I've been producing editorial materials for a utility company for several years, and I worked with the Union of Concerned Scientists when writing an article for the Times about the environmental effects electric car charging, so I've gotten pretty deep into the electrical grid, how it functions, an the problems involved in the necessary transition to cleaner power.
In the U.S. the utility companies are private enterprise and are beholden to their stockholders. Even small changes are expensive, so they have to be cost effective or paid for by rate increases. And a vast majority of those who want clean energy don't want to pay for it. Government can't afford to pay for it -- unless, of course, a tax increase is part of the package. Legislation has mandated a specific amount of clean energy in most states. In Michigan, the utility companies have to reach 10% by 2015, and they have invested in wind farms and biomass, while creating programs to help homeowners pay for solar installations in exchange for their RECs -- basically the credit for the clean energy. Solar is fine when it's on the roof and hooked up to the home electrical system, but it's still expensive. Wind farms are very expensive, and most communities want them. But they don't want them here. They want them in the next county. And of course once the wind farm is built, it's useless until it's attached to the grid, which means a new high-tension line has to be created. Most of them go underground these days. Again, that's very expensive. And, again, no one wants the cable to run anywhere near the place where they live. One of the best answers to achieving some measure of cleaner energy is natural gas. It's somewhere around 60% cleaner than coal -- our major source of electricity -- and it's plentiful. While we can talk about eventually depleting oil reserves (in several hundred years), it's hard to imagine that we could ever deplete natural-gas reserves. Of course much of what's available has to be obtained via hydraulic fracturing of shale layers, and environmentalists have seized on that as today's most fashionable issue. It's actually a safe process when handled correctly. The big producers have handled it well, but some small wildcat outfits have given it a bad name. A reasonable amount of government regulation and follow-up inspection can fix that. Biomass is a good answer, but again it's expensive to implement and useless until the generating station is connected to the grid. Most landfills can generate a fairly substantial amount of electricity and/or natural gas. We need to be using as many as possible, but that would still be a drop in the bucket. And nuclear shouldn't be ruled out. Closed-cycle or holding-tank cooling systems can solve the water problem, and when plants are built correctly and without the shortcuts that were taken in Japan, they are safe. Chernobyl shouldn't even be cited as an example. It was a primitive mess of an installation and doomed from the start. Public perception is probably the biggest problem for nuclear now. Unfortunately, the grid is going to get dirtier before it gets cleaner, as more and more nukes are being shuttered. So,yes, talk is cheap. Clean power, on the other hand, is very expensive. Paul -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
