Renewable energy is a fast growing and increasingly cheap alternative to fossil fuels, however without serious moves to greater energy efficiency and conservation it will be swallowed in our increasingly energy hungry world.Nicholas Stern estimated in his report on British energy use that up to 80% of energy was wasted, so while renewables will make a contribution efficiency and energy conservation as well as changes to agriculture are also key parts to the solution.
There is essentially nothing that is the *entire* solution by itself. But every coal plant we can shut down because we've replaced it with solar, wind, biomass, hydroelectric, or other renewable energy generation is one less coal plant emitting CO2 into the air.
Nuclear power is currently the best way. It provides the constant current needed as well as the amount of energy necessary to run cities. In the 1970s, nuclear power was cheaper than coal. Unfortunately, we ahve too many "environmentalists" in the US that have so demonized nuclear power that they have added a ton of non-safety related regulations, protests and restricted land use. These have made nuclear power far more expensive in the US than it is in Europe. Simple changes and the enviros actually rallying around nuclear instead of demonizing it can put us on a path of having the power we need, at the cost we want, with no CO2 emissions. Win Win Win. Its a trifecta.
Solar and wind are great alternatives IF they are cost efficient for the location. Unfortunately, they do not supply the base power necessary and they are unreliable. It is not hard to figure out that solar power does not work well without sunshine and that wind power works poorly in periods of heavy wind or light winds. Consequently, it would be stupid to try to base the entirety of our energy on these two technologies, but they can be used to supplement other forms of energy.
Other renewable sources like ethanol have turned out to be an abyssmal failure. Ethanol does not reduce CO2 emissions, but does increase the cost of gasoline and crops. Oddly enough, the US crop production has been outpacing population growth, yet the price of produce is going up. Why? Ethanol.
As for what Jonathan is saying about nuclear, he conveniently leaves out some key issues.
1.) We do know how to properly handle nuclear waste. It is radiactive for a VERY long time, but so is the uranium that we pull out of the ground.
2.) There have been 0 US deaths from nuclear power in the US. So Fukishima had problems after the 5th largest earthquake on record follow directly by a tsunami, and still only failing because of KNOWN improperly placed back-up systems. Even so, finding places to build nuclear power plants that are not on fault lines, is not really difficult in the US. Finding places in the US that can be hit by both earthquakes and tsunamis is very difficult.
As far as population increasing, it should be noted that the UN who has a history of overeestimating future populations have estimated that the world population will hit a maximum around 2050. While Jonathan has not proposed any crazy population control methods, be wary of those that do.
Edit:
Jonathan, Of course the nuclear power plants are old. Environmentalists in their stupidity have been blocking every new nuclear power plant in the US.
As for radioactivity, they are linked. There are locations in the ground that are naturally radioactive because of uranium. Greener logic of thinking that we cannot place LESS radioactive material back into the ground is just plain stupid. Of course we can and of course we can do so safely.
Only warmers are silly enough to point to places like France and Japan and claim we nee to have our CO2 as low as them WHILE fighting the very form of power that allow them to keep their CO2 emissions low.
watch Cosmos episode The World Set Free
http://www.cosmosontv.com/watch/27080352...
So-called 'renewable energy' will not prevent so-called (catastrophic), Man-made, global warming.
The Earth has warmed and it has cooled many times over millions of years, and will continue to do so with or without Man.
Please don't let the Hippy activists fool you.
Renewable energy means "renewable on human time scales." Non-renewable means "renewable on geologic time scales, or longer." So renewable energy is solar (biomass, photovoltaic, heating, wind, water power from dams such as from rain, and wave action), tidal (moon and sun gravitation effect), and geothermal (heat difference between deep in the earth and the surface.) The sun, the moon, the gravitation of both, and the heat stored in the interior of the earth will all last for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years and essentially cannot be depleted. Some parts of renewable energy, such as biomass, can be depleted on human time scales but if we don't completely destroy them they can be also renewed on human time scales. So biomass is renewable, unless we deplete ecologies to the point where they cannot recover. But since we are doing a pretty thorough job of destroying complex habitat and species, as we occupy and dominate so much of the existing landmass biomes, I generally don't like to think of biomass as renewable. But some disagree with me on that point.
Non-renewable is synonymous with fossil fuels because they are pretty much the only meaningful energy source that takes millions of years to renew, where it also takes us only a few decades to nearly use up.
Fission power has a separate problem -- it creates hundreds of unique and very dangerous isotopes and waste we do NOT as yet know how to properly dispose of. If it weren't for the weaponization issues, the serious waste issues, and the crafted and intended lack of disclosure about safety and risks due to earthquakes and system failures, it might be a fairly decent idea. Fission isn't strictly speaking renewable power, but supplies would probably last longer than fossil fuels. So it's kind of in a no-man's land between the two ideas.
Since all fossil fuels include carbon and when burned produce CO?, which is always today released into the atmosphere directly, all fossil fuels contribute substantially to modern rapid rates of global warming. Moving from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources shifts away from CO? production and therefore away from the rapidly rising greenhouse gas levels.
The best way to mitigate against global climate change is to reduce CO? emissions into the atmosphere down to pre-1800 emission levels. But that would require us to stop tearing down global forest systems -- deforestation alone accounts for about 20% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and is at a similar level to the entire transportation sector of human activities. It would also require us to replace 85% of our energy sector with something other than fossil fuels. On a global scale, this is mind-boggling to consider. But no matter what approach you take, it must include cutting very significantly down on the use of fossil fuels. And since we don't know any other viable way to go, renewable energy is considered the best way despite its many current problems.
The underlying problem is human population, though. With only a billion or two on the planet, we would NOT be watching our fisheries at 10% normal or less, we would not see our forests in such bad shape, we wouldn't need nearly so much energy, and so on. The fundamental, underlying issue is population. Humans and domesticated animals now occupy more than 99% of all land based vertebrate mass on the planet. Everything else is a symptom of an excessive and unsustainable population level.
EDIT: Years back, during the congressional hearings over the FPO (full power operation) permit for Seabrook, I found out about a MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) between the US NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and INPO (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations), which is a private corporation that can be hired by nuclear power operators for tasks such as investigating nuclear power plant safety deficiencies.
This revised MOA was dated in October of 1988, was a modification of a 1985 MOA, and was signed by Victor Stello, Jr, then the NRC's Executive Director for Operations. It effectively transferred the NRC regulatory responsibilities to INPO, because the NRC agreed not to duplicate safety investigations that INPO had performed and to rely upon those reports, instead. This was touted to "lessen the burden" on the NRC. But the effect of it was to cause nuclear power operators, upon notification by the NRC of some intended safety evaluation per their responsibilities, to immediately hire INPO, instead, to perform exactly the same required safety deficiency investigations that the NRC was expected to perform. Since INPO documents were private between INPO and the licensed Operator of the plant, and since the NRC would then refuse to duplicate the efforts, this MOA effectively sealed out of public view any safety information. There is no doubt in my mind that this effect was its purpose.
The upshot of this fact became QUITE CLEAR through the hearings and testimony I listened to for many, many hours, at that time. In the Seabrook case, the INPO documents were leaked and they highlighted several serious safety issues. In this specific instance, the leaked INPO documents described a wide variety of serious safety deficiencies (no one is arguing that INPO's work is poor.) The plant operator, PSNH, clearly planned to initiate corrective actions on the basis of this INPO report, but the corrective actions were planned to take substantially longer than the date on which the NRC's FPO permit was to take place -- March 1, 1990. In the testimony I listened to, NRC representatives were allowed onto the Seabrook premises to examine the INPO report, but were specifically barred from taking copies of the reports off-premises or from talking about any of the details in the reports. And in their testimony, they did in fact refuse to discuss the details and claimed that they had no copies to examine. They refused to address the leaked version. And the NRC consistently stated that the Seabrook plant met their safety requirements, without being willing to deal with any specifics. They expressed an opinion
and refused to engage in any debate over the issues, hiding behind their MOA with INPO and behind their requirement for honoring their agreement with PSNH (Public Service company of New Hampshire.)
This kind of situation that effectively works to bar informed public discourse about plant safety cannot be acceptable if this is to proceed. We need open information so that those less directly benefiting from the business outcome and yet still better informed about nuclear power plant operations can make reasoned arguments on the basis of the better information available.
I was also surprised around this same time (1990ish) by the proposed rules from the NRC, in the case of so-called advanced reactors. The NRC proposed approach to this was to standardize the licensing, providing early site approval, certification of plant designs by rule (avoiding the lengthy public hearings for each plant), and simultaneous issuances of both a construction permit and an operating license (a "one-stop licensing called "combined licenses".) I'm not opposed to some aspects of this, as I understand the need for efficient processes to get the job done. But the rules have/had all the appearances of just more of the same, similar to the NRC MOA with INPO.
Under the provisions of the NRC, nuclear power plan designs can be simply certified by rule. The cert is valid for 15 years from the date of issuance. An application can be renewed for another 10-15 years. If a utility takes full advantage of the procedures, securing an early site permit in advance and referencing a certified standard design in its combined license application, the issues available for consideration in any public hearing is severely limited. Neither the suitability issues nor the reactor design issues can be litigated or discussed. (The suitability is decided simply by the issuance of the early site permit and the reactor design issues decided by the existing certification.) The effect is to eliminate any safety siting issues in combined license hearings, even if there is new material information discovered _after_ the issuance of the early site permit.
To Raisin Caine: (1) Thousands of isotopes are created in a reactor and no, just being radioactive like uranium is irrelevant to the problems created. (2) US plants are ancient -- many already well past their design lifetimes.
Can you please list some reasons why renewable energy is the best way to prevent climate change (global warming) and reasons why it's not. Thankyou.
