 TWh

Although I do appreciate you helping me dig into the numbers

[StarvingLion]

In 2016, Renewable Energy is about financial innovations, financial engineering.

Thats the only reason there is so much interest in it because the tech as it stands today is completely inadequate as discussed by the "French Chemist" thread I started a while back.

In the best possible scenario, financial innovations will be concocted over the next 20 years (the BUBBLE of all BUBBLES) as it pertains to renewable energy finance leading up to a GUARANTEED CRASH that ends industrial civilization for good. This is not a transition. Its a visible and extremely obvious hopeless mania before total collapse.

Either the Perfect Hydrogen Economy happens right now or else a suicidal mass of useless energy harvesting junk will litter the earth that will ensure total collapse of civilization simply via resource exhaustion. There is no more time for can kicking and innovation because the bedrock (oil industry) is about to go under itself. The upcoming MONSTER renewables BUBBLE is simply an act of desperation to stall the inevitable. And its the last one.

The FRENCH CHEMIST spelled out the DOOM: renewable tech 15-30 years away from being barely acceptable....but we cannot afford the time to wait without the financial system imploding before then. So my prediction is that they will go for broke right now and never make it...collapse occurs within 5 years. The renewables scam will be stopped because this crap (PV and Wind turbine) is completely driven by massive subsidies for the next 10 years.

[lpetrich]

Is there some law of nature that states that renewable-energy harvesting devices can only be built with the help of fossil-fuel energy? I don't know of any.

The first renewable-energy systems have to be built with the help of fossil-fuel energy, but as more and more gets running, then later systems can be built with much of their energy coming from renewable sources.

Likewise I wouldn't be surprised if the first car makers got their supplies in horse-drawn wagons.

[vtsnowedin]

Is there some law of nature that states that renewable-energy harvesting devices can only be built with the help of fossil-fuel energy? I don't know of any.

The first renewable-energy systems have to be built with the help of fossil-fuel energy, but as more and more gets running, then later systems can be built with much of their energy coming from renewable sources.

Likewise I wouldn't be surprised if the first car makers got their supplies in horse-drawn wagons.

In North America I'll go you one better. The Hydro Quebec and Pasny New York hydro power added to the Columbia river Hydro on the Pacific coast can build all the renewable energy infrastructure you need.Alcoa has used the hydro Quebec power to smelt aluminum for decades.

[KaiserJeep]

One clarification to the prior analysis: the EPA regulations on carbon dioxide emissions established by Obama are largely responsible for the increase in natural gas and the decrease in coal as energy sources for our electrical power grid.

These regulations sparked the conversion of literally hundreds of coal fired steam turbine plants to burn natural gas in place of pulverized and powdered coal. Such a conversion is relatively cheap as substituting one hydrocarbon for another does not change the basic steam boiler and turbine design. Of course, it also did not hurt that (due to widespread use of hydraulic fracking of gas wells) the price of gas declined steadily, while (due to widespread coal exports from America to China) the price of coal rose steadily.

Give the devil his due - hundreds of steam turbine plants converted from coal to gas means that our power grid now sources about 33% of it's energy from dirty coal, down from 58% only 4 years ago. Burning a light hydrocarbon such as natural gas produces only 40% of the carbon dioxide of burning the witches brew of heavier hydrocarbons in coal - and releases far less radioactivity into the air than does coal. Additional savings result from the fact that coal does not have to be transported via rail to the power plants (gas is transported in pipelines) and coal does not have to be crushed and ground into powder form for burning (idling a lot of machinery), and burning gas does not require the extensive stack scrubbing tech that burning coal requires to reduce emissions. These steam turbine plants are also "baseline power" that is online 24X7, unlike much of the renewables. Whether or not the SCOTUS upholds the EPA regulation or (as seems most likely) sets it aside because the POTUS exceeded his authority is actually irrelevant, you cannot claim that substituting gas for coal is anything but a huge success as an environmental policy.

The net/net is that the US of A is a lot healthier place to be living today, whereas 4000 people per day die from inhaled coal emissions in China, some portion of which come from imported American coal. (Note also that this state of affairs is their choice, just as a cleaner environment is our choice in the US of A.)

Note also (I just have to say it ) that burning coal in China rather than in the US of A where we have strict standards for power plant emissions does NOTHING WHATSOEVER to benefit Global Climate Change - in fact, this change brought about considerable actual damage to that goal, since coal is now transported halfway around the world using petroleum bunker fuel on ships, and then burned in power plants with no effective stack scrubbing.

The figures I quoted are found in the source document in post #1 of this thread.