"America will always rely on foreign oil" | 26 comments (26 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Compare and contrast (4.00 / 2)

i was going to do a story on this tonight, but you preempted me nicely Chris... but you missed this gem in the Breakfast:

Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.
"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."
According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.
Ms Sahlin has described oil dependency as one of the greatest problems facing the world. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would give us enormous advantages, not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices," she said. "The price of oil has tripled since 1996."
A government official said: "We want to be both mentally and technically prepared for a world without oil. The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 01:41:48 PM EST

Always the pessimist (none / 0)

I fear even this doesn't go far enough. It's mostly my scepticism of biofuel that makes me say this - but also the use of such a qualifier as "no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline.".

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 01:51:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

BTW, speaking of firsts, what about Island's attempt to be the first oil-free economy by switching to hydrogen and total geothermal utilisation?

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 01:53:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

You mean Iceland, surely?
I get the geothermal part (plenty of this over there), but I'd like to understand the hydrogen part.

by Bernard (bernard) on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 03:10:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

Yeah, being multilingual comes through. (It is Island in my mother tongue and German.)

The hydrogen part is to turn every motorised vehicle, from fisherboats through buses and cars to sawmills and backup generators, into fuel cell-driven units. Having energy in plenty and a low population, this would be viable in Iceland (but not transferable to the rest of the world).

I don't know what the state of things is, though - haven't read up for a year.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 03:15:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

Also Iceland has massive geothermal resources, a little lava in the center of town, is a pretty good trade off for lots of acessible heat.

by btower on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 04:08:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

The hope of hydogren is that it is a fungible medium for energy in the way that petroeum is. In a liquid state you can make hydrogen fit into a container of any size, and it can come from a diversity of sources.

Right now almost all renewable energy as to be used at the time that it's made, there's not an efficient way to store the energy (biomass and hydropower. And with techologies like wind and solar, you have to have a diversified sourcing of electricity and a fossil fuel backup. There's an expensive duplication of infrastructure.

Nonetheless, as I expect Jerome will point out, the bottleneck in a hydrogen economy would be the platinum used in fuel cells.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 04:56:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

The other bottleneck in a hydrogen economy is the small, or large, matter of making enough. It is nice to talk about using solar and wind to generate the power for this. But when we calculate just how much power would need to be generated to replace all that oil things get,well, impossible.

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.
Czeslaw Milosz

by Chris Kulczycki on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 05:24:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

70% of the planet is water. Windmills have just started to venture onto the continental shelf.

One of the princpal limitation to mega windmills on land is that the neighbors get nervous when you say that you're planning to put a 100 meter monster in their backyard. If you take them out onto the continental shelf you can find strong reliable offshore winds, and make real monsters that are 400-500 meters tall.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Wed Feb 8th, 2006 at 09:57:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

70% of the planet is water. Windmills have just started to venture onto the continental shelf.

Do you think swimming windmills will be viable some day?

If not, and only the continental shelves can be utilised, they won't add that much in the case of the USA (unlike in the case of Europe). Consider this: utilising the entire continent (not taking into account limitations in zoning laws) and shallow waters, the US total capacity with present technology was estimated at three times the current consumption a few years ago. Incidentally, another study estimating the electricity need if all US cars go fuel cell also put the need at three times the current usage (i.e. the new need would be four times of today's in total).

There is not much benefit from size: you have to place larger wind turbines further apart. As both the power of a wind turbine is proportional to the swept area (hence the square of its rotor diameter) and the required distance between rotors is proportional to the rotor diameter (hence the number of rotors on a given area is inversely proportional to the square of the rotor diameter), the two factors cancel out. What you can win with size is some economies of scale (less maintenance or installation costs), but it can break down with further increase in size.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 05:06:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

Larger wind turbines operate farther away from the ground to take advantage of higher wind speeds - the "laminar boundary layer"

In this sense, the size of the turbines does matter, and bigger is better. I suppose if you get farther away from the ground the wind speeds get so large that you get into the "turbulent boundary layer"

so there is indeed a limit to how high you can go with wind turbines of this type

but maybe other turbine designs will be better suited to operating in turbulent conditions?

This is a semi-educated guess - I know hydrodynamics but little about turbine engineering

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 06:04:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

Larger wind turbines operate farther away from the ground to take advantage of higher wind speeds

That is (a) a function of turbine height, not rotor diameter, which can (and is) increased independently, (b) it is a strong factor only on land - on water, in fact, the same type of turbines stand on typically lower towers (the lower limit is not even turbulence-related: it is a height for safe passage of smaller yachts).

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 07:19:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

I mentioned turbulence for the upper limit. As land is rougher than water you have to climb higher in order for the boundary layer to set in. The lower limit on water should be a function of typical wave height in rough weather.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 07:30:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

I admit to having been cursory in my reading, and now being confused. Aren't both the laminar and turbulent boundary layers lower limits - and the turbulent one being lower? I would expect the flow to be laminar or turbulent depending on weather (on water, this includes the waves) and the surrounding surface, and the laminar boundary layer as the lower limit.

On the other hand, larger-scale turbulence and differing wind speeds might be a limit on rotor diameter indepentently of height.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 07:46:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

The flow is laminar at low Reynolds numbers, and turbulent at high Reynolds numbers. For our purposes, the Reynolds number is proportional to wind speed and distance to the ground.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 08:04:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Compare and contrast (none / 0)

Indeed that's why I wrote that Iceland can do this but this is not transferable to the rest of the world.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 05:07:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"America will always rely on foreign oil" | 26 comments (26 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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