Adressing a few of your points: I include pumped storage because I am in no way interested in what the cost of a given energy source is in a grid that loadbalances with natural gas. I consider natural gas burning for power a grossly unacceptable waste of a valuable resource, a irresponsible risk to the climate, and absurdly expensive. With current technology, that means supply-side loadbalancing has to be done with hydro or throtthling of nukes. If we invent a cheaper solution for energystorage, that would be wonderful, but its not really relevant for generation.
The US economics are more favorable because the US is less densely populated, which means that all else equal, it has more good wind sites per capita. Mackay made a very illustrative graph about this, sec.. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/business/energy-environment/29iht-sustain.html
Increasing nuclear cost via nusiance lawsuits was, and remains, an explicit strategy of american anti-nuclear activists. They do not hide or deny this. I can go qoute hunting, but it isnt very relevant for a discussion of global energy strategy as it is simply an unique economic hazard specific to the US nuclear industry, and equating it to due dilligence hearings in europe or elsewhere would be wholly false, in either direction.
Externality studies are an obsession of mine, and ExternE is in fact what converted me to a nuclear advocate, because it put numbers on exactly how much damage our current, coal and gas based grid is doing year in, year out. Every coal plant in operation is a slow-motion disaster. and looking at the actual methods used, arguing with a straight face that these studies are in any way lowballing the damage of nuclear is impossible. There are uncertainties, yes. But they are of the "we have no good feel for how much we are overstating the danger of nuclear here". kind.
.. Waste heat ecological impact? Ehh.. there is one. Any heat engine of this size is going to heat the water body it uses for cooling, which shifts ecological balances of which species thrive in that strech of water. For plants near the sea, this essentially doesnt matter, because the sea is too big a heat sink to affect, and if you are directly replacing a coal plant with a nuke plant in the same location, it doesnt matter either, since after decades of operation, the local water system will have adapted to the warmer water, and removing the heat source would be the disruptive act. This is not, in general, a very worrysome type of enviormental impact, however. as the footprint is minute, and non-toxic.
Disallowing nuclear power is not the only conscious political choice Denmark has made. Disallowing new wind farms is another conscious political choice. Banning congestion charges is another conscious political choice. Building two new highways every time we do maintenance on one railway line is a conscious political choice.
So let's not pretend that Denmark is an example of a wind/conservation strategy. That was almost true in the 90s, but elections have consequences. Specifically, the election of the current crop of anti-wind, pro-car, anti-conservation, neoliberals had disastrous consequences.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Thomas' position is not unusual, including his tone. Do you remember Ustenzel? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
So, irrespective of the cost to Danish generators (and you should be happy about coal-plants oweners losing money, right?); it's a positive to Danish consumers and taxpayers.
3) that's an argument not to do anything. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The energy debate in Denmark post the 70s oil crisis was explicitly between a bet on nuclear and a bet on renewables. Looking at the actual consequences of the choice made, when compared to the people who came down on the other side of the fence, IE: Sweden, France, the wrong side won in Denmark.
The decisions not to expand wind further in denmark have a hell of a lot to do with the costs of loadbalancing it.
The decision not to continue expanding wind in Denmark has nothing to do with engineering and everything to do with the fact that Fogh and that useful idiot he installed as minister for the environment hated Sven Auken's guts. Therefore, any project that Sven Auken liked was bad simply by virtue of the fact that Sven Auken liked it. Sven Auken liked wind. Therefore, wind was bad.
(Yes, for more than half a decade, Denmark based our policy in a vital strategic sector like energy supply on "not invented here" and personal animosity towards the outgoing administration. Yes, Danish right-wing politicians really are that petty and stupid.)
efficiency is shiny, but it tends to induce jevrons paradox effects
Only under laissez-faire. In a properly managed industrial production economy, there is nothing which prevents you from adjusting product taxes to compensate for lower cost.
And as far as heat and electricity goes, Jevron's effects are minor to negligible, because heat and electricity are infrastructure, not consumer goods.
If mankind is still about in a thousand years, noone is going to be dying from cancer
And by 2010, we'll have nuclear-powered airplanes. Oh, wait...
Are you open to changing your views when confronted with evidence, i am.
But i'm betting you have some better goal in life, and that tech support is not it, it's just a job for now. What do you want to be doing in ten years?
Poor phrasing, yeah, grant you that. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
Yeah, right, just in your previous comment you were questioning his motives. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
We have a lot of arguments to defend the qualities of wind power and critique some of the claims made by Thomas, so let's focus on these rather than on ad hominems. While partial to nuclear, Thomas' arguments are rational and follow traditional lines that we are all-too-familar with, so let's just respond as we know we can rather than question his motives or good faith.
Don't forget that even within the wind industry, many of the points we regularly make here on ET are not that well known (such as the size of merit-order effect on prices of wind). In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
i think i'll just leave it alone. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
3. efficiency is shiny, but it tends to induce jevrons paradox effects, so I dont trust it as a solution to AGW. Better energy efficiency will make mankind richer, it will only reduce actual energy use if future generations behave in ways no past generation of mankind ever has, and use machines less while they get cheaper to use.
The Jevons paradox goes beyond a normal division of the gains of efficiency between demand and supply to an increase in quantity demanded of the final product exceeding the efficiency gain.
However, where Jevon first observed it, it was in a market for a product where large numbers of low income consumers faced a tight budget constraint, and reduction of the price of coal-fired heat allowed switching to coal burning furnaces from, eg, wood.
Its a common abuse of the Jevon's paradox itself, as well as the far more common cases where Jevon's effect does not apply but the reduction in consumption of the input is less than the efficiency gain, to take it from arguing against sole reliance on efficiency gains - the techno-cornucopian position - to arguing against the benefit of pursuing efficiency gains at all.
We already know that efficiency gains alone are not going to be enough, because as we mine the easiest to reach inefficiencies, the result is a more efficient system with less inefficiency to be mined.
But that is no argument against replacing policies that support and encourage inefficient energy use with policies that support and encourage more efficient use. Its just an argument that efficiency on its own is not sufficient. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Demonstrably, utterly false. Why do you keep pushing this fantasy? The policy decisions of the Fogh cabinet (which I listed in a previous comment, and which you didn't deny but switched to criticise the present policy of parties) and their justifications are well known, as are their effects. And it is also well known that the Danish public utilities themselves prepared studies already back then showing that wind with 50% grid penetration can be easily be integrated in the current grid.
Gas has to go.
Yes, and before it, coal. While gas plants are less CO2 intensive and cheaper for load balancing than coal or oil, on the long run we need CO2-free peaker plants/energy storage, whatever will provide baseload. Now: are you advocating inaction on baseload until 100% replacement of peaker plants is possible?...
wind is a less appropriate technology in tokyo than it is in Texas
This is not an argument but flashy rhetoric. Europe is not one single megapolis like Tokyo, and suburban sprawl USA (including large swathes of Texas) is not a wilderness area like you imagine Texas. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
If those lawsuits are without merit, and the activists lose them, then it's the activists' costs that increases, not that of nuclear. If the lawsuits are with merit, then what exactly are you complaining about? They are only turning externalities into internalities. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
What deterred US nuclear build for decades had little or nothing to do with activist tactics, rather cost and safety issues, as well as little utility desire to counter the prevailing zeitgeist. Add to that the ease of developing various nat gas, because of artificially low fossil prices, and ease and cost of financing.
Please feel free to rejoin reality at any time. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
If those lawsuits are without merit, and the activists lose them, then it's the activists' costs that increases, not that of nuclear.
Not necessarily. Not all American states have anti-SLAPP statutes on the books, and the winning side is not always awarded compensation for their costs.
Sigh. That was the nighties. Then came the naughties, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen made sure to change the credits system so that on-shore installations practically stopped (they only had a second boost thanks to a time-limited repowering programme, which proveed uncomfortably successful for the government); and he halted the projecting of the next off-shore farms in the schedule made law by the previous SocDem government, with the excuse that Denmark already reached the foreseeen share of renewables. (Yes, projecting began again five years later, but you'll see its effects on Denmark's CO2 emissions only in the coming years.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
(I watched bits of connie hedegårds confirmation hearing this morning. Depressing as fuck, as she was standing by the danish consensus on energy policy, and it is a consensus that has failed to deliver)
SF has a coal phaseout policy.
Now, if you subscribe to the theory that SF is firmly installed in S' back pocket, that doesn't matter. But if you subscribe to that theory, you really rather need to take a look at the last EP and municipal elections...
Don't mix past and present. I don't know what the parties current plans are, but the overall failure over the past decade can be blamed 100% on Fogh. The previous SocDem plan was all-out. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
