An excellent article on solar thermal and it's benefits is at:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/index.html

Another one here, part of a series of articles on "core climate solutions"

http://climateprogress.org/2008/04/14/concentrated-solar-thermal-power-a-core-climate-solution/

Harvey:
Guess my main point with batteries is no one ever brings up the upstream or downstream side - they just refer to the battery itself, as though it just became in existence by some miracle. What happens pre & post consumer for a battery is just as, if not more, important as how coal, oil, NG, etc. are garnered. Where are the materials for all these battery packs going to come from? Mining, transport of raw materials, smelting, plastics, acids - all have significant enviro-costs associated, yet nary a mention. Just displacing the petroleum used to a little farther upstream. And what about the downstream side of things? What's the rate of battery recycling now? I'll tell you what it is - Horrific. If they can't seem to do a good job at it now, what happens when we increase that expectation 1000-fold? What about 10,000-fold? That's what you're talking about doing, but without any system in place to account for after.

Harvey

As a long time windsurfer and sailor I can tell that places with wind blowing 50% of the time exist but are relatively scarce, the average factor is more 0.25/0.3 and that's not too bad. For the sun well it is even worse...

Saying nuclear is safe because few people have died up until now somehow doesn't quite cut it for me.
We haven't had a nuclear holocaust yet either, but that doesn't make me feel any better about nuclear weapons.
The potential danger is huge and for all practical purposes forever.

We've had civilization for less than 5,000 years or so.
Now what were those half life numbers again?

Rick says wind isn't sinergistic with PHEVs
Sure it is. The wind blows more at night when they will be charging.

ACAGal In case you haven't noticed oil, gas and coal, (for which we can be grateful for powering the industrial revolution) are now killing our economy.
Let's not forget the loss of lives in wars fought over them either.
And they are killing our environment.
CO2 dissoving in the ocean creates carbonic acid. We are acidifying the oceans. This can effectively kill off coral and shellfish. A recent study said we have lost 20% of coral in 20 years. 25% of all marine life is connected with coral reefs. And coal puts more mercury in the air and water. It's one of the main reasons our fish are full of mercury. We have lost 90% of some fish stocks and 75% of most. There is a sea of plastic in the Pacific ocean, the size of the lower 48 states, where near the surface, plastic outweighs zooplankton 6 pounds to 1. That's the bottom and base of the marine food chain. Tiny creature are ingesting microscopic size pieces of plastic. Toxins like PCBs stick to these plastic particles.

Nah, Man can't adversely effect the planet.
Do you honestly think man would survive if the ecosystem of the sea collapses? The cradle of life?

Far from ruining the economy, the new technologies will create new prosperity, sustainable prosperity.
Not doing anything about carbon emissions is what could kill 90% of humans. I suggest you read the book "The Heat is On" to get an idea of who is fooling you and who is bankrolling the disinformatioin campaign that you have bought into.
This group has even been caught on tape saying that the science of AGW was closing in on them and getting stronger, and that they should continue to play on the public's doubts about global warming in their propaganda campaign. I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of it. In case you haven't guessed it's Bush Cheney and crew and the fossil fuel and auto industries.

Unfortunately the press has played right into their hands, giving equal air time to a handful of skeptics verses the majority of the worlds scientific community.
This is supposed to be balanced reporting.
You don't believe those phony stories about hundreds or thousands of skeptical scientists like the Oregon Petition I hope. You can learn all about it here.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine

Their leader believes that the more CO2 we pump into the atmosphere, the more wonderful life on earth will be, and how we can thank the industrial revolution for making our environment into such a healthy place.
He's not a climate scientist nor are any other members of his organization. The Orgeon petition was a hoax.
It's been completely discredited and debunked.
If you don't think there is overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming go here and see for yourself.
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/

The following science organizations support the IPCC findings on climate change.

National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)

NASA

Woods Hole Resesarch Center

US Geological Survey (USGS)

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

American Association of State Climatologists

Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006 (the study authorized and then censored by Bush)

American Chemical Society - (world's largest scientific organization with over 155,000 members)

Geological Society of America

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

American Association of State Climatologists

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

American Astronomical Society

American Institute of Physics

American Meteorological Society (AMS)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Stratigraphy Commission - Geological Society of London - (The world's oldest and the United Kingdom's largest geoscience organization)

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Royal Society, United Kingdom

Russian Academy of Sciences

Academia Brasiliera de Ciências

Royal Society of Canada

Academié des Sciences, France

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Germany

Indian National Science Academy

Science Council of Japan

Australian Academy of Sciences

Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

Brazilian Academy of Sciences

Caribbean Academy of Sciences

French Academy of Sciences

German Academy of Natural Scientists

Indian National Science Academy

Indonesian Academy of Sciences

Royal Irish Academy

Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy)

Academy of Sciences Malaysia

Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Union of Concerned Scientists

The Institution of Engineers Australia

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

National Research Council

Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospherice Sciences

World Meteorological Organization

State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)

International Council on Science

Sorry, I attributed comments to the wrong people in my last post. It should have been Kit P. instead of Rick
and Allysa van de Fintergold instead of ACAgal

Recycling rates for lead-acid batteries are in the high 90% range. A battery pack that costs 100 times as much is not going to be thrown in the trash.

As far as wind power is concerned, with PHEV's and a smart grid all of the electricity will be used sooner or later, so the "unreliability factor" is simply not relevent. Cars will be programmed to keep their batteries charged to a certain minimum level necessary for commuting, and whenever the price dips below a certain point, the battery will be topped off. When the price goes higher than a certain point, that electricity (above the required minimum) will be sold back to the grid when its most needed.

@ACAGal

How is the air pollution now in Long Beach? I was in a ship stationed on Long Beach before the CAA and pollution was bad.

I would think that it would be rather silly to fix a problem that has already been fixed.

.

Wind power is the best when the wind isn't blowing. At that point, which happens regularly, we use coal fired plants to keep the world operating. Lets use magic power generation as well as wind. They are both perfectly feasible.

.

@ziv

Most of the weight of a solar panel is in the supporting structure; in mark's plan the car becomes the supporting structure.
The added weight is on a par with a new paint job.

Re question:
"How is the air pollution now in Long Beach? I was in a ship stationed on Long Beach before the CAA and pollution was bad."

The pollution from the shipping in the Ports of LA/LB, port activities, shipping by rail and truck have increased pollution and created worse traffic problems, making the areas affected by the onshore wind flows more dangerous, but with chronic, not acute problems. Because many pollutants from Bunker oil and diesel create small and ultra fine particle pollution, areas further inland are affected differently from those next too the ports. Pollution levels also impact parts of the upper desert, as fine particles are mobile in the winds.
The AQMD is trying to get improvements in shoreside operations, by trying to get electric service to the docks so that ships can be powered by cleaner electricity instead of keeping the ships under power at dock. You will recall the US Navy always used shore power with docked ships. There are Green goats for yard work, and some test EVs....but when in full activity the skies near LB are black.
Now, because the economy is down, the skies are less black, but this area has become one of the more impacted in the country. The Native Americans called this area The Valley of the Smokes, because the simple campfire smoke was trapped in the basin. Intense shipping has made a bad situation worse and the ARB has just passed extreme rules that they hope will return the area to 1990 standards once they have been inacted.. ....does this start to answer the question?

"Not doing anything about carbon emissions is what could kill 90% of humans."

Yeah. That's why there is an all out effort in action to transition to non-fossil fuels and then to electric transport. Mostly driven by economics and national security issues. But if you recognize the enormous efforts being made and the changes already at hand - then you have less to catastrophize about. And the AGW CO2 clan is as addicted to catastrophe as Detroit is to gasoline.

FYI, in order for the entire IPCC AGW argument to fly they have got to deny the existence of a Medieval Warm Period which demonstrates millennial cyclic climate driven in large part by solar radiative forcing.

It's quite simple: IPCC wants us to believe the 20th century is the warmest in 100,000 years - enabling their man-made CO2 warming claims. Scientists insist that a Medieval Warm Period from around 1100 to 1400 AD was at least as warm if not warmer than 20th century - debunking the AGW theory and fitting millennial oscillations that include the Little Ice Age and radiative influences like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

As of right now there are 643 individual scientists from 377 separate research institutions in 40 different countries who support the Medieval Warm Period. The 377 institutions are just as impressive and in greater quantity than those you list.

What were your fastest toys? Slot cars, right? Battery powered toys were no good for hours of fun, more like minutes of sloth. My point here is that we must empower our roadways. Carrying electricity around in big, heavy batteries is super suboptimal. An American Tesla coil can deliver electricity through the air without danger to anyone over short distances, remember? Efficiency of power delivery has improved a lot, too. Even intermittent recharging of smaller batteries is a better technology than batteries. Electricity should be delivered to moving vehicles with wires, not batteries. Do we deliver power from dams to cities with batteries? NO! This technology is well along and should be nearly ready for deployment. We can forget about the silly 50 mile batteries and give our vehicles increased power over ICE powered vehicles.
Even portable generators make better sense than big batteries. We are lucky we have so many options and a market economy to sort them all out for us.

NO, biofuels are definitely not the worse, except for ethanol. Gasified or fermented biowastes into hydrogen or methane can produce perhaps 1/3 of transportation needs. Current combustion engines coupled with efficient hybrid power train can very efficiently take advantage of these gaseous fuels right now.

The main issue is NOT whether which type of renewable energy is the best or worst. Each will have a set of advantages and disadvantages, depending on the local geographic condition. We will need all forms of renewable energy supply, from wind, solar, biowastes, hydro, geothermal, tidal, and even nuclear energy, in order to wean off fossil fuel.

The report is mostly correct, and the naysayers are blowing smoke.

Here is why ...

Wind is cheap and plentiful. We are not running out of wind. The intermittent wind problems are overcome when many wind farms are interconnected on a grid, wind always blows somewhere.

Backup power needs addressed, but every sort of power generation is to some extent intermittent. At least with wind, a single broken generator makes little difference, while other systems have trouble dealing with plant failure.

As for the BEV, Zebra batteries can be made in quantity and cheaply. ($2,000 per 300km/charge BEV). Others may be better, but this one is available.

If the political choice is made to plan an infrastructure, and promote electric cars, then the technology is already developed.

A CANDU reactor uses 18 tons of natural uranium per TWh.
(that would be 5.4 tons per 280 GWh)
In optimal situations, a 3MW wind turbine produces 280 GWh in 20 years. What's the weight of such a turbine ?

We call wind energy renewable (which it is compared to fossils), but the amount of steel, concrete,... needed to produce the mills is many times higher than the amount of fuel 'used' in a nuclear reactor.
Certainly, the steel could eventually be recycled, but even in the production of the steel, much is lost, and much of the concretesteel and concrete will never be recycled. the ecological damage in the ore production for millions of windmills is much higher than for the production of the (comparatively) minute amounts of uranium.
Furthermore, since only 1% of the uranium fuel is actually consumed, the 'waste' fuel will in the relatively near future be capable of producing many times more energy in next-generation reactors.
The powerplant itselve of course also acounts for a lot of material, but is much lower than the added amount of material for all these windmills + extra transportation infrastructure + back-up systems,.

Although wind is much better than coal, it is from an ecological point of view much worse than nuclear.
Don't only look at the beautiful mills, but also look at the huge ore mines, steel factories, ...
Don't compare 2008 wind-energy with 1970 nuclear !

Lets not be juvenile here. Saying that we would have to factor in the extra cost of backup power generation for 100% wind is like saying we would have to factor in the additional cost of idling most of our generating sources w/ 100% nuclear. Either way ignores what's reasonable to expect and likely to happen, that is to say a mixed grid, just like we have today.

In terms of mix I expect we'll see a mix of wind and nuclear, among others. Sufficed to say a simple analysis won't cut it in terms of predictive power. For instance while the concrete per installed MWh of wind is higher than that of nuclear, we aren't going to completely tear out the base every time we have to replace the turbine, so that would have to be prorated against use, just like recycling the older turbine components.

Similarly, nuclear plants could see a large degree of recycling, especially if a refurbishment is deemed adequate instead of a complete tear down and rebuild. The handling of spent fuel, as it changes from simple storage to actual use, will also play a part.

Then there's risk, which includes the difference in capital costs as well as the cost of doing nothing or doing less compared to current GHG emitters such as coal. A new nuclear build may be limited by bottlenecks such as the production capacity Japan Steel Works, just like a roll-out of wind power could be hampered by uncertainty regarding the production tax credit, and the list goes on...

In short, no one here has presented nearly enough information to come even close to a reasonable statement/projection regarding any mix of alternatives, so I don't see what the fuss is about, besides sheer fanboy/girl mania.

Missing the Market Meltdown

"Renewable energy is attracting Wall Street but nuclear power isn't. Why? Simple economics.

Capitalists have already scuttled Patrick Moore's claimed nuclear revival. New U.S. subsidies of about $13 billion per plant (roughly a plant's capital cost) haven't lured Wall Street to invest. Instead, the decentralized competitors to nuclear power that Moore derides are making more global electricity than nuclear plants are, and are growing 20 to 40 times faster.

In 2007, decentralized renewables worldwide attracted $71 billion in private capital. Nuclear got zero. Why? Economics. The nuclear construction costs that Moore omits are astronomical and soaring; low fuel costs will soon rise two-to fivefold. "Negawatts"—saved electricity—cost five to 10 times less and are getting cheaper. So are most renewables. Negawatts and "micro-power"— renewables other than big hydro, and cogenerating electricity together with useful heat—are also at or near customers, avoiding grid costs, losses and failures (which cause 98 to 99 percent of blackouts).

The unreliability of renewable energy is a myth, while the unreliability of nuclear energy is real. Of all U.S. nuclear plants built, 21 percent were abandoned as lemons; 27 percent have failed for a year or more at least once. Even successful reactors must close for refueling every 17 months for 39 days. And when shut by grid failure, they can't quickly restart. Wind farms don't do that.

Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007—and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.

Micropower delivers a sixth of total global electricity, a third of all new electricity and from a sixth to more than half of all electricity in 12 industrial countries (in the United States it's only 6 percent). In 2006, the global net capacity added by nuclear power was only 83 percent of that added by solar cells, 10 percent that of wind power and 3 percent that of micropower. China's distributed renewables grew to seven times its nuclear capacity and grew seven times faster. In 2007, the United States, China and Spain each added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. Wind power added 30 percent of new U.S. and 40 percent of EU capacity, because it's two to three times cheaper than new nuclear power. Which part of this doesn't Moore understand?

The punch line: nuclear expansion buys two to 10 times less climate protection per dollar, far slower than its winning competitors. Spending a dollar on new nuclear power rather than on negawatts thus has a worse climate effect than spending that dollar on new coal power. Attention, Dr. Moore: you're making climate change worse."

Unfortunately, what the nuclear religion keeps on forgetting is the simple fact that nuclear power only produces electricity. And apart from the the nuclear-religion people no-one is willing to pay an extra price just because the electricity was produced in a new holy nuclear power plant.

Wind is less costly than new nuclear:
This report funded by the nuclear industry states that new nuclear power production costs are between: 8.3 and 11.1 cents/kWh
www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_12_2007(1).pdf
However this report assumed capital overnight costs of only $2950/kW and new nuclear power plants to be built in Florida already assumed capital costs of over $7000/kW and this at prohibitively long planning and construction times.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837
According to the Department of Energy the costs of wind power are between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh. Average capital costs of Windturbines are $1480/kW (2006).
www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf
No wonder wind capacity is currently growing more than 20 times faster than nuclear and has a double digit growth every single year.
And interconnected Windfarms can provide baseload.

Not to mention, PV, geothermal, tidal, combined heat&power and most importantly Efficiency.

I don't want to deride anybody since most of us have similar goals on this site. I really don't think nuclear is such a good idea. I'm not a zealot, it just seems to me to be trouble waiting to happen. You have to dig up the fuel, then run it in the reactor, and that's fine, but when it's done you have this terrible waste that no one knows what to do with.

They say that they'll figure out what to do with the waste, but nuclear has been around a long time and they haven't. Blasting it into space isn't an option because there could be a terrible accident, and there's no anti-radiation substance to mix it with so that it stops being harmful. Thousands of years after we're all dead, beings could discover it and be killed by it unknowingly.

What's worse is that it provides cover for nations like Iran to develop nuclear weapons for "peaceful" energy generating purposes. If we could lead by example with renewables that became the standard for power generation, then there'd be no excuse, nations developing nuclear weapons would have to do so out in the open. Furthermore, those weapons are worse than anything out there. Nuclear war is a terrible thing. Bombs that have been tested above ground before the ban were so many orders of magnitude above Hiroshima and Nagasaki that it's ridiculous. Check out "Trinity and Beyond (The Atomic Bomb Movie)" for film footage of what they could do up into the 70's. It's nuts. It doesn't make sense to promote an energy policy that gets more of this dangerous material out there and circulating.

It's time for something new. Wind is one solution, I'm also interested in wave and geothermal. Mix it all together with the nuclear we already are stuck with and minimize fossil fuel use. The problem is solvable with sensible, long term solutions so we can go worry about other things.

Battery electric will travel 3 times as far on the same amount of electricity as hydrogen fuel cells.

Electricity, charging battery to wheels ~75%

HFC electrolysis ~ 60% Fuel cell ~50% + compression ~ 25% delivered to wheels.

Don't forget that wind is far more scalable then other alternatives.

10,000 miles = 3,000 kWh per year.
Assuming 10 miles from 3kWh ~0.3kWh/mile

Assuming 2,500 kWh per year from each kW of installed capacity

Each car only requires 1.2kW of installed wind capacity per 10,000 miles driven per year.

A single modern turbine could provide 5GWh/yr or 15 million miles of travel.

Electric scooters can deliver around 10 miles per kWh of electricity, this would mean that the turbine above could power 50 million miles of travel per year.

Enough batteries to cover 10-50 miles on all electric with small range extending engines would result in cheap to build and cheap to run vehicles, fuel them on natural gas so you can fill up at home or on locally produced biogas and its goodbye OPEC and goodbye big oil.

but the amount of steel, concrete,... needed to produce the mills is many times higher than the amount of fuel 'used' in a nuclear reactor.
Besides that there the windturbine requires mostly steel and no concrete. The earth crust contains 50times more iron than carbon and the energy pay-back time of a wind-turbine is a few month. The energy needed to produce the steel for the windturbine is neglectable compared to the windpower produced over its lifetime!

the ecological damage in the ore production for millions of windmills is much higher than for the production of the (comparatively) minute amounts of uranium.
Wrong. A 3000 kW windturbine has less steel than 200 cars, lasts for over 20 years and can actually power several 1000s of BEVs.

Interconnected windfarms provide baseload.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf

Furthermore, since only 1% of the uranium fuel is actually consumed, the 'waste' fuel will in the relatively near future be capable of producing many times more energy in next-generation reactors.
And you simply don't mind to pay several times more for your holy nuclear recycled waste electricity than for electricity produced in a simple windturbine.

how cellulosic E85 is worst than corn E85. We can use yard wast and gabage to make cellulosic E85. With corn E85 we can't.

@ACAGal

You did not answer my question. What is the air quality like now in LB? To find this information you would go to some place like the EPA web site AIR NOW.

Where I live now, the air quality is always good except when there is something like a forest fire nearby. Air quality is something that can be measured. If quality is poor and the cause is POV, then BEV may be a solution.

However, presently in the US air quality is almost always in the healthy range. When it is not it is caused by natural sources.

My point here is that assigning heath hazards to energy sources when no heath hazard exist is wrong. Mark Jacobson is being unethical because he is using incorrect methods and is a professor in a field where the correct methods are taught. I do not see any indication that the folks at Standford University are not competent.

Environmental engineers are taught system approaches to solving environmental problems. For example, many in the world cook their food indoors with dried cow dung. Their indoor air quality is a very real health risk as WHO points out. I can list many solutions to cooking with cow dung but wind turbiditie/BEV combination does not make my list. Extrapolating WHO to the US is misleading.

treehugger:

Wind quality varies a lot from place to place. Some shores are regularly windy with wind quality form 7 to 9 most of the time. Others do not.

Windy places are well enough known. If you look at the North American wind map you will find that the eastern Labrador shores and some of the Hudson Bay shores have very high quality winds (8 to 9). Unfortunately, you would have to construct over 2000 Km of new power lines to connect with the existing north-south 735 KV grid. That is not a major challenge. We have done even more 20 and even 30 years ago.

A very high votage DC (HVDC) line from the norther tip of Labrador to the St-Lawrence river may be a effective way to collect and transport all this new energy (from up to 40 000 wind mills). A similar line could be constructed on the eastern Hydson Bay shores.

Secondly, new wind mill blades design operate effectively with much lower wind quality.

Thirdly, new electronically controlled multiple rotors generators can generate stable output with very wide range of wind speed. These new generators control rotation speed by varying the numbers of rotors connected. This way you can maximize the generation of electricity at just asbout any wind speed.

Its simple folks.

H2 moves along because right this second bloody OODLES of energy are consumed making h2. And bloody oddles of energy and money manpower are consumed shipping it around.

So every billion spent on improving h2 generation saves huge amounts of money and energy... thats why its spent.

On the fuel cell side... so many places want fuel cells for various needs where a fuel cell is FAR better then what they have now that the push for fuel cell tech will pay out MASSIVELY in reduced costs reduced fuel use and so many other things. Every billion spent on fuel cell tech will save BILLIONS even without a single fuel cell car.

All the car makers and bus makers and so on need to do is check from time to time to see how those fuel cells are going.

On nuke power.. as with wind and solar and everything else the full cost of most all power generation on the planet is spread out via subsidies so that things simply run better work better and people have jobs. It doesnt matter how much a nuke plant realy costs the first off.. What REALY matters is how much the people in charge are willing to invest in making nuke power cheap and plentiful.

In the end its very likely that a fleet of nuke plants across america will be belting out cheap co2 free power in the next few decades. And just as with dams and wind and solar and wave and sweaty belgian midgets in tights, government subsidies will bring it into line with EXACTLY what the people in charge want it to wind up costing.

Thats how the world works.