Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

"The idea that solar panels in space will block a significant amount of sunshine; well, you're just sort of reaching at this point."

No doubt, but you don't seem to have a problem with elsewhere overreaching of eco-activists.

And yet we have stopped building nuclear power plants

Lame attempts at come-backs. You're funnier when you post drunk.

Quote:

"The idea that solar panels in space will block a significant amount of sunshine; well, you're just sort of reaching at this point."

No doubt, but you don't seem to have a problem with elsewhere overreaching of eco-activists.

Of course I do; I outlined some of my problems with them above.

Quote:

And yet we have stopped building nuclear power plants

Don't look at my generation; not our fault.

Cycloptichorn

Germany plans to build up to 30 off-shore wind parks

FRANKFURT (Thomson Financial) - Germany plans to erect up to 30 off-shore wind parks in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to offset the decline in power supply from the phase out of nuclear energy, infrastructure minister Wolfgang Tiefensee told Welt am Sonntag.

The projected wind parks will be a first step to increase wind power in Germany to 25,000 Megawatts by 2030, the minister was quoted as saying.

Several investors have filed applications to build wind parks, which confirms the profitability of the projects, he added.

An off-shore wind power capacity of 11,000 megawatts will be installed 'soon' the newspaper reported, adding that the first German wind park will be built off the shores of the island of Borkum in the North Sea.

Germans plan to build 2,000 offshore windmills

Amid rocketing oil prices, the German government has proposed a law to increase output of renewable energy as part of a long-waited environmental package and plans to construct 2,000 offshore windmills by 2030.

The German government wants to build up to 30 offshore windfarms in a bid to meet its renewable energy targets, Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said in an interview published Sunday.

Tiefensee told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the windfarms would be built in the Baltic and North seas and said some 2,000 windmills should soon be producing 11,000 megawatts of electricity.

The government is aiming to obtain "25,000 megawatts of energy from windfarms by 2030", Tiefensee said.

"The rise in the oil price has made this all the more pressing and the interest from investors shows that it is economically viable," he added.

The first windfarm will go up off Borkum island in the North Sea later this year, according Welt am Sonntag.

Earlier this year, the French energy giant Areva announced that it would sell windmills to the German renewable energy company Prokon Nord to enable it to build a windfarm near Borkum.

Germany's Bundestag or lower house of parliament passed a law last month aimed at increasing the amount of power generated by renewable energy sources like wind or solar power to 30 percent from the current 14 percent by 2020.

Wind energy currently makes up seven percent of the nation's energy consumption.

The new law was part of a long-awaited package aimed at fighting climate change agreed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right coalition government.

The government has agreed to honour a decision to close the country's 17 nuclear power plants by 2020 but remains divided over the issue.

Merkel insists that a nuclear phase-out would hinder efforts to slash Germany's dependency on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.

But Tiefensee, a member of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners, said that investing in windfarms was better than keeping the nuclear plants running.

"We believe in renewable energy and not in nuclear energy."

Hmm, hard to see how cables could cost more then, say, transporting millions of tonnes of oil.

Cycloptichorn

access

Three types of cables would be used:

• Inter-array cables connecting groups of turbines to the offshore substations
  
• Export cables for transmitting electricity from the offshore substations to shore
  
• Onshore cables to connect to the onshore substation

The wind turbines would be connected to each other by buried inter-array cables that carry the electricity to offshore substations where the voltage is increased. Up to six export cables would then carry the power from the offshore substations to shore, a distance of around 50km (31 miles). Cables will typically be buried at a depth of between 0.5m and 3m, subject to local conditions.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Hmm, hard to see how cables could cost more then, say, transporting millions of tonnes of oil.

Cycloptichorn

The pipes for transporting mega tons of oil over land already exist. The cost of use of those pipes may or may not be as expensive as the cost of use of cables between sea located wind turbine farms and land.

Regardless, I look forward to future evaluation of the practicality of sea located wind turbine farms, especially if the cost of crude oil per barrel remains higher than it is now ... or even only higher than $100.

Regardless, I look forward to future evaluation of the practicality of sea located wind turbine farms, especially if the cost of crude oil per barrel remains higher than it is now ... or even only higher than $100.

Large solar energy array set for GM in Spain

A Michigan company, Energy Conversion Devices, plans to announce Tuesday that it is providing the solar electric system for what it says will be the world's largest rooftop array, on a General Motors assembly plant in Zaragoza, Spain.

The project will be 12 megawatts, a huge number in a field where most arrays are measured in kilowatts, units 1,000 times smaller.

The project will use solar devices manufactured in rolls, like carpet runners. Installation will be completed this fall, according to the company, which is based in Rochester Hills, Michigan Energy Conversion will supply the equipment to Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy, which will lease the rooftop space from GM and own and operate the installation, which will be two million square feet.

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12 Megawatts !!!! That works out to about 1% of the capacity of a single nuclear generating plant or a typical coal-fired plant. However it is about twice the capacity of the latest wind turbines. :wink:

Well, it's fair to point out that wind generation usually involves multiple units collected into farms.

You are correct tho that Nuke is by far the best way to produce power at this time... and I can't help but think that a more effective advocate at higher levels could have helped break through the blocks placed by those who irrationally associate nuclear power plants with guaranteed doom and gloom.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Well, it's fair to point out that wind generation usually involves multiple units collected into farms.

You are correct tho that Nuke is by far the best way to produce power at this time... and I can't help but think that a more effective advocate at higher levels could have helped break through the blocks placed by those who irrationally associate nuclear power plants with guaranteed doom and gloom.

Cycloptichorn

I think you should spend a little time reading up on the hysteria generated by Reid & Pelosi over the Administration's attempts to open up the Yucca Mountain repository -- which has been sitting there, completed and ready for several years. There is no scientific case whatever for opposing it. However it is a psychological hot button for many people, and the Democrats have revealed themselves to be completely spineless and utterly cynical on the issue. Obama in his public statements so far has carefully avoided the issue, and restricted his affirmative proposals to the politically correct "renewables" exclusively, even though he undoubtedly knows better. Not likely to be an "effective advocate at a higher level".

In fact the Bush Administration has very quietly reformed the licensing process for new nuclear powerplants, reducing the number of approval steps (and therefore opportunities for the various organized "intervenors" to stop construction through litigation) from four to one. Six licenses for the construction of new plants have already been issued and another 20 or so are in process. Construction is scheduled to begin in a year or so at the first six sites. Your Democrat heroes will have an opportunity to show us what they are made of.

Oil billionaire Pickens puts his money on wind power

(CNN) -- Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is putting his clout behind renewable energy sources like wind power.

The legendary entrepreneur and philanthropist on Tuesday unveiled a new energy plan he says will decrease the United States' dependency on foreign oil by more than one-third and help shift American energy production toward renewable natural resources.

"The Pickens Plan" calls for investing in domestic renewable resources such as wind, and switching from oil to natural gas as a transportation fuel.

In a news conference outlining his proposal, Pickens said his impetus for the plan is the country's dangerous reliance on foreign oil.

"Our dependence on imported oil is killing our economy. It is the single biggest problem facing America today," he said.

"Wind power is ... clean, it's renewable. It's everything you want. And it's a stable supply of energy," Pickens told CNN in May. "It's unbelievable that we have not done more with wind."

Pickens' company, Mesa Power, recently announced a $2 billion investment as the first step in a multibillion-dollar plan to build the world's largest wind farm in Pampa, Texas.

Pickens said Tuesday that if the United States takes advantage of the so-called "wind corridor," stretching from the Canadian border to West Texas, energy from wind turbines built there could supply 20 percent or more of the nation's power. He suggested the project could be funded by private investors.

Power from thousands of wind turbines that would line the corridor could be distributed throughout the country via electric power transmission lines and could fuel power plants in large population hubs, the oil baron said.

Fueling these plants with wind power would then free up the natural gas historically used to power them, and would mean that natural gas could replace foreign oil as fuel for motor vehicles, he said.

Using natural gas for transportation needs could replace one-third of the United States' imported oil and would save more than $230 billion a year, Pickens said.

"We are going to have to do something different in America," Pickens told CNN. "You can't keep paying out $600 billion a year for oil."

His energy plan could be implemented within 10 years if both Congress and the White House treat the current energy situation as a "national emergency and take immediate action," he predicted.

Pickens, a lifelong Republican, says he is not advising either presidential candidate, but is prepared to work with the next president.

The Web site for the plan urges people to sign up and help spread the word.

Oil analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover, an energy risk manager, said Pickens' plan could definitely reduce the country's dependency on foreign oil.

"The best thing about it is that it's a definite plan -- it's not something that either party has pitted itself outrightly against. It therefore has a tremendous chance for success on Capitol Hill."

Analyst Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., an investment firm, added that such a plan "has been on the drawing board for years."

At least 21 states and the District of Columbia have set deadlines or goals for utilities to obtain electricity from clean, renewable sources instead of fossil fuel-burning plants.

The scramble has triggered construction of large-scale wind farms throughout much of the nation, including proposals for the first U.S. offshore facilities.

Delaware and Galveston, Texas, have offshore projects in the works, although a farm proposed off New York's Long Island was shelved this year because of high projected construction costs.

In Massachusetts, where utilities are under the gun to obtain four percent of electricity from renewables by 2009, builders await federal approval of a hugely controversial wind farm off historic Cape Cod.

The Cape Wind project envisions 130 wind turbines each rising 440 feet above Nantucket Sound by 2011. State officials said the farm will eliminate pollution equal to 175,000 gas-burning cars.