tallen702 wrote: Not to mention his plan for 5 million new jobs in the "green" sector are all jobs that can easily be shipped overseas or done by illegal labor for a fraction of the cost.

Not to get distracted by a side point, but this isn't true. 

"Green" jobs come in a couple of different main varieties, and they are mostly local either by necessity or by irreplacability.

Examples:

1.  Wind turbine manufacturing.  Shipping costs are HUGE for turbine nacelles, blades, and towers.  Towers are always built in-country, but they are easy to make.  Blades and nacelles are more complicated, but if there is enough of a local market the manufacturers will build local factories.  Already most of the major manufacturers have plants in the US.  With aggressive pro-wind policies, there will be many more such plants, which will employ Americans in non-outsourceable manufacturing jobs.  Michigan could be put back to work.

2.  Photovoltaic solar R&D.  This is work that theoretically could be done anywhere, but as a practical matter is done where there is the biggest concentration of eggheads.  Bay Area, Pacific Northwest, Boston, Austin, North Carolina - that is where these jobs are now, and that is where these jobs will stay, with policies that discourage brain drain.

3.  Photovoltaic rooftop installation.  This is by definition local.  Millions of hours of work for certified electricians and roofers.

4.  Solar thermal manufacturing.  Solar thermal facilities require lots and lots of mirrors and vacuum tubes, which are very expensive to pack and ship.  Local manufacturing is therefore much preferred over delivery from Germany and Israel.  The right policies would encourage this type of facility and therefore local manufacturing.

5.  Geothermal construction.  With the right policies, more geothermal facilities would get built.  By definition, these construction jobs are local.

6.  LEED construction and retrofits.  Again, local construction jobs.  Now also with local architecture.

The list goes on, but the bottom line is that these are mostly infrastructure jobs, and infrastructure generally cannot be outsourced, because it is, well, "infra."

Tallen supports McCain. Obama MUST know nothing!

Edit: Tallen '12?

Hate to say it, tallen, but you are pretty wrong on most of this...

tallen702 wrote: Bruce Banner wrote: 1.  Wind turbine manufacturing.  Yet the viability of wind-power as more than just a minor contribution to our electric grid is next to nil. There are very few places in the US where they are viable to place and then you get into the fact that many of those places are wildlife and nature preserves.

Not true at all.

The main current growth in US wind is in the farm-belt.  Wind turbines work very, very well with farms.  Siting is relatively easy, few environmental constraints, and certainly no nature preserves.  The main current problem is transmission, and that is one of the things that would have to get addressed to boost wind generation, but wind could easily account for 20% of total generation within a decade or two.

And that's just on-shore.  Offshore wind has just the same potential.  Here there are significant permitting hurdles, but that is exactly where government comes in.  With the right leadership in state and local leadership, there could be major development on both coasts and the Great Lakes.  And again, the factories will be built near the demand.

The industry certainly thinks so - this is why GE has made investments in wind, and most of the major foreign manufacturers now have facilities in the US, and more are being built.  This is is not pie in the sky future - this is NOW.  It's just a matter of whether we make the decisions to foster continued demand.  We have just scraped the surface of potential for wind energy in this country.

Solar is far more practical, especially when used in conjunction with a hydrogen-separation battery for night-time.

I am a big fan of solar, and storage is an important issue.  But storage is actually more of a concern for wind than solar, since wind tends to be counter-peak.  And hydrogen batteries are not here yet.  Soon, maybe, but not yet.

Oh, and you mean to tell me that it's cheaper to build turbine blades, nacelles and tower segments here than to build them in say, Vietnam and ship them over? If that's the case, then our Ford and GM workers won't need new jobs because it'll be cheaper to build automobiles here than to build them in china and ship them right?

Absolutely, and without a doubt.  Your car analogy fails.  Some things are easier to ship than others.  Wind turbine components do not transport cheaply.  Transportation cost can make up as much as 30-50% of total project cost for a wind project, depending on specifics.  The main reason that the foreign manufacturers are building US facilities is that GE bought Enron Wind and beefed it up.  Because of local manufacturing, GE was able to significantly undercut the foreigners, and in just a year or two GE became the market leader in the US.

And the major manufacturers DO have facilities in China.  That's where they build the turbines that they install - in China.  They certainly don't ship them here.

I can promise you this for a fact.  The wind turbine factories get built near demand.  That is true for blades and nacelles both.  Towers are built in regular steel foundries, so no special factory needed, but they are also bought from local sources.

tallen wrote: bb wrote: 2.  Photovoltaic solar R&D.  This is work that theoretically could be done anywhere, but as a practical matter is done where there is the biggest concentration of eggheads.  Yes, R&D will always stay where the intelligent folk live and work. However, development is such a small fraction of an entire industry that the pittance of jobs the R&D sector creates is just a drop in the bucket.

Not true.  All of those places I just mentioned built their economies around eggheads and R&D.  And it is those exact same guys that are now doing solar PV.  Vinod Khosla, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, for instance, just started Ausra, a new PV R&D/investment company.  Again, this is not pie in the sky - this is NOW.  SunEdison, MMA Renewable Ventures, Ausra, SPP, SunPower - the list goes on.  American companies using American eggheads to develop and build projects and equipment here in the US.

Later it will be outsourced - sure.  But only when the work has become a commodity and we don't want it anyway.  The way to fight outsourcing is to do work on the cutting edge, and THIS is the cutting edge.

Organic PV research - being done in New Jersey.  Solar thermal research - done in SoCal.  Capacitor storage research - Bay Area and Boston.

Manufacture of photovoltaic equipment is already on the rise in China and will move to Vietnam before the decade is out.

MANUFACTURE - yes.  Manufacture of PV cells is basically a commodity and not work we want.  Kyocera is the world-wide leader, and most of the other electronics companies make them as well.  Those are not the jobs we want.

tallen wrote: BB wrote: 3.  Photovoltaic rooftop installation.  This is by definition local.  Millions of hours of work for certified electricians and roofers. Yeah, because those same roofers aren't short on jobs right now... especially when Juan from El Salvador will do the installation for half the price. Again, as the technology progresses with photovoltaic systems, they'll essentially become "plug-and-play" to the point where you'll only need the electrician to set up the collection and grid systems for the house and our boy Juan will be more than happy to just plug the panels right in for way less than Joe American will be willing to work for.

I shold have focused on the electricians rather than the roofers - these systems are almost plug and play now, but you still need a certified electrician - required by law/quasi-law in every state to qualify for state rebates or net metering.  And there aren't enough solar-qualified electricians around.

One of the things that is happening in the industry is that forward-looking investors are snapping up solar installation companies.  There has been a surge in small-medium acquisitions of this kind in the strong solar markets.  Contractors are scrambling to get their electricians trained in solar installation.

Jobs are being created for solar installation electricians RIGHT NOW.  Not pie in the sky.  And these jobs aren't going anywhere either, and they are good jobs that require skill, training, and certification.

tallen wrote: bb wrote: 4.  Solar thermal manufacturing.  It is also one of the least efficient "green" energy production methods out there. The energy output of even the latest solar-thermal plants pale to that of turbine farms, and turbines aren't even as good as photovoltaic or fuel cell, and none of them are as efficient as nuclear. I seriously doubt you'll see much solar-thermal outside of Austrailia and the Mid-East.

This makes no sense, and is also wrong.

The cents-per-kWh price for solar thermal is less than half that of solar PV.  That may change, but that is where it is now.  And all of the SouthWest utilities have issued RFPs over the last 2 years for additional solar thermal plants to be built.  Within five years you will see additional solar thermal in California, New Mexico, Nevada, and probably Arizona.  There are also plants under development in Spain and other parts of Europe right now, as well as Mexico.

I view solar thermal as a patch until PV becomes more price competitive, but today it is the most viable solar technology available.

tallen wrote: bb wrote: 5.  Geothermal construction.  With the right policies, more geothermal facilities would get built.  By definition, these construction jobs are local. The question is, will Geothermal get the nod? I'm thinking no due to the inefficiency of heat-transfer engines that rely on geothermal power. The 15 separate geo-plants that are located in California near the Salton Sea combined only produce 570MW.

There is no "if".  There are more than a dozen new geothermal facilities in development near the Salton Sea, and several are already in construction.  Wells have been drilled.  It is for real, and it is NOW.

tallen wrote: In comparison, one BR-600 Breeder Reactor (which uses almost 100% of it's nuclear fuel, all but eliminating waste) puts out MORE power with less cost and far less land consumption.

Breeder reactors, on the other hand, are not now, although other nuclear technologies are perfectly fine and current.  I do support lots of more nuclear as well simply due to size, but thermodynamic efficiency is not the right question to ask.  And it is not one or the other.  Just because nuclear is "better" doesn't mean that we shouldn't use other energy sources.

Also, there are specific environmental concerns when using geothermal power, especially when condensed steam is injected back into the ground to allow the cycle to continue.

That may be true for hot rock and other experimental technologies, but most current facilities are dual-loop, and the heat source is subsurface brine.  Nothing external is pumped down.  And even then this concern is vastly exaggerated.

Geothermal liquids are also extremely corrosive which mean higher upkeep costs than other alternatives.

Yes, there are maintenance costs.  TANSTAAFL.  But that is just part of the equation.  Geothermal is less capital-intensive than, say, nuclear.  You look at the total result, you don't focus on one line item on the budget.

Not to mention the fact that spots where geothermal plants can be built eventually cool off. Several plants in Iceland have seen dramatic reductions is their output over the past decade due to shifts in the earth's mantle. Again, green, but not yet viable on the scale which you would need to make those jobs permanent.

This is such a overblown quasi-myth.  Nothing is "permanent."  Geothermal facilities have been in continuous operation for decades.  How permanent do you want them? Yes, seismic shifts could change the output.  We'll plan for it.  And one way to plan for it is to have MORE of them, so that our geothermal portfolio is geographically diversified.

Geothermal is also NOW, and is creating jobs right NOW, and will continue to do so for years with the right policies.[/quote]

You of all people should see that these jobs aren't really the "infrastructure" that you say they are.

I of all people know very well the job creation potential of renewable energy.

JohnnyHopper wrote: The green initiatives are nice but the lowest common denominator is that the ever increasing amounts of money are being taken by force and thrown at crap that actual investors have been leary of. It is easy to gamble with other peoples money and then when it pans out, to turn around and charge top dollar for the service from the same people raped to pay for the development.

lolwut?

Why do you keep dancing around nukes? Nuclear power is clean, now power and it won't be wiped out by every severe storm. I can't wait for the joys of emergency spending on a wiped out wind farm grid, year after year. If you were honest with real numbers, you could quickly determine what would be cost effective in terms of energy production.

I don't know who exactly you mean by "you," but I am certainly in favor of expanded nuclear energy.  Very much so.

But your "wind energy wiped out by storm" bit is just silly.  A nice feature of wind energy is that it is self-diversified - there are far more wind turbines in this country than any type of "big" power plant.  You could wipe out 100 turbines and it would not be a significant event.  Each turbine is small.  A single coal plant offline, on the other hand, leads to blackouts.

That said, we are aware of weather risks.  Siting wind turbines considers the local weather, of course, and we try not to put them in the middle of tornado paths.  I am not aware of a single turbine that has been ripped up by tornado in this country.  And there are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of turbines worldwide and has been for decades, yet there has never been a single large "wipe-out" event like you describe.

You are in no position to mock others for their fear of nuclear when you hold on to this irrational fear of wind turbines, DQ.

And if such a thing were to happen, the "emergency spending" would be borne by the private investors that own the wind farms and the insurance companies that cover them.

You again misunderestimate the self-diversification that is involved.

On the average, new land-based wind projects in the US use 50 acres per megawatt.  Each megawatt costs about $2MM installed.

Therefore, to run up replacement costs of, say $500MM, your natural disaster would have to take out 250 MW of turbines covering about 12,500 acres, in the middle of Kansas.  That's one heck of a storm.

And even then it is only $500MM, which won't dent the economy, and only 250MW, which won't dent the grid, since wind farms are more easy to adjust for than baseload units like coal plants or nukes.

You are fantasizing about an event that won't happen and wouldn't be a big deal even if it did.

JohnnyHopper wrote: I'm not envisioning a gigantor storm. I'm thinking of each little blip that adds up.

The little blips don't add up.  There are too many turbines.  Look at countries like Germany and Denmark where wind makes up a significant portion of their generation.  Or just look at the performance history over the last 20 years of wind power in the US.

There is plenty of data, so no need for speculation.  And the data is perfectly clear:  Wind energy is very, very reliable.

You are worried about something completely made up and unfounded.

There's also the losses of power lines and the losses over power lines. If the wind farms are in bumfrack, how much electricity is lost getting it to civilization? The wind will also not respond to peak demands like conventional power plants.

Line loss is well known and easily calculated.  It is worked into the cost of all power plants, not just wind farms.  My $2MM/MW figure (which is generous) accounts for that cost.

Loss of power lines is exactly the same for wind farms as for any other power plant.  But since wind is generally more distributed, less energy is lost from a single line lost.  Besides, most blackouts from lines out have nothing to do with power plants, and everything to do with local distribution grids and grid-sharing arrangements.  The recent New York blackout, for instance, was caused by a line out in Ohio.

These are all just more made-up bogiemen.

As to peak power - yes, wind turbines are intermittent.  No doubt about it, and this is a drawback.  We will still need peakers to load-follow.  But it is not as big of a drawback as it appears, because whenever the turbines turn, you can turn down/off a gas/diesel plant, which saves money and pollution by the second.

Once they are up, wind turbines are basically free to run, whereas fuel-based technologies have a per-kWh cost associated with their use. 

Again, this is all well known and factored into the cost.

The other issue is many people get all weepy everytime a bird gets wacked. I know there are huge obstacles from dingbats who oppose any progress. How hard do you think the ELF type groups would find it to attack multiple turbines in the middle of nowhere vs a nuke plant? Is each wind farm going to pay to keep the level of security found at conventional power plants?

Another bogieman.  There are thousands of windmills up in this country, and have been for decades.  How many terrorist attacks so far?  Zero.  And even if they did, the effect again would be minimal, due to the spread-out nature of windmills.  They could bomb all night and still not affect the grid significantly.

Yes, some idiots are worried about the birds.  The smarter ones are worried about the bats.  TANSTAAFL.  Besides, the truth, of course, is that your kitchen window kills more birds than a wind turbine.

The bottom line is I want "now power" (and "now pie"). I don't want to subsidize hippie dreams and I don't want to be at the mercy of nature for my electricity.

This IS now power.  Wind energy is now, not later.  It is not a hippie dream.  You are about 20 years behind schedule with your whining.

If all this works with only private sector money it's cool. If DC is involved in it, I'm out.

Copout.  DC is involved in everything.

JohnnyHopper wrote: I'm pretty sure you can not turn off a coal power or diesel power plant and then just flip it back on like a light swiitch. Most heavy machines I've worked with have a warm up period. I would bet good money that a cold power plant would not be back up in less than 30 minutes. If the average supporter knew this, they would panic at the thought of 30 minutes without cable TV or internet.

Coal plants can generally not be flipped on or off, but you don't - you ramp up or down, but not off.  You can usually ramp up or down 10% of load per hour.  From a cold start it takes couple of hours.

But this is why coal plants, like nukes and geothermal, are mostly baseload.  They just run.

Thankfully, there are plenty of other facilities that can be tweaked easily, like hydro, diesel and gas plants.  New natural gas plants can do a cold start in ten minutes, and are equipped with AGC (Automatic Generator Control) that causes the facility to automatically load-follow.

More importantly, this is also old news.  Dealing with intermittent generators like wind is no different than dealing with users, who are all intermittent.  It's all about balancing the generation against the load, and utilities have been doing that since the beginning of time.

As for Europe and their wind farms, what are they paying for electricity? Is it anything like their gas prices? What are their taxes like to fund it and are they forced into sustainable developemnt housing that looks like 700sqft boxes? I'm also pretty sure that their wind farms are not 800 miles from anywhere people want to live.

The better question to ask is how wind energy is impacting prices here and now.  This is more relevant and also not terribly difficult to answer.  Through a voluntary local program, I get 25% of my residential electricity from "renewable" resources (which means wind).  This costs me $0.00343/kWh, which amounts to about $2.50 per month.

On a national level, you can figure on a 1-1.5 cent per kWh premium for wind energy.  Given local retail rates that vary from 7 cents to 14 cents, that is a 8%-20% increase, depending on location - but that is on a kWh-to-kWh basis.  Nobody is talking about 100% wind nationally.  The cost of going to 20% wind nationally would be in the order of 0.2 cents per kWh.  Figure $25/year per household.

But, importantly, that is the cost NOW.  Once built, the price stays the same for 20 years, whereas gas and coal prices are not static.

agentwhale007 wrote: His PLAN is very clearly stated on his Web site.

That may be true, but it is hard to find behind all the DONATE NOW! buttons.

Good lord.