Wind energy can power much of East Coast, study says

[unhappycamper]

Wind energy can power much of East Coast, study says
By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, September 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — The strong winds off the Atlantic Ocean could become a cost-effective way to power much of the East Coast — especially North and South Carolina, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia, a new study released Tuesday says.

The report by the conservation advocacy group Oceana argues that offshore wind could generate 30 percent more electricity on the East Coast than could be generated by the region's untapped oil and gas. It predicts that wind from the ocean could be cost competitive with nuclear power and natural gas to produce electricity.

The study appears just as new developments are starting to push U.S. efforts to catch up with Europe and China on tapping the energy in offshore wind. Great Britain last week opened the world's largest wind farm, and China built its first pilot offshore wind farm in 2008, using turbines from the nation's largest wind turbine producer, Sinovel.

The Department of Energy earlier this month issued a draft plan for creating a U.S. offshore wind energy program.

"Offshore wind energy can help the nation reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, diversify its energy supply, provide cost-competitive electricity to key coastal regions, and stimulate economic revitalization of key sectors of the economy," the study says.

[One_Life_To_Give]

1. But what about my View!

And the fishing, the Native American sacred places, Sailing grounds etc.

:sarcasm:

[kristopher]

2. Original study

http://na.oceana.org/en/blog/2010/09/new-report-offshore-wind-s-untapped-wealth

There is a "take action" link and you can download the full report.

[kristopher]

3. State by state breakdown

http://na.oceana.org/en/our-work/climate-energy/clean-energy/offshore-wind-report/state-by-state-analysis

[JohnWxy]

4. important info. (Tried to recommend but was outside the 24 hr window)

[NNadir]

5. If it's so "cost effective" how come Cape Wind asked for wholesale prices higher than retail prices?

After decades of cheering for it, wind power is not a significant form of energy anywhere on earth.

It doesn't run Denmark. Those Danish assholes are at sea right now drilling for oil and gas.

http://ens.dk/EN-US/OILANDGAS/Sider/Oilandgas.aspx

Denmark's thrown billions of Euros down the wind energy rabbit hole and the entire nation can't produce as much electricity from wind as we produce in a few acres here in our Oyster Creek Nuclear Reactor, but unlike the wind plants, Oyster Creek is reliable.

Nobody has to drill baby drill for gas, burn the gas, have gas accidents or dump dangerous gas waste into earth's atmosphere to run a nuclear plant.

The wind industry, like it's failed solar cousin, is more effective at producing "studies" than it is at producing energy.

Not so wind. It's a gas industry scam, which is why the like of T. Boone Pickens and Gerhardt Schroeder support it.

[kristopher]

6. Poor little feller just ain't got a clue...

[NNadir]

9. How many times, one wonders, is the same stupid meaningless graphic

going to be posted in this space?

It is a fraud, obviously composed by the gas and wind industry to hoist their corrupt, filthy and unreliable industry on humanity.

I note, with due contempt, that the "consumer cost" portion of this very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very misleading graphic is belied by the fact that Cape Wind's wholesale "guranteed" price is higher than Massachusett's consumer retail price, not that there is ONE dumb bourgeois anti-nuke who gives a rat's ass how poor people pay their electric bills.

In May, Cape Wind signed a power purchase agreement with National Grid, which agreed to pay 20.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for half of the electricity generated by Cape Wind, which is significantly higher than wholesale electricity prices.


The agreement with the attorney general calls for Cape Wind to charge 18.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, which will increase by 3.5 percent per year. Other provisions are designed to adjust prices downward if Cape Wind saves money through lower construction costs or receives a federal loan guarantee.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20012330-54.html#ixzz11BoQsHjA">Cape Wind agrees to reduce cost of offshore wind

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/massachusetts.html">Massachusetts Electricity Profile: 16.27 cents per kwh retail.

If one can compare numbers - and let's face it, anti-nukes are wholly innumerate as thousands of examples here have shown conclusively - one can determine if 18.7 cents per kwh wholesale is higher than 16.27 cents per kwh.

It's even more atrocious when one realizes that these wind turbines are unlikely to last twenty years.

If one can't compare numbers, one can qualify for membership in Greenpeace.

Of course, when we compare the wind cults dogma with real numbers, the cultists just demonstrate, as usual, reply with lies, dogma, or outright denial. It doesn't matter which.

I am going to fight putting this garbage and greasy metal junk off the coast of my state. I don't want to put poor people out on the street because they can't pay their electric bills because of a stupid mystical religion held by uneducated bourgeois brats.

The liars and frauds in the wind/gas industry also are spectacularly unable to explain why the price of electricity in France is about 1/2 of that in that "Drill, baby drill!" hellhole in Denmark: http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic">European Electricity Prices


Have a nice day.

[kristopher]

10. ROFL - how did the electricity from the first commercial nuke plant compare?

Cape is a first of a kind project for the US; how did the first of a kind commercial nuke plant compare to the going price of electricity at the time? What we have with wind, however, is a method of generation that, unlike nuclear, is very responsive to economies of scale. Wind and solar prices are strongly trending DOWN, while at the same time the huge scale of nuclear projects ensures that their costs are sky-rocketing.




Of course you don't care about the societal costs (that is part of the profile of nuclear energy supporters) but the fact is that the societal costs are comparable to the coal alternative (see Jacobson below).




Abstract intended for public distribution

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned 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 source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

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 cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

Oh yes, and then there is this:

[NNadir]

11. QED. As predicted, the anti-nuke response is pure DENIAL of real numbers.

Nuclear energy is a MATURE techonlogy and according to anti-nukes so is wind. Denmark, an oil/gas/wind hellhole, is gingerly stepping away from its misguided wind subsidies and just 'fessing up to being interested only drilling more oil and gas at sea. They've been in the wind business for 30 years and are finally admitting the whole program was garbage.

Thus any discussion - even stupidly interpreted - of history is irrelevant. France went nuclear 30 years ago, about the time Denmark was was investing in the gas subsidy desguised as "renewable" energy.

Massachusetts has the 4th highest electricity rates in the nation and the Cape Wind gas freaks want to raise the retail price of electricity even higher.

Why? Because being bourgeois brats, they just love raping the poor for money.

Denmark, an oil/gas/wind hellhole, has electricity rates twice that of France, which produces 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy.

The reponse you give is exactly what I predicted.

All the misinterpreted graphics in the world cannot make the irrational rational.

I love this.

QED. QED. QED.

Have a nice day.

[kristopher]

13. Still laughing at you...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x259623#260032

[Nederland]

7. Nuclear power DOES provide 80% of France's power

I'm not talking about what some study claims might be possible, I'm talking about real brick and mortar power plants producing clean, carbon free electricity.

It's time for wind advocates to stop talking about all these studies and start actually building stuff and proving their theories in the real world.

In all sincerity, I wish them the best of luck.

However, I think they will need a great deal of luck because I am still very skeptical they can pull it off.

[kristopher]

8. Interesting how you've shifted the basis of your support

It used to be "Nuclear is the cheapest therefore we should use nuclear".

Since that has disappeared as a rationale you now shift to the logical fallacy of "Man wasn't meant to fly"; meaning our future efforts should be decided solely on the basis of what has been done in the past. If we accept your premise then change in the world becomes impossible.

Both a logical and common sense fail.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Nederland]

14. Please provide a link

Where I have said "Nuclear is the cheapest therefore we should use nuclear".

Thanks!