CDZ Humorous Puffery for Fracking: Renewable Energy

[william the wie]

A few days ago a bit of puffery from the fracking industry appeared and disappeared before I could run the numbers so no link to a primary source but here's the facts as best I can reconstruct them with my own commentary.

Most fracking fields are deep enough to be above or near the boiling point of water despite pressures that raise the boiling point of water. (The fields are natural pressure cookers like those used in the Boston Marathon Massacre complete with explosions if water is added.)

Fracking fields have a short life expectancy of 10-15 years. (Pulverizing the underground fields with steam explosions solves this problem quite nicely, It also sets off earthquakes.)

Once the superheated steam reaches the wellhead it can be run through a turbine to produce electricity in a renewable green fashion. (Then if it is run through a condenser the hydrocarbons can be extracted.)

By using floodwaters and snow the wells can keep this up forever as the under ground reservoir keeps growing as a public service.

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - an' den all dem Arabs can sit an' sift sand...

Experts: US Could Be Renewable Energy Nation in 15 Years
March 16, 2016 — Near wheat fields in rural Kansas, wind turbines spin away, producing clean energy that doesn’t contribute to climate change. But they do contribute to the local economy. Smiling at the turbines on his farm, Ted Bannister says, “Now on a windy day, I’m willing to buy lunch for somebody, because that’s money in my pocket.”

Midwestern wind is so abundant, in theory, it could even light up east coast cities. Unfortunately, most Kansas wind power never gets that far. Just as it’s impossible to drive fast in a traffic jam, today’s regionally-focused transmission lines make it impossible to send energy across the nation. “[Transmission lines] are not like highways because the on-ramps and off-ramps are so incredibly expensive," Bannister explained. "State, federal, county and then certainly on the business side of it there, they’ve been much more competitive than cooperative.” And there’s another problem. Even in windswept Kansas, the wind doesn’t always blow. In sunny Arizona, the sun doesn’t always shine. To power the grid during those times, utility companies depend on fossil fuels, an expensive, but vital, redundancy.

Renewable energy nation

Meteorologist Alexander MacDonald remembers the day he realized it didn't have to be that way. He was having a conversation with some colleagues about the cost of renewable energy, at a climate change conference six years ago. “This guy over a beer says, 'No one’s going to do anything. Nobody’s going to accept a doubling of cost.' I said, 'Wait a minute, wind and solar energy are really cheap. It should work.'” He recalls thinking that the U.S. is so big geographically, the wind is always blowing somewhere. And tapping all that wind potential all at once might reduce the need to maintain expensive backup fossil fuels.

Some of the more than 37,000 solar panels gather sunlight at the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Center, in Merritt Island, Florida​

MacDonald says all this was on his mind when he returned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, where he directed the Earth System Research Lab. “I came back hellbent to prove the wind and solar do work if you get the right scale corresponding to the weather.” After six years of rigorous computations, MacDonald’s team has determined that by using existing technologies, carbon-free wind and solar power can power the entire U.S., at a lower cost than fossil fuels. What’s needed to balance the ups and downs of local weather, MacDonald says, is a unified plan across a very large geographic area.

Electron superhighway

With a national plan for more wind turbines and solar panels, MacDonald says that even on calm, cloudy days, the U.S. could harvest almost all its energy from a few big pockets of wind and sun. He foresees that energy being sent instantly from where it's generated to where it's needed, over a nationwide grid of High Voltage, Direct Current Transmission Lines that he compares to the interstate highway system. MacDonald, who recently retired from NOAA, says this electron superhighway could eliminate the need for regional backup from fossil fuels, and reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2030, for less money than by sticking with mostly fossil fuels.

Wind turbines at a wind farm are seen generating power in Tehachapi, California​

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, energy analyst Sara Ladislaw says the plan has merits, giving it "a thumbs up" in terms of technological feasibility. But she warns that “business as usual” in the power industry will block the plan from happening by 2030. “If you think about it from a regulatory and a market resolution standpoint, I just think there’s a lot of things that would have to get resolved.” Including local opposition to the 82-foot tall high voltage towers that would support that transmission grid.

Power underground

 

[william the wie]

Bizarro world is real and we are living in it

 

[Holos]

So now that we have all the technology and the secured money in our pockets from the technology's success, what kind of knowledge do we need to efficiently nationalize to succeed with the proposed expansion of already established renewable energy that currently exists throughout many niches but is not altogether reaching the country in its international relations?

In other words, why and how did the average of 15 years come to be the agreeable in this case?

There seems to be, first of all, a misunderstanding of climate and consumption with the analysis provided. Climate change occurs only in very extended periods (if ecologies are to be stable along with human lives), energy consumption occurs in short periods as it directly concerns individuals with their particular biotypical traits, such as commutes and meals (agriculture shouldn't be excluded from national or international power analysis), meanwhile ecologies and climates are of direct concern to entire groups of individuals that have to necessarily relate to each other as workers to receive their appropriate biotypical consumption standards.

Perhaps climate engineering is even a feasible and appropriate approach to provide for every individual sustainably. However, this would require extensive study of geology and ecology both nationally and internationally, as the climate is spatially transitory in brief periods of time by the overlaps and overlays of weather, and only really formally transmutable (by natural evolutionary functions) over longer periods of time.

It shouldn't take a whole 15 years, the government as it is able to continue doing their job of facilitating appropriate study in the fields of ecology and geography (both by exometric and isometric) methods to already set the base for consumption along with gradual projecting of sustainable global power networks. For the U.S.A. to be renewable energy nation at this point, and to make the process and result mostly efficient for American citizens it also necessarily has to include sustainable energy for all other countries and citizens alike.

Granny says, "Dat's right - an' den all dem Arabs can sit an' sift sand...

Experts: US Could Be Renewable Energy Nation in 15 Years
March 16, 2016 — Near wheat fields in rural Kansas, wind turbines spin away, producing clean energy that doesn’t contribute to climate change. But they do contribute to the local economy. Smiling at the turbines on his farm, Ted Bannister says, “Now on a windy day, I’m willing to buy lunch for somebody, because that’s money in my pocket.”

Midwestern wind is so abundant, in theory, it could even light up east coast cities. Unfortunately, most Kansas wind power never gets that far. Just as it’s impossible to drive fast in a traffic jam, today’s regionally-focused transmission lines make it impossible to send energy across the nation. “[Transmission lines] are not like highways because the on-ramps and off-ramps are so incredibly expensive," Bannister explained. "State, federal, county and then certainly on the business side of it there, they’ve been much more competitive than cooperative.” And there’s another problem. Even in windswept Kansas, the wind doesn’t always blow. In sunny Arizona, the sun doesn’t always shine. To power the grid during those times, utility companies depend on fossil fuels, an expensive, but vital, redundancy.

Renewable energy nation

Meteorologist Alexander MacDonald remembers the day he realized it didn't have to be that way. He was having a conversation with some colleagues about the cost of renewable energy, at a climate change conference six years ago. “This guy over a beer says, 'No one’s going to do anything. Nobody’s going to accept a doubling of cost.' I said, 'Wait a minute, wind and solar energy are really cheap. It should work.'” He recalls thinking that the U.S. is so big geographically, the wind is always blowing somewhere. And tapping all that wind potential all at once might reduce the need to maintain expensive backup fossil fuels.

Some of the more than 37,000 solar panels gather sunlight at the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Center, in Merritt Island, Florida​

MacDonald says all this was on his mind when he returned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, where he directed the Earth System Research Lab. “I came back hellbent to prove the wind and solar do work if you get the right scale corresponding to the weather.” After six years of rigorous computations, MacDonald’s team has determined that by using existing technologies, carbon-free wind and solar power can power the entire U.S., at a lower cost than fossil fuels. What’s needed to balance the ups and downs of local weather, MacDonald says, is a unified plan across a very large geographic area.

Electron superhighway

With a national plan for more wind turbines and solar panels, MacDonald says that even on calm, cloudy days, the U.S. could harvest almost all its energy from a few big pockets of wind and sun. He foresees that energy being sent instantly from where it's generated to where it's needed, over a nationwide grid of High Voltage, Direct Current Transmission Lines that he compares to the interstate highway system. MacDonald, who recently retired from NOAA, says this electron superhighway could eliminate the need for regional backup from fossil fuels, and reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2030, for less money than by sticking with mostly fossil fuels.

Wind turbines at a wind farm are seen generating power in Tehachapi, California​

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, energy analyst Sara Ladislaw says the plan has merits, giving it "a thumbs up" in terms of technological feasibility. But she warns that “business as usual” in the power industry will block the plan from happening by 2030. “If you think about it from a regulatory and a market resolution standpoint, I just think there’s a lot of things that would have to get resolved.” Including local opposition to the 82-foot tall high voltage towers that would support that transmission grid.

Power underground