Scary Energy Scenarios:

My Real Fears on Halloween

From Wikimedia Commons

As I sit down to write this, I realize that I have been bombarded by more than the usual number of scary things this Halloween.  Of course, there are the ghosts and ghouls and goblins, the witches and werewolves, and the vampires and zombies.  But what haunts me more is the specter of an energy future resulting from decisions made on the basis of short-term profit, misinformation, and dogmatic ideologies.

So, it is not the eerie sounds emanating from the dark forest that scare me, or the creaky sounds from upstairs when I know that no one is there.  It is not the skeletons hanging from the trees and rattling in the wind. 

What really scares me is a future where we are less safe because our critical energy infrastructure is not being maintained or operated with the highest attention to safety.

What really scares me is a future where our energy and non-energy infrastructure is at risk because we failed to plan for changes in the environment, population, and emerging needs.

 

What really scares me is a future where I cannot get the energy I need because short-term pricing and market imperfections have caused valuable energy resources to shut down prematurely.  
 
What really scares me is a future where the air I breathe is dirtier because misguided attempts to manipulate the market by favoring particular technologies or handicapping others has resulted in more use of polluting sources to back up intermittent technologies.

What really scares me is a future where energy availability is restricted because not enough fuel is extracted, not enough power plants are built, and not enough transmission capacity exists because we did not find a way to balance local interests and societal needs. 

What really scares me is a future where the price of energy is pushed so high that that gulf between the haves and the have-nots becomes a chasm, and social unrest results.
 
What really scares me is a future where we become dependent on the whims of other regimes because we failed to develop our own resources or because we favored technologies that use materials that are scarce in our country.
 
What really scares me is a future where we have lost our voice on the international stage because we have taken too rigid and unrealistic a stand, or because we have failed to stay competitive in critical markets. 

What really scares me is a future where we are mired in the use of outdated technologies because we failed to invest in research and development.

What really scares me is a future where we do not realize our full potential in all areas because we are impoverished in the energy supplies that fuel advances in other areas, a better standard of living, and so much more.

 

These are my ghosts and goblins.  They pertain to all sources of energy and all parts of all the fuel cycles--fossil fuel extraction, gas pipelines, electricity transmission, nuclear power plants, windmills, rare earths, and more.  And, while Halloween will be over tomorrow, and the scary spiders and blow-up black cats and sheet-clad "ghosts" hanging from my neighbors' houses will be taken down in a few days, the things that trigger my energy fears, unfortunately, are not as easy to stuff back into boxes and store in the basement. 

I would like to think that common sense will ultimately prevail and that, in the very near future, we will exorcise the demons of shortsightedness, ignorance, and fanaticism when it comes to energy matters (as well as other matters).  Until then, I am scared.

Happy Halloween!

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Water and Energy:

                       A Close Connection

Several recent items brought home for me the very close linkage between water and energy.  In particular, one study suggests that coal and nuclear power plants are vulnerable to climate change.  The study predicts that rising temperatures could exacerbate the problems we have seen in recent years with plants having to shut down because cooling water temperatures were too high.  Specifically, they predict that electricity production could be reduced by between 4 and 16 percent between the years 2030 and 2060 due to increasing temperatures.

The authors of the study drew the conclusion that this might mean that electricity production might have to shift from coal and nuclear plants to natural gas plants, which use less water.  They appeared to jump to this conclusion without considering other options, including the use of cooling towers and the use of advanced nuclear technologies that don't rely on water for cooling.  I have seen other suggestions that more plants in the future could be sited in coastal areas, thus having access to the oceans, which would not heat up the way confined bodies of water can.

Of course, I have to agree that each of these solutions faces challenges, but so does the greatly increased use of natural gas.  The point is that there is a potential concern in the future and we need to begin to think about ways to address it.

What was even more interesting to me, however, was another article that crossed my desk, this one saying that water is also an issue for some renewables.  The article reports that solar thermal farms that are more "financeable" also potentially use billions of gallons of water.  Since some of these projects are being sited in desert areas, that could become a significant problem.  They mention one project in Nevada that would require about 20 percent of the area's water supply.

Once again, this is not a dire projection of doom and gloom.  The article identified solar technologies that use less water.  These include a technology that places mirrors on towers, producing high-temperature steam, and using a dry cooling method.  They indicated that photovoltaics require water "only" to clean the panels.  However, I understand even that can be significant, as dust can reduce the output of a photovoltaic array significantly.  Further, they say that photovoltaic arrays are typically more expensive and less efficient than solar thermal farms.  For photovoltaics as well, research continues on ways to improve the efficiency and to clean the panels without water.

While the article didn't mention it, wind produces electricity without the need for cooling water.  But as I've indicated in other posts, there are other issues associated with wind.  Therefore, wind has a role in the energy mix, but as with every technology, there are tradeoffs.  

The point of this discussion is not to conclude that we have no options.  The point is to recognize the issues associated with the water needed to produce electricity and the possible trends, and to assure that growing constraints are considered as new technologies are developed. 

On a larger scale, of course, water and energy are linked at a more fundamental level.  Just as it takes a lot of water to produce electricity from most sources, it also takes a lot of energy to produce clean water, more so in places where water for human consumption needs to be extracted from seawater. 

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Energy from a Global Perspective:

Observations from a Grand Tour

My husband and I just returned from one of those dream trips--an 8-week, around-the-world vacation, with stops in southern Japan, Cambodia, India, Egypt (fortunately, while things were still calm), Italy, France, and England.  (Yes, we are old school, and don't tell any Social Media where we are until we are back home.)

Depending on our audience, we can regale any willing listeners--or anyone we can tie to their seats--with tales of all the interesting ancient ruins we saw, make them salivate as we describe some of our best meals, or bore them to death with hundreds of photographs.

For this audience, I will do none of the above.  Rather, I will focus on some energy-related observations.  Thankfully, we avoided some of the real energy trouble spots that were in the news during our tour.  Most notably, we were not caught in China's suffocating air pollution.  And we were nowhere near any of the disputed oil and gas fields.  

Nevertheless, we had our share of experiences that reminded us of just how important energy is, how much of the world still lacks what we take for granted, and how controversial all new energy is.  

For example, despite the fact that our hotels were mostly at least somewhat upscale, there were numerous brief power outages in some places.  It was not so much the power outage that got our attention, but rather the fact that no one even paused or looked around.  The flickering of lights and fans was such a common part of the background that locals didn't even notice it.  

Then there was the beach resort hotel that acknowledged it was short of power, so although the room had air-conditioning, it was cut off when demand exceeded supply.  Needless to say, in these same places, the Internet was intermittent, and even when we had it, it was marginal.  (To be fair, there were some places in the developed world where the Internet service was also wanting, but in these cases, it was clearly the fault of the hotel, and not of the entire infrastructure.)
 
Our final stop tied all our observations together neatly.  We stayed with friends in Lincolnshire, outside of London.  Lincolnshire still has a very rural look in most places, with large farms--and with coal mines.  Despite that, we saw signs all over the countryside saying, "Say NO to Windmills."  

This somewhat surprised us, as the land looked spacious enough to support some windfarms without making a significant dent on the bucolic nature of the countryside.  In any event, it was difficult for us to see how the windmills were any worse than the several coal mines where we passed huge piles of coal along the rail line.  And in the United States, in many places, the farmers are profiting from the installation of wind turbines on their land. 

We never did figure out what the fundamental objection was.  Are the economics in the UK much different than in the US, so there is no benefit to the farmers?  Has the local population drawn a line, figuring that the coal mines are enough of a contribution to England's energy supply?  Or is it NIMBY, pure and simple?  

(To those who will argue that the windmills won't do that much to help meet energy needs, I would only respond that it would be difficult to believe that was the motivation of the locals.  After all, the signs didn't say, "Say No to Windmills, say YES to Nuclear Power Plants"!) 

In any event, the trip, in addition to being many other things, was a reminder of at least a couple of the key issues that continue to dominate the energy scene--the lack of sufficient energy supply in many parts of the world, and the lack of acceptance of new facilities to produce more energy.

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More on Wind Farms:

A Complex Picture

While I did not intend to have two consecutive posts on wind power, two things have happened since my last post that compel me to follow up. In the first place, I had more comments on this post in a shorter time than on most of my other posts, so there is clearly an interest in this topic. Furthermore, one point was raised in these comments to which I wanted to respond. Second, another news article came out since that posting claiming a positive effect of wind on cropland! As a result, I decided that I really do need to follow up on my last post.

All of the comments I received on my last post were of interest, but two raise a question in my mind that I cannot answer at this point. Both noted that the computations of land use for wind and nuclear power in my previous post neglected to include the land required for mining uranium. This point is well taken. A full comparison of technologies needs to account for all the impacts of both.

In trying to look more broadly, I see two points that need to be considered:

First, the windmills of today are not the romantic structures of old Holland. They are advanced, complex structures that use "exotic" materials. In particular, they use neodymium, a rare earth, to make a lightweight generator. Rare earths also need to be mined. At present, I have seen only a few statements about the amount of rare earths needed--it is of the order of one or two tons per wind turbine. The original context in which I saw this estimate focused on the supply issue, as China has about 95% of the world's output of neodymium, according to the accounts I read. I do not have any information on the land use requirements, but surely, if we are incorporating land requirements for mining uranium, we also need to incorporate the land requirements for mining rare earths for wind turbines.

Second, I can envision that different types of land should be treated differently in comparing energy technologies. I'm sure this will prove a controversial statement, as all land has value to someone, but I think a case can be made for comparing the use of similar types of land--say farmland--as long as other impacts, be they to the land, air, or water, are considered somewhere. In that sense, it was not completely wrong to compare the footprints of wind and nuclear power on farmland. What was wrong of me was to leave the reader with the implication that the footprint of the generating facilities was the only footprint these technologies had on land.

Perhaps when I wrote the post I had in the back of my mind the picture that appears at the top of this post, which was someone's mocked up photo of what an area might look like with a nuclear plant vs. wind turbines. This one is particularly egregious, as it shows wind turbines covering only the same acreage that a nuclear plant would occupy, neglecting the fact that those few windmills would produce far, far less power than the nuclear power plant. A different issue, to be sure, but it seemed to me that there might be several layers of misunderstanding in the public's minds--not only does this picture not represent equal levels of power production, the windmills that seem almost to vanish in the distance in the picture really have a bigger footprint than the picture implies. (Something also makes me think that something is wrong with the perspective here, but the other shortcomings of the picture overwhelm the artistic shortcomings.)

In that regard, and in the interest of trying to tell the whole story, a recent report on the work of researchers at Ames Laboratory and the University of Colorado claims some potential benefits of wind power on crops, such as keeping them cooler during the day and warmer during the night due to the air turbulence from the wind turbines. The turbulence could also help dry moisture on the plants, thus reducing the chance of fungal infections, as well as reducing the effects of frost, thus increasing the growing season. Both effects should increase crop production. I note that the article says that the effects haven't been proven yet. If true, they could offset the land use I mentioned in my previous posting. That depends, of course, on whether these early indications are borne out by further research, and what the magnitude of the effect is. This article did not address effects on livestock at all.

The comparisons of energy technologies are complex and multidimensional. I truly doubt that we are going to find a technology that is "best" in every category. In the end, society will have to make choices based on which impacts it is willing to accept to have the benefits of reliable, affordable electricity.

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Wind Farms:

The Real "Footprint"

This is one more in a series of pieces I am writing to try to examine non-nuclear technologies under the same microscope usually reserved for nuclear technologies.

I have been puzzled in the past about conflicting claims regarding the "footprint" of wind farms. A recent report and some very astute analyses by some colleagues of mine has opened my eyes. For wind farms, it seems, things are not as they first appear.

The argument made by wind advocates is that wind farms take hardly any land at all. They can be sited in the middle of farmland, and their only footprint is the small base of each tower. Crops or livestock can surround them. That certainly seemed plausible, so I have not fully understood the criticisms that the footprint of a wind farm was really much larger than the area occupied by the towers.

Let me hasten to point out that this post will address only wind farms sited on farmland. It will not address the special environmental and scenic implications of wind turbines on mountain ridges, and it will not address implications of offshore windmills. These have their own issues. I cover here only the "real" land use implications of windmills on farmland.

The report provides some numerical data on the real land use of wind farms. However, it errs in its comparisons to nuclear power, because, as a colleague has pointed out, they fail to factor in the megawatts per unit acre generated by a nuclear power plant compared to that from a windmill. Adjusting for the generation per acre makes nuclear much more land efficient--up to about a factor of 10 or more, depending on which end of the stated range you use for each. (The observation is from Margaret Harding in a communication and to my knowledge is not available on a website.)

She and others have noted other farm-related implications of windmills on farmland:

• The land requirements for rights of way to access the wind turbines.
• The added difficulty of operating large tractors and combines around the bases of turbines (probably resulting in an effective loss of the land immediately surrounding the towers).
• The sensitivity of livestock to the noise and light from wind turbines.
(There are anecdotal reports of reductions in milk production by cows.)
• The difficulty and danger of crop dusting, which is causing crop dusters in some areas to refuse to work around windmills. The net result is either application of pesticides by less efficient (and more petroleum-intensive) methods, or reduced crop production per acre.

Some of these reports are anecdotal, so clearly, this is another case where we need more facts. I doubt that these factors would rule out the use of wind farms on agricultural land. However, the ultimate findings could affect how much we can really expect such wind farms to penetrate the nation's farmland, where they can be sited with least impact, and what side effects we would have to tolerate, and perhaps, how to minimize them.

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