Loading ...
Clean energies are the future. This is already a certainty, everybody from scientists to politicians are looking for a change, or at least this is what they say. At some point in the future, fossil fuels will be replaced by renewable energies as the Earth is getting more and more polluted mainly due to human-related activities. There is no doubt about the fact that we need electricity and machines, but we are so stubborn that we cannot replace our polluting cars with hybrid-cars and it’s clear that we need to change.
It would be a mistake to make these changes instantly so we need to know what’s best for our future and which clean technologies are the best. So far, nobody conducted an elaborated study to find out the best ways to fight against global warming, reduce pollution, and which are best renewable energies, therefore Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, decided to do something about this and he conducted the first major and scientific energy-related study.
He says that the best ways to accomplish our green goals are “blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants.” Also, he added that the so-called clean coal is “not clean at all.”
Prof. Jacobson claims that he found the solutions to produce clean energy for electricity and cars, and that he even predicted their impact on global warming, water supply, water pollution, human health, energy security, wildlife, reliability, sustainability, and space requirements. According to the Stanford professor, the options that until now were getting the most attention are 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the “real” best options available today.
“The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful. Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels,” says Jacobson.
It’s not the first time we hear this as other recent studies about ethanol showed that this type of fuel is more pollutant than fossil fuels, and it supports global warming.
Here are, in order, the most promising energy sources in Jacobson’s vision - wind power, concentrated solar (which involves using mirrors to heat fluids), geo-thermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (solar panels on buildings’ rooftops), wave, and hydro-electric. The professor says that we should forget and go against nuclear, clean coal, corn ethanol, and cellulosic ethanol. According to Jacobson’s findings, cellulosic ethanol is worse than corn ethanol as it releases more air pollutants, it requires more land for crops, and it damages the wildlife.
In order to test which clean energy sources are the best, the Stanford professor compared them by calculating their impacts as if each was used to power all vehicles in the US. According to Jacobson, wind was “by far the most promising” as it led to a 99% reduction in air pollutant emissions, saving 15,000 lives per year from premature pollution-related deaths in the US only. Also, he found that cellulosic and corn ethanol would continue to cause about 15,000 premature pollution-related deaths per year in the US.
So, why wind? Well, mostly because wind turbines require a small amount of space between them for the blades to spin and wind farms would require only 0.5% of US land. Jacobson says that cellulosic and corn ethanol would require more than 30% of the US land for crops.
“There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession. Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power,” says Jacobson.
We’ve heard people talking about the fact that wind and wave power are unreliable as they cannot provide steady amounts of energy for electricity, however, Jacobson says that this is a false impression as all that we need is to properly coordinate the energy output from wind farms to various locations, and “variability problem” will be overcome and electricity will be well distributed to users.
Jacobson’s research shows that biofuels are the worst alternatives as clean energies and we should focus our money on other cleaner technologies.
“That is exactly the wrong place to be spending our money. Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels. We should be spending to promote energy technologies that cause significant reductions in carbon emissions and air-pollution mortality, not technologies that have either marginal benefits or no benefits at all,” says Jacobson.
Well, if biofuels are not good at all, then we need to start producing others, and we’ve seen that wind would be the perfect solution, but not the only one.
“Obviously, wind alone isn’t the solution. It’s got to be a package deal, with energy also being produced by other sources such as solar, tidal, wave and geothermal power,” says Jacobson.
Now the election are over. Obama won, and he has a plan to make it right and to remove US’ dependence on fossil fuels. However, in Obama’s green plan, nuclear power and clean coal are mentioned, and it seems like they play an important role for a cleaner future. According to Jacobson, these two are the worst as clean alternatives, and they are the lowest-ranked solution after biofuels.
“Coal with carbon sequestration emits 60- to 110-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy, and nuclear emits about 25-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy,” says Jacobson.
Although it was obvious, Jacobson also wanted to mention that if the US started to produce more nuclear power, then other countries would have demanded to do that, which would have resulted in more air pollutants, and other political issues.
“Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it’s straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do. The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide,” says Jacobson.
In conclusion, Jacobson wanted to mention that clean coal and nuclear power plants would longer to build than clean energy power plants.
Here is Jacobson’s list of clean energies from best to worst:
1. Wind Power
2. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
3. Geothermal Power
4. Tidal Power
5. Solar Photovoltaics
6. Wave Power
7. Hydroelectric Power
8. Nuclear Power and Clean Coal
The problem with wind turbines is that their placement can often harm the ecosystem. Specifically, off shore wind turbines. They disrupt the habitat of fish in that region, and also interfere with fishing businesses.
[...] Major Energy Study Shows That Wind Is The Cleanest Source Device Daily [N]obody conducted an elaborated study to find out the best ways to fight against global warming, [...]
[...] et_tile=1; document.write(”); Windenergie toch het beste13-12-2008 om 11:49 door Steeph Wind toch de beste alternatieve energiebron Alternatieve energie, Energie, Waan v/d Dag, windenergie Terug naar het [...]
Without having read his report, I notice from what is quoted in the article that the language Jacobson uses in making his points is very clear and concise. I’m also surprised if this really was the first major study of its kind in the US when the conclusions would seem obvious, and the headline almost amusing.
I especially liked the quote that our green goals are “blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants.â€
If that is the kind of straightforward language that is needed to make policy makers take notice, then Jacobson is to be applauded. The majority of scientific studies are so difficult to summarize.
Jamie,
In a word, horsehockey.
That their existence causes fish to move (very briefly) is VERY VERY small potatoes. Consider how much worse and more ongoing any other source of energy is, and you’ll see that wind is a MAJOR improvement.
I’m all for protecting the environment, and wouldn’t endorse placing a wind farm in the middle of a coral reef… but there are vast tracts of nothing but sandy bottom that will work just fine. Or would you rather we just keep on burning -choke- fossil fuels -cough- until -gag- we die?
Most people who dream this dream have never been around a wind turbine in their lives. First, except in limited areas these are “episodic” not constant sources of power. These are mechanical resistance devices that break down frequently, are “unit” based (lots of small turbines to produce the power of one hydroelectric turbine) thus require massive service crews (there is that 2 1/2 million new jobs thing). BTW, birds fly in the wind too and turbine fields do a wonderful job of thinning the flock. You need lots and lots of storage batteries that leak and need disposal, they are not totally recyclable. I am and have been for 40 years a proponent of non-hydrocarbon based energy sources but you have to be a realist. Current wind and solar based technologies are grossly inadequate to our needs. Don’t expect a research miracle soon.
I don’t think Jacobson understands the zero-emission cycle of bio-fuel versus something like underground coal and oil.
Here’s the cycle for non-fossil carbon fuels (biomass):
1. Plants grow, taking carbon from the air (in the form of carbon dioxide). We all learned this in 6th grade biology. Plants do not take carbon from the ground. In fact, ground-carbon (fossil fuels) got there because the plants died millions of years ago, got sequestered and pressured underground, and formed the carbon-based fuels we dig and well-up today.
2. Harvest the plant matter and create bio-fuel. I am not an expert on this, but there are methods out there with low energy and low ecological impact as far as the gathering and refining of plant matter into usable fuels.
3. Burn the fuel. The carbon the plants removed from the air is now back in the air. No net difference. Total carbon in the atmosphere remains the same, just as it would for wind or solar power. Sure, there could be localized elements to this, as in a bio-mass plant smogging up an area, but localization effects need to be taken into account for every energy production method. Wind generators, hydroelectric dams, and tidal facilities would all have localized impact, too.
The comments about bio-mass requiring land and/or tapping into food resources are on-topic, though. It would take a lot of land, and there are costs involved with harvesting/refining the materials, as I state above. But bio-fuels are certainly better than taking coal and oil from the ground, where every molecule burned releases carbon into the atmosphere that was entirely sequestered underground previously.
Why is this point not made clear in this article? If we are to develop a smart energy policy, ALL facets and ALL logic must be analyzed. I am very disappointed that a Stanford professor is not more clear and cohesive on his ideas.
I find it somewhat negligent of this man to give nuclear such a passing glance. Was he thinking of the elderly reactors? The RBMKs of Chernobyl? Even the reactor at Three Mile Island had no fatalities or injuries, releasing only a tiny amount of material into the air. Today’s reactors are infinitely safer than them, with absolutely no chance of catastrophic meltdown.
The only release from the plant is excess heat, safe steam, and waste for reprocessing. Given fast reactors and proper reprocessing facilities, we have enough fissile material for thousands of years to come, with a ridiculously small amount of waste, of which we have plenty of room to dispose in some very dark trenches leading under the crust that we won’t be using for much else (sublimation, still being explored). In short, it’s not a problem.
In a perfect world this man would be absolutely right, but he neglected to take into account the projected energy demand. In the United States alone, to generate enough electricity by wind to cover even 15% of the demand, we would need a wind farm the size of Texas. In terms of land use for nuclear waste disposal, we would need only a football field dug deep in the ground.
Even with all of this taken into account, Clean Coal and Nuclear are the only economically viable alternatives, regardless of what is or isn’t “green.” We should explore these options, definitely, but there is no way we can feasibly deny the use of Nuclear and Clean Coal.
*I am training to be a Nuclear / Mechanical Engineer with minors in Management and Economics, and as such am biased but informed.
The eight proposed coal-fired power plants in Michigan claim that they will be more efficient and reduce emissions compared to older coal plants they may be replacing. That may be true, but does that make them clean
This is possible but we will have to look at the picture from a different perspective. Big wind is not the silver bullet and it is just a piece of the puzzle. It will take a collaboration of many different types of alternative energy sources and an open minded government to visualize the path to a sustainable future. Do I have the answer? Not yet, but I am working on a small part of the big picture. If we all do our part we can make a huge impact.