Straightforward analysis shows that the AWEA generation/transmission proposal is very expensive and amounts to spending $4 billion unnecessarily (based on a 400 MW infrastructure).
A representative of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) recently wrote what amounted to an op-ed in Power magazine, claiming that building more transmission lines would make the grid more efficient.
The core of her argument was that more transmission lines would bring wind from distant parts of the country to where it could be used.
She said:
“Now is the time to expand the nation’s network of transmission lines to bring electricity from the country’s most renewable-rich sites to the cities.”
What this would mean, in real terms, is to spend billions of dollars unnecessarily on new transmission lines. It is no free lunch but an expensive, unnecessary second lunch.…
Continue Reading“If ‘some humans survive’ is the only thing we care about, then climate change is a non-issue. I think it’s certain that ‘some’ humans will survive almost any climate change. They may be living short, hard lives of poverty, but they’ll be alive.”
“Future humans, as they live in a climate dystopia: ‘I thought he cared about the environment’.”
“I find the path we’re on now — the rich world survives (if lucky), but abandons everyone else — to be morally problematic.”
Professor Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M is the alarmist’s alarmist. At a lunch some years ago, he remarked to me (and his more moderate colleague Gerald North) that humankind would have to live underground because of anthropogenic warming. And he stated that fossil fuels had made us slaves, a deep-ecology argument that has been ably turned around by Matt Ridley).…
Continue ReadingThis is the final installment of the course syllabus of Pierre Desrochers’ Energy and Society class.
Part I explored the course description as well as the videos and readings from the first two weeks of the class; Part II covered carbon-based energy. Part III yesterday was on electricity generated from non-carbon sources (Hydro, Nuclear, Renewables, Biomass).
| • Population Growth, Resources and the Environment Deffeyes, Kenneth, Peter Huber. 2005. “It’s the End of Oil / Oil Is Here to Stay.” Time, October 23. Ellis, Erle C. 2012. “Overpopulation is not the problem.” The New York Times (September 13). Pearce, Fred. 2010. “The overpopulation myth.” Prospect Magazine, March 8. Ridley, Matt. 2014. “Why Most Resources don’t Run Out.” Rational Optimist (April 30). Mann, Charles. |