Thoughts on Clean Energy

The future of energy will have to become “greener” as will the rest of the world’s economy. However, this will not happen overnight. Many people want to see an immediate end to traditional sources of power generation such as coal and many other fossil fuels but that is not a reasonable position to take. Others want “green” energy ideas to slow down or go away. This position is not tenable either.

The coal industry sings the praises of “clean coal” and decries the idea of cap and trade to limit harmful emissions. First, clean coal, as a technology, is still on the drawing board and no plants have been built yet. Second, they maintain that cap and trade will kill jobs in their industry. This too is speculation as they ignore the fact that many new jobs will be created by the new technologies that cap and trade will require to be developed. Clean coal technology may create a few jobs in time but with no time table for implementation of these technologies who knows when these jobs would ever come into being. Cap and trade would impose timetables that the industry does not want. They would rather play with clean coal as a marketing term than be forced to develop and install it for the good of the environment.

Natural gas is a good alternative, although more expensive alternative to coal, however its methods of extraction are environmentally questionable. A new report released today also questions its "clean" status as far as green house gas emissions are concerned. Many countries are converting coal generation to natural gas. Time will tell if it's really cleaner than other carbon based fuels or not.

Nuclear power also has its challenges. Although it emits no greenhouse gases, its waste presents a problem for disposal. American reactors all or nearly all use refined or concentrated uranium as a primary fuel source. Fission of this fuel source results in highly radioactive waste. On the other hand, Canadian reactors use unrefined or raw uranium which produces a much less dangerous waste product. They also can burn the spent fuel that US and other reactors can no longer use. Perhaps we should contract with Canada to dispose of our spent fuels in their reactors? That could help the U.S. with a portion of its waste problem and provide Canada with a possibly cheaper source of nuclear fuel.

Wind and Solar are supplements but neither is reliable in and of itself for base load generation needs. Solar works find if each home has battery storage but it is not practical for grid applications. Wind may work at night when solar won't but it doesn't function in high winds or no wind. If wind and solar electrical generation does have one major advantage it would be found in the security of what is called distributed generation. A city full of small wind turbines and solar PV panels will always produce some power whereas the failure of one large base load generating station presents problems on a huge scale. An attack could take out a power station but not a city full of small solar and wind generators.

How much biological waste does this country produce? How much power could be generated by burning this waste instead of coal? Biofuels will be an answer for the future but they are still in their relative infancy. Corn does not produce enough sugar to make corn ethanol a good long term solution but naturally growing plants such as switchgrass have a high sugar content while needing very little artificial fertilizer like corn does. Being cheaper to grow, higher sugar content and not part of the food crop market like corn makes this a real alternative for ethanol production that is also just beginning to be exploited.

The real problem with developing these alternate and greener sources of energy is that the large energy companies seem resistant to change from what they know. Energy producers are more interested in the short term profits of the next quarter than they are with their long term success and the success of the planet.