Considering the Externalities of Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy Is the Bargain of the Century
As readers may have noticed, I’ve begun promoting the launch of my second book, Is Renewable Really Doable? (available March 15th) using the 32-page report “Insights into LCOE – The Levelized Cost of Energy” as a give-away.
In response to my mentioning the LCOE concept, Henk Daalder responds:
No, we do not need to know what it costs to get sustainable energy, because the fossil route is always more expensive than the sustainable route.
Just start building good-looking windfarms, ignore promotion and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) from the fossil industry. Electricity from a land-based wind farm is already less expensive than any commercial provider of commercial energy.
Organize citizens around community based generation of sustainable energy.Start reconstruction of homes to use no external energy for heating.
These are the actions that matter.
You’ve nailed it, Mr. Daalder. The moment we take a serious look at the externalities of fossil fuels, we realize that renewable energy is the bargain of the century. Thanks for the comment.
Craig;
Yes, Mr. Daalder has nailed it, and it is a point I have been making for years to anyone who will listen.
Given modern technology, do we even need a national grid? Here in Canada, nation-wide we do not have one, although it may seem that way to those of us in Southern Canada, who are on a grid; but many Northern communities are not.It is simply impractical to run grid lines to them. Therefore, they have community-size systems, or even home-based systems. Unfortunately, many of them have relied on Diesel generators.
Many comments have been made in past 2greenenergy blogs about the cost of fossil fuels. How about $80.00 per gallon for diesel fuel? That is what it costs to supply these northern communities with fuel if it has to be flown in. Many of these communities are inaccessible by truck through most of the year. Fuel is generally trucked over ice roads (in itself an expensive and potentially hazardous operation) during the short part of the winter season during which this is possible, and they try to get a seasonal supply of fuel to the communities during this window. Unfortunately, with an ever-shortening season due to climate warming, this is getting to be harder and harder to do. The alternative is $80.00 per gallon flown-in fuel- or a change to renewable energy, which is now being heavily invested in by these communities; particularly wind energy, with storage in high-reliability batteries.
Ironically, there are substantial natural gas deposits near some of these communities, which our gas companies are itching to exploit- by piping it southward to southern Canada and the U.S. Such is the logic of our fossil fuel industry. This is the same industry, of course, which proposes to pipe and ship bitumen (a far more caustic substance than conventional oil)through a pristine and environmentally sensitive part of British Columbia to China, while importing oil from the Middle East to our east coast. Our Mr. Harper is influenced by the Frazer Institute, a so-called “think tank” of right-wing philosophy, which insists that resource exports are absolutely necessary to maintain “economic growth”.
It’s not surprising that such thinking prevails- I remember that my college economics textbooks were full of such nonsense. It didn’t wash then and it doesn’t wash now, and we need to unlearn it. It reminds me of Mrs. Smith’s comments to Anne Elliot (in Jane Austen’s novel “Persuasion”) on “those who, having had ‘the best education in the world’, know nothing worth attending to.”
Dear sir,
I am doing research in IN-PIPE CASCADING MARINE AND HYDRO ELECTRICAL GENERATION FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS.In the year 1992, in the month of April i was watching national geographical channel and i got a Idea and in 1998-99 I registered a company by name Cow and Calf Dairy Farms Limited and incorporated power generation as the main objectives of the company and designed a concept to get Ocean water to run inside the Pipe and when the ocean is a natural reservoir a natural head is formed and in my idea water is made to run inside the slantingly sloppily down pipe where the inlet is connected inside the ocean and the slantingly pipe will run down inside the earth quite opposite the Ocean and running towards the human habitat so that the Ocean water will run from a high point to a low point and in between the inlet and the outlet will be a series of turbines in the path of the flowing water so that the water pressure head rotates equally in all turbines equally and electricity is generated.
Thanking you
with regards
CHAGANTI
+91-9014116548