Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

[SixFoot]

In spite of massive alternative energy failures over the last few years, more and more people (people who are more well off than me, or very DIY savvy) are investing in solar and wind power to supplement their energy usage, which is also conserving fossil fuel usage. I say good on those who are able to invest.

California has horrible droughts and I'm sure water evaporation from their canals isn't helping any either.

Indian water canal topped with solar panels to conserve water, conserving land, and producing 1mW of renewable energy.

With energy prices necessarily skyrocketing, why not make investments like these instead of flashy eurotrash-style railways?

This Conservative supports economical, alternative solutions like these, but if we're going to make serious strides in weaning ourselves off of so much oil and foreign dependence (especially on the filthy middle east OPEC), can we also take this kind of clean energy more seriously and start investing in a few more? It seems like we're the only people in the world who can't build anything viable for our long term benefit.

Three Years After Fukushima, Japan Approves a Nuclear Plant

In the meantime, could we please also expand and renew contracts for producing more oil/coal/gas on federal lands to be on par with the rest of the resource booms? I don't know about you people, but I could sure use a break on the prices of fossil fuels.

As oil boom continues, there’s no end in sight for job growth

This country could so easily have its cake and eat it too on both energy demands and types of energy production. So what's REALLY stopping us from using ALL of our resources on the road to finding complete independence on energy?


Discuss.

 

[Mr. H.]

Not with the EPA on the loose, and Obama threatening the oil and gas industries with over $40 billion in new taxes.

 

[hadit]

What's stopping us is politics.

 

[deltex1]

This country could so easily have its cake and eat it too on both energy demands and types of energy production. So what's REALLY stopping us from using ALL of our resources on the road to finding complete independence on energy?

Obabble.

 

[Rikurzhen]

In spite of massive alternative energy failures over the last few years, more and more people (people who are more well off than me, or very DIY savvy) are investing in solar and wind power to supplement their energy usage, which is also conserving fossil fuel usage. I say good on those who are able to invest.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that these decisions are rational. For instance, on a cost per mile basis the rational choice is to buy a cheap Hyundai rather than a Mercedes Benz and yet people buy luxury cars. Something else is driving that decision. Same dynamic in play here. Most likely a philosophical desire for self-sufficiency, even if not cost effective. Or a desire to express one's intent to be environmentally friendly, though this likely doesn't actually produce any environmental benefits.

The projects that have failed have failed in reference to objective metrics. Those metrics aren't really driving individual decisions. Do we really want to see the Federal Government buying Mercedes and Ferraris for their automobile fleets? Society level versus individual level decisions don't really overlap.

I understand the appeal of some of these motivations. People get a nice fuzzy comfortable feeling when they stock up their pantry, all that food there makes them feel tingly with security. Same with having solar or wind on your property, it tingles you with feelings of self-sufficiency.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I think we should pursue both. Why not use the sun, waves and geothermal?

 

[Mr. H.]

It's always confounded me why there are not more diesel passenger cars on the road. In Europe and elsewhere, they represent the majority of such vehicles.

 

[flacaltenn]

Preventing water evaporation from canals can be done a LOT cheaper than using $$Bills of solar panels. The question should be -- What real role do they play as "an alternative energy" source. For every MW of solar that you install, you need to specify whether it's primary purpose is to reduce the 20% daytime peak -- or whether it has to have a RELIABLE PRIMARY source to back it up on the grid when it's NOT available.

Solar PV is a PEAKER technology -- not a backbone grid generator. You can only use it to relieve (sometimes) daytime peak usage. And it's efficiency is GREATLY limited geographically.

Wind is even worse as a Grid Generator. Not even worth consideration as "an alternative". Best use for BOTH of these is as fuel generators or in the case of California -- to power desalinization plants OPPORTUNISTICALLY --- when the power IS available. Making Hydrogen fuel for fuel cells is another TREMENDOUS application for wind and solar. But they are NOT alternatives to existing reliable generation sources..

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Damn! That Indian solar setup over the canal is a fantastic idea...if it works up to expectations. And it's so simple. (Why didn't I think of that a million people are chortling). We have a mega huge solar farm here in Colorado's San Luis Valley. The main complaint by locals before it was built, was the fact that big commercial solar generation setups take a lot of water for cooling. And this being a desert, we have lots of canals like the one pictured.

 

[elektra]

Using more hydrocarbons to produce the world's largest structures, stuff you can see from space, is conserving?

Zero acknowledgement of the heavy industry, the $Triilion$ dollars spent, the billions of tons of raw material, used.

complete ignorance.

it's like using 20 Cadillac's to go to the supermarket, each taking you a little distance, as long as they use no gas the idiots do not see the waste in using 20 cars to do the work of one.

in the case of,"alternative Energy", it takes thousands to replace one of any conventional source of energy

Coal is energy
Uranium is energy.
Natural gas is energy.

Fiberglass structures are not energy

Glass panels are not energy.

 

[Crick]

Preventing water evaporation from canals can be done a LOT cheaper than using $$Bills of solar panels. The question should be -- What real role do they play as "an alternative energy" source. For every MW of solar that you install, you need to specify whether it's primary purpose is to reduce the 20% daytime peak -- or whether it has to have a RELIABLE PRIMARY source to back it up on the grid when it's NOT available.

Solar PV is a PEAKER technology -- not a backbone grid generator. You can only use it to relieve (sometimes) daytime peak usage. And it's efficiency is GREATLY limited geographically.

Wind is even worse as a Grid Generator. Not even worth consideration as "an alternative". Best use for BOTH of these is as fuel generators or in the case of California -- to power desalinization plants OPPORTUNISTICALLY --- when the power IS available. Making Hydrogen fuel for fuel cells is another TREMENDOUS application for wind and solar. But they are NOT alternatives to existing reliable generation sources..

I think you ignore vanadium and quinone developments in the last year that promise the ability to store utility scale amounts of energy in inexpensive storage structures. Work like this CAN make wind and solar viable primary power sources. I am also very pleased to see you mention that such intermittent power technologies have value in fuel generation. There are numerous ways to store excess alternative energy for use in off hours. Norway is rife with hydroelectric facilities that make use of high altitude mountain lakes drained through turbine generators. During off peak hours, energy from solar and wind generators is used to pump water back up into the lakes. Overcoming the intermittency of such sources is not difficult and from which the users are certainly compensated by the zero fuel cost and zero carbon emission.

 

[elektra]

Wind turbines and solar are pure wastes of natural resources, constant maintenance, heavy consumption of raw materials with the lowest return.

Thousands will sit idle for days, weeks. Y he actually use a greater percentage of Elements than all other forms of power, Elements are not renewable.

Alternative energy increases the use of fossil fhel.

Since when is an increase a savings.

 

[flacaltenn]

Preventing water evaporation from canals can be done a LOT cheaper than using $$Bills of solar panels. The question should be -- What real role do they play as "an alternative energy" source. For every MW of solar that you install, you need to specify whether it's primary purpose is to reduce the 20% daytime peak -- or whether it has to have a RELIABLE PRIMARY source to back it up on the grid when it's NOT available.

Solar PV is a PEAKER technology -- not a backbone grid generator. You can only use it to relieve (sometimes) daytime peak usage. And it's efficiency is GREATLY limited geographically.

Wind is even worse as a Grid Generator. Not even worth consideration as "an alternative". Best use for BOTH of these is as fuel generators or in the case of California -- to power desalinization plants OPPORTUNISTICALLY --- when the power IS available. Making Hydrogen fuel for fuel cells is another TREMENDOUS application for wind and solar. But they are NOT alternatives to existing reliable generation sources..

I think you ignore vanadium and quinone developments in the last year that promise the ability to store utility scale amounts of energy in inexpensive storage structures. Work like this CAN make wind and solar viable primary power sources. I am also very pleased to see you mention that such intermittent power technologies have value in fuel generation. There are numerous ways to store excess alternative energy for use in off hours. Norway is rife with hydroelectric facilities that make use of high altitude mountain lakes drained through turbine generators. During off peak hours, energy from solar and wind generators is used to pump water back up into the lakes. Overcoming the intermittency of such sources is not difficult and from which the users are certainly compensated by the zero fuel cost and zero carbon emission.

I'm ignoring nothing. I'm a life member of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. It's take a football field size building to "grid store" electricity for about 1000 homes for just 5 hours of storage (5MW-hrs) and about $60 million bucks.
The Japanese whose government respects engineering more than we do -- will not allow renewables on their grids at ALL without at least about 15 minutes of production storage for switching. And THAT is already taxing the installation of renewables in Japan..

The environmental consequences of land use and recycling materials would be ENORMOUS. And wind has a nasty habit of not coming to work for DAYS at a time. Germany has bulldozed ENTIRE PRISTINE sections of the Alps in attempts to push renewables into storage and with efficiencies of pumped storage being about 30% AT BEST -- you'd need 3X capacity just to break even. Neither solar or wind can be used to INCREASED basic grid capacity without 100% PRIME generation from nuclear, hydro or fossil to rely on. So the amount of energy WASTED by switching off these primary generators is immense and SHOULD BE CHARGED to the renewable that failed to deliver. No grid operator is gonna order a coal plant to shut down to take maybe 20 minutes of wind energy onto the grid. It takes MORE than that to come back up to power..

Solar is a peaker technology, wind is useless. UNLESS you dedicate them to an OFF-GRID process that can MAKE water or fuel when the power is available...

 

[SmedlyButler]

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

 

[elektra]

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

Most of us, meaning all of you, seriously, what do you know about Spain, I know Spain invested over 80$ billion on Alternative Energy, and as everyone knows that is the same amount of money that Spain needed to save their economy form collapsing.

As posted in threads here, stuff not disputed, straight from the Spaniards themselves, they lost 2 jobs for every 1 job created in "alternative energy".

Spain is about the best example you could point out, as a total failure. About the highest unemployment in the European Union.

I will post the first 10 google results of, "spains wind failure"

About 61,100,000 results (0.40 seconds)
Search Results

1. Spain's Solar-Power Collapse Dims Subsidy Model - WSJ
   online.wsj.com/articles/SB125193815050081615
   The Wall Street Journal
   Sep 8, 2009 - Spain's early bet on wind power paid off: The country is one of the world leaders in generating such power, only recently eclipsed by the U.S. ...
2. Green Policies in Spain are a Total Failure - The Real ...
   real-agenda.com/2010/05/19/green-policies-in-spain-are-a-total-failure/
   May 19, 2010 - Exports: Net exports of Spanish wind industry 1.300M€ contributed to the trade balance in 2008 and, besides, wind generation avoids fossil ...
3. The Lesson in Renewable Energy Development from Spain
   www.renewableenergyworld.com/.../a-lesson-i...
   Renewable Energy World
   Jul 30, 2013 - A firm's bankruptcy is always and everywhere driven by the failure to keep ... In Spain's case, it is not the investment in wind turbines and solar ...
4. Spanish downturn a disaster for green energy - Phys.org
   phys.org › Technology › Energy & Green Tech
   Phys.org
   Rating: 4.5 - ‎13 votes
   Jun 23, 2013 - Wind turbines are seen off the coast of Barbate, southern Spain on August 30, 2006. Spain's wind turbine manufacturers are laying off workers ...
5. Spain Cuts Green Energy Losses - The American Interest
   www.the-american-interest.com/.../spain-cuts-gree...
   The American Interest
   Jul 15, 2013 - Spain is the latest European country to regret its foray into green energy production. ... been wildly successful at encouraging solar and wind farm construction. They have utterly failed, though, to help build profitable industries.
6. Green Energy Is Dead In Spain | Tory Aardvark
   toryaardvark.com/2012/05/30/green-energy-is-dead-in-spain/
   May 30, 2012 - Over a decade later the total economic failure of Green renewable ... the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium,” European Wind ...
7. Green energy companies off the government teat in Spain ...
   wattsupwiththat.com/.../green-energy-companies-of...
   Watts Up With That?
   May 30, 2012 - Spain Ejects Green Energy Lobby by Alex Morales and Ben Sills, ... “They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium,” European Wind ..... failed companies as the harbingers of green triumph and the Chevy ...
8. Spain's Green Disaster a Lesson for America - Finance ...
   www.cbn.com/.../spains-green-disaster-a-...
   Christian Broadcasting Network
   Dec 26, 2011 - President Obama has said Spain should be a model for America in green technology. ... One study has declared it a colossal failure.
9. No End In Sight For Spain's Escalating Solar Crisis - Forbes
   www.forbes.com/.../no-end-in-sight-for-spains-escalating-solar-cri...
   Forbes
   Aug 16, 2013 - The pain in Spain's energy sector is escalating. In April, renewable energy accounted for a record-setting 54% of the electricity generated in ...
10. Renewable energy in Spain: The cost del sol | The Economist
    www.economist.com/.../21582018-sustainable-energy-me...
    The Economist
    Jul 20, 2013 - But as Spain shows, good intentions are not enough. ... The government failed to cut subsidies when renewables were booming, so the cuts ...

 

[elektra]

Honestly, there is no bigger display of ignorance than those who believe in Wind Turbines. You people honestly have no idea of what a Wind Turbine is. A simple test is the question as follows.

How much energy and of what types does it take to produce one base for one of the tens of thousands of Wind Turbines in California?

If you do not know the answer, never even considered this, what can you possibly know, other than what you blindly believe.

 

[SmedlyButler]

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

Most of us, meaning all of you, seriously, what do you know about Spain, I know Spain invested over 80$ billion on Alternative Energy, and as everyone knows that is the same amount of money that Spain needed to save their economy form collapsing.

As posted in threads here, stuff not disputed, straight from the Spaniards themselves, they lost 2 jobs for every 1 job created in "alternative energy".

Spain is about the best example you could point out, as a total failure. About the highest unemployment in the European Union.

I will post the first 10 google results of, "spains wind failure"

About 61,100,000 results (0.40 seconds)
Search Results......

Yes you can google, I can google, we all can google, that's how we argue around here. That was the first thing I pointed out in my post;

"Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly."

I googled success of spains wind power and got;
About 1,750,000 results (0.29 seconds)
Showing results for success of spain's wind power

Google is a great tool but for a serious argument and not an ideologically driven one you have to have a hard look at the political sites with a political agenda. I didn't use those kind of sites in my post.

And I acknowledged Spain's budget problems;

"So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there."

Your first site on the top ten list, the WSJ was mainly concerned with solar and not that critical of wind power;

"Spain's early bet on wind power paid off: The country is one of the world leaders in generating such power, only recently eclipsed by the U.S. Spanish wind-power companies have become global players. In 2008, wind power accounted for 11% of Spanish electricity production, compared to less than 1% for solar power.
Reyad Fezzani, chief executive of BP Solar, a unit of oil giant BP BP -0.65% PLC, said that despite the current crisis, the Spanish model succeeded in creating a solar industry from scratch. "Once you pay for the infrastructure, you have a skilled work force and you can expand and contract very easily," he said."

Your focus on Spain's alternative energy model in your reply is somewhat unfair. My post's scope was considerably broader. And your 3rd site says;

"In Spain’s case, it is not the investment in wind turbines and solar power that represent the root of the problem: like many of its European partners, Spain encouraged private investment in wind and solar power partly to meet binding EU climate and energy targets, partly to improve its energy security, and partly to encourage the development of new economic sectors.
Moreover, numerous studies from major research institutes and think tanks around the world continue to find that FITs are the most cost-effective means of accelerating investment in renewable energy.
The problem is therefore not with wind and solar per se, nor with the policy that encouraged investment in them (though Spain’s FIT policy had a number of important design flaws): it is that the government, through regulations dating back decades, prevented utilities from recovering the true costs of the electricity system through rates."

I have no problem conceding that countries must try to be smarter in their pricing models and not spend more on subsidies than they can afford. But I will stick by my main point, the United States cannot afford to be left behind in this industry. And if you modern Luddites get your way that just could happen. Also, some of you seem to pick the side of an issue that is anti-Obama and not necessarily the one that is in the country's best interest.

 

[SixFoot]

Pardon my "lack" of participation in this thread. I want to hear more opinions/facts first before I continue.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Personally I think wasting our open spaces on solar farms is not only too expensive but it is unnecessary.

We have tens if not hundreds of thousands of acres in the form of south and southwest facing rooftops that we are leaving unused.

Why not exploit this unused space before we ugly up our landscapes with solar and wind farms?

 

[Crick]

Good idea