I'm conducting a research paper about why transitioning to clean energy is important.
1. what is the biggest risk to switching from fossil fuel to alternative energies such as wind power, solar power, and hydroelectricity?
2. Is there any pollution in any of the alternative energies? If there is what is it compared to fossil fuel meaning will it actually benefit the world?
3. A big question is how stable can alternative energy be, since we have only been using fossil fuel?
4. Out of the three alternative energies mentioned which method is your favorite and why?
5. What are the major cons of alternative energy compared to fossil fuel of any?
Thank you for your responses.
Alternative energy
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hengman
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- Project Question: I'm doing a research paper on alternative energy vs fossil fuel. I really am trying to just be able to get an interview on any one of the alternative energies like solar power expert, wind power expert, or hydroelectricity expert.
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: I am conducting my research
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HowardE
- Posts: 496
- Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:35 pm
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Re: Alternative energy
Hi hengman.
My expertise is in cogeneration, which is using a fuel to get more than one thing. If you're burning a fossil fuel to get electricity, some of the energy is converted, but some is wasted. In cogeneration, the wasted energy is lost as heat, and the company I'm with makes home heating equipment that captures the waste heat and uses it to heat your house. You still use fossil fuel but you use it more efficiently. While you're heating your house you don't have to buy power from the power company and they don't have to make any for you.
So if I qualify for your interview:
1) The biggest risks are monetary and availability. It costs a lot to switch a commercial power plant from one method to another. Someone has to pay for it. Since companies have invested so much already in burning gas, wood, coal or whatever to make power, you're asking them to now spend millions to throw that equipment away and put up windmills. It's also true that we now use more power than we used to. The average home has multiple TVs when they used to have 1 or 2. When is the last time you saw kids reading books or playing outside instead of playing computer games? We consume power like crazy. If a coal plant shuts down and gets replaced by a wind farm, the new one has to produce as much power as the old one or people get upset. And while it's true that our new TVs and refrigerators use less power than they used to, all of these changes have to happen before a successful transition is possible. You also have the problem with wind and solar that power is only generated when it's windy or sunny. Are you willing to give up your internet games at night when the sun goes down? Smaller risks: swapping out one form of damage to the environment for another. Coal power plants may put out pollutants, but windmills kill birds. Hydropower inconveniences the fish. I guess you have to decide which of these you can live with.
2) Any pollution in the alternative energies? There's certainly some in the manufacture of the tech. Solar cells (PV) are made of materials that are pretty toxic. The windmills we use today contain quite a bit of rare earth materials which have to be mined. That process creates pollution. Once the windmill is installed, it makes noise. Noise pollution irritates people and some claim that the low frequency sounds that come from a wind farm are bad for your health and the health of cattle on farms. I'm not an expert on that, but people jump up and down about it. Hydro plants require cooling and since the water is being used for power, they cool with that same water. The water comes out warmer than it comes in. Does that extra heat qualify as pollution?
3) How stable can alternative energy be? As the technologies mature and become as reliable as plants that burn coal, oil or gas, the stability will depend entirely on the energy source. It will always blow wind sometime, so a wind farm will always generate some power eventually. The sun comes out every day, so you will get some power every day, but more on bright sunny days than on cloudy ones. Contrast that to a gas-fired plant which, as long as it has gas, will always generate all the power you need. So it's less stable in a sense, but maybe we can all learn to live with turning off a few things at night or on calm days. Also, these planst are on the power grid too, so if it's not windy in your town today, it might be windy enough 100 miles away that they have extra power they can share. transporting the power does waste some, but it's what we do now anway.
4) I prefer nuclear because except for the waste disposal issue (which is a *huge* problem), it's stable, safe (when done correctly and we do it correctly in this country) and pretty efficient. It also doesn't pollute (if you discount the waste issue) except for some heat and we know more about how to reuse that heat now than we used to. But that wasn't one of the technologies you mentioned. Of those, I prefer hydro. Water is always flowing. It doesn't stop at night, it doesn't require windy days, and it uses a lot of the same tech that's been around forever that we use in the fossil fuel plants. We know how to build the plants, they can run all day and night and the output is predictable. The people opposed to hydro often point out that the fish can't navigate the waterways and the heated water kills some plants and encourages others - changing the ecosystem. I grew up near Niagara Falls which is a big hydro area. People complained that diverting water from the falls was ruining the tourist industry. I find it funny that you might want to drive your electric car to the falls to see the pretty water, but not tolerate that there's less water falling because the hydro plant had to generate the power to charge your car.
5) The biggest cons seem to be that none of the alternative energy methods are as reliable as burning fuel. Fuel is rather energy dense - a little of it releases a lot of energy. You can run a plant all day and night, throttling the output up or down based on demand. With solar, for example, if it's a hot day and and the local box store has a sale on air conditioners, everyone in town runs out and buys one. Then they all try to plug them in - is there enough power to run them all? You can't just make more like you might be able to with your coal plant. If clouds move in, the power output drops and people have to use less power. Good? Bad? You decide that. And on a really good sunny day, you might make more power then people need. You can produce less or throw some away but it's better to try and store it for use at night. How will you do that? Batteries? Batteries use toxic materials, have disposal problems and wear out. You can maybe store it as heat, but that's another bit of tech. Wind has that same issue. A hot, still day isn't going to let you make enough power to cool everyone's house. On a really windy day, people could open their windows and maybe not need as much power for air conditioners. Then what do you do with the extra capacity from your windmills? Store that in batteries? Transport it over the grid and sell it to someone else (perhaps the best option)?
Howard Eglowstein
Principal Engineer, Climate Energy LLC
My expertise is in cogeneration, which is using a fuel to get more than one thing. If you're burning a fossil fuel to get electricity, some of the energy is converted, but some is wasted. In cogeneration, the wasted energy is lost as heat, and the company I'm with makes home heating equipment that captures the waste heat and uses it to heat your house. You still use fossil fuel but you use it more efficiently. While you're heating your house you don't have to buy power from the power company and they don't have to make any for you.
So if I qualify for your interview:
1) The biggest risks are monetary and availability. It costs a lot to switch a commercial power plant from one method to another. Someone has to pay for it. Since companies have invested so much already in burning gas, wood, coal or whatever to make power, you're asking them to now spend millions to throw that equipment away and put up windmills. It's also true that we now use more power than we used to. The average home has multiple TVs when they used to have 1 or 2. When is the last time you saw kids reading books or playing outside instead of playing computer games? We consume power like crazy. If a coal plant shuts down and gets replaced by a wind farm, the new one has to produce as much power as the old one or people get upset. And while it's true that our new TVs and refrigerators use less power than they used to, all of these changes have to happen before a successful transition is possible. You also have the problem with wind and solar that power is only generated when it's windy or sunny. Are you willing to give up your internet games at night when the sun goes down? Smaller risks: swapping out one form of damage to the environment for another. Coal power plants may put out pollutants, but windmills kill birds. Hydropower inconveniences the fish. I guess you have to decide which of these you can live with.
2) Any pollution in the alternative energies? There's certainly some in the manufacture of the tech. Solar cells (PV) are made of materials that are pretty toxic. The windmills we use today contain quite a bit of rare earth materials which have to be mined. That process creates pollution. Once the windmill is installed, it makes noise. Noise pollution irritates people and some claim that the low frequency sounds that come from a wind farm are bad for your health and the health of cattle on farms. I'm not an expert on that, but people jump up and down about it. Hydro plants require cooling and since the water is being used for power, they cool with that same water. The water comes out warmer than it comes in. Does that extra heat qualify as pollution?
3) How stable can alternative energy be? As the technologies mature and become as reliable as plants that burn coal, oil or gas, the stability will depend entirely on the energy source. It will always blow wind sometime, so a wind farm will always generate some power eventually. The sun comes out every day, so you will get some power every day, but more on bright sunny days than on cloudy ones. Contrast that to a gas-fired plant which, as long as it has gas, will always generate all the power you need. So it's less stable in a sense, but maybe we can all learn to live with turning off a few things at night or on calm days. Also, these planst are on the power grid too, so if it's not windy in your town today, it might be windy enough 100 miles away that they have extra power they can share. transporting the power does waste some, but it's what we do now anway.
4) I prefer nuclear because except for the waste disposal issue (which is a *huge* problem), it's stable, safe (when done correctly and we do it correctly in this country) and pretty efficient. It also doesn't pollute (if you discount the waste issue) except for some heat and we know more about how to reuse that heat now than we used to. But that wasn't one of the technologies you mentioned. Of those, I prefer hydro. Water is always flowing. It doesn't stop at night, it doesn't require windy days, and it uses a lot of the same tech that's been around forever that we use in the fossil fuel plants. We know how to build the plants, they can run all day and night and the output is predictable. The people opposed to hydro often point out that the fish can't navigate the waterways and the heated water kills some plants and encourages others - changing the ecosystem. I grew up near Niagara Falls which is a big hydro area. People complained that diverting water from the falls was ruining the tourist industry. I find it funny that you might want to drive your electric car to the falls to see the pretty water, but not tolerate that there's less water falling because the hydro plant had to generate the power to charge your car.
5) The biggest cons seem to be that none of the alternative energy methods are as reliable as burning fuel. Fuel is rather energy dense - a little of it releases a lot of energy. You can run a plant all day and night, throttling the output up or down based on demand. With solar, for example, if it's a hot day and and the local box store has a sale on air conditioners, everyone in town runs out and buys one. Then they all try to plug them in - is there enough power to run them all? You can't just make more like you might be able to with your coal plant. If clouds move in, the power output drops and people have to use less power. Good? Bad? You decide that. And on a really good sunny day, you might make more power then people need. You can produce less or throw some away but it's better to try and store it for use at night. How will you do that? Batteries? Batteries use toxic materials, have disposal problems and wear out. You can maybe store it as heat, but that's another bit of tech. Wind has that same issue. A hot, still day isn't going to let you make enough power to cool everyone's house. On a really windy day, people could open their windows and maybe not need as much power for air conditioners. Then what do you do with the extra capacity from your windmills? Store that in batteries? Transport it over the grid and sell it to someone else (perhaps the best option)?
Howard Eglowstein
Principal Engineer, Climate Energy LLC