If the federal government doesn’t act, policy developments at the state level might promote clean energy instead. At the end of last week, as the stock market tumbled, ten northeastern states launched the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first U.S. cap-and-trade system. On Thursday, the ten states participated in an auction for 12.5 million one-ton carbon emission permits. The bidding occurred as numerous journalists speculated anxiously (remember the European Trading Scheme) about the results, which they had to wait through the weekend to receive. With that information now available, Reuters reports that the auction generated $39 million for the participating states. And Keith Johnson, at the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog, surmises that demand for the permits “was actually pretty strong,” though not strong enough to make them as expensive as hoped.
At any rate, the Western Climate Initiative, a similar cap-and-trade pact among seven states and four Canadian Provinces whose broad outline was released last Tuesday, is “more ambitious,” concluded New York Times reporter Felicity Barringer on the Green Inc. blog. But that plan, which won’t begin until 2012, still has been many “obstacles” to face in both conception and implementation, according to two stories by the Associated Press. And even if both plans were to succeed, as one source told Johnson in his Journal post about the northeastern cap-and-trade scheme, regional policies just won’t cut it. According to Johnson, that:
[P]asses the buck back to Senators McCain and Obama. How will the U.S., shackled with the double whammy of a possible recession and the cost of the financial bailout package, muster the resources to launch a nationwide, economy-wide climate-change scheme?
What he really means is a nationwide, economy-wide energy scheme. Obama and McCain don’t talk about cap-and-trade, a climate policy, much these days. With the economy tumbling, they try to keep it positive by talking about investing in clean energy or energy independence. It used to be that those regulatory and market-based approaches were just two sides of the energy package’s coin. Wall Street’s slow, and then alarmingly rapid, decline may have changed that. The question for journalists is whether energy policy will be the victim of, or part of the solution to, that crisis.
Nice story, Curtis. It's interesting to think about potential connections between energy and the financial crisis and the economic bailout. I noticed yesterday (on www.fool.com) that the three stocks with the greatest percent gain yesterday, the day that the stock market plummeted on news that the House had voted down the $700B bailout, were all related to alternative energy:
* Vera Sun Energy (up $1.80 or 81.2%): production and sale of ethanol
* U.S. Geothermal (up $0.69 or 42.86%): geothermal energy
* Beacon Power Corp (up $0.50 or 40.0%): flywheel energy storage systems.
-- Kim --
Posted by Kim Kastens on Tue 30 Sep 2008 at 04:42 PM
Re: Freidman's Green book
So how is all this green stuff supposed to do any good?
1. The combination of windmills and airplane motor backup uses more natural gas than CCGT. CA ISO assigns 20% windmill utilization. Nobody anywhere distains to publish windmill utilization. Not hard to figure out why: everybody else's field data is worse than the CA ISO number. 20% windmill utilization means 80% airplane motor backup utilization. Airplane motors running at 35% efficiency 80% of the time uses more natural gas than CCGT running 100% of the time at 45% efficiency.
2. Nobody has been able to get wet geothermal to work on any significant scale. All successful geothermal sources are dry steam. All dry steam sources were exploited decades ago. Wet geothermal mean hot water that is hypersaline. More than 20% by mass salt. As soon as heat is extracted, hypersaline effluent turns to gooey-corrosive-concrete. ICK! what does not corrode away immediately, immediately clogs up. Also thermal efficiency is 10% versus 40% for a coal plant. This means cooling water consumption is 4 times that of a coal or CCGT power plant. Already no cooling water West of Texas.
3. GWe solar energy can be done using reversible separation and mixing of ammonia and water. Collector area is roughly same as for solar PV with batteries. Difference is that the first GWe capacity of does not deplete all available resources. There is not enough Pb in the world to make enough energy storage for more than about 2 GWe. Enough solar energy to offset World CO2 will require a collector larger than Texas.
4. If somebody gives me a solar PV system for free, my property taxes and insurance will go up by more than my present annual electric bill. I used 3300 kWh over the last year, including the September 2007 hot spell, when you could not buy an air conditioner anywhere. 3300 kWh at 13 cents/kWh marginal cost is $430/y. Property taxes on a 20,000 solar PV system under Prop 13 would be $250/y. My insurance is roughly equal to my property taxes, so add another $250/y. Insurance companies will probably start excluding solar systems when hardware store parking lot contractors start falling off roofs. Washing an energized electrical device is an act of natural selection.
5. The greenies recently came out against carbon sequesterization from coal plants. Said it will arrive too late to do any good. Besides if the geopressurized CO2 is released, 3% of the original generation is obtained. Poooffff! One GWe free power is available anytime in the future for each 33 GWe worth of coal power that was sequestered.
6. Electric cars will save negligible energy. Battery efficiency under load is roughly 50%. Also the Tesla carries a half tonne batteries. Gasoline engines are 20% efficient. Diesels hit 25% or so in use. Also coal plants lose 10% of the energy in transmission. So my 60% efficient MHD coal plant delivers 55% to Los Angles, and the battery loses half of that. Overall efficiency is 27.5% in a two tonne car. Aluminum gasoline car can come in at 1 tonne and will therefore use less fuel. It gets worse. Heavy cars stop worse and will require outlawing ice cream trucks.
7. My numbers indicate that the carbon tax will have to be $1000/tonne-C if existing coal plants are to be replaced by CCGT. Nobody seems to publish numbers with any basis. Even 1000 USD/tonne-C may not be high enough if somebody develops MHD-coal, resulting in 60% thermal efficiency from coal plants.
So does anybody vet this stuff? Neither Tipane nor Gore in his movie distain to say the N-word. You might inquire with these people: what if the plan don't work (from Roots). Better yet, ask if there is a plan, other than crowing: "renewable energy." I suspect there is no plan other than perhaps making Kim Jung iI king of the world. Ramon is a little too old. North Korea is that dark spot on the Lanstat photos between South Korea and China.
Posted by william Ernest Schenewerk, Ph.D. on Tue 30 Sep 2008 at 06:28 PM
It’s a quite difficult decision for any politician choosing between more bailout packages or letting the free market economic principles take care of the failed businesses, whether it is the financial institutions or automakers. The main focus should be defending the interests of middle-class Americans and creating a stable economic system that will guarantee long-term stability and sustainability. But here we also can face more challenges, since right now the Washington politicians are talking about the second large bailout package. If we bailout financial institutions and other industries again, when are they going to ask for the third bailout package? Or fourth? Maybe this is a time to let free market economy work rather than keep bailing out large, failed corporations? After all, it is the small and medium size businesses that create vast majority of middle-class jobs in America, not the large corporations. Maybe the government is better off to replace banks in lending practices and directly give loan packages with low interest rates to small and medium size businesses? That might work better and have a direct, immediate impact on economy and the middle-class America…
Posted by David Dzidzikashvili on Sat 17 Jan 2009 at 10:28 AM