New plants don't have such problems.
So, coal plants without a smoke stack?
Those don't class as subsidies. Just because they say subsidy, doesn't mean they are using the word right. The media spins things.
are you replying to me? If so, I have never heard the media classify those as subsidies. I just think that if there is a cost which is caused by a business, which that business doesn't pay, and is therefore shifted to the population as a whole. I personally would consider that a subsidy.
actually, it's called not subsidy, but cost shifting.
Are tax dollars going to pay for the health care of these people? Not in all cases, but in some they are (those that don't have insurance for example).
Taxpayers paying the costs that a company incurs . . . Subsidy. No?
I think you already answered your own question here: higher fines, stiffer penalties.
Well cost-shifting is technically the same as subsidizing. It masks the true costs.
China Leads the Clean Economy Race
According to a pithy report from Deutsche Bank led "The Green Economy: The Race is On", in the years 2000 to 2009, the U.S. invested (public and private) about $67 billion in clean technology. Similarly China spent $72 billion and Germany $38 billion. However, as a percentage of GDP, China, Germany, and even Brazil are investing at a rate three times greater than the U.S. On the specific issue of smart grid investment, another report estimates that the U.S. and China far outpace the rest of the world with an estimated $7 billion each in spending in 2010 alone
Between now and 2020, the country will invest 5 trillion yuan in the clean economy. That works out to about $75 to $100 billion per year for 10 years running (smart grid investment alone is estimated at $60 to $100 billion over the next decade). Imagine the U.S. Congress passing the equivalent of the highly controversial stimulus package 10 times over (not likely).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew...tml?view=print
==========
Don't worry, the free market will always provide the best solution. Industrial policy is something the US never does.
this is already biased and misleading - energy can be stored when there is an excess, and wind energy is only ever going to supplement, not supplant, the power grid. this sentence in particular is laughably biased:1 – Wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago, as it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning more modern needs of power, even in the late 1800s. When we throw the switch, we expect that the lights will go on — 100% of the time. It’s not possible for wind energy, by itself, to ever do this, which is one of the main reasons it was relegated to the dust bin of antiquated technologies (along with such other inadequate sources like horse power).
with a sentence like that the article CLEARLY has an agenda. propaganda.relegated to the dust bin of antiquated technologies (along with such other inadequate sources like horse power).
Sorry but this article says about 5 points and then claims it as 14. What I read was.
1) Windmills and horse drawn carriages stopped being used when reciprocating piston engines became popular 100 years ago therefore current wind technologies that are pretty much nothing like those in anyway are worthless.
I would like to add to that the east coast power grid was based on the plans of George Westinghouse over 100 years ago. There was no failing on the part of windpower. Edison had his system and Westinghouse had his. Westinghouse won. Nuclear energy also was not used back then. I am not really sure what his point is on this one.
2) Windpower has technical difficulties. The porblem witht his argument is that the solutions to those issues have been found. Basically a for generator to work in the grid its input has to be at a certain hz. 50 or 60 I cannot remember.
This is what he means when he is talking about balancing the grid in another point which is the same damn argument.
When you have a coal burning plant you can feed a steady fuel supply and maintain that easily. Wind energy input is variable cause well wind speeds vary. Thats what they make capacitors for. You can do this at the local level.
He also makes this same point when he is talking about quality of power. This is just stupid. w = va. Is he trying to tell us that a watt from a coal plant is better? If you add a coal plant you have to balance the load too.
As RG pointed out there are startup costs but maintenance and operating costs are much much cheaper.
I mean at no point does he say that the issues have not been overcome. Its not like they do not work.
3) Not much oil is consumed. Well I am not sure what this has to do with windpower. Youre right oil is not burned very much for AC power. Most of it is set aside for various ICE's its very good for portable piston engines.
OTOH, something like 60% of the three power grids is pushed by coal and natural gas. Coal takes too much space and natural gas is too dangerous for portable devices. Really though again I fail to see how this applies.
4) The capacity value is zero and this is not disputable. Well yeah it is. Wind has a reliability rating of 95%.
5) Subsidies are bad.New gas plants are capable of achieving low forced outage rates—high levels of reliability. Because gas plants have often been the generator technology of choice in recent years, it can be tempting to use this gas plant characteristic in an attempt to estimate the capacity value of an intermittent generator such as wind. To carry out this approach, one collects wind generation over the relevant high-load period (for example, the top 10% of load hours). The next step is to calculate the 95th percentile of wind
generation—the level of wind generation that is achieved 95% of the time during these load hours. A variation of this approach, one that we have encountered, is to then feed this 95th percentile generation into a reliability model to calculate the ELCC of the wind plant. In both of these variations, the method only values capacity levels that are exceeded 95% of the time. All other capacity levels are assigned a value of zero. The use of a percentile arbitrarily discounts reliability contributions that are achieved at levels below the percentile value. These approaches are based on fallacious use of probability theory, and they ignore the statistical independence of outages and the fact that system reliability can be achieved at a very high level (such as 1 day in 10 years LOLE) even though every unit in the system is somewhat unreliable.
I am going to bold this part because it should be damn obvious.
THIS IS A SUBSIDY TOWARDS THE NATIONS POWER GRID I.E. INFRASTRUCTURE.
lets say this again:
THIS IS A SUBSIDY TOWARDS THE NATIONS POWER GRID I.E. INFRASTRUCTURE.
And whoever the dumb that questions whether or not the oil industry gets subsidized should punch themselves in the face just as much as the person that thinks it should not get said subsidization.
I mean come on do you really think none of the power stations, refineries, pipelines, ceded lands, oil exploration, etc were not at least in part funded by the government? Pull your head out of your ass.
And this is expense on infrastructure. This is like roads and bridges and sewers. I mean I do not even think that Ron Paul argues that government has no role in infrastructure development.
Whether or you like or not the oil infrastructure should be maintained as well. This really is a nobrainer. The fact that this is being drawn on partisan lines is just dumb.
"oil infrastructure should be maintained as well"
with private funds, not by taxpayers.
Taxes pay for roads, bridges, K-12, sewers, garbage, etc and mostly their use is not charged. All that stuff is also financed with bonds (loans).
I don't get my oil and gas for free. Why should my taxes facilitate oilcos' 100s of $Bs of profits? Let the stock and bond market "subsidize" oil/gas/coal infrastructure.
You pay for sewage and water have been subsidized like this for years. Power is something that every american uses.
We need more power. The pacific grid is a mess. The Hoover dam is not cutting it. The east coast has been having blackouts every year and brownouts all the time for 15 years.
So you say we should not have to pay for power. Well that means that either we get nothing because the market has not corrected itself in decades or we can give it away for free.
All I can really say is that even communist countries like China make you pay for power and gas.
No problem, we disagree. Now I agree it's a cost that should be recouped if it does cause harm. Where do we draw the line for power plants built before the regulations and laws were created? That isn't what I was arguing against. I was arguing against the misuse of the term "subsidy." People here might be surprised of my views if they actually use the correct terms.
It's what is in the final exhaust. Newer facilities burn very clean compared to past plants. When someone lumps them all together as bad, they are simply wrong.
Rather than a "carbon tax" or "cap and trade," maybe we should tax by type of emission. Tax so much for sulfur, mercury, soot, etc. Make these emissions so expensive that plants either have to shut down or comply. Leave CO2 out of it though.
Which is fine with me. Just don't assume that I am against lifting all regulations.
I don't know about Brazil, but Germany's energy infrastructure is in need of replacement. Ours is new enough that we don't need to spend as much. China has nearly an entire nation to build infrastructure for, so it makes sense going with the latest technology. Maybe they finally realized they can no longer be the worlds leading polluter. Too bad they didn't go with state of the art Coal Power plants when they were growing them like rabbits.
Care to show us a cost effective method of doing this?
Yeah the million tons of coal we burn every year is no big deal.
Storage is not an issue. The grids are stressed. I am not sure why storage is even a question here.
And your point is it that you are an uneducated idiot, right?Yeah the million tons of coal we burn every year is no big deal.
Tell me. What would you do different. have you looked to see what the emissions are of coal plants using clean burning technology?
I know right now, the answer is a resounding NO!
Then buy a clue. Read a book or two on the subject. Wind is not consistent. Some other power source has to be online that is capable of increasing and decreasing output as the wind output and demand changes.
I don't think anyone is arguing that wind power is 100% efficient/useful 24/7/365. That doesn't mean wind power is useless, though. Just another tool.
Again what does this have to do with storage. They run 95% of the time and apparently you do not understand how AC power works. Fine its a supplement that does not mean in that 5% that they are down they have to have storage to make up for it.
Its not like natural gas and coal plants are up 100% of the time either and the ability to store power that can be translated back to the generator in gas and coal plants works either either. Its stored as rotational motion and friction eats up the power very very quickly. Your argument is baseless.
One thing that I know for certain is that I know a lot more about how the infrastructure actually works better than you do.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
