Obama to focus on Clean Energy

Yep,

I agree with you. I am also not too optimistic about this.
Only time will tell if this is successful.

DBCassidy

 

The devil is in the details, and the carbon legislation had really bad details. I'm somewhat optimistic that something decent gets passed. I'm also sure there will be lots of pork like the carbon bill. There are people on both sides of the aisle that want this, and uncertainty about the legislation hurts utilities and businesses that use large amounts of electricity.

I have friends that are building a pro-type plug in diesel electric 18-wheeler. It drastically reduces pollutants in cities. Payback is estimated at 2.5 years. I'm not sure if we are jumping the gun to get natural gas trucks on the road without first adding in hybrid capability. I can easily see this as a great application for a gas turbine plug in serial hybrid.

 

20% of Americans are tea baggers;
Another 30% are so clueless they are still sure Iraq has WMD;
The majority of the remainder vote to continue the status quo, and most certainly will vote against the taxes needed for a new national energy infrastructure.

A world war that disrupted oil imports would be enough to change America's path.

 

Well the biggest news was Obama is talking natural gas. He made a shout-out to the Pickens plan for trucks, which would be a good place to start using more NG. I think Obama said non-hybrid gasoline cars from Detroit now getting 50 MPG are rolling of the lines - what car is that? The carbon sequestration push is questionable. Think I'd rather see coal gasification as the favored direction. I'd probably build 4 of those instead of the 4 bio-refineries, or maybe 4 of each. Perhaps the loss of nuclear option as a "slam dunk" accounts for why Obama is finally using the word natural gas in a sentence. But I'd build 4 SMR (very small nuke technology) too.

 

Natural gas may burn cleanly, but it's a public health nightmare to extract. All of the deep shale gas deposits which are supposed to give us decades of energy independence require high volume hydraulic fracturing which uses billions of gallons of water and renders all of it toxic and radioactive. The EPA glossed over it during the Bush Administration but is studying it anew now. Check out Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy

 

OK I'll check it out but if we'd used more natural gas we could actually have some fish in the lakes of the Adirondacks. I agree there needs to be enviro. sound methods used.

 

DPLATNYC- I want to say, despite the tone of my first response, I fully support what you are doing. As a fellow concerned citizen, I have fought many public battles over various projects. If I can send you an old how-to manual, pls advise. Even city hall and EPA can turn against you, so there is simply no substitute for citizens fighting for the correct answer, if you can see it clearly. The planet will be better off for your work.

 

He's talking about cafe not epa.

The most cost effective way for CCS is in an IGCC plant, so the push for sequestration is a push to make new coal plats use gasification. They need to look at water pollution, but IGCC with CCS gets rid of most of the airborne pollutants. Natural gas turbines or cc can sequester but costs of ccs make combined cycle a winner as there is less carbon to sequester to go along with less fuel used.

 

Conservation & efficiency come first. We need better standards for buildings (more conservation, less "go get more.") Every sale of every building must include a HERS (Energy audit) so potential buyers can objectively assess efficiency. Utilities need to upgrade the grid. We need more emphasis on distributed power and less on centralized power. Photovoltaics on every roof tied into the grid (Germany has done this for apartments, houses, freeways and farms). Negawatts are more cost effective than kilowatts.

 

The grids are regional so the upgrade has to be national policy. ERCOT is all in texas and that is being upgraded fastest since a single state can control and pay for it. Interstate disputes need to be moved aside. Distributed power does require those grid upgrades and smart regulation/deregulation, which need federal leadership. Remember how dumb regulation/deregulation in california led to rolling black outs.

PV is good, but people drastically overestimate the value. Germany still only provided 2% of their electricity from solar last year. Wind provided around 7% and the German government's bigger push is in wind and reduced electrical use.

 

Obama speech "And our automakers will build more innovative products. Right now, there are even cars rolling off the assembly lines in Detroit with combustion engines — I’m not talking about hybrids — combustion engines that get more than 50 miles per gallon."

Name that car?

 

^^
PriusChat Forums - SageBrush's Album: CAFE 2008 -- by vehicle

The listing is from 2008 and shows a couple of non-hybrids in the low 40s MPG.

 

Today I read Obama is supposedly embracing T Boone Pickons Natural Gas plan.
Convert fleet vehicles to NG .Sounds good to me.

 

Things we could do right away for energy in the USA:

1 ) geothermal HVAC credit for properly installed systems
Most components are US made and all of the labor is US so it has a very stimulative effect on economy.

2) reintroduce the tax credits for insulation, windows, doors and hybrid hot water heaters.
Nearly all of this money would stay in the US economy as well.

3) make a concrete commitment to buy 1 gigawatt of solar panels a year and put them on most government buildings that they can be easily installed like schools, fire stations and other buildings with flat roofs. About half of this money would go overseas but all of the savings will stay in the USA. This is ambitious as it is a little more then double the installations in 2010 but it is certainly not outside of the realm of possibilities.

4 ) make it easier for wind farms to be installed with less delay from NIMBY folks (don't take away their rights, but don't allow things to drag on for years)

5 ) streamline solar regulation in the USA in the same way the federal 'right to receive' law streamlined dish installation. Stop local code enforcers and utilities from screwing up solar installs with a standard nationwide code.

 

Austin- I sure hope you are correct, but I was thinking the carbon capture idea was to put it on the back end of a conventional coal fired power plant (driving the efficiency from 30% to <20%).

 

the problem with putting CCS on old plants is that it takes a lot more work to siphon off the CO2. IGCC makes that way easier. In stead of ramming the stuff into the ground, why not force the flu gases through something equivalent to a CO2 filter on space craft. You could pass the CO2 through silicates that would absorb the CO2 and the disposal would be pretty easy and you wouldn't have to worry much about the CO2 being re-released. Don't know what the kinets of that reaction are, however. I'm sure someones thought of this an rejected it, but it seems a lot easier than ramming CO2 deep into the ground.