Comments on: Washington Post tries mightily to spin a conflict between stimulus and green jobs

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:54:53 +0000

Asteroid Miner — Can you provide a reference for “A coal fired power plant produces 14.7 million tons of CO2 per 1000 megawatts in one year.” I’d find that quite, quite helpful.

By: Asteroid Miner

Asteroid Miner — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:47:13 +0000

Maybe Congress knows something that you don’t:
The proper way to write a law to require the use of NON-fossil-fuel energy to make electricity is to cap and lower the carbon dioxide put into the air per 1000 megawatt years. Do it on a company-by-company basis, not a power-plant-by-power-plant basis. A coal fired power plant produces 14.7 million tons of CO2 per 1000 megawatts in one year. Lower the amount of CO2 allowed per 1000 megawatt years each year. Allow the private sector to figure out how to do it. If you just require that a certain percentage of power come from renewable resources, the production of CO2 will diminish only slightly because of the “Spinning Reserve” problem, described below.

Wind energy wastes energy because the wind varies so much that a “spinning reserve” is required in most locations. That means that the coal fire has to be kept burning so that the steam turbine will keep spinning fast enough to generate electricity instantly when the wind dies. If you are running the steam powered generator at the spinning reserve rate, you may as well use the steam as your energy source and forget about the wind. Wind turbines are decorations, not sources of energy for the grid until we have room temperature superconductors or super batteries. There are special locations and circumstances where wind energy is useful, but wind cannot replace coal and nuclear in most places. The object of the new law must be to shut down coal fired power plants by replacing them with the only base load source that doesn’t make CO2, namely nuclear. “Base load” has real meaning. “Base load” is not just a buzz phrase to be copied willy-nilly. A “Base load” source is a source that operates 24 hours a day 365 days a year regardless of the weather and regardless of whether it is day or night. Wind, solar and wave power are NOT base load sources.

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:17:42 +0000

Yes, but the WSJ OpEd today by Martin Feldstein says Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus, which makes the Post look good.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:00:14 +0000

Off-topic, but related to Andy’s comment, I’m going to toot my own horn and encourage you (yes, you) to read

http://www.icis.com/ blogs/ biofuels/ archives/ 2008/ 12/ a-short-essay-on-biofuels-and.html

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:15:57 +0000

Ten Billion for wastewater infrastructure repairs seems way too low. A lot of cities are still trying to deal with combined storm and sewage water system overflows. These sewage redevelopment projects will require many billions of dollars and the EPA program that funded this work has been repeatedly gutted since Reagan. Likewise, many regions, for example the Chesepeake Bay watershed, are trying to deal with storm water treatment systems in order to comply with existing or future EPA requirements for reducing nitrogen.

The biggest unfunded project in this regard is that being developed for reducing nitrogen runoff from the midwestern farm states in order to stop the growth of and eventually reduce the dead zone off the Mississippi River mouth. Restoring drained wetlands on mariginal farmlands is an integral part of this and this requires lots of earth work which requires men/women and machines and lots of billable hours.

And holy cow just take a look at the unfunded need for EPA superfund clean up.

Repairing our environment isn’t just about buying and setting aside land.