When your economy and lifestyle hinges on a particular industry, you're unlikely to see a major shift in Alberta in particular.
People are 'me first', usually. What is the government doing to subsidize innovation for alternative energy? Oil and gas companies, majors in particular, could maybe be prodded into the direction that hey- maybe you're an energy company, not just an oil and gas company.
That reminds me of this. "McGuinty said that a number of MPs from Alberta — especially those on the committee — come to Parliament not prepared to work in the national interest. He said they give attention to the fossil-fuel sector to the detriment of renewable energy or other industrial sectors."
His "go home" comments deservedly got him in hot water, but he had a good point about Alberta MP's stifling alternative tech (which then the conservatives twisted into a an anti-western argument).
I appreciate the response, but it didn't touch a single bit on why energy alternative are not promoted by the government.
Why aren't renewable energy alternatives for consumers subsidized to the same degree as conventional energy?
I apologize, I suppose my response was asking you to read between the lines a little. The data I provided, however, was meant to show you the consequences of what happens when a Government makes a bet and does subsidize a transition technology like wind or solar PV through guaranteed contracts at artificially high prices and preferential access to the grid as they have in Germany.
The net impact is exactly what environmentalists want. Namely, conventional baseload gets replaced with renewables. However, you're replacing baseload with a less reliable technology, and one that is far more expensive. Do you think a party in Alberta would have any success if they ran on a platform of "hey, let us destroy the only job that you're good at and have energy prices triple over what they are today so we can pay for doing so"? Probably not, and that's why it's not happening. Would you pay $0.32/kWh for the generation cost of your power? Not to mention the fact that any new grid that would need to be established for connecting expanding renewable energy would be astronomically expensive due to it's horribly low economies of scale. It hasn't happened because it is not a good alternative, and Germany's case study is a perfect real life example of how crappy an idea it is. Their carbon emission levels haven't appreciably declined under Energiewende, either - so what the heck exactly are they accomplishing?
Policymakers have not come up with a way to encourage the adoption of renewables without hurting the public because they can not.
It is simply not practical to build a modern society around the performance parameters of renewable technologies. They cannot provide enough power - they lack the energy density (output vs footprint), are not on for predictable amounts of time (how can you develop a manufacturing base or run things like hospitals if you cannot depend on power being available), and the energy returned from the technologies is not greater than the energy invested in their production and operation (or are very marginally so). What's the point? No matter what politicians do, we won't be able to solve this puzzle without completely re-defining the way we live while we are at it. The only thing that can solve that is revolution, collapse, and reconstruction under a new set of rules. Policy alone is not effective enough to cause that much change.
Sure, traditional baseload might start getting clever and divert it's excess energy during peak renewable generation times to processes like hydrogen production or other synthetic fuel fabrication (i.e. converting CO2 from the atmosphere and seawater into diesel fuels, etc); but the truth is that utilities will only re-divert enough to these processes as is required to avoid losses when power pool prices go to zero or negative. There will always need to have a significant baseload behind a grid with significant renewable inputs for the hundreds of "just in case" failure scenarios that come hand in hand with renewables. This will make our power extremely costly and with high footprint - again, unless we all agree to live like pioneers when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.. but only then.
Second, I take exception to your question about "subsidization to the same degree". This isn't really a point. Granted, the data is difficult to gather and interpret, the IEA estimates that hydrocarbon subsidies run about $660 billion annually, for example. But that is something like 0.7% of global GDP, and these sources account for a vast majority of global energy supply (and thus GDP). It's easy to put up billion dollar subsidization bills when the activity is generating far, far more income. Germany plans on investing something like 550 billion Euro on their transition, which is approaching the same scale, but these sources do not generate anywhere near the same value on a kilowatt basis.
But thank you for asking the question, because I am going to seek out better data to see if someone has compared the levels of subsidization an energy supply receives relative to it's generation contribution.
Let's make no bones about this - renewables are in the very early stage of their adoption curve. The amount of money governments invested and subsidized for the development of our existing power generation and distribution model is astronomical (another set of data that would be interesting to research). You're right that renewables haven't received the benefit of 100 years of subisdization and stimulation policy, but my point is that we are making the wrong bet. The kinks won't be worked out with time.
I am glad we are acting, but setting our supply mix targets with too high of a renewable component is folly and it will completely devastate the high quality of life we enjoy today. There is absolutely no better fit for a growing population and improving quality of life standards world-wide than there is with Gen IV nuclear. An investment in that technology has the potential to support the development of a true space exploration age as well - something renewables have a very slim chance of making any meaningful contribution to. As funny as that sounds, I do believe it is important for our species to get off this planet eventually. Why not start now?
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Yeah Nuclear has a lot going for it...the newer generation of reactors are not prone to failure in the same ways as Fukishima. If there is a problem the system stops working (vs getting out of control) and the fuel can be recycled a few times (France Does it)
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Why? Nuclear waste you know where it is and can keep track of it (and in many cases reuse it, most nuclear waste retains most of its potential). CO2 just goes into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming, and coal for example also produces (or rather concentrates pre-existing) radioactive waste and throws it into the atmosphere.
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Yes, you need to track it. For how long? Isn't it centuries, if not over 1000 years? Our energy use today will because the responsibility for generations to come. Even if it's sealed in tanks below ground, will people from the 24th century trust our technology? Would you trust toxic waste from the 19th century under your property?
At least with CO2 it can be dealt with by the planet to a certain extent.
Yes, you need to track it. For how long? Isn't it centuries, if not over 1000 years?
That depends on what it is and what one does with it. We could stop mining uranium today and with the right kind of reactor the existing "waste" could power the planet for 400 years leaving us with waste that's no more radioactive than what we dug out of the ground in the first place.
Even if some you might need to track for centuries, having an industrialized society has a cost.
Better to have to watch your waste for centuries than spew it into the atmosphere where it stays there for centuries.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
Our energy use today will because the responsibility for generations to come.
Everything we do will become the responsibility of generations to come. Dumping CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere impacts future generations worse because they'll have to suffer the consequences rather than us passing down a responsibility. Taking responsibility rather than shrugging and dumping it into the atmosphere sounds like a better plan.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
Even if it's sealed in tanks below ground, will people from the 24th century trust our technology? Would you trust toxic waste from the 19th century under your property?
Why does it have to be under someone's property? If future generations don't trust the technology they'll replace it with their technology.
And as mentioned, even current technology can have that waste be a resource rather than waste.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
At least with CO2 it can be dealt with by the planet to a certain extent.
That's the problem, it can't. We've already outstripped the planet's ability to act as a carbon sink for the CO2 we produce now resulting in warming and other effects (acidification of the ocean being a big one if we expect the ocean to absorb more CO2). And the CO2 we dump now will be there for centuries.
With China and India becoming more industrialized, it'll just get worse.
Solar, wind, nuclear all need to be part of powering our planet now.
Hundreds of millions of tonnes of toxic waste are produced every year by industry around the world (much of which doesn't degrade and become safe by itself over time so has to be stored forever or dumped), nuclear is a tiny portion of that. All of Canada's nuclear waste amounts to a few Olympic swimming pools worth.
Nuclear waste isn't a trivial problem, but it's also not a reason not to expand nuclear generation.
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Originally Posted by photon
Solar, wind, nuclear all need to be part of powering our planet now.
Replace nuclear with hydro, and I will agree with you. deGrasse Tyson's point was that the sun produces more than enough power to provide for our electricity needs; even if those needs increased 100 fold. (Which is possible if we switch from gas heat to electric.)
I just don't see why nuclear has to be one of the options. It's a messy solution when cleaner solutions are also available.
Then comes the political aspect. Do we allow North Korea, Iran, etc to have nuclear power? Outside of the odd James Bond movie, I've never heard of a terrorist using hydro or solar as a weapon of mass destruction.
Replace nuclear with hydro, and I will agree with you. deGrasse Tyson's point was that the sun produces more than enough power to provide for our electricity needs; even if those needs increased 100 fold. (Which is possible if we switch from gas heat to electric.)
I just don't see why nuclear has to be one of the options. It's a messy solution when cleaner solutions are also available.
Then comes the political aspect. Do we allow North Korea, Iran, etc to have nuclear power? Outside of the odd James Bond movie, I've never heard of a terrorist using hydro or solar as a weapon of mass destruction.
You could blow up a damn and kill a lot of people.
Hydro is also a dirty, dirty power source on a large scale. You destroy massive ecosystems to build big hydro. Run of the river hydro is better but not scalable.
Something like the Hoover Damn would never be built today because of habitat destruction. In fact damn removal to restore rivers is occurring in BC and Washington to help salmon stocks.
Hydro is not a guilt free solution either. Nuclear to me seems like the only viable approach that can take us to where we need to be on the next 30 years. Even the guy who started Greenpeace jumped on the nuke bandwagon.
You could blow up a damn and kill a lot of people.
Hydro is also a dirty, dirty power source on a large scale. You destroy massive ecosystems to build big hydro. Run of the river hydro is better but not scalable.
Something like the Hoover Damn would never be built today because of habitat destruction. In fact damn removal to restore rivers is occurring in BC and Washington to help salmon stocks.
Hydro is not a guilt free solution either. Nuclear to me seems like the only viable approach that can take us to where we need to be on the next 30 years. Even the guy who started Greenpeace jumped on the nuke bandwagon.
Just to add to this. The level of mercury in the water increases substantially in dammed lakes/rivers and gets into the food chain. A lot of great farmland is also destroyed by the process. Everything has it's consequences but I'm in the nuclear energy boat for sure.
Replace nuclear with hydro, and I will agree with you. deGrasse Tyson's point was that the sun produces more than enough power to provide for our electricity needs; even if those needs increased 100 fold. (Which is possible if we switch from gas heat to electric.)
Sure but gathering that power isn't that simple, and solar just doesn't cut it as baseload electricity, you have to either have something to pick up the slack while the variable sources vary, or a massive energy storage system (which means you need many times the variable production as well, if you get solar for 8 hours you need 3 times as much solar plus storage to provide 24 hours worth).
Solar takes a lot more materials, a while back I'd mentioned a study where as India develops and gets electricity to their people (which is a huge health issue for them, burning wood or whatever to cook food causes huge repository issues for people, especially kids) they need to bring on a certain amount of electricity generation (and they're running out of coal as well). Comparing doing that generation in Nuclear vs Solar, solar will tie up the entire world's steel industry for a decade or more, and a significant portion of the world's concrete. Never mind China.
If it's photovoltaic solar then making the panels creates toxic waste that has to be managed, and the creation process is energy intensive and "repaying" the energy used to make the cell (i.e. the amount of time it takes for a solar cell to generate more electricity than it took to make it) is measured in years (though it used to be decades so this is improving).
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Originally Posted by ken0042
I just don't see why nuclear has to be one of the options. It's a messy solution when cleaner solutions are also available.
All solutions are messy in different ways, including solar (10 times more people die from solar than from nuclear per unit of energy generated, 170,000 died from the failure of the Banquao Reservoir Dam in China). Nuclear should be one of the options because we need the capacity now, we can't wait for an unknown period of time for solar to become viable baseload generation. And it's safer than everything else.
In the long term nuclear will hopefully just be a stepping stone to more pervasive solar and/or fusion, but we can't wait for an indeterminate amount of time, we have to use what we have.
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Originally Posted by ken0042
Then comes the political aspect. Do we allow North Korea, Iran, etc to have nuclear power? Outside of the odd James Bond movie, I've never heard of a terrorist using hydro or solar as a weapon of mass destruction.
Or let them continue to burn oil or natural gas, the idea is to reduce human output enough to stop further damage, not to reduce it to zero. Or come up with one of a thousand other possible solutions.
There's no such thing as a perfect solution, just better ones and worse ones.
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Was doing a bit more reading on this and I might be over estimating the need for baseload and/or under estimating the ability for alternatives to provide it... Seems if the grid is smart and capable enough, there are computer simulations for some countries where renewables are capable of providing all the energy without nuclear for baseload.
So it might be easier in that respect, still all the other difficulties.
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NDT on nuclear power:
"So, your question was nuclear power plants: I think we should using solar power, just because it’s free. It’s there. That’s the reason why we shouldn’t use nuclear, because solar is out there, and we’re not putting enough energy to get it. I’m much less concerned about the safety of nuclear power than others who point to the singular disasters that have taken place, without pointing to the fatherless homes of coal miners and to the deaths that have resulted from the pollutants that have gone into the atmosphere that have gone into the atmosphere from burning coal – you want to add that to the numbers, that’s worse than any secondary or tertiary cancers you might be citing from nuclear power plant leaks. It wins in every context, plus there’s places like, in France, they’ve had nuclear power forever, and it’s not a big deal there. So, alright, you don’t build it on a fault line, and you do some smart things, but the solution to that is not safer nuclear power plants, the solution to that is solar power. And by the way, hydro-electric is solar power. You know, you don’t get water at the top of the dam without the evaporative energy of the Sun. That’s solar power – plants are solar power. Solar power is much broader than people are thinking it to be."
So it sounds like he isn't totally against the nuclear option, but would prefer we do as much solar as possible.
Already been asked but what about thorium reactors, or is the technology not proven yet? Not the same danger with uranium reactors. There was a TED talk speech about them awhile ago in Calgary by an ex NASA scientist retreading AB idea from the middle 1900's trying to figure out how to power a moon colony. Ultimately concluding the technology could work on earth.
I believe China, India, Russia, U.S, Germany and a few others are experimenting with the technology.
