"Pete C." wrote in
:

Jim Yanik wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in
:

Kurt Ullman wrote:

In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

We certainly won't get there with the status quo. Something like
an executive order that we'll be energy independent in 5 years
with the weight to quash all the NIMBY and Eco-Loon attempts to
prevent it.

Good luck. Little of that would be constitutionally valid to
overturn
as an EO since it is based on laws passed by Congress, at the
minimum bringing up sepatation of powers.

Well, since something like that will never happen, the exact
logistics don't really matter.



What I want to see is a comprehensive push starting with new
nukes to allow the shutdown of the coal and NG plants and stop
all that pollution, provide cheap electricity for electric and
plug in hybrid cars and electric commuter rail and busses and
home heating and cooling.
Which brings up the rather creative accounting for "clean"
electric
cars where they look at tailpipe admissions and studiously ignore
the extra electricity that has to be generated.

But I digress (g)

On my various business visits to San Francisco, I've note the
fraudulent claim of "Zero emissions vehicle" on the electric
busses, which are in fact "Remote emissions vehicles".


Use the freed up US NG and US oil to keep other transportation
going without foreign oil. Improve conservation as much as
possible. Get realistic renewable sources, including distributed
solar and wind generation online (again quashing NIBMY and
Eco-Loon nonsense) over a reasonable period of time so that in
30 years when those nukes are reaching retirement they can be
retires and we can by on entirely renewables.

I am not all that sanguine about real life solar and wind
generation
as a viable major contributor. The solar cells have to too big and
wind generation takes too much space and both are fairly polluting
on the making of the cells or turbines. Might be useful at the
margins, but I am not all that sold for large scale applications.
Although even the marginal stuff would keep the growing part
of
the demand at bay, as it were.

This is why I specified "distributed solar" (and wind where
applicable), i.e. panels installed on existing rooftops. Basically
something like a utility supplied and maintained battery less grid
tie system. Trying to do utility scale solar any other way just
isn't practical and has huge environmental impact. Distributed
across customer's rooftops it uses no new space and also greatly
extends the service life of the already overtaxed grid by producing
a good portion of the power locally.

how do you supply power when the sun goes down,if there are no
batteries to store the excess power generated by the solar panels?
Wind generators typically go quiet at night,too.

The (continental) US spans a few time zones so that gives some spread,
and hydro and tidal should go a long way towards filling in the night.
Add in locally viable items like biomass in big farm / ranch areas,

Why bother with biomass when nuclear power works so well?

geothermal in the few areas where that works, some storage such as
pumped hydro and CAS to store surplus production during peak times and
you'll be in better shape. Some time of day rate breaks can also help
encourage utilization during off peak times and local energy storage
as appropriate.


All this adds unneeded complexity to our power generation,while nuclear
power simplifies it greatly.
Use modern,modular reactors,not the old cusotm-built light-water reactors.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net