Recently, OU announced that by 2013 all of the power to supply campus would come from green, renewable, wind energy. Yippee, Oklahoma! Well, a fellow grad student remarked "Boren (the OU President) is just getting ready for the cap and trade on carbon emissions," effectively saying that he's going to use the university's greenness to make money. Who knows?
Today, one of the meteorology professors came to talk about the "Energy Crisis." Has anyone heard of the proposed wind farm in Cape Cod? Yeah, the one that's going to supply 1/30th of the electricity needed by the state of Massachusetts. Yeah, I said 1/30th. Or the expensive, and not really cost-effective, solar project in Arizona that will provide the electricity equivalent of the use of 70,000 homes.
In order to gain large benefits from these green technologies, they have to be more efficient than they are currently, both in use of materials and energy production. We are at a point where oil and gas production is, in all likelihood, maxed out. Nuclear power is coming back and coal plants are growing in number. Where do we get the extra power needed as the worldwide demand for energy continues to grow?
The answer is better technology, not more of what we currently have. Sure, wind power is renewable, but the resources needed to produce the turbines aren't. And, how many wind turbines do you need to put up to put a dent in the energy need? The answer is out there (it has to be, it always is, right ... maybe a blueprint will occur in the form of a stain on a wall in a bathroom at CalTech or MIT). But solar panels on your roof aren't going to save the world from global warming and the energy crisis. Research might, altruism ... not so much.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Don't put up the solar panels (or windmill) just yet
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http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22098/
http://mediamatters.org/items/200703010008
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/07/responding-to-al-gores-clean-energy.html
The previous two links seem to share Evan's sentiment.
Personally, I'm not sure what the real answer is out there, but something needs to be done. It is not called an Inconvenient Truth for nothing. Bailing ourselves out of an energy/global warming crisis is going to greatly surpass the recent push to bailout of monster financial institutions ($700 billion)....
Read this yesterday. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/the-65-mpg-car-ford-won't-sell-in-us.aspx
Looks like we have the technology (remember the electric car?) but businesses don't want to offer it to consumers. SO maybe there needs to be some altruism afterall. Or a swift kick in the ass.
Right ... saw it. Even if you have electric cars, you have to have energy (electrical, instead of gas) that charges up the cars. How do you make electrical energy? Sure, there are "green" methods, but the renewable mechanisms for generating electrical energy aren't currently feasible. In fact, I think some would argue that hydroelectric isn't "green" ... unless you're referring to green being the color of money.
For could sell the 65 mpg car in middle America, where diesel is prevalent. Can you find diesel easily on the coasts?
Why do you think countries (it's European countries as well as developing countries like China) are setting up coal-fired power plants? I'm pretty sure they aren't using them for widespread biofuel production.
I don't know the average efficiency of an electric car (how much energy is consumed to drive 1 mile compared to a gas powered car with similar features when you take into account all the processes, extraction of oil, oil processing, coal extraction and firing or whatever), but it would be interesting. If you are running an electric car off of electricity produced by burning coal, are you really any better off than if you're using gasoline? You might feel better about your role as a citizen in the global community ... but that's un-American!
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