Wrong. Its based on two years of continent spanning drought. Under the weather conditions we are experiencing now it doesn't matter how good your forest management planning is or what back burning you do. Firstly you cannot conduct wide scale back burns under these conditions and secondly even if you could you cant 'back burn' the every square kilometer of forest in the country - huge sections are inaccessible on foot/horseback or by helicopter. With the right weather conditions you can back burn around the fringes of cities and towns but that won't prevent the kind of firestorms we have been having this year. Once a fire gets up into the tree line you cant easily stop it under the type of dry windy conditions we have been experiencing. There is to much fuel load up high and two many red embers to stop it spreading. So to be clear clear its the weather. Not a lack of back burning and NOT arson. Dry lightning has been responsible for most of the big fires we with seen with arson making a smaller contribution.
Usually after a fire nature has a way of renewing itself. Let us hope it happens in your neck of the woods.
Fact is renewables are doing just fine in spite of constant resistance from naysayers, and, as stated in the data, coal will continue to decline while renewables will continue to grow...your comments are about the past...time to move into the future...
It is still the fact even today. Myself, when talking about the current time, I talk about the current time. I do not try to project into the future and claim it is true. And the largest renewable continues to be hydro power. Wind and Solar have increased dramatically, but many still question how long this may be. Per kilowatt produced they are still far more expensive, and many largely see them as "gap providers" until some other technology is created.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source The cost of renewable generated power is dropping while fossil fuel generation is increasing. Who are some of the largest investors in renewable energy? The oil companies! And please explain if true what is the problem with your 'gap providers'? The discussion is not about who or when power is generated; it's about putting forth an effort to greatly reduce fossil fuel consumption for all the reasons delineated to date...
Gap ar Gap are just that, gap. They are not reliable and consistent. It is right there in the very definition.
No one claims today that renewable energy is a 100% answer to all of our power needs. It might be someday but not for the next 50-100 years. To believe we can continue to consume fossil fuels forever is reckless. Electrical energy is critical and mandatory to just about everything we have today. It is logical that into the future we should take steps to do better on costs, on emissions, on sustained availability, the security of the nation. Renewables are simply part of the current and long-term answers...
That's a seriously strange chart as it doesn't include gas or oil - neither of which is renewble, of course. The fact is, new electric generation needs to make up for the decline in other sources. as well as for providing the growing energy demand of our economy. The majority of that growth is coming from clean energy - not from nuclear (which is flat at best) and not from fossil fuel. That trend is telling. Unless something realy weird happens, we are roaring toward clean energy, whether President Coal likes it or not.
Today, wind energy is growing because of cost competitiveness. It's growing especially fast in the midwest, where wind is plentiful - adding a much needed econmic boost to the region. Yet, President Coal has THIS to say about wind: Hilarious, if this were Saturday Night Live. Deranged and ignorant if he actually said that.
Talk to OldManOnFire, it is from his reference, not mine. And of course Nuclear is flat, from 1977 until 2013 not a single new nuclear plant was approved. And in 2016 the first nuclear power plant in 20 years started operation. Myself, I wish we would spend more resources into improving hydro technologies. It is the oldest and most reliable of all "Green Energy" technologies, and it is the safest and has many benefits to the environment. And we have known for over a century how to make such things "renewable".
Wind is only effective as a gap source, not as a primary one. Generally it is used to increase power on demand during peak hours, not as the primary power source. That is still some form of "on demand" supply, like coal, gas, or hydro. One of the big problem with wind power is that it only operates in a band generally between 9 and 50 MPH (depending on many other factors). To little wind, and they can not produce anything. To much wind, and they have to shut down production and "feather" the blades so the turbines do not tear themselves apart. And wind turbines are highly intensive for maintenance. Most last no more than 20 years, at that point the cost of maintenance becomes so high that it is cheaper to just throw them away and buy new ones than it is to keep fixing them. And those things are not cheap, which is why it is such an expensive solution. Meanwhile, 100 year old power plants are still in operation that use hydro as their power source.
In the Pacific Northwest we've been removing some dams because they kill the salmon industry and have other negative aspects. I agree that if side effects aren't too bad, dams are great. But, I don't believe that means we should discourage other clean energy directions. Today, wind is growing because it is cost effective. Solar is also cost effective as can be seen by the companies who are willing to install solar on your roof for free if the contract includes them sharing in the electricity generated.
We are a LONG way from having to worry about wind or solar not working at night. Also, central solar designs include technology that allows for generation long into the night. Investment in coal plants have to be shown to pay out within 20 years, too. These concerns are handled by capitalism. Today, capitalism is choosing to invest in wind an solar. That's where the majority of all new electric energy capacity is coming from. It's making up for the rapidly decreasing generation of coal factories.
I did not say a thing about night, I talked about the wind being to strong or to soft. And coal (and gas) pays out in 20 years, awesome. It then has another 40-80 years of life left before it has to be shut down. Most wind and solar generating systems only have a lifespan of 20-25 years. Which means it has barely paid for itself, and you then must replace it with something else. That is why the power is so expensive. You are eternally paying for the replacement. Where as with more conventional systems, that is not an issue. Imagine building a toll bridge, with a lifespan of 25 years. Then as soon as it is paid off, you have to tear down the bridge and build it all over again. That is why solar and wind are not good long-term solutions.
Do you know the maintenance costs on a coal fired plant? The sulfur in the coal combines with water to form sulfuric acid that is extremely corrosive to iron and steel. Wind energy does NOT produce ONGOING POLLUTION. Coal Power Plant Operating & Maintenance costs range between $60 to $75 per megawatt/hour. Hydro power plants O&M is just $42 per megawatt/hour. Onshore Wind power plants O&M is just $26 per megawatt/hour. Solar power plants O&M is just $16 per megawatt/hour.
Actually, it is not as simple as just that. Because you also have to factor in the cost of producing the generation facilities in order to factor in the true ROI. And costs without a reference? Yea, right. Gas turbine ($20 per kW) Large-scale solar photovoltaic ($25 per kW) Subcritical coal power ($43 per kW) Onshore wind power ($46 per kW) Large-scale hydropower ($53 per kW) https://www.power-technology.com/fe...w-does-the-industry-stack-up-on-cost-4417756/ Oh, and "coal power" has been decreasing in use for decades now. Most have long ago been converted to natural gas. However, I do notice that you seem to have greatly increased the cost for coal, and decreased it for others (not to mention not even including natural gas). And the quoting without actually linking to a reference? Uhhh, no. And $16 per MWh? On what planet exactly?
Looks like my link was lost so here it is to SUBSTANTIATE that I am using 2019 O&M numbers. https://www.statista.com/statistics...nd-maintenance-costs-in-the-us-by-technology/ It was YOU that posted this FALLACY about the MAINTENANCE costs of wind power! Which is what I responded to since that was YOUR POINT. That you want to MOVE the goalposts now is NOT my problem. YOUR numbers are OUT OF DATE from 2014! So it is you who needs to figure out what planet YOU are on!
OldManOnFire did not create that chart...it comes from a link I posted by https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39992
The joke about all this renewable talk is how anyone can be so opposed to something so obvious and logical. There are horrific impacts from oil and coal power generation but these same RE naysayers never talk about these impacts? I live in a county of 500,000 and over the past few years we have achieved 30% RE with zero impact on a single citizen...most are too stupid to even know 30% of their power comes from RE. Yet on these forums and elsewhere the naysayers are rabid about refusing anything RE? Why are they so frightened?
Wind power is "so expensive"? I'm confident that corporations are aware of your concerns. Capitalism is like that. There are companies putting up wind farms throughout the midwest. And, it's not because Trump is paying them to do that. It's because it is economic. The sad part is that we let China get a jump on us - so they own way more clean energy patents, produce way more clean energy technology, and export more clean energy technology than any other country. And, they're installing it in China at an amazing rate. As the world's clean energy super power, their production rate is nearing 40% of all electricity.
Well, Trump and the Republican party in general have been HUGE coal and oil advocates for many decades. They've grown up fighting hard against auto emissions standards and disbelieving the possibility of clean energy being cost effective - which pretty much grew into a partisan divide issue that wasn't based in any kind of evidence. The idea that RE could exist was associated with the political left and enviromentalism. This was so ingrained that US auto took heavy losses against foreign manufacturers who delivered reasonable gas mileage. Convincing those who have committed themselves to Republicanism and who have rejected the science for decades find it hard to accept that RE is both cost effective and important for our environment. It's a serious problem. It's the same problem that drives so many to ignore science when it comes to climate change - something that is crosswise with their partisan view of the world.
It's a classic battle: Logic, reason, evidence, science, good, vs the mob and the evil they perpetuate with simpleton thinking, conspiracy theories, greed, and fear mongering.
Your toll bridge analogy is misleading. Firstly your 'bridge' still needs regular maintenance as do all types of power generations systems (even coal) secondly they don't pull down solar and wind power stations en-mass like bridges. Individual modules (generator units ) are replaced as they wear out, not all in one go. Also the businesses whose job it is build and run power stations are quite capable of crunching their numbers and doing their own cost forecasts. And in the case of coal they don't like what they see - in most parts of the West there's no ban in place on building new coal fired power stations but they simply aren't being built. New gas plants yes, they have a quicker payback time than coal and produce at least 40% less CO2 per megawatt anyway. Bit no coal fired plants - and its not because every member of their various boards has suddenly had a rush of (green) blood to the head its because they can see how rapidly the cost of solar, wind and other options is coming down compared to coal.
But we know that solar and wind only has a lifespan of around 25 years. Solar is one of the worst, as it ages it looses more and more of it's power potential, until it can actually become a power consumer. They replace them before they get that far, which is somewhere between 20-25 years. It does not matter how much maintenance you put into them, they always degrade. Even the ones that are put on satellites degrade, which is why once those fail the bird dies, and the de-orbit it if they can. The same with wind. Because of all the moving parts and stresses, eventually it simply costs more to maintain them than they are able to produce. And nothing can get around those facts. So the analogy of replacing a bridge 4 times a century is very accurate. You just do not like that fact, and are trying to say it is not true. And yes, bridges need maintenance. They have been painting the Golden Gate Bridge since it was built, but they have yet to replace it. But that is not the case with solar, once the cost of maintenance exceeds the power produced, all you can do is replace it.
