True Environmentalism Means Making Tough Choices
I just got an email from the Sierra Club, wanting me to get on board for a piece of environmentalism that goes like this:
This year, Assembly member Felipe Fuentes has a bill that would allow the Calico Solar Project, a solar project in California that will cover 4,613 acres—four times the size of the Golden Gate Park- within an area key to the survival of the desert tortoise- to bypass the environmental review process that almost all other projects are subject to.
I see no reason that anyone or anything should be exempt from the standard environmental review processes. Having said that, it’s always struck me as inflexible to refuse to make tough choices. Imagining 4,613 acres as all PV, we’d have about a gigawatt (after using a capacity factor of 0.2) , a replacement for a coal-fired power plant. I hate to sound insensitive, but considering the larger ecological and health-related issues of burning coal, I would think that the savings would justify exiling some desert tortoises.
Craig, you are a reasonable man. I say that not because I agree with you about the desert tortises vs. the PV panels but because you understand that trade-offs must be made to secure green energy for replacement of retiring fossil fuel sources. So many so called environmentalists want a free energy lunch. It doesn’t exist. Hard choices must be made and moving a few tortises a few miles away from their homestead is one of them. LL
One of the advantages of nuclear power is that it does not require the large land areas that solar power requires.
As I see it, we should be doing more research work to make ready for implementation nuclear power systems that are safer and more economical than our present pressurized water uranium reactors. Until that is done, the lesser of evils would be to expand temporarily our use of the present nuclear technology.
You did multiply the rated power of the PV system by 0.2 to allow for the fact that it provides intermittent power, but still there is the problem of where the power comes from when the sun isn’t shining or, if PV of complemented by wind power, when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. My fear is that if we do not quickly begin research on better nuclear technologies, the public will, when costs of renewables escalate and reliability declines, demand the rapid expansion of coal power and current technology nuclear power. Then we will be worse off than we are now.
IMO you are spot on Frank regarding the role of nuclear power as a near term necessity. We need to fill in the troughs of the supply curve that a purely PV world would generate.
Personally I would like to see the thorium reactors fill that demand. The supply of thorium is greater than the supply of uranium. Thorium would be very difficult if not impossible to weaponize as a nuclear device.
Even with thorium there are trade-offs that must be dealt with. Most likely any nuclear plant of any design would be sited on a body of water and would contribute to thermal pollution and maybe kill some fish. Maybe warm water fish will have to be farmed in lagoons to replace the cold water species that would be displaced. That would be a tough decision for someone like me that enjoys a Friday night walleye dinner. LL
Actually, a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) would not have to be sited near a body of water. It can use the Brayton cycle instead of the Rankine cycle to drive generators because of its ability to operate at much higher temperatures; that would make it practical to use air cooling instead of water cooling. From studying the reactor options, I tend to favor the LFTR for that reason, in addition to other reasons, although it may be premature to decide on a particular reactor technology. But I do believe that our pressurized water reactors are far from the best choice.
In my opinion, we should be doing research on LFTR technology in addition to doing research on different types of breeder reactors until we know for certain which reactor technology is the best. That could even require using different reactor technologies concurrently for a while. And, because we will be needing energy for many centuries, it is important to determine which is the best reactor technology.
As China, India, and other countries become more prosperous, the need for energy on a global scale can go only one way, i.e., up, and unless developing countries migrate away from fossil fuels, it will make little difference how we in the U.S. get our energy or how much we use. The need to desalinate see water will also greatly add to energy requirements. So, it’s imperative that we develop energy technologies that can be used anywhere in the world, including in countries with such high population densities that wind and solar power could not possibly even be considered. Even so, there may always be a place for renewables because nuclear power may always remain impractical in small island nations and remote areas.
Probably the best use for solar power in the U.S. is not for generating electricity, but rather, for heating domestic water and homes. For heating, its efficiency can exceed 50% whereas PV systems are generally less than 20% efficient. Using solar for heat has been badly neglected at least partly because, for some reason, it is not subsidized while solar electric is subsidized. That has resulted in economic distortions.
Craig – agreed. Not that we should forget about desert tortoises (or prairie hens, or whatnot)- all cost should be weighed, but those costs should be weighed keeping in mind that there is no perfect solution.
Craig,
Thanks for having the guts to address the “renewable energy vs. open space/endangered species” debate among enviros. I agree with you that we need to look at the big picture and stop treating utility-scale solar projects like fossil fuel wells and mines, because they are not the same thing. For solar to “scale” up and become 20% or more of the energy mix, we are going to have to make some sacrifices, especially in desert states like California, Nevada, NM, and Arizona.
Exactly right.