Sierra Club’s actions also reek of disengagement with professionals and mediative social processes.
Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by john prince
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Planning Engineer
Now you tell me.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by kim
Yup, John; I overreacted. After reading 420 comments, it’s more like racing 6 month olds. An important perspective from Professional Engineer and an invaluable discussion.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by kim
er, that’s from the highly professional Planning Engineer.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Peter Lang
Planning Engineer,
Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated. I have enjoyed this post and the many valuable contributions immensely. I am not an economist and it is economists who argue carbon pricing is the least cost way to reduce emissions. But like all projections, they make assumptions. When you look at them you realise they are impractical in the real world.
I have this post, just posted this afternoon, on MasterResource:
“Why The World Will Not Agree to Pricing Carbon (Part I)”
https://www.masterresource.org/carbon-tax/world-not-agree-pricing-carbon-1/ .
“This two-part series considers the probability of success of carbon pricing and an alternative approach. Part 1, ‘Why carbon pricing will not succeed’, is an edited extract from my submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into repeal of the carbon tax legislation (Submission No 2; Mr Peter Lang). Part 1 explains why carbon pricing cannot succeed unless it is global, and global carbon pricing is unlikely to be achieved, let alone sustained for the time until the job is done (centuries).
Part 2 tomorrow, ‘Why the world will not agree to pricing carbon’, evaluates the output from the most widely cited and accepted climate economics model and shows that at realistically likely participation rates, carbon pricing would be economically damaging for all this century. Costs would exceed benefits for all this century and probably forever. Negotiators recognize these facts so they will not sign up. An alternative approach is suggested that may be worth more consideration than it has received to date.
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Proponents of carbon-pricing acknowledge that to succeed it must be global. Proponents of national or regional level carbon pricing argue that these schemes will, eventually, integrate into a global carbon pricing system. Yet it is highly unlikely a global carbon pricing system will be implemented because negotiators recognise the high cost for negligible benefit for participants until there is a global system with near full participation (all human-caused GHG emissions from all countries). Therefore, national or regional schemes would have high cost for little benefit and hence not be politically sustainable.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by ordvic
Joshua reminds me of my youngest sister who used to ask a qusetion get an answer that would only lead to another question … to infinity.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by kim
It’s sort of fun trying to follow John Carter’s thoughts as he meanders slowly to the sea. Unfortunately he’s unduly deferent to mistaken authority, skeert pantless, and an idealogue. That’s an ugly combination.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by jim2
Thanks for the info. At least it wasn’t the Onion :)
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by kim
So, a typical alarmist.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by jacobress
“Denmark uses more wind power than any other country per capita.”
Wrong. Denmark PRODUCES more wind power, but is unable to use it. They export it (at almost no cost) to Sweden.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Fernando Leanme
Jim, my excel model predicts oil prices will rise again. I fed the Pacific Ocean data into the second worksheet in my climate model and it predicts that “monster kelvin wave” will turn out to be a bit below average and by July 2014 it will have dissipated.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Fernando Leanme
I assume you mean nuclear fission ?
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by jacobress
“I’d rather go by the Israeli goal to eventually achieve 10 % penetration. ”
Israel has achieved, so far, 1.25% solar production, and this may double to 2.5% by existing projects under construction. The 10% penetration was a promise made by pres. Peres at Copenhagen in 2009, which was based on no feasibility study and on nothing more than a desire to pivide a sound bite.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Planning Engineer
Peter Lang – Thanks for the link. That is helpful in explaining the challenges/futility of a sensible carbon pricing scheme.
But I have a question for you about a less than sensible approach (because some times we have to deal with those realities). Say a country or state decided to cut carbon emissions by some arbitrary amount and for some arbitrary reason. Would allocating carbon credits and allowing trading make more sense that specific plant by plant, or resource specific mandates?
I understand many of the flaws – how do you fairly allocate credits, what level do you allow. So clearly you can reward the wrong people and all that, but after it all settles it seems you make the correct decisions about mothballing and retrofitting plants. So given that regulators/legislators/administrators want to push back utility emissions is there a better way?
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by DP Wolf
It is great to hear from technical experts working from within the electricity system. It is interesting to think that their expert opinions (which tend to be cautious with respect to RE) are being suffocated by alarmist and delusionally optimistic discourse.
See Vaclav Smil for one of the few critical views of the potential for RE from within academia.
See Mark Jacobson for an example of an extreme view of the potential for RE from within academia.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Peter Lang
Planning Engineer,
Say a country or state decided to cut carbon emissions by some arbitrary amount and for some arbitrary reason. Would allocating carbon credits and allowing trading make more sense that specific plant by plant, or resource specific mandates?
Well that’s a hypothetical. But, based on the premise, I’d say the answer is yes. Carbon pricing would be the least cost way to reduce emissions in a country or region.
But i have a problem with the premise, because it would deliver no benefits other than simply reduce that country’s or regions’ emissions. It would not cut global GHG emission concentrations because the world would not participate (for the reasons explained in the post). At 50% participation rate the cost penalty for the participants is 250% to achieve a a given global emissions reduction. But even 50% participation is near unachievable even if all countries participated. EU prices only 45% of its human caused GHG emissions. If that’s the best EU can do after all these years and their dedication to achieving it and to be seen as leading the world, what hope is there of countries like Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia achieving high levels of participation?
With no prospect of delivering benefits to it’s citizens it’s not politically sustainable.
So given that regulators/legislators/administrators want to push back utility emissions is there a better way?
I assume you mean “is there a better way to cut global emissions?” as distinct from is there a better way to cut emissions from a country or region?
I believe there is. But I don’t want to preempt Part 2. Once that’s up, we can discuss it and I can expand on it. But it would actually take a post on its own, which I may or may not get around to writing.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Kevin Finnegan
+1
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by Planning Engineer
Good answer Peter Lang. I think we are views are basically the same. Local regions acting on their own can not accomplish much. But nonetheless they often decide to do things anyway and among the many dangerous tools in their arsenal, tradable carbon credits are a less damaging. I’ve been battered enough that I sometimes endorse a lesser evil (carbon credits) over the potential for a greater evil (mandated targets).
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by AK
@Jim D...<blockquote>Perhaps there’s an obvious answer, but why not use solar to make hydrogen, which is a way of storing energy until needed, and then burn that like natural gas to generate energy? Why the methane step?</blockquote>Obvious to me (see below): hydrogen is very hard to store, <a href="http://www.arhab.org/pdfs/h2_safety_fsheet.pdf" rel="nofollow">extremely dangerous</a> (explosive at mixtures from 18.3-59.0%, flammable from 4-74%), very hard to contain, and once safely contained would add considerably to weight and cost.
My father worked in the aerospace industry, so I grew up with stories about the difficulties involved in containing hydrogen. And the safety problems in that industry highlight the issue: people simply cannot be expected (IMO) to follow the types of safety guidelines needed to roll out hydrogen as a replacement for methane or hydrocarbon fuels.
Thus, for me, that essential roadblock mandates some sort of work-around for using the energy from hydrolysis. Since I'd already researched the types of energy relationships involved in converting H-H to C-H bonds, it wasn't hard to track down the info regarding methanogens and their potential to be GE'ed for this use.
I may be overreacting; the article I linked above tries to portray hydrogen as relatively safe if the correct guidelines are followed, but I just don't buy it. How often have you seen somebody get out of their car smoking at a service station? Have you worked in small-scale industry and seen how often safety procedures are blown off? IMO with widespread hydrogen this attitude would lead to a constant string of bad incidents.
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Comment on Myths and realities of renewable energy by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
P.E. ” I’ve been battered enough that I sometimes endorse a lesser evil (carbon credits) over the potential for a greater evil (mandated targets).”
It always comes down to lesser of evils. I believe that is why “demonizing” is an effective political tool.
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