Providing all Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power

[kristopher]

Do not believe the claims of the nuclear industry that nuclear power is a necessary or desirable part of the solution to climate change and energy security concerns. This paper is a detailed description of what energy analysts specializing in noncarbon sources of power are looking at in our energy future.

Providing all Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power,
Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials

Mark Z. Jacobson 1* and Mark A. Delucchi2
1 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California
94305-4020, USA; [e-mail]; [phone]
2 Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Davis, Davis, California 95616
USA; [e-mail]; [phone]
*Corresponding author


Energy Policy, in Press
Submitted September 1, 2010; Revised November 11, 2010; Accepted November 22, 2010


Abstract
Climate change, pollution, and energy insecurity are among the greatest problems of our time. Addressing them requires major changes in our energy infrastructure. Here, we analyze the feasibility of providing worldwide energy for all purposes (electric power, transportation, heating/cooling) from wind, water, and sunlight (WWS).

In Part I, we discuss WWS energy system characteristics, current and future energy demand, availability of WWS resources, numbers of WWS devices, and area and material requirements.

In Part II, we address variability, economics, and policy of WWS energy.

We estimate that
~3,800,000 5-MW wind turbines, ~49,000 300-MW concentrated solar plants, ~40,000 solar PV power plants, ~1.7 billion 3-kW rooftop PV systems, ~5350 100-MW geothermal power plants, ~270 new 1300-MW hydroelectric power plants, ~720,000 0.75-MW wave devices, and ~490,000 1-MW tidal turbines can power a 2030 WWS world converted to electricity and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes. The additional land footprint and spacing needed are ~0.41% and ~0.59% of world land area, respectively. We suggest producing all new energy with WWS by 2030 and replacing pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic. The energy cost in a WWS world should be similar to that today.

Download at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWSEnergyPolicyPtI.pdf

Providing all Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power,
Part II: Reliability, System and Transmission Costs, and Policies

Mark A. Delucchi1* and Mark Z. Jacobson2
1 Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Davis, Davis, California 95616
USA; [e-mail]; [phone]
2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California
94305-4020, USA;
*Corresponding author



Energy Policy, in Press
Sumbitted September 2, 2010; Revised November 20, 2010; Accepted November 22, 2010

Abstract
This is Part II of two papers evaluating the feasibility of providing all energy for all purposes (electric power, transportation, heating/cooling), everywhere in the world, from wind, water, and the sun (WWS).

In Part I, we described the prominent renewable energy plans that have been proposed and discussed the characteristics of WWS energy systems, the global demand for and availability of WWS energy, quantities and areas required for WWS infrastructure, and supplies of critical materials.

Here, we discuss methods of addressing the variability of WWS energy to ensure that power supply reliably matches demand (including interconnecting geographically-dispersed resources, using hydroelectricity, using demand-response management, storing electric power on site, over-sizing peak generation capacity and producing hydrogen with the excess, storing electric power in vehicle batteries, and forecasting weather to project energy supplies), the economics of WWS generation and transmission, the economics of WWS use in transportation, and policy measures needed to enhance the viability of a WWS system. We find that the cost of energy in a 100% WWS will be similar to the cost today. We conclude that barriers to a 100% conversion to WWS power worldwide are primarily social and political, not technological or even economic.

Download at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWSEnergyPolicyPtII.pdf

[Zoeisright]

1. If we had spent as much money on renewable fuels as we have WASTED on

nuclear, coal, oil, and gas, not only would we be energy independent, pollution would be greatly reduced and we wouldn't be talking about global warming.

I'll never forget a cartoon in the 1980s, in which an oil industry exec was exclaiming: "Interested in oil? We own the wells! Thinking about coal? We own the mines! What about nuclear? We own the plants! Think solar is the answer? We own the ........ solar energy isn't feasible."

[TheMadMonk]

2. Good. Now stack those numbers up against current and known...

...supplies/deposits of rare earth metals for magnets in damned near everything. Lithium for batteries (Lithium may be potentially sourced from seawater, so this can be done if the price goes up enough.) Platinum group metals for fuel cell catalysts.

You're also talking of ramping up semiconductor grade silicon production by at least a couple of orders of magnitude. And bulk silicon production is not a particularly clean industry.

You might also want to put some perspective on those numbers. Among other things the number of rooftop systems projected is roughly one for every second rooftop around the world, grass huts in Africa included. A wave device every 100m or so along every single metre of coastline around the world plus a tidal device every 200m or soo.

Virtually every available waterway suitable for hydroelectric (particularly one that floods deeply enough to minimise the rotting of inundated vegetation, which makes many hydro schemes net greenhouse gas emitters over their projected lifespans) has already been dammed and harnessed. 270 hydro plants of that size would have to cut deeply into a lot of wilderness areas and pristine gorges.

About 100,000 sq km or more goes under permanent shade to provide that level of consolidated solar. Most geothermal utilises latent heat in rock, so new wells must be periodically dug. 5350, becomes 500-1000 new wells per year in perpetuity.

Nuclear power plants of a like total capacity would utilise less than 1% of the land area. Their construction requires a shitton less in the way of materials, so a lot less mining, even if you later include mining for fuel. Nuclear power plants are plug and play replacements for existing power generation plants, so a lot easier to integrate. And whether you like to admit it or not, even with existing waste handling practices the safety record of nuclear power is well and truly proven. With projected waste handling facilities, the problem becomes less than those faced by any heavy metal smelter.

[kristopher]

4. That's quite a bunch of nuclear industry inspired falsehoods...

You really, really love nuclear power, don't you?

At least, you love it enough to spend all that time writing pure garbage to try and mislead people about the technologies that are far superior to it.

1) Rare earths are not an issue, they are not rare and no scarcity exists in the resource, just mining bottlenecks as operations to extract newly valued by-products ramps up.

2) Lithium isn't an issue - it is very abundant without resorting to seawater.

3) Semiconductor grade silicon isn't required.

4) Why wouldn't we have rooftop solar on EVERY home, not just 1/2. Also you omitted commercial solar rooftop.

5) The total tidal shoreline in the US alone is 95,471 statute miles. Not only is that enough to place 1/5 of the GLOBAL total at a concentration of 1/mile, there is no reason that these generators will not be clustered both longshore but also going offshore.

Of your first 5 "objections", 1-3 and 5 were overtly false, and 4 was false by omission while also misrepresenting the idea that putting solar on a rooftop is somehow undesirable.

I think that is more than enough to establish that your claims are indeed, garbage. Since the topic is renewable energy and since you religiously push the nuclear industry line it is clear that you are not discussing the issue in good faith.

[TheMadMonk]

7. And what a lot of half truths, lies and meaningless prattle in return.

1) no they're not rare in the sense that gold is rare. They are however as rare as copper in overall abundance, and don't form nice neat deposits like copper does. Commercially viable deposits of Rare Earth Ores ARE NOT common.

2) The recently rediscovered Afghan deposits of Lithium PLUS all other known supplies totals up to LESS than the amount necessary to replace existing motor cars with BEVs. But as I said it can be obtained from seawater so this issue is addressable.

3) Silicon refined to seminconductor grade (or very close) IS needed for solar panels and for the highest efficiency devices it MUST be mono-crystaline.

4) The article YOU quoted, specifically refered to 3 KW rooftop installations. That my friend would be a DOMESTIC installation, times one point seven billion. (you might want to note that that's more than there are cars on the planet. Industrial site installations would be in the 40,000 solar PV installations (of no stated capacity) metioned. You can't even reference your own material correctly.

On every home? So who the fuck is going to pay to 15, 10 or even 5000 dollars to give third world families an asset worth close to the local average lifetime income. And how long do you think such systems would last in parts of the world where the looters already rip up copper as fast as the installers lay it?

5) I could well be wrong. I simply grabbed what appeared to be the first figure for global coastline lengths on Google. However, your math ability is obviously even worse than my search engine driving, if you can divide 3/4 million into <1/10 million and come up with a number greater than unity. And yes I am fully aware that such installations are not going to be neatly lined up along coastlines, I was simply making an illustrative point.


So we have from you 1) A partial truth told in a way intended to mislead. 2) 3) A strong indication that you have very little in depth/background knowledge of the subject under discussion, but are simply parroting someone else's work. ie. your ignorance is showing. 4) Deliberate misrepresentation of my words. NOWHERE did I say "putting a cow in every pot and a chicken in every barn" was wrong. I did imply is was impractical. You are obviously absolutely ignorant of logistics that would be on the same scale as simultaneously introducing the motor car, television, air travel, and the internet worldwide and a rate at least three times at which those game chagers were introduced. 5) Just plain wrong, even if I was also incorrect.


And at the end of it all. I failed to single out point zero. In that great littany of technologies that will "save the world" there is not one single mention of load ballancing/storage facilites. And apart from hydro and geothermal every single one of those technologies you listed supplies power only intermittently. The closest anything in that list comes to energy storage, is a mention of hydrogen electrolytically cracked from water, a process so inefficient it is only done in school laboratories, and for a few specialty niche applications. Maybe practical for mobile applications, but utterly impractical for grid load ballancing as matters currently stand. Recombined in fuel cells (we just made our platinum problem worse BTW) round trip efficiencies of perhaps 40-50% are possible. Burnt we might manage 25%. Just how much overcapacity in that littany is devoted to smoothing the output of the remainder? If there is no great overcapacity, just where is the load ballancing to be achieved? All you have in your OP is a list of power supply technologies, that agregated have a capacity approximately equal to world demand and NO SUGGESTIONS whatsoever for integrating them into a coherent WORKING system.


You argue like a fundy or any other person with a predetermined position where objective truth is entirely second to ideology. In your case a fairly obvious pathological objection to nuclear power in any form. You have repeatedly signalled your willingness to see tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of square killometers of pristine wilderness destroyed, in your "quest" to avoid nuclear power.

When presented with statistical evidence as to the safety record of nulcear power, you either ignore it, or appeal to the existence of a decades old conspiracy involving tens of thousands, to claim that the official death toll of the only major nuclear incident in close to 70 years now, must have been deliberately understated. You can't point to any other credible numbers. You can't cite any credible sources to make a case. You simply K.N.O.W. that the official reports MUST be wrong.

You repeatedly recycle discredited material in fresh discussions. You misrepresent the words of your oponents. And you absolutely REFUSE to actually educate yourself (or allow yourself to be educated) on EITHER side of a subject you obviously have strong feelings about.

[joshcryer]

12. re: load ballancing, he advocates V2G.

[TheMadMonk]

14. Indeed, even when the numbers show that the raw materials don't exist...

...to simply replace existing vehicles with ones fitted with battery/fuel cell electric power trains, let alone provide enough additional storage capacity to ballance a national grid.

V2G demands that people put up with further limiting on the range of already limited range vehicles or remembering to tell their car they will be popping out in half an hour to give it time to top up the charge. Or as I believe most likely, people simply not participating at all.

I also have to wonder how such a system would cope with several tens of million cars more or less simultaneously disconnecting from the grid every morning just at the very time the system needs somewhere to stuff power from the sun, and reconnecting just at the time the sun goes away for the night.

[kristopher]

17. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight....

When you continue to press falsehoods as you do, you prove you aren't worth going around and around with.

My background on energy is rooted in post-graduate level study and my conclusions are a result of years of intense research on this precise topic (noncarbon energy sources to respond to climate change) in an academic setting.

It was only after coming to DU, however, that I concluded there was a concerted effort to deceive people about both renewable and nuclear energy by proponents of nuclear power like yourself. Prior to that I was more or less an agnostic on nuclear power. It was this observation that there was a Koch-like campaign being waged by the nuclear industry that caused me to delve deeper into nuclear industry claims I had previously taken on faith. What I found was falsehood piled on falsehood and that is what I try to address.

Sorry you don't like it, but your facts and your position are simply wrong - they CANNOT withstand close scrutiny. Which is why you CANNOT substantiate your pronuclear claims with peer-reviewed independent (nonnuclear industry) research.

http://pubs.rsc.org/services/images/RSCpubs.ePlatform.Service.FreeContent.ImageService.svc/ImageService/image/GA?id=B809990C

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/Articles/I/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.

[fascisthunter]

20. Thank you.... ignore them

same shit different day, always on the wrong side of the debate.

[Kolesar]

5. The Cleveland newspaper dumps a lot of those Palin-quality talking points on its readers

They cannot write an energy article or editorial unless it has the message of Senator Voinovich and the electricity companies.

[joshcryer]

10. It's something like 300 Apollo's or 50 WWII's of production.

It's not economically viable or it'd be happening.

[bananas]

3. "Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic."

k&r.

[joshcryer]

13. Economics and resource constraints are certainly part of social and political realities.

You cannot, for example, expect China to share their rare earth supplies and already they are seen as hoarding them: http://www.china.org.cn/business/2010-09/27/content_21019927.htm

You can't just magically separate out the two.

OK, yeah, it's social and political if we had magical space factories on the moon and NEOs and we could ship in the needed resources without having to deal with the social and political realities that exist here and now.

[dreamnightwind]

6. Thanks, K & R!

And seriously, just say NO to nuclear power and its shills. Eventually nuclear leads to disaster, its proponents are thinking short-term rather than thousands of years.

[Desertrose]

8. K&R

[MadHound]

9. Actually economics are a barrier,

Insomuch that those who have grown rich and powerful on the development and exploitation of a centralized power generation infrastructure don't want to see their golden goose taken away by the development of a vastly decentralized power generation infrastructure. Going to wind and solar would mean that each house, each building would become its own little power generating station. Rather than the profits continuing to flow to the nuclear, coal and gas giants, instead it would go to the manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines.

[joshcryer]

11. +1

It's one reason why natural gas industry is in bed with the wind industry.

[SpiralHawk]

15. + 2

Power - John and Johanna Hall - Siren Songs, BMI

Just give me the warm power of the sun
give me the steady flow of a waterfall
Give me the spirit of living things as they return to clay

...Take all of your atomic poison power away...

http://www.peterpaulandmary.com/music/13-02.htm

[One_Life_To_Give]

16. Just takes imagination to profit from it

Options include Leasing the PV array/Wind Generator. Or including the ability to cite such, as a requirement for connecting to the grid.

The real question is one of "Who" will finance it and "Who" will own the assets once built? And how do we craft laws that make it possible to get there. There would be huge opposition to any attempt to Federally fund it and hence expect the government to own the generation. Hence eliminating all the energy companies. Or at the very least using tax dollars to directly compete against private enterprise.

I don't see where the votes in congress would come from to support a federal electric project. So how do we craft laws that encourage/force private firms/capital to build this?

[kristopher]

18. That is generally considered politics - literally power politics.

It is rooted in money, but economics in this context refers to the costs of providing goods and services and the behavior of consumers as they make choices on those costs.

The meat of your comment is spot-on, however.

[Terry in Austin]

19. Nice theorizing for grad students

Peer-reviewed theorizing, of course B-)

But out here in the world, it was hard enough to pull off a single Apollo program, let alone something 300 times bigger. Good luck with that. FWIW, nuclear is just as unlikely, for much the same reason.

[kristopher]

21. It isn't going to happen as most people expect.

It is popular among certain people to attack economics, but economic forces are what is going to push the response to climate change. The writing is on the wall regarding the limits fossil fuels' ability to meet global needs when rapidly rising demand is taken into account. That means the big impetus for mass production is going to be found in places like China where there is little-to-no existing fossil fuel infrastructure that will be rendered worthless.

China is making huge investments in all areas of energy and their efforts are going to result in dramatically lower costs for solar PV and lithium batteries in the coming decade. That is really all it will take.

If you go back in history, you'll be amazed at how rapidly obsolete technologies can be discarded and replaced by superior technologies. It sometimes takes a while for the new tech to cross a threshold of acceptance, but in my view, we went beyond that point with renewables when corporations like BYD, Sanyo, and Mitsubishi starting viewing renewable technologies as a major source of profits in the coming decades. Their self-interest makes them a powerful force for change.

[XemaSab]

22. So where are you proposing to put these 270 new MASSIVE hydro plants?

:shrug:

[kristopher]

24. What 270 new MASSIVE hydro plants?

You may want to consider reading the papers you are trying to find fault with. While 270 is the number of 1300 MW generators that Jacobson and Delucci have projected a need for, that doesn't equate to 270 new dams.

For reference, 3 Gorges Dam has 26 700MW generators with a total capacity of 18.2 gigawatts.

4. Quantities and Areas of Plants and Devices Required

How many WWS power plants or devices are required to power the world and U.S.? Table 4 provides an estimate for 2030, assuming a given fractionation of the demand (from Table 2) among technologies. Wind and solar together are assumed to comprise 90% of the future supply based on their relative abundances (Table 3). Although 4% of the proposed future supply is hydro, most of this amount (70%) is already in place. Solar PV is divided into 30% rooftop, based on an analysis of likely available rooftop area (Jacobson, 2009), and 70% power plant. Rooftop PV has three major advantages over power-plant PV: rooftop PV do not require an electricity transmission and distribution network, they can be integrated into a hybrid solar system that produces heat, light, and electricity for use on site (Chow, 2010), and they do not require new land area. Table 4 suggests that almost 4 million 5-MW wind turbines (over land or water) and about 90,000 300-MW PV plus CSP power plants are needed to help power the world. Already, about 0.8% of the wind is installed.

The total footprint on the ground (for the turbine tubular tower and base) for the 4 million wind turbines required to power 50% of the world’s energy is only ~48 km2, smaller than Manhattan (59.5 km2) whereas the spacing needed between turbines to minimize the effects of one turbine reducing energy to other turbines is ~1.17% of the global land area. The spacing can be used for agriculture, rangeland, open space, or can be open water. Whereas, wind turbines have foundations under the ground larger than their base on the ground, such underground foundation areas are not footprint, which is defined as the area of a device or plant touching the top surface of the soil, since such foundations are covered with dirt, allowing vegetation to grow and wildlife to flourish on top of them. The footprint area for wind also does not include temporary or unpaved dirt access roads, as most large-scale wind will go over areas such as the Great Plains and some desert regions, where photographs of several farms indicate unpaved access roads blend into the natural environment and are often overgrown by vegetation. Offshore wind does not require roads at all. In farmland locations, most access roads have dual purposes, serving agricultural fields as well as turbines. In cases where paved access roads are needed, 1 km2 of land provides ~200 km (124 miles) of linear roadway 5 m wide, so access roads would not increase the footprint requirements of wind farms more than a small amount. The footprint area also does not include transmission, since the actual footprint area of a transmission tower is smaller than the footprint area of a wind turbine. This is because a transmission tower consists of four narrow metal support rods separated by distance, penetrating the soil to an underground foundation. Many photographs of transmission towers indicate more vegetation growing under the towers than around the towers since areas around that towers are often agricultural or otherwise used land whereas the area under the tower is vegetated soil. Since the land under transmission towers supports vegetation and wildlife, it is not considered footprint beyond the small area of the support rods.

For non-rooftop solar PV plus CSP, the areas required are considered here to be entirely footprint although technically a walking space, included here as footprint, is required between solar panels (Jacobson, 2009). Powering 34% of the world with non-rooftop solar PV plus CSP requires about one-quarter of the land area for footprint plus spacing as does powering 50% of the world with wind but a much larger footprint area alone than does wind (Table 4). The footprint area required for rooftop solar PV has already been developed, as rooftops already exist. As such, these areas do not require further increases in land requirements. Geothermal power requires a smaller footprint than does solar but a larger footprint than does wind per unit energy generated. The footprint area required for hydroelectric is large due to the large area required to store water in a reservoir, but 70% of needed hydroelectric power for a WWS system is already in place.

Together, the entire WWS solution would require the equivalent of ~0.74% of the global land surface area for footprint and 1.18% for spacing (or 1.9% for footprint plus spacing). Up to 61% of the footprint plus spacing area could be over the ocean if all wind were placed over the ocean although a more likely scenario is that 30-60% of wind may ultimately be placed over the ocean given the strong wind speeds there (Figure 1). If 50% of wind energy were over the ocean, and since wave and tidal are over the ocean, and if we consider that 70% of hydroelectric power is already in place and that rooftop solar does not require new land, the additional footprint and spacing areas required for all WWS power for all purposes worldwide are only ~0.41% and ~0.59%, respectively, of all land worldwide (or 1.0% of all land for footprint plus spacing).

Providing all Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials, pg 11, 12

[XemaSab]

26. So where are you proposing to put a new facility on the scale of Three Gorges?

Name ONE site in the lower 48 that will fit a dam of that size. Or any size, for that matter.

Let's see where the crickets are chirping from.

[kristopher]

25. Listen to those crickets... nt

[XemaSab]

23. .

:shrug: