User profile: NyeCountyLocal

The sad truth is we will not be replacing fossil fuels with renewables ever-- wind and solar must be backed up by coal, natural gas, and hydro. I have been told nuclear cannot be used to back up intermittent sources because you cannot rev up and power down a nuclear power plant. Coal, unfortunately, is the best baseload, even though it can be energy-consumptive to rev up and down when the sun shines and clouds move over, or when the wind blows.

When will folks get out of their fantasy world?

The best way to deal with arctic melting is efficiency and energy conservation.

"But a single water-cooled solarthermal plant could consume up to 2,000 acre-feet of water a year ..."

The reporting these days is amazingly bad. When I last read the plan of development for Solar Millenium's solar thermal plant in Amargosa Valley, it read they need 4,000 acre-feet of water per year for wet-cooling.

Are we going to ignore our valuable desert waters?

If the Sun was actually following the story on the toad it would know that solar is not even the biggest threat facing it. There was a proposal to plough up 5,000 acres of valley wetland and adjacent habitat near Beatty for housing in a BLM land transfer (something that has broken Vegas-Summerlin, I note, in foreclosures from too many houses and not enough buyers with actual money).

What a shame this issue has been dummied down for politics.

I can't believe how ignorant the world still is. Solar and wind are not going to save us or the economy. I have been going to many of these scoping meetings and reading the development plans of these projects: Solar Millennium's own report on Andasol 1-3 in Spain, large solar thermal parabolic trough plants, state that they have been operating at 15% capacity. Solar Millennium's Amargosa Valley project will be a copy of these plants, and the nameplate capacity is said to be 484 megawatts (MW). Now that is the maximum theoretical capacity if there was no night, no clouds, no freezes. In the real world the solar thermal plants operate at only 15%-- that's a little over 72 MW! And they need 4,000 acres of land scraped up to produce this piddly amount!

A typical baseload coal power plant produces 1,000 MW at 70-90% capacity, on a couple hundred acres of land.

I'm not saying I am for coal, I'm just saying we are not going to replace this with solar or wind. Get real folks!

In addition, the cost of coal is around 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar thermal is still up at 12 cents. Solar Millennium's Amargosa Valley plant will be using experimental heat storage technology which they admit is very expensive-- I don't think they will be bringing the price down any time soon.

That translates to higher electricity costs, which can only be handled two ways: in Spain their government puts in massive subsidies to hold up these solar thermal plants (which is not working); or the cost will be passed onto the ratepayers. Hmm, I wonder what our future is?

How can you trust the newspapers when they can't even get the facts straight on renewable energy? This statement is incorrect:

"Solar tower plants, which have yet to be built in the United States...."

You drive by one on highway 15- Solar Two power tower in Daggett, California (see http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/csp_ba...)

"Chinese utilities must generate 8 percent of their power from renewable sources other than hydroelectric by the end of 2020.""

That is actually a way more realistic RPS than California's 33% by 2020, which is unattainable and will be highly destructive to the deserts and mountains rides in the blind rush to develop renewable energy on remote lands. Cihna understands the continued need for baseload power (which could be reduced if Americans conserve more energy, as Sunlizard says).

Reality check: China opens a new coal-burning power plant every week to feed its massive industry of manufacturing cheap goods to export to the US. China consumes 2.5 billion tons of coal per year, more than double the US, and coal imports are rising. But they also are doing something we do not want to do, they plan on closing old small inefficient coal-burning power plants and replace them with large highly efficient new coal-burning power plants that operate at near-critical high pressures for steam generation. The current cap-and-trade bill in Congress will not close any old coal-burning power plants in this country because big energy companies lobbied hard to keep them (they'll just buy carbon credits). (Source: Scientific American Earth 3.0 March 2009.)

Even better, China is ahead of us on the best part: they are building carbon-neutral cities. The city of Rhizao, with 2.8 million people, is making all new skyscrapers and 30% of suburban houses with rooftop solar water heaters. This generated a lot of local jobs, doubled the economic output of the city, and cut carbon emissions in half.
(Source: Scientific American Earth 3.0 March 2009.)

Yes, where is the US in this "race" to build energy-efficient cities? We're barely talking about it in newspapers.