Some "Amazingly" Abandoned "Renewable" Energy Plants Around the World.

[NNadir]

Even sources of clean energy can get dirty when they sit around for ten, twenty or fifty years. More often than not, renewable energy power plants are upgraded—or their equipment replaced—because their locations were selected for their excellent renewable resource. But stuff happens: businesses go under; policies and incentives change; more efficient technologies are discovered, etc. And as a result, relics of a renewable past are left scattered across the global landscape.

http://webecoist.com/2009/05/04/10-abandoned-renewable-energy-plants/">10 Amazingly-Abandoned Renewable Energy Plants

Even, um, "clean" energy can get dirty?

Who knew?

Oxymorons anyone?

There are dozens of wind farms scattered around the Western rim of the Mojave Desert near Tehachapi pass. There are over 5,000 wind turbines in the area thanks to the wind rush of the 1970s and 1980s.

Many companies have come and gone, been bought, or gone belly-up. Some of the hundreds of turbines not spinning have been derelict now for decades. There is no law in Kern County that requires removal of broken or abandoned wind turbines, and as a result, the Tehachapi Pass area is an eerie mix of healthy, active wind farms and a wind turbine graveyard/junkyard.

[eleny]

1. Looks like stills from an episode of "Life After People" on the History Channel

[madrchsod]

2. lots of scrap in those turbines and

thats a lot of shotgun torch cutting....

[joshcryer]

4. You gave me an idea to make some "easy" money...

...heh heh.

[joshcryer]

8. I bet if I were to set up a company to get that metal for scrap...

...the previous owners would jump on it and say that it's their metal. Wonder what the abandonment laws are in CA.

[hunter]

3. I remember when many of those were brand new and shiny.

I'd visited most of them and even worked for one of the renewable companies. I remember how they'd show off the control room of Solar One like it was some kind of NASA project. Lots of blinking lights and a dazzling view of the mirror field.... Ooooo..... pretty.

That's what makes me the cynical nasty curmudgeon I am today.

San Onofre 2 and 3, and Diablo Canyon (which I naively and quite ferociously opposed when they were built) are still producing huge amounts of electricity almost 24/7, while the renewable energy projects I researched and later worked on are useless toxic waste.

The two companies I worked for, one an actual renewable energy firm, the other a business that did a lot of engineering for those firms, are not even U.S. companies anymore. One got assimilated by a European multinational, the other got assimilated by China.

Have a nice day.

[NNadir]

5. I also reversed my opinion on nuclear energy. More recently I reversed my opinion on MOST

renewable energy, particularly wind energy.

I still am somewhat enthusiastic about geothermal energy, although it's not really "renewable" either. But I believe that the carbon dioxide released by many geothermal plants would have been released naturally in any case.

I concede that neither wind nor solar have as high an externality as dangerous natural gas, or the other two even worse forms of dangerous fossil fuels.

However wind and solar presuppose gas or oil and for this reason I have little use for them, since I favor the immediate phase out of all dangerous fossil fuels. I think gas's externalities are getting much worse rapidly because of the implications of fracking and overshore terminals and gas fields, the latter which represent Denmark's real energy agenda.

I am also aware, unlike many anti-nukes, that the economic costs of solar and wind are calculated on lifetime assumptions that are clearly not realistic for either form of energy, particularly wind. A lot of these big wind plants, as I document, fail much earlier than advertised. The assumption that they will function for 30 years is pure bull, and all this crap about "new technology" is clearly bull.

Finally there is the matter of what we turn over to the next generation. My father's generation left me the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant, and the only threat to its continued operation is the ignorance of anti-nukes. Other than that, it runs fine.

It is the same with Vermont Yankee. What will shut it and cause it to be replaced by dangerous fossil fuels and the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste is ignorance, stupidity, irrational fear mongering, complacency, indifference and wishful thinking.

People will die as a result of these awful examples of the worst of human pyschology.

Nuclear plants have a high capital cost mostly because of the destruction of nuclear industrial infrastructure.

[hunter]

6. This inspired me to dig through some of my old slides...

The mirror field at Solar One was really striking:




I once had good photo of a girlfriend in this set, but she took it away from me after I put it in a presentation.

It was an accident, I swear!

[joshcryer]

7. That's a flippin shame.

[wtmusic]

9. You should have used one where she wasn't naked. nt

[hunter]

16. She had more naked pictures of me than I had of her.

If she didn't have a survey rod handy, she had Hunter.

:blush:

[XemaSab]

10. Thanks for posting this

If we're talking about externalities, at least nuclear plants don't involve blading hundreds of acres of wildlands.

All these big solar plants are biological deserts, and wind farms involve constuction of huge amounts of infrastructure in open space.

[Wilms]

13. Wiki mentioned a different idea...

"Solar thermal power plants are big and use a lot of land, but when looking at electricity output versus total size, they use less land than hydroelectric dams (including the size of the lake behind the dam) or coal plants (including the amount of land required for mining and excavation of the coal)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project


Likely the same for energy and land intensive uranium mining.

[kristopher]

14. That is true.

Review of Solutions to Global Warming, Air
Pollution, and Energy Security

Briefing to Senator Jeff Bingaman
Chairman, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee

Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
October 8, 2008

Thank you, Senator Bingaman, for meeting with us today. I would like to discuss a
review of proposed solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy
security that is the culmination of several years of work. I have handed out a draft copy of
the review, which contains the calculations referred to here in an appendix, and some
slides. The review considers the proposed solutions with respect not only to climate,
pollution, and energy security, but also to water supply, land use, wildlife, resource
availability, thermal pollution, water pollution, nuclear proliferation, and reliability.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options were considered. The
electricity sources included solar-photovoltaics (PVs), concentrated solar power (CSP),
wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and
storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options included corn-E85 and cellulosic E85.
To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, I examined their
comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned above by powering new-
technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell
vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy sources and vehicle type were considered. Upon
ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories,
four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerged. Tier 1 (highest-ranked) included wind-
BEVs and wind-HFCVs. Tier 2 included CSP-BEVs, Geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs,
tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs. Tier 3 included hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-
BEVs. Tier 4 included corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first (best) in seven out of 11 categories, including mortality,
climate damage reduction, footprint on the ground, water consumption, effects on
wildlife, thermal pollution, and water chemical pollution. In fact, the U.S. in 2007 could
theoretically replace all onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by electricity from 73,000-
144,000 5-MW wind turbines operating in 7-8.5 m/s mean wind speeds. This number of
turbines is less than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II. Such
wind-BEVs could reduce U.S. CO2 by 32.5-32.7% and nearly eliminate 15,000 onroad

gasoline vehicle-related air pollution deaths per year in the U.S. projected in 2020 (a
reduction from about 20,000/yr today). The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 500,000-1
million times less than that of producing ethanol for E85 regardless of whether ethanol is
from corn or prairie grass, 10,000 times less than those of CSP-BEVs or PV-BEVs, 1000
times less than those of nuclear- or coal-BEVs, and 100-500 times less than those of
geothermal, tidal, or wave BEVs. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-
BEVs cause the least wildlife loss as well, accounting for bird fatalities.

Although HFCVs are less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs provide a greater
benefit than any other vehicle technology aside from wind-BEVs. Wind-HFCVs are also
the most reliable combination due to the low downtime of wind turbines, the distributed
nature of turbines, and the ability of wind’s energy to be stored in hydrogen over time.

The Tier 2 combinations (CSP-, Geothermal-, PV-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs) all
provide outstanding benefits with respect to climate and mortality and are also
recommended. Among Tier 2 combinations, CSP-BEVs result in the lowest carbon
emissions and mortality. Geothermal-BEVs requires the lowest array spacing among all
options examined. Although PV-BEVs result in slightly less climate benefit than CSP-
BEVs, the resource available for PVs is the largest among all technologies considered.
Further, many PVs can be implemented unobtrusively on rooftops. Underwater tidal-
BEVs are the least likely to be disrupted by terrorism or severe weather.

Tier 3 options (hydro-, nuclear-, and coal-CCS-BEVs) are less desirable.
However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with
respect to climate- and health-relevant emissions, is an excellent load balancer, thus
recommended. Nuclear and coal-CCS are not recommended since they emit significantly
more carbon and air pollutants than the Tier 1 and Tier 2 options or hydroelectricity, and
the large-scale spread of nuclear energy poses a nuclear weapons security threat to all
nations, as illustrated shortly.

Specifically, coal, with CCS (and its 85-90% reduction in coal-plant exhaust
emissions), puts out about 77-110 times more lifecycle carbon and other pollutants per
kWh than wind energy. Coal-CCS emissions are primarily from the mining and transport
of coal, exhaust that escapes the CCS equipment, the greater time-lag between the
planning and implementation of a coal-CCS plant that from a wind, solar, or geothermal
plant, and potential leakage from underground storage reservoirs. Further, the addition of
CCS equipment to a coal power plant requires an additional 14-25% energy for coal-
based integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) systems and 24-40% for
supercritical pulverized coal plants according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Such equipment also does not capture health-damaging pollutants, such as NOx,
NH3, and SOx.

Nuclear power puts out about 24 times more lifecycle carbon and other pollutants
per kWh than wind energy. For nuclear, carbon emissions include those due to the mining
and transport of uranium, the opportunity-cost emissions due to the time-lag between
planning and operation of a nuclear power plant (10-19 years), and the risk (between 0
and 1) of carbon emissions due to the burning of cities associated with nuclear war or
terrorism that is linked to the future increase of nuclear fuel production in nuclear power
plants worldwide. For example, the explosion of 1.5 MT of nuclear weapons material, or
0.1% of the yields proposed for a full-scale nuclear war, during a limited nuclear
exchange or a terrorist attack in a megacity would burn 63-313 Tg of fuel in city
infrastructure, adding CO2 and 1-5 Tg of soot to the atmosphere, much of it to the
stratosphere, and killing 3-17 million people based on a recent paper (Toon et al.).

As stated in a Los Alamos Report in August 1981, “There is no technical
demarcation between the military and civilian reactor and there never was one.”
Currently, 42 countries have fissionable material to produce weapons; 22 of these
countries have facilities in nuclear energy plants to produce enriched uranium or to
separate plutonium; 13 of these countries are active in producing enriched uranium or
separating plutonium; 9 of these countries have nuclear stockpiles. Having a nuclear
reactor facilitates the basis for obtaining uranium that can then be used either for energy
production and either secretly or openly for weapons production. The U.S. would need to
add 200-275 850 MW nuclear power plants to power all U.S. electric vehicles, and once
the U.S. started to do this, most countries of the world would try to follow, increasing the
risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Any solution to global warming, air pollution, and
energy security on a large scale must involve technology that can be disseminated
worldwide. As such, this technology cannot be nuclear. If the U.S. uses alone nuclear,
this will undercut international efforts to slow global warming and air pollution mortality.

The Tier-4 combinations, cellulosic- and corn-E85, were ranked lowest overall
and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste.
Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger
land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than
corn-E85. Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality,
nuclear-BEVs may cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk as discussed above. The
largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

An important issue to address with respect to wind, solar, and wave power is
intermittency. Intermittency can be reduced in several ways, including (1)
interconnecting geographically-disperse intermittent sources through the transmission
system, (2) combining different intermittent sources (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal,
tidal, and wave) to smooth out loads, using hydro to provide peaking and load balancing,
(3) using smart meters to provide electric power to electric vehicles at optimal times, (4)
storing wind energy in hydrogen, batteries, pumped hydroelectric power, compressed air,
or a thermal storage medium, and (5) forecasting weather to improve grid planning.
Currently, the greatest limitation to the large-scale implementation of new, clean electric
power plants is limited transmission line availability.

In sum, the use of wind, concentrated solar, geothermal, tidal, photovoltaics,
wave, and hydroelectric to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs will result in the
most benefit and least impact among the options considered. Coal-CCS, nuclear, corn-
E85, and cellulosic-E85 put out much more carbon and health-damaging pollutants than
the other options examined. Thus, the investment in corn- or cellulosic ethanol, coal-
CCS, or nuclear at the expense of the others will cause certain climate and health
damage, thus economic damage. Because sufficient clean natural resources (wind,
sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, gravitational energy) exists to power all energy for the
world, our failure to focus on these resources by diverting our attention to less efficient or
non-efficient options will guarantee that the significant environmental and energy
problems we face today will not be solved any time soon. The philosophy, that we should
try a little bit of everything is wrong. We need to focus on the technologies that provide
the best benefit. We know which technologies these are.

Finally, the relative ranking of each electricity option for powering BEVs also
applies to the electricity source when used to provide electricity for general purposes. The
implementation of the recommended electricity options for providing vehicle and general
electricity requires organization. Ideally, good locations of energy resources would be
sited in advance and developed simultaneously with an interconnected transmission
system. This requires cooperation at multiple levels of government.

[joshcryer]

15. I'd like to see how you'd build a wind farm in a forested area without...

...cutting down trees.

[kristopher]

18. There is a lot you need to know...

Have you any examples of wide-scale clearing of forests for windfarms? The typical tree in an area of abundant wind is scrub - because that's how they grow when the wind is strong. So tall trees aren't normally an issue to deal with. Second is that wind has a much smaller land use footprint than nuclear when mining is factored in.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. Why do I get the feeling...

...you're factoring in the mining for nuclear and not the mining for the windfarms? Or the extended transmission grid?

On second thoughts, don't answer that. I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.

Have a read of this instead: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hills/cc/gallery/index.htm

[joshcryer]

20. He lives in his own little reality.

He still denies or downplays the effect of needed transmission infrastructure while at the same time claiming wind is decentralized.

[Dead_Parrot]

21. It must be a very warm and fluffy place

I might go for a visit, if I can find enough hard drugs.

He'll be back in a minute claiming that dcentralised energy uses less grid infrastructure than centralised energy, citing a paper based on everybody having thier own diesel generator and extrapolating by magic.

[NNadir]

32. Nah. Stay off the drugs. They'll make you stupid enough to cite the one paper you've ever read...

over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

That would be the one written by Mark Z. Jacobson.

Because Jacobson has written the paper, and it is cited here over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, this proves in an irrefutable way, that Jacobsen is God.

Here at E&E we have all the answers, including theological answers and no, the, um, answer is not taking drugs; it's chanting, sort of like those crazy guys in airports who used to chant "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo."

[XemaSab]

23. Tall trees are definitely an issue in Northern California

You should educate yourself before you open your mouth.

[kristopher]

28. Where specifically?

one of the fundamental things to look for in trying to find a good wind site is the type of tree growth, so, please show me an instance of what you are talking about.

"Wind also limits tree growth. On coasts and isolated mountains, the tree line is often much lower than in corresponding altitudes inland and in larger, more complex mountain systems, because strong winds reduce tree growth. High winds scour away thin soils through erosion,<117> as well as damage limbs and twigs. When high winds knock down or uproot trees, the process is known as windthrow. This is most likely on windward slopes of mountains, with severe cases generally occurring to tree stands that are 75 years or older.<118> Plant varieties near the coast, such as the Sitka spruce and sea grape,<119> are pruned back by wind and salt spray near the coastline.<120>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind#Effect_on_plants

[XemaSab]

29. The picture is of a site that was harvested recently

but there are some LARGE p-pines up on that ridge.

[NNadir]

27. So called "renewable energy" has an energy/mass density problem that translates...

...big time into a land use problem.

Note that these plants date from the dawn of the "renewables will save age," late 70's and early 80's, when renewable energy was even more weeney than it is now, and it is still weeney.

Now imagine that instead of producing less than 1 exajoule of the 100 exajoules we consume each year in this country, someone attempts 3 exajoules. Fast forward just 15 years.

No form of energy, including nuclear energy, is free of impact, but anyone with an ounce of sense will immediately understand that a nuclear reactor is superior to all other forms of energy in a land use sense. In less than one ton of fuel, Indian nuclear scientists recently produced as much energy as 1/3 of all the wind turbines in Denmark. That fuel could have been contained in a box smaller than a coffee table.

[wtmusic]

11. Driving through the Tehachapi Pass makes me ill

Not a noble sentiment in sight when the farms were constructed - it was all about tax writeoffs.

Maybe they're better left in place, a monument to misplaced "environmentalism".

[OnlinePoker]

12. So many people here...

...decry the mountain top removal for coal going on in West Virginia, but to go someplace that once was beautiful be destroyed by heaps of scrap metal is just as bad. I go to the wilds to be in the wild. To have the view obscured by spinning blades eliminates one of the reasons I want to go...to be away from the modern world for a while.

[hunter]

17. Here's one I took at zond (later bought by enron)

This particular fleet of turbines didn't last long. I've long forgotten who made these, but nearly all the turbines from that era are dead, even those turbines not generally known to be crap. Some turbines were known to be crap even as they were erected.

As XemaSab said above, the infrastructure required to support these things is not insignificant.

Wind farm roads are every bit as hideous as logging roads. They kill any sense of wilderness and remain long after the wind farms are abandoned.

[jpak]

22. Amazing Post!!!! And what about the 110 US nuclear plants that were "abandoned" in the 70's & 80's!

and let's hear it for Maine Yankee...

abandoned by its owners in 1996 even though its license expires in 2012!!!11

:rofl:

[jpak]

24. and Yucca Mountain and that *hugh* uranium mine in Moab that threatens the Colorado River

and the 750,000 metric tonnes of uranium hexafluoride in corroding leaking casks "abandoned" at US uraniums enrichment plants.

and thousands of tonnes of spent fuel *abandoned* by the nuclear power industry that the taxpayers - not the nuclear industry - has to dispose.

:rofl:

[Statistical]

26. They weren't abandoned.

Utilities were forced to pay billions in disposal fees in return ownership was transferred to federal govt.

Just because the federal govt has done nothing with the waste they were contracted to dispose of isn't the fault of utilities.

[jpak]

30. Forced? LOLOLOLOL!!!! They UNLOADED their spent fuel on the taxpayers.

They ABANDONED it because they knew the true costs of spent fuel disposal were and are ENORMOUS and would have made nuclear power *hughly* unprofitable.

One of the biggest scams in American history.

yup

[Statistical]

31. Well they have paid $33 billion to date and received NOTHING in return.

I wouldn't really consider that a worthwhile investment. Fees collected are about $1 billion a year and growing.

Works out to about $14 million per ton.

[GreenPartyVoter]

25. I was just gonna post a pic of that. LOL