Kyoto's Footsteps - December 3, 2007
I have just read the article "Kyoto's Footsteps" and felt that I must respond. The implication that there is now scientific consensus, and that all responsible scientists agree that global warming is caused by man cannot be let stand. There is no such consensus, and there are still a great many climatologists that proclaim we have absolutely no way to check such an assumption. I am not a climatologist, but there are many responsible researchers (not paid by oil companies) who strongly condemn the UN for their global warming positions. The claim that global warming is even occurring is based on computer modeling, and as I understand not one of these models has ever been successful when tested against reality. There are current findings that ocean temperatures and cloud development could significantly affect results, and these have not been included in the models.
The primary reason for the huge push toward "Kyoto taxes" is so that left-leaning politicians can impose there will on the people and generate more revenue to support socialism at the expense of capitalism. It already appears to be working in Europe on a small scale, and taxpayers in Spain and elsewhere are footing the bill.
There are many who now worship the "God of Global Warming." I would enjoy seeing a bit more balance in future articles.
Dr. Laurence F. Wagner
Orlando, FL
Your Kyoto's Footsteps article was informative and valuable. The key point about the Bali negotiating process may be that it will take time and cooperative effort by the international community, including nations, global institutions, and multinational corporations, among others, to address climate change. The issue is still controversial for some, but accepted as real now, even by the Bush Administration, regardless of whether it is anthropogenic, which in my opinion is a distraction.
Differentiated approaches will be necessary as developing countries still seek to grow toward US standards of living. Technology alone will not solve the problem, but will play a critical role. A worthwhile proposal has recently been put forward by the Clean Energy Group.
Some free market purists will resist a cap-and-trade plan. Capitol Hill insiders say utility lobbyists have prevented Congressional adoption of the Lieberman-Warner bill, but a plan is likely to pass eventually, especially since the alternative is a carbon tax, which has been advocated recently by Greg Mankiew, former chief Administration economist and Harvard professor.
Addressing climate problems will not be easy, and it is unlikely that whatever ambitious goals are set will be met, but achieving mutual gains (and avoidance of losses) will show that countries can cooperate within market contexts, as well as those that agree to some limits.
Nick Gill
Newton, Mass
Your article on global warming omits important information.
Transportation by auto, truck and plane is a major contributor of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These releases can be greatly reduced by use of high speed inter- and intra-city rail powered by electricity produced in nuclear power plants.
This would also relieve congestion in airports and the sky and on our roads and highways.
Most important is that Americans wake up to the challenges of our energy crisis that began in 1970 when we lost ability to produce enough oil to meet our demands.
The world is on the verge of losing ability to produce enough oil to meet world demands.
Clinton Bastin
Chemical Engineer/Nuclear Scientist
US Department of Energy (Retired)
The line in your piece that "The U.S. position is that a gradual phase-in of emissions cuts is better than required and rapid reductions. Such an approach would assure greater success without creating economic disruptions" has both some wisdom and some serious concerns depending upon degree. As in most circumstances, the longer time you set to accomplish a certain goal, the more options you leave open. Like Buckminster Fuller I like to look at it in terms of navigational allegories. If you are going to fly sixty miles and you are one degree off course and you take no action to correct your course, at the end of the sixty miles you will be equal to one miles off course and forced to make a drastic correction right near the end. This is bad navigation at best and dangerous at worst. If you correct your course early in the flight and gradually throughout, you will not be forced to take drastic action toward the end.
One of the best strategies I have seen to gradually meet a goal of climate stabilization has come out of Princeton via professors Steven Pacala and Robert Socolow who have developed what are termed "stabilization wedges". They have the beauty of: 1) using multiple technologies currently available or at point of pilot project; 2) are implemented over a 50 years period; 3) reductions grow at a certain rate each year and are cumulative as CO2 is retained in the atmosphere for 100 years after being released 4) it also provides for carbon growth during this same period; 5) "connects the dots" (tactics) on any number of disparate plans; 6) appears to be somewhat scalable in that a state (maybe even a business) might use it in goal-setting; and 7) possibly offers a focus on what will be a very long term problem with long term solutions. In addition to these, it works well with no regrets strategies that focus on other than climate mitigation as the prime aim ! but also alleviates the climate change--such as reducing reliance on risky imported oil and LNG as a national security concerns.
It is akin to the insurance policies we all buy year in/year out never knowing with 100% certainty whether we will have a need to use them but they are there --- just in case. I would hope the climate skeptics can even appreciate some of these arguments.
Joel N. Gordes
Environmental Energy Solutions
In your article, you inadvertently call CO2 a pollutant. A substance is not a pollutant until it is shown to be hazardous to the health of living things or the environment. At this point, we know that the mean global temperature is rising. We know that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. We do not know which is cause and which is effect. There is a large cadre of people who claim that CO2 is driving temperature, but they seem to ignore that in previous warm periods on earth, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere lagged behind the temperature increase. In other words, it is premature to call CO2 a pollutant, it may simply be an indirect indication of global warming.
More importantly, however, until we have better evidence, I for one cannot support carbon taxes or carbon cap-and-trade schemes based on the assumption that CO2 is a pollutant. The negative impacts of these costly programs - loss of competitiveness and thus jobs, lower standard of living - on the vast majority of our citizens (and the disproportionate impacts on the poor) cannot be justified until we know that there is a real benefit. Many "professional environmentalists" espouse the Precautionary Principle - "proponents of a new potentially harmful technology must show the new technology is without major harm before the new technology is used" (from Wikipedia). Imposing carbon constraints may drive our price of electricity up by 50-100%, depending on how it's accomplished; costs of automotive fuels are likely to rise as well - driving up the costs of everything we produce and of everything we buy. On that basis alone, the US should undertake no such c! arbon-constraining actions until there is a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue from these actions, or that the benefit of constraining carbon will outweigh the costs.
Thus, I argue that our best national approach is to ignore carbon (until we can better predict the consequences of carbon constraints) and concentrate on reducing the amount of energy we use (constraining carbon is based on increasing the release of energy from the earth and its atmosphere - why not reduce the amount of energy produced in the first place?). Of necessity, this will reduce the amount of carbon we produce. If carbon is later implicated as the cause of global warming, we will have already begun to reduce our carbon footprint but without producing many of the worst consequences. If carbon is ultimately found to be an effect and not the cause of global warming, then we will have concentrated our efforts on solving what I believe to be the real problem - too many people using too much power. And if we're lucky, we Americans can then lead the world in a new way of life that uses less resources but achieves an even higher standard of living.
M. J. Plodinec
Aiken, SC
Sinking Water and Rising Tensions - December 5, 2007
Since your article mentions nuclear generating stations rather prominently, it seems only reasonable that you should have cited the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station scheme. PVNGS, at arguably one of the most water -challenged sites in the U.S., uses recycled wastewater from the city of Phoenix for its cooling water requirements. Let's widen the perspective a bit!
Don Giegler
Thanks for your great story on the connection between electric power production and water consumption. As we move into the Greenhouse Century and begin to experience the "global weirding" effects that Thomas Friedman talked about earlier this week, we'll have to rethink the power infrastructure we built in the last century.
Thanks also for pitching the importance of making efficiency first, the cheapest cleanest way to "make" electricity-and to save water both!
Leslie Glustrom
Boulder, CO
The subject article is not up to your normal standards. It seems that you have been overcome by the obfuscation of the fossil-fuel generation industry. You article doesn't seem to distinguish between "possible future" fossil plant cooling technologies and the reality on-the-ground today. The data I have seen indicates that power consumes 40% of our freshwater across the country, and 98% of that is boiled away in the plant cooling processes. Certainly it is possible to reduce the water consumption to close to zero, but that has a fairly high cost.
Your article (uncharacteristically) seems to veer between accounts of shutting down nuclear capacity for lack of water in Georgia (the reality) and statements that "Most plants today use "once-through cooling" in which nearly all the water is returned to the source." Simply not true unless you are referring to "new and proposed plants", and you say nothing about the cost.
Water is a HUGE issue in the west as your article indicates, and it is critical that articles such as yours provide accuracy in this complex issue.
Tom Conroy
President
Wasatch Wind, Inc.
At Florida Power & Light's planned West County Energy Center, FPL intends to increase the power-generating capacity of the plant from 3,300 megawatts per day to 3,800 megawatts. To avoid the drought-like conditions expressed in "Sinking Water and Rising Tensions Dec 5" about 21 million gallons a day of treated sewage from throughout south Palm Beach County, Lake Worth and West Palm Beach will be used to cool the plant's generators. The use of treated sewage, euphemistically termed "reclaimed water" negates FPL's previous plans calling for using water from underground aquifers.
Florida along with other rapid growth and water scarce states [CA, NV, TX] have mandated reclaimed water for non-potable purposes e.g. landscape and golf course irrigation. Reuse of treated sewage has been implement from the 1970's [Lake Tahoe, CA and Dan Sewage Reclamation Project Rehovot, Israel] to the present; cost-effective technology has been developed to achieve treatment viability - protecting public health and using demonstrated technology. Perhaps other electric utilities and regulators should consider FPL's example and explore use of treated sewage as a viable source of cooling water.
Dr. Richard W. Goodwin, P.E.
Environmental Engineering Consultant
LNG's Prognosis - December 7, 2007
The article, "LNG's Prognosis" paints a generally rosy picture of the benefits of increasing natural gas imports.
I strongly disagree with this perspective. The U.S. already imports 2/3 of its oil. This has tied us to unstable areas of the world such as the Middle East and is a major factor in our involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Becoming dependent on imported natural gas promises to make us as dependent on imported natural gas as we already are on imported oil. A report from the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers has projected that global natural gas production will peak around 2025 and then go into permanent decline so long term natural gas supplies are hardly reliable. Natural gas can be converted into synthetic diesel fuel so in the long run the cost per BTU for natural gas will tend toward parity with the price of oil (natural gas is currently less than half the price of oil per BTU). There will be increasing pressure to divert natural gas to making synthetic diesel for use as a transportation fuel further reducing the supply of natural gas.
The long-term solution is to move away from all fossil fuels including oil and natural gas. Becoming dependent on imported LNG will only dig us deeper into the hole we are already in with imported oil.
Michael Winkler
Research Engineer
Schatz Energy Research
Humboldt State University
It would be helpful to people interested in furtherance of LNG importation to remind readers--and the community at large--that there are 13 LNG storage (peak shaving) facilities in the U.S. as well as import terminals, which get so much attention in the press.
When the NIMBY's come out to alarm common folk about potential terrorist targets and fiery death, they usually don't like to acknowledge that we have liquefied storage amongst us in many more places. I know of two within an hours' drive of my own office [Carlstadt, NJ and Philadelphia].
Many of these are situated in close proximity to residential. One sits a mile away from Giant's Stadium and the Meadowlands Sports & Entertainment Complex (talk about a post-9/11 remake of "Black Sunday").
Matthew Held
Signaling for Energy Efficiency - December 10, 2007
I read your article today about energy efficiency and the need for standards. Some of the problems we have with Standards are they limit the creativity of the marketplace if they are too restrictive. While there are economies of scale and benefits of interoperability of devices, new technologies are quickly being developed and the upgrade potential of systems is a much more important feature in this information age. The utility industry needs to accept that the historical long term investments in long lasting reliable STANDARD technologies is a relic from the industrial age and part of the reason the electrical system is antiquated and needs billions of dollars of investment. We are currently launching the Building Intelligence Quotient Rating system developed for the Continental Automated Building Association. In just the period of time since 2003 when we started the BiQ project, many new innovative building automation technologies like the Zigbee wireless and the HARTMA! N loop Chiller optimization program have arrived in the marketplace. We are already working on adding the new issues such as Demand Response and GRIDWISE interoperability to the rating of an Intelligent building that contributes to it being GREEN and Sustainable!
Perhaps we discuss an article on the BIQ and the other efforts that CABA is going forward with as part of their new Roadmap noted in the Executive summary attached.
David Katz
Building Intelligence Quotient Consortium
Demand control increases energy efficiency only to the extent that the last generators called into service on-peak are less efficient than the balance of fleet; and, that grid losses on-peak are higher than off-peak.
Energy efficiency involves using more efficient devices and/or techniques to perform a function.
Energy conservation is doing with less or doing without.
Using a condensing gas furnace to heat your home results in increased energy efficiency, compared with using a less efficient furnace, regardless of thermostat setpoint.
Setting your thermostat down one degree in the winter results in energy conservation, compared with maintaining the higher temperature, regardless of furnace efficiency.
Driving your Prius hybrid, rather than your Highlander hybrid, to the grocery store for a quart of milk increases energy efficiency.
Choosing to drink water, or use powdered milk, until you have to go to the store for other things as well is energy conservation.
Edward A. Reid, Jr.
President
Fire to Ice, Inc.
China's Nuclear Power Aspirations - December 12, 2007
China business operations differ from those of the western world; consider the case of lead containing paint in children's toys, contaminated pet food, contaminated human food. Just what does China manufacture that one considers high quality?
Hence, its nuclear ambitions will continue until too many Chinese components in the plant cause a major disaster - remember the USSR. China, by itself, is incapable of building and operating nuclear power plants.
China's current ambitions may be to purchase one plant than make Chinese copies just like China does with other technologies. This is a path to disaster and we should not consider their lofty plans as though China operates like the West.
Bruce Gerhold
Bartlesville, OK
Grooming Wind - December 14, 2007
One year's worth of weather data is inadequate to define the climatology of an area or region. Is this another example of researchers making recommendations outside their field of expertise? When I was at the University working on my master's degree in BioClimatology, we used 20 years of historical weather data (wind direction, speed, and temperature) to define the "Wind Climatology" of a site. We found that parametric statistics were invalid, so an average is meaningless. We used non-parametric statistical analysis methods to create an annual "Wind Rose" for each site. Creating a statistically significant "Hourly" wind rose for a site is a significantly more difficult issue, although worthy of a researchers time and effort. If we had this statistically significant "Hourly Wind Rose", then and only then could their analysis proceed and be considered valid.
Making recommendations for an industry where the commodity being produced is a waste product a tenth of a cycle after it is produced needs to be left to the experts in the field.
Joseph E. Childs
Energy Software Solutions
Hope no one was paid for the 'study'. I might be mistaken but electrical distribution grids already exist, but due to NIMBY additional or expanding of existing is very difficult. Some one may recall a large northeast blackout when something failed, was that something a distribution grid. Actually it was a so-called super grid. Comparing a European country to the United States is an old poor comparison, maybe compare a European country to one of the states of United States would be more accurate.
Don Harouff
You may be able to get 30% dependable capacity in the plains states, but in California the combined Northern/Southern California wind plants only produced at about a 5% capacity during the Summer 2006 heat wave. Similarly I've looked at hourly generation data from the Alberta ISO website and seen many days when not a single one of their wind farms were producing output.
Beyond that, the economic value of connecting all of the Midwest wind plants at a single location eludes me. You get the same overall capacity value, but more transmission value, by spreading them over a large geographic region than by having all of the wind output injected at a single point. Say you have 3000 MW worth of wind all injecting at a single site. You might still have output ranging from 1000 MW to 2500 MW at any given point in time. Nobody is going to want the equivalent of a 2500 MW power plant with wild daily fluctuations injecting at one point in the grid.
Wade Schauer
Vice President
Global Energy Decisions (A Ventyx Company)
The Wind Energy Industry simply do not want to recognize that they only supply energy and that dispatchable Power or Capacity is not possible. Installing more and more WTG's and complicated interconnects as well as new special transmission lines, comes a high cost and subject to faults and failure.
Wind Energy can be dispatched on the Demand cycle and guarantee capacity, better payments and better utilization of high $/kW infrastructure. Bulk and distributed Energy Storage makes this possible, and the current transmission systems can be better utilized at night when a lot of Wind Energy is available. The Storage Systems can be located closer to load centers and not taxing power delivery when long Transmission lines are loaded during the day. Bulk Energy Storage such as Pumped Hydro has demonstrated the value, Bulk Energy Storage such as CAES (compressed air energy storage) can geologically be located in 85% of the continental USA. NG storage has demonstrated that very well.
Storage is not inexpensive, nor is Wind considering the under utilization of installed capacity. The added value of Energy Storage meeting power demand, Voltage Regulation, Frequency Control, Spinning Reserve and avoidance of installing fossil plant to support Wind, as is currently being done. CAES is more than competitive with mid-range CC power plant currently being used and installed for Wind back up. Why pay the Wind Industry incentives when Energy Storage can solve the problem.
Septimus van der Linden
BRULIN Associates LLC
I read with great interest the concept of interconnecting wind farms to make a more stable power source. Only someone who has never been to some of the wind farms and who lives in academia could come up with such an idea. Things to consider:
1. Wind farms are by nature isolated from each other and the load center.
2. Power lines to the wind farms are a major cost of a project and no one wants a power line in their back yard.
3. Wind farms are literally thousands of miles apart from each other so connecting them would be a very expensive proposition.
4. An unstable, unpredictable power source + An unstable, unpredictable power source= a stable reliable power source? This is definitely new math. In the real world there is just as high or higher probability of two unpredictable sources being available as unavailable.
I was always amazed in college when we would do the math and prove a concept and look at all the ASSUMPTIONS that we made to make it work. Now in the real world I see that most of the assumptions can't be made because somewhere along the line they have to be dealt with in reality.
Wind is a great energy source but it has to be looked at realistically. They need a lot of wind to get started and even more to make full load. The Wind Industry likes to talk about wind speed in meters/ sec while the public thinks in miles per hour. So when the Wind Industry say 7 m/s everyone thinks not much of a wind as 7 mph is only a slight breeze but what they are saying is 15 mph which is a very windy day in most places.
If you could put up a series of wind farms between Amarillo and Lubbock TX and inner connect them you would have one of the most continuous sources of power possible. But it would still only have a capacity factor of near 40%, which is high for the overall wind industry, so there would still need to capacity available to cover the load. As Thomas O. Gray Deputy Executive Director/Director of Communications American Wind Energy Association has said, wind energy is an energy source, not a capacity source. This is a misconception that is wildly held by the public that needs to be clarified. A 100 MW of installed wind capacity is not the same as 100 MW of installed coal capacity. On any given day the 100 MW of wind may or may not be available for use and it is entirely up to mother and the weather if it is available. Whereas the coal capacity is available 24/7. This is something that has to be made known to the general public or one day they will wake up freezing in the dark ! on a calm day wondering why all the wind mills aren't making power.
Philip T. Flowers, P.E.
Senior Field Engineer
Mobotec USA
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