I think the opposite is true; the accepted truth seems to be that we can't solve the problem that we will have to cut our lifestyles and all move to peasant huts and spend 30% of our time cultiviating our food. Or go to nuclear power. You are pushing the coventional left wisdom.
> Although windmills should certainly be part of every landscape, when
> you divide the megawatts required by the potential of wind, it doesn't work
> out. Other than nuclear energy, there's no real way to substitute for fossil
> fuels in any systematic way.
>
You are oversimplifying. It is true that wind alone could not provide 100% of our electricity - but not because there is not enough of it, but because it is not reliable enough. That is , the Great Plains alone could provide many times the kWh we currently consume. Offshore generators could provide many times the kWh we currently consume. It does not provide power where we want it - but DC high voltage lines to take care of that would be needed if we put in new nuclear power plants in any case. The problem with wind is that it does not blow all the time; so you can get as much power as you want, but not when you want it ; and of course having the power when you want it is rather the point of an electric grid. Add a few hours storage at $350 per kWh of capacity with flow batteries, and wind becomes semi-dispatchable - not baseline or anything, but reliable enough to provide 50% of your supply. As an added advantage, flow batteries can discharge power at twice nominal capacity for up to a half hour without damage - which means they not only make the wind dispatchable put provide part of you spinning reserve, and even a little bit of peaking capability (though not for full peaking period). What about the other half? I am now in the process of writing query letter for a book that answers these and other questions. Read it when it is published, and find out.
Jordan
>
> .. adding a significant number of electric cars would significantly tax the existing infrastructure: there's no way you'd get people to "only" charge at night, for one.
To the extent that it matters you can. Electric cars need specialized plugs in any case. And you need plugs in apartments and street parking for people who don't own their own parking space; to ensure availability you have require it by regulation in any case. So computer control the chargers so that all chargers combined never draw more than your system can handle - which provides a better incentive than time-of-use pricing for people who are able to do their charging during off peak hours. Charge your car during peak hours and your battery gets charged more slowly.
>
>
> I'm not saying all this shouldn't get done. I'm not saying it can't be
> done. I'm saying you're vastly underestimating the impact of such a
> change.
The point is not that there is no impact - but that the impact is lower the market price, not even the externalities of fossil fuels at present.
> It certainly is a political and social problem. But it is also a huge
> technical problem as well. Denying that just seems silly to me. It is
> not just a matter of will. I could give you a long list of challenges,
> but I suspect you already know them: you're just downplaying them for
> some reason. Ok, I'll give you one:
> >
>> Electric cars with decent battery capacitiy could be ...
>
> This is a very hard problem, and it's not advancing the way you'd need
> it for significant change. Batteries are big, heavy, inefficient,
> expensive, and dangerous. It's getting better. There is a whole
> industry devoted to it. In the time that people have been saying
> "electric cars with decent battery capacity could be ..." we've also
> seen the availability of better-than-zero-emission gasoline-powered
> cars. Food for thought ...
Wrong. Batteries are heavy, inefficient, but they are still good enough for electric cars. Even old fashioned nickel cadium batteries can last 1000 cycles with only a 50% loss of capacity. That means a car that started with a 240 miles range would still have 120 mile range at 100,000 miles. There are now lithum batteries on the market that only lose 2% of their capacity in 1000 cycles. The batteries are expensive, but the rest of a car that runs on them is cheap - lowering the overall cost, batteries and all to that of normal car if mass produced.
Fundamentally you don't want to admit that the technical challenges have been solved, because that really questions things about markets and capitalism you take for granted - that whatever their problems they are the best way to get bread baked, homes heated, beer chilled. But there is a reality out there that does not respond to wishful thinking; injustice is not the only problem with our capitalism; there are a lot of practical things it screws up as well.