So, to sum up, give my companies money...
.... I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that Bill would operate in his own personal interests. c.f. Malaria...
Gates: Renewable energy can't do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D
Retired software kingpin and richest man in the world Bill Gates has given his opinion that today's renewable-energy technologies aren't a viable solution for reducing CO2 levels, and governments should divert their green subsidies into R&D aimed at better answers. Gates expressed his views in an interview given to the …
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Monday 29th June 2015 22:05 GMT JCitizen
Re: So, to sum up, give my companies money...
Bill is full of it - wind has now reached coal in parity by cost analysis. This was made possible by changing the design of the blades to something that is very economical to manufacture. They make these things in my back yard so I'm pretty familiar with the industry. The ONLY thing holding this off becoming a primary source of power, is there is no way right now to store the excess energy that could be generated every day. Right now, if you visit a wind farm, you will see many towers with the blades feathered, or the generator locked, because there is no where to go with the load. There is almost never a day with wind below 7 mph here, and that is the limit to make enough difference to actually make money to receive a return on investment. It only takes 28 days, on average, to pay off a single tower, if the wind maintains a speed above that figure for the entire month.
I've been proposing gravity storage, as in building an electric cog railway into the Rocky Mountains, that can generate electricity on the way back down hill. If there were money used to that end, then I'd say it would be worth it. Wind energy subsidies have already been canceled by the US congress, because it is already making the Midwest very rich. They transmit all they can to California, but the grid can only take so much voltage at a time - hence the need for storage. Another idea is to turn the salt water caverns nearby, into a huge electric saltwater battery. I really think this is solvable - but the coal miner unions and the natural gas industry are in cahoots to cancel this advantage out. They have noisier lobbyists in Washington than the wind energy sector.
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Friday 26th June 2015 15:33 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: The richest pragmatist in the world.
Green subsidies have nothing to do with the environment - they are a way of taxing poor people to give rich homeowners a tax break.
If you introduced a campaign for road safety, gave a tax rebate on Chelsea tractors paid for by a hike in bus fares people would object, do the same with solar feed-in tarrifs for Teslas and it's a green revolution.
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Monday 29th June 2015 00:12 GMT Charles Manning
Re: The richest pragmatist in the world.
"Green subsidies have nothing to do with the environment - they are a way of taxing poor people to give rich homeowners a tax break."
No, it's more about letting the eco-smugs feel good about themselves while flying their private jets to the next speaking engagement where they will tell everyone else to reduce their living standards.
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Friday 26th June 2015 15:19 GMT Swarthy
In addition
Could we do something about the interminable lawsuits and injunctions that stop nuclear plants from being built? The US could drastically cut it's carbon emissions (and electricity prices) if it weren't more difficult to build a nuke plant than it is to put a man on the moon. Actually, I guess they are about the same - we haven't done either since the 70's.
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Thursday 2nd July 2015 20:12 GMT ScottDrysdale
Re: in my ill-informed world
Yes thorium would be excellent for the long term but engineers always support "field proven" solutions to meet cost/schedule deadlines while minimizing risks...... and will walk away to protect their reputation if necessary. At this time several of the SMR technologies have been properly "field proven" in mines, ice breakers etc.
Some favor Toshiba's 4S. But I am not sure if Bill Gates travelling wave reactor is ready for prime time just yet. Windturbines and Solar panels are all the radical, non-technical environmentalists tend to push because they don't know any better and do not want to go against Greenpeace strategy to demonize all forms of nuclear power.......
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Monday 29th June 2015 09:42 GMT Hans 1
Re: In addition
>The US could drastically cut it's carbon emissions (and electricity prices) if it weren't more difficult to build a nuke plant than it is to put a man on the moon. Actually, I guess they are about the same - we haven't done either since the 70's.
Well, nuke power is not it ... how much does it cost to decommission a nuke reactor ? How much does it cost to build a new one ? When will you need to decommission the bulk of your plants in the US? I am unsure, in France, it is estimated to be 3bn/reactor, they have 50 to decommission, 30 to build @10bn a piece - now, that is close to 450bn to be found over the next 20 years, knowing that no provisions have been made in France for decommissioning the plants. The sector already has its woes without even considering decommissioning the old plants ... so, how is it in the US ?
I do not believe what Gates is saying, as usual, BS to promote his personal profit ... where exactly are those 98% of 52bn you were supposed to give to charity, Mr Gates ? Still in your pocket? I thought so ...
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Monday 29th June 2015 12:28 GMT Swarthy
Re: In addition(@Hans 1)
First: 3bn, what? 3bn Euro, Pounds, Dollars?
Second: As to where the money may come from for building and decommissioning, in the UK 'leccy is about 10 pence per kWh (US is $0.12-0.15, so similar). Lets assume a medium-small plant: 1500MW, That is 1,500,000kW*£0.1/kWh=£150,000/hr, run that for 20 years and you have earned £26.29bn. I think £3bn could be affordable.
On the point of my original comment: The last nuke plant in the US to break ground, broke said ground in the late 70s. 40 years of pointless (and almost always stricken down) lawsuits have caused the plant to not be built, because the lawyers are too expensive.
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Monday 29th June 2015 22:20 GMT JCitizen
Re: In addition(@Hans 1)
The original plant system that was adopted in the US (at least) was purposly designed to accept only a proprietary system of fueling. This was the only way they could get the greedy industrialists to actually make a working system. Obviously this has become an economical wreck, but if the proper design is built like Admiral Rickover proposed, the spent fuel laying around would become a valuable fuel source.
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Friday 26th June 2015 15:20 GMT sisk
This isn't entirely accurate. True no battery today can handle the demands of renewable energy, but modern flywheels handle it just fine and scale to pretty massive levels. And the only reason it's so blasted expensive is because the prices are artificially inflated. True we're never going to power the whole world with the current crop of renewables, but we can do a whole lot more with them than what Bills giving them credit for. And, frankly, we have to do something. Even if climate change isn't man-made (I swear one day I will sit down and do the research to figure out which side of the debate going on in the scientific journalism is full of hot air) we still have to worry about pollution and whatnot.
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Friday 26th June 2015 15:49 GMT Dan Paul
Stop proposing....
Pie in the Sky solutions that have never been done. That would be a good start.
Realize that IT GETS DARK AT NIGHT! No sun, no solar power. No sun, little wind. We need power 24/7/365 not just when the wind blows. NUKES ARE THE ONLY SOLUTION!
80% of civilization lives where there is a WINTER season! Electric Heat is inefficient and expensive. Gas or oil is the only thing that will work right now and I'm not going freeze to satisfy anyone elses green fantasy.
Stop blaming Man for the miniscule amount of CO2 we put out compared to all the other infrared light absorbing gas sources from nature including water vapor and Methane. AGW is a frikkin fallacy foisted on us by feckless efftards.
Tell developing nations they have to control their stack emissions exactly like the rest of us do. Clean sulfur free fuels and fuel oils and refining of same as well as coal did more for the atmosphere than anything else in history but the China and India ignore their pollution at OUR expense and it is greater than anything we put out across ALL developed nations combined.
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Friday 26th June 2015 16:08 GMT Nunyabiznes
Re: Stop proposing....
"Tell developing nations they have to control their stack emissions exactly like the rest of us do. Clean sulfur free fuels and fuel oils and refining of same as well as coal did more for the atmosphere than anything else in history but the China and India ignore their pollution at OUR expense and it is greater than anything we put out across ALL developed nations combined."
Well to be fair we did it to them first. We certainly learned a lot about emissions and air quality the hard way, and just like teenagers, those "developing" nations aren't willing to take us at our word - they insist on learning those lessons just like we did.
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Friday 26th June 2015 20:03 GMT kmac499
Re: Stop proposing....
Yes it get's dark at night but if a crazy idea like these infrared solar panels ever works
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827915.000-is-night-falling-on-classic-solar-panels.html#.VY2tmVIsBgg
then a big rethink maybe on the cards.
I fully expect future power generation and distribution to be some sort of hybrid mix.
Domestically generated solar power
Nationally generated nuclear power (hopefully thorium)
with local or regional storage and regeneration plants using hot salt, liquified air, vanadium flow cells or even good old fashioned batteries; whatever is appropriate for the area. Such local regeneration stations would fill the same ecological niche as the old and soon to be lost Gasometers buffering supply and demand.
Combine all of this with some serious energy efficiency drives and it might all just work
I love disruptive technologies..,, just wish I could reliably see the next one coming
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Saturday 27th June 2015 17:38 GMT Charles 9
Re: Stop proposing....
"80% of civilization lives where there is a WINTER season!
80% of the US population lives somewhere that needs AC."
And plenty of the world lives in an area where BOTH conditions exist, usually in turn, which means the area requires climate control for most of the year: double whammy. That's why the heat pump is popular in these kinds of areas: one device that can handle either temperature extreme as needed.
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Monday 29th June 2015 08:04 GMT Dr. Mouse
Re: Stop proposing....
"People lived everywhere before aircon."
People also lived most places before central heating, electricity, cars, paper... That doesn't mean we should get rid of them.
It's easy for us Brits to slam people using air conditioning, as it rarely gets so hot that it is needed. But when you look at hot places, they would be much less comfortable and much less productive without it. There would also probably be more deaths.
Take a look at, for instance, Qatar. My friends just returned from an 18 month spell out there. In the middle of summer, it reached 50+ degrees C. Now, I know that the indigenous peoples survived without AC there for a long time, but they were a much smaller population, did not live as long, suffered much larger child and elderly mortality rates... Surely using a little electricity to reduce deaths and support a larger, more productive population is worth it?
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Monday 29th June 2015 08:52 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: China and India ignore their pollution at OUR expense
Right.
Continue conveniently ignoring the pollution WE have created during the past century at EVERYONE's expense for OUR OWN benefit.
Hint : we live in INDUSTRIALIZED countries. China and India are industrialiZING. You can't seriously expect them to not want what we have, now can you ? Neither can you tell them to not do what we did.
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Tuesday 30th June 2015 13:42 GMT Tom 13
Re: Tell developing nations they have to control their stack emissions
There's a simple, easy way to implement the core of that idea without going as far as you did:
Impose an import tariff on all good manufactured in a country that doesn't meet your standards to buy real offsets for the pollution. Provide the manufacturer with the option of voluntarily meeting your standards and having one of your inspectors check the plant to avoid the tax.
I don't think you'd even need a treaty to effect the change, just a simple law passed wherever you happen to live. Everybody would benefit.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 15:39 GMT Visionar
It really is based upon energy density and nuclear is 5 million times denser of an energy source vs wind. One nuclear prevents 250,000 acres of raptor and bat killing winf farms or square miles of bird blast solar thermal. R&D should go into the molten Salt Reactor, it can't blow up, melt down, make weapons and will be cheap to build. MSRs don't need water, an expensive pressure dome, 170 atmosphere plumbing or triple redundant cooling and power back up systems. They are far less complex to build on an assebly line than a Boeing 787 that have to fly safely for decades. www.energyfromthorium.com
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Friday 26th June 2015 15:38 GMT Efros
Current Renewables are a Band-Aid
I've always felt that the current renewable technologies are for the most part individual or small scale solutions. They can be used to minimize a family's or small community's use of fossil fuels, but when it comes to providing power for major conurbations they tend to fail in terms of capacity and/or reliability given that a lot of them are dependent upon unpredictable natural phenomena. That being said it should be written into building codes that new construction must use available technologies to minimize the occupiers grid usage, In the meantime we really do need to start building nuclear power stations, power consumption is only going to go up and with no massive increase in the availability of fossil fuels and environmental concerns about their continued usage, steps need to be taken now to avoid an energy drought in the near future. Let's face it, the one's who will suffer the most are those without a voice. Barring the arrival of a Mr.Fusion we are going to be in deep shit unless governments start acting now.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 06:44 GMT Charles 9
Re: Current Renewables are a Band-Aid
That's also some claim when Germany is in such tight electrical straits they've had to buy a sizable chunk of their electricity from France lately. Would love to see this claim backed up with some hard data and plenty of details that spell out exactly what they mean by renewable sources.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 09:54 GMT Peter2
Re: Current Renewables are a Band-Aid
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
At the time of writing the 8GW of installed wind farm capacity in the UK is generating 3.21GW. Our 8GW worth of wind capacity appears to have generated up to 5GW 8 times in the last 12 months.
We constantly max out the 2GW connector from France to reduce our emissions (otherwise we'd have to use the CCGT (gas) plants were built to "back up" the wind capacity. Wind output has not equalled the amount of gas based power produced in the last 12 months, though it managed exceed the amount of coal used on one day. This apparently because a couple of coal plants have gone green by burning trees (sorry: biomass) instead of coal, which reduced the coal power total, but keeps the power output, CO2 emissions, and most importantly qualifies them as a "green" plants which lets them claim renewables subsidies.
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
France sells electricity to quite a lot of people. Germany generally exports renewables to france by day when the wind is blowing and they have a low demand, and imports the rest of the time, most heavily by night.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 17:33 GMT Chemist
Re: Current Renewables are a Band-Aid
"That's also some claim when Germany is in such tight electrical straits they've had to buy a sizable chunk of their electricity from France lately."
I've mentioned here before that a comprehensive analysis of Germany's electricity stats (2014) can be found at :
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/data-nivc-/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-2014.pdf
Page 6 ;- first 11 months of 2014 total generated electricity ~470 TWh
46% coal, 9% wind, 7% solar,
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Friday 26th June 2015 16:21 GMT Nunyabiznes
nuclear
A lot of people seem to be scared that if we have lots o' radiated power that the genie is going to be let out of the bottle. News for them: That genie is suffering from old age at this point.
Western nations are going to have to accept that some day all of our security theater will not stop some motivated group from setting off a nuke in one or more of our nations.
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Friday 26th June 2015 17:14 GMT cray74
"Clean, efficient, safe and from what I understand can be used to burn up our existing nuclear waste stock piles."
Fast reactors do better at burning transuranic waste than most molten salt reactors, which tend to be thermal rather than fast. The continuous molten salt reprocessing needed to efficiently produce uranium-233 does give some interesting opportunities for waste "burning" in thorium reactors, though.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 06:03 GMT itzman
Thorium Salt reactors.
Not as clean, efficient, safe or from what I understand able to be used to burn up our existing nuclear waste stock piles as people think they are..
Slightly harder to make a safe weapon from than uranium 235, true, but are terrorists worried about getting radiation sickness themselves?
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Monday 29th June 2015 09:01 GMT Pascal Monett
Why don't we change tack on this issue ?
Instead of worrying about terrorists and nukes, let's get reactors and cheap energy in place so as to improve EVERYONE's living standards so terrorists won't have so much misery to motivate them.
A well-fed man living a comfortable life makes a terrible terrorist - unless he's a psychopath, obviously.
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Tuesday 30th June 2015 16:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why don't we change tack on this issue ?
> Those are pure Progressive lies. The terrorists are the ones who are well off. Just look at OBL.
It doesn't work if a select few are well off and educated if everyone else is destitute and uneducated.
Surely we have learned this time and time again throughout history.
Osama Bin Laden may have been well educated and wealthy but he has a sea of easily-lead people living in political and economic strife to fuel his power-crazed agenda. And don't be misled yourself: Osama's aims are not religious, they are entirely political.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
