Green Technology - A Sales Opportunity for the Yanks?

Green technology is a sales opportunity for anyone. Australia, for example, and I'm sure the USA too, could be making a lot more out of the opportunities in green technologies. The older (brown, unsustainable) technologies must eventually be replaced by green and those countries that get on the band-wagon earliest will do best.

Like little robber says, its a great opportunity, but looks like the Yanks don't want to take it. Their loss others are well ahead.

As to wind and solar not being any use in large scale power production, I think that is a little biased. Many others don't share that view and are putting their mney into building large scale wind and solar plants. There are still lots of technological advances to be made to improve output.

I agree this is not all about money, because the price per megawatt hour, will vary for all sorts of reasons. There are other issues to consider. Social issues are a serious matter to concern us. For an insight to the social issues relating to nuclear energy, just consider the issue of Iran and its stated claim to have a right under international law to develop nuclear energy, including a right to produce its own fuel, and other countries concern that right or no right, they don't want Iran to do that for political and security reasons. Then think what issues may arise if nuclear energy were adopted on a much larger scale by far more countries.

Wind turbines just don't pose the same security threat by a rouge state as a full blown nuclear energy program.

So not just the physics but also the societal issues need to be addressed in choosing solutions. There is a role for nuclear energy, but it is not a total solution.

Personally I would be happiest if a broad spectrum of solutions were put in place, as a diverse energy program is inherently safer and more resilient that a concentrated one. Lets not ever again put all eggs in one energy basket. Lets take this opportunity to wrest power away from the big corporations and allow smaller players to participate. Solar and wind and other renewables do allow that without loss of efficiency.

Joe in Texas: "They have been high maintenance, unreliable, and extremely inefficient."

Complete fiction, they are low maintenance and very reliable, you seem to be getting you info from a nuclear or coal power company handout. The place I work operate two 300 kW sized units, and have since 2003, at our station (Mawson) in Antarctica last month these saved 28,323 litres of fuel (which normally has to be shipped in) which is the equivalent of 74 tonnes of Co2 not released into the atmosphere. You could not have a more hostile environment on Earth than Antarctica and there have been few maintenance problems in just over 7 years, yes the wind does not always blow, but if you are running fuel or coal, you always have to pay for more fuel.

'Green Technology - A Sales Opportunity for the Yanks?'

Yes indeed if they choose to take it! At the moment though, others are taking the advantage. For example;

French nuclear giant Areva buys Ausra, says solar thermal power market may increase 30-fold by 2020

February 16, 2010

http://climateprogress.org/

We need to get away from looking at these issues in monetary terms; the only sane and competent way to view them is in in terms of physics and physical economics. Monetary and related statistics can be fudged in any number of ways (just ask the Wall Street boys), but when we abandon monetarism and look at the basic physical characteristics of various technologies, we can get a much clearer understanding of their merits.

So, when you look at this issue in terms of physical efficiency - for instance, when we contrast wind and nuclear energy - there's simply no comparison. Because it's far more energy dense, nuclear is more efficient than wind by at least an order of magnitude. Unless you want to get on the fast track back to the stone age, wind and solar energy are useless beyond a few niche applications.

*Edit*

As Antarcticice probably knows, the application she mentions - a remote research station on a basically unpopulated continent - is one of the few in which wind power is viable. There are no high capital intensity power plants or electrical power there for obvious reasons; thus, all of the electricity has to be generated on site.

As it probably costs at least $20 a gallon to ship diesel fuel over such great distances and inhospitable, undeveloped terrain, fuel costs are going to be wildly inflated as compared to any sort of standard application. And, of course, electricity generated from petroleum derivatives is a highly physically inefficient method to begin with, and is only useful in the most inaccessible locales.

So, in this extremely rare case, he/she's right. But when we're talking about developed industrial civilizations, it's a different story entirely - again, for reasons which should be obvious.

The decaying remains of wind farms are easy to find. They are in california, Hawaii, and all over Europe. They have been high maintenance, unreliable, and extremely inefficient. In Europe these "green" technologies have been a disaster, leaving governments with huge debts.

"Green" technologies are not economical. They represent a way to rob the tax payer to benifit a few big players like General Electric.

Yes you can spend taxpayers money to create "green jobs". but you could accoplish the same thing by paying people to dig holes one day, and fill them up the next.