Lets do a risk comparison. Do nothing keep using fossil fuels, catastrophe. Try a nuclear path. Expensive, same risk of being aborted by poltiics, same risk of running out of money. Same risk of plain old not working, cause nuclear is lousy for peaking and demand response - two things you need even in the absence of renewables. Or a renewable path. It is not certain disaster like sticking with fossil fuels. Once started I'd say the risk of it failing for various reasons is lower than with nuclear. And you don't have all the freaking nuclear disasters, which I consider worth something.
Barry Commoner advocated switching immediately to natural gas and efficiency with a slow transition to solar back in the 70s when we had plenty of natural gas. If he had been listened to then, we would have had a no risk option.
We don't have that. We have no low risk options. A renewable path (which is not a particularly soft energy path) is the lowest remaining risk. Also some of the mineral shortages: they are assuming one hell of a lot of electric cars. If we move to electric trains that would save some of the minerals. We do have substitutes when it comes to building wind generators. We can replace some of the fancy rotor that use rare earths with slighly less efficient ones that use iron. At least Jacobson and Delucchi base their proposals almost entirely on existing tech. Hansen wants to gamble on tech for which commercial prototypes have not been demonstrated. The equivalent would be for J & D to have based their proposal on flying energy generators.
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Dissenting Wren
<dissentingwren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> OK, so let's say that we get on board with Jacobson and DeLucchi plan to convert
> to 100% WWS power over twenty years. What happens if the plan is less than
> totally successful, because...
> (1) The price tag (they estimate $100 trillion) gets to be too high,
> (2) Countervailing political forces truncate the program,
> (3) The specific materials shortages they note prove to be intractable, or
> (4) They're just wrong - WWS can't deliver the full load of needed energy at
> particular times and/or places?
>
> In that case, does natural gas become a viable backup? Can you use natural gas
> to shape a grid with high penetration of renewables at reasonable cost?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Gar Lipow <gar.lipow at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Wed, March 16, 2011 10:25:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] catastrophy II
>
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 7:08 PM, Dissenting Wren
> <dissentingwren at yahoo.com> wrote:
>><snip>. Could you unpack the last
>> paragraph a bit?
> <snip> Paragraph to unpack:
>> Incidentally nuclear and renewable are not complementary. If you have
>> a lot of renewable energy, then you need shaping energy, on demand
>> energy. Nuclear is baseload. If you use it for shaping you waste most
>> of its capacity and it becomes extremely expensive. If you have a lot
>> of nuclear, using nuclear for base load and maybe for load following,
>> you need peaking power and spinning reserves. Renewables (except hydro
>> and geothermal whose potential are limited) are lousy for that. So if
>> you want to go carbon free you go nuclear or renewable. Splitting
>> this baby just gives you a dead baby.
>
> Nuclear has a high capital cost (higher even than renewables) and low
> operating cost. Where (in the abstract) nuclear can be cheap is that
> you can run it all the time. So your total cost is low, because not
> only do you have low operating cost, you make use of your capital 23
> of 24 hours. Your actual power production is close to the theoretical
> maximum.
>
> OK, not say you have a very high penetration of renewables - 75% of
> your power comes from renewables. Well it is not going to provide 75%
> 24 hours a day or close to it. It will provide 100% sometimes and 90%
> sometimes and 75% and so on, down to 10% sometimes. (With that high a
> pentration, it probably won't ever drop below 10%). So, say you are
> using nuclear as backup. Well you have to have a nuclear power plant
> capable of producing 90% of your needs and then run it at a lot less
> than capacity most of the time. So your cheap nuclear power (not that
> it was ever than cheap) suddenly becomes extremely expensive. The most
> lowest estimates I've seen from independent sources of nuclear power
> is 11 cents a kWh. Use those plants to shape a grid with a high
> penetration of renewables and that changes to 22 cents per kWh or 33
> cents per kWh. In comparison, Commonwealth Edison, who has been widely
> criticized for overpaying for electricity, buys electricity for an
> average of a bit over 7.5 cents a kWh in the merchant power market.
>
> Let's go the other way. Assume mostly nuclear, and try to complement
> it with renewables. OK, well nuclear as I said is baseload. To get the
> most out of it run it at maximum capacity producing the same amount
> day and night. There are two extra steps for more penetration. We can
> use various forms of smart grid and just plain old time of day pricing
> to encourage shifting of as much demand to base, so as high a percent
> of demand as we can manage is baseload. And we can build the plants
> for a bit beyond baseload, throttle them down a bit for the minimum
> demand period, up a bit during higher demand. Still not handling peak,
> but doing what is known as load following. So now you you can run
> plants at 70% capacity instead of 90% which is not that big a price
> addition. But still need some for peaking and also for unexpected
> increases in demand. And renewables don't give you shit there. I mean
> the wind blows when it will, the sun shines when it will. So even
> you try to use renewables for peaking or demand response you can't
> count on them being there when you want them. Unless you put in place
> the same amount of renewables that would if you had no nuclear, and
> the same long distance transmission, and the same storage. And at the
> point you get power when you want it, but you also get power when the
> nukes are already providing all you need. So you end up having to
> discard most of what your renewable sources produce. Just as trying
> to using nuclear as backup for renewables ends up with very expensive
> nuclear, trying to use renewables as backup for nuclear ends up with
> very expensive renewables. Which if you think about it makes sense.
> They are both capital intensive. Neither are truly demand responsive.
> They have similar flaws, other than nuclear being a hell of a lot more
> deadly. Neither compensates for the other's weaknesses. Not much is
> gained from mixing them.
>>
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