Keystone Pipeline leaks...

[Paratus]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timwor...he-subsidy-that-fossil-fuels-do/#76e05c3619d8
Renewables Get 25 Times The Subsidy That Fossil Fuels Do

From your own link:

“Global fossil-fuel subsidies do exceed those for renewables in raw dollars—$523 billion to $88 billion, according to the International Energy Agency. ... Fossil fuels make up more than 80% of global energy, while modern green energy accounts for about 5%.Nov 13, 2013”

Do you ever read.

Edit:

As a percentage of inflation-adjusted federal spending, nuclear subsidies accounted for more than 1% of the federal budget over their first 15 years, and oil and gas subsidies made up half a percent of the total budget, while renewables have constituted only about a tenth of a percent.

So seems like in an apples to apples comparison renewables have gotten 5X less than oil and gas.

(Oh and my salary is in no way effected by how much renewable energy is used by the US. I do however still have some stocks from when I worked In the petrochem business.)

 

[imported_tajmahal]

You post a misleading quote about subsidies then you change the topic about the where the total energy comes from.

Only if you didn't read the link, but you knew............. well maybe you didn't. Read the links. BTW at our level of technology is it possible to have the United States power come 100% from renewables ?

 

[Paratus]

Only if you didn't read the link, but you knew............. well maybe you didn't. Read the links. BTW at our level of technology is it possible to have the United States power come 100% from renewables ?

Technically - absolutely yes. Spent 15 years doing operations on nothing but large solar arrays and batteries. It’s an absolute pain in the ass but it’s doable.

Would it be financially viable in the next decade - not remotely.

Would it be financially viable done over the next 80 years - absolutely and it would financially beneficial too.

 

[K1052]

The US grid, with some modification, can also accept significantly higher levels of renewable penetration than previously thought. California should hit 50% by 2020, a full decade earlier than required with no grid instability. What the utilities used to freak out about isn't a big deal now. They're talking about going to 100% but that will take a massive rollout of storage tech both at utility scale and behind the meter.

 

[SlowSpyder]

The US grid, with some modification, can also accept significantly higher levels of renewable penetration than previously thought. California should hit 50% by 2020, a full decade earlier than required with no grid instability. What the utilities used to freak out about isn't a big deal now. They're talking about going to 100% but that will take a massive rollout of storage tech both at utility scale and behind the meter.

We should focus on renewable clean energy as our long term goal. But in the mean time we shouldn't pretend that we don't need fossil fuels and safe ways to move them hundreds and thousands of miles. Without fossil fuels we'd lose a lot of conveniences as well as necessities.

 

[K1052]

We should focus on renewable clean energy as our long term goal. But in the mean time we shouldn't pretend that we don't need fossil fuels and safe ways to move them hundreds and thousands of miles. Without fossil fuels we'd lose a lot of conveniences as well as necessities.

We'll need natural gas for a while and it's a sensible bridge fuel to move away from coal and oil. Shipping Canada's diluted bitumen to Texas so it can be exported as refined product to more lucrative markets than ours doesn't really move the dial much for me. Transcanda's plan was to also pipe it to the pacific coast but they found out demand didn't exist for both projects. So they chose the one with less cost, less liability, and that is enjoying politically favorable winds. I do not have great confidence that this pipe will be trouble free as current events would seem to imply. Diluted bitumen is nasty stuff and insanely expensive to clean up.

 

[SlowSpyder]

We'll need natural gas for a while and it's a sensible bridge fuel to move away from coal and oil. Shipping Canada's diluted bitumen to Texas so it can be exported as refined product to more lucrative markets than ours doesn't really move the dial much for me. Transcanda's plan was to also pipe it to the pacific coast but they found out demand didn't exist for both projects. So they chose the one with less cost, less liability, and that is enjoying politically favorable winds. I do not have great confidence that this pipe will be trouble free as current events would seem to imply. Diluted bitumen is nasty stuff and insanely expensive to clean up.

I imagine the stuff will be used for more than just fuel. There are already pipelines bringing this stuff in, we still have an appetite for it, whether we like it or not. Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 (some several dozen times stronger), and leaks (and explosions) are very real problems. And while it is cleaner burning, it still creates a lot of the same problems. Natural gas may have more upsides, but it far from perfect itself. We should focus and put effort into clean renewable energy, but for the time being while we use fossil fuels, I'm for safe and efficient methods of transferring the product to where it needs to go.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Oh yeah in 80 years, OK, maybe.

 

[K1052]

I imagine the stuff will be used for more than just fuel. There are already pipelines bringing this stuff in, we still have an appetite for it, whether we like it or not. Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 (some several dozen times stronger), and leaks (and explosions) are very real problems. And while it is cleaner burning, it still creates a lot of the same problems. Natural gas may have more upsides, but it far from perfect itself. We should focus and put effort into clean renewable energy, but for the time being while we use fossil fuels, I'm for safe and efficient methods of transferring the product to where it needs to go.

Last I looked crude oil went about 70-75% for transportation fuel, the remainder industrial use like the chemical industry, and a small minority for heating. The US is in the midst of a crude glut so we have little use for additional supply at these prices. The next phase of Keystone is largely immaterial to the domestic picture since it's destined for the export market anyway. I simply see little national interest in assuming the risk.

Methane, while a more potent GHG, is also traceable. Cutting down on leakage should be and is a priority. There are many upsides to using it over oil/coal though like way less NOx, CO2, SO2, and soot

I agree that the focus long term should be renewables. They are already beating fossil generation on cost, particularly coal. Onshore wind and utility scale solar is becoming shockingly cheap. New utility scale solar tenders in Mexico for example returned bids as low as 1.77c/kWh. Renewables are now so cheap that the current discussion is largely shifting to storage.

 

[unseenmorbidity]

onto nuclear, may work. Because in liberal land the sun is always shining, the wind is always blowing at the right speed and we can burn unicorn farts for power when it isn't. Unicorn farts have no carbon, only magic.

You don't know what you are talking about. The ideal grid would have conventional power plants as well. No one is seriously arguing for a 100% renewable energy grid. It would be mostly renewables with nuclear tossed in to supplement the grid.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

You don't know what you are talking about. The ideal grid would have conventional power plants as well. No one is seriously arguing for a 100% renewable energy grid. It would be mostly renewables with nuclear tossed in to supplement the grid.

Actually if you read the thread quite a few of them ARE arguing for complete renewable. I'm the one saying it's not achievable at this moment in time and linked the PNAS paper about it.

 

[K1052]

Actually if you read the thread quite a few of them ARE arguing for complete renewable. I'm the one saying it's not achievable at this moment in time and linked the PNAS paper about it.

If by "quite a few" you mean like maybe one person.

 

[K1052]

You don't know what you are talking about. The ideal grid would have conventional power plants as well. No one is seriously arguing for a 100% renewable energy grid. It would be mostly renewables with nuclear tossed in to supplement the grid.

I think nuclear is going to, eventually, succumb to renewables as well. The fixed costs are high, plant fleet is aging, and new reactors have encountered billions in construction overruns. They also can't ramp up and down quickly to meet modern demands.

 

[brycejones]

Actually if you read the thread quite a few of them ARE arguing for complete renewable. I'm the one saying it's not achievable at this moment in time and linked the PNAS paper about it.

tajbot lying mode enabled!

 

[unseenmorbidity]

I think nuclear is going to, eventually, succumb to renewables as well. The fixed costs are high, plant fleet is aging, and new reactors have encountered billions in construction overruns. They also can't ramp up and down quickly to meet modern demands.

We did cost analysis of power output vs cost back when I was in college a few years ago. IIRC, it went from,

Natural Gas > "clean coal" = Wind > coal > Nuclear > Solar

Geothermal and hydroelectric require very specific conditions that aren't abundant in the USA.

EDIT: "Clean" coal is total bullshit, and natural gas is at least as bad as coal plants as far as greenhouse gases go.

 

[K1052]

We did cost analysis of power output vs cost back when I was in college a few years ago. IIRC, it went from,

Natural Gas > "clean coal" = Wind > coal > Nuclear > Solar

Geothermal and hydroelectric require very specific conditions that aren't abundant in the USA.

Utility scale solar has crashed in cost over the last few years and wind continued to decline. Coal slid a bit but nobody is building new plants.

Some recent data on LCOE declines:

 

[darkswordsman17]

I think nuclear is going to, eventually, succumb to renewables as well. The fixed costs are high, plant fleet is aging, and new reactors have encountered billions in construction overruns. They also can't ramp up and down quickly to meet modern demands.

Yep. Nuclear needs a major technological breakthrough to be feasible moving forward. The risks, and costs associated with attempting to reduce those risks, are too high, especially as population density keeps climbing and people become more and more bothered by the idea of having a nuclear plant nearby. And developing modern plants, let alone fusion, not to mention actually building new plants requires so much capital that it just doesn't make economic sense. We'd be better off short term pouring those resources into battery development that will pay massive dividends for renewables and doing things like moving to electric cars and other things that will help the overall energy efficiency, helping to lower and distribute the loads.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Actually if you read the thread quite a few of them ARE arguing for complete renewable. I'm the one saying it's not achievable at this moment in time and linked the PNAS paper about it.

the pnas paper wasnt about this moment in time

 

[K1052]

Yep. Nuclear needs a major technological breakthrough to be feasible moving forward. The risks, and costs associated with attempting to reduce those risks, are too high, especially as population density keeps climbing and people become more and more bothered by the idea of having a nuclear plant nearby. And developing modern plants, let alone fusion, not to mention actually building new plants requires so much capital that it just doesn't make economic sense. We'd be better off short term pouring those resources into battery development that will pay massive dividends for renewables and doing things like moving to electric cars and other things that will help the overall energy efficiency, helping to lower and distribute the loads.

With the two new units at Vogtle at least $4B over budget and years behind schedule (also bankrupted Westinghouse Electric) and the complete collapse of the VC Summer project I sincerely doubt that any new nuclear is on the table from a utility's pov for the foreseeable future. So yea I'd say it's done long term.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

the pnas paper wasnt about this moment in time

It covers this moment in time to a period about 35 years from now.
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722.full

........................................
"Faults with the Jacobson et al. Analyses
Jacobson et al. (11) along with additional colleagues in a companion article (12) attempt to show the feasibility of supplying all energy end uses (in the continental United States) with almost exclusively wind, water, and solar (WWS) power (no coal, natural gas, bioenergy, or nuclear power), while meeting all loads, at reasonable cost. Ref. 11 does include 1.5% generation from geothermal, tidal, and wave energy. Throughout the remainder of the paper, we denote the scenarios in ref. 11 as 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power for simplicity. Such a scenario may be a useful way to explore the hypothesis that it is possible to meet the challenges associated with reliably supplying energy across all sectors almost exclusively with large quantities of a narrow range of variable energy resources. However, there is a difference between presenting such visions as thought experiments and asserting, as the authors do, that rapid and complete conversion to an almost 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power system is feasible with little downside (12). It is important to understand the distinction between physical possibility and feasibility in the real world. To be clear, the specific aim of the work by Jacobson et al. (11) is to provide “low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of WWS [wind, water and solar power] across all energy sectors in the continental United States between 2050 and 2055.”

 

[ch33zw1z]

i read it, thanks. boils down to money, how much are we willing to spend to keep the species alive and world inhabitable.

100% renewable grid is way off.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Jaskalas]

You could always bring it into perspective. A 220 thousand gallon spill is about enough of a spill to fill up 1/3 of an Olympic sized swimming pool.

Huh.... I imagined an incredibly large oil spill. But a third of a pool makes it seem like nothing.

 

[brycejones]

Huh.... I imagined an incredibly large oil spill. But a third of a pool makes it seem like nothing.

Only like 25 tanker trucks worth, no big deal.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Just for comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was some 10.8 - 31.7 million gallons of crude oil. No method of delivery is guaranteed to never have an accident.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Just more acceptable losses. Capitalism ftw!