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Climate Change Debate

So Long Architect said:
Ooh look, efficiency - something we can all spaff over! http://www.theguardian.com/environm...orlds-most-efficient-solar-electricity-system

"Independent tests by IT Power in the UK confirm that a single Ripasso dish can generate 75 to 85 megawatt hours of electricity a year - enough to power 24 typical UK homes. To make the same amount of electricity by burning coal would mean releasing roughly 81 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Paul Gauche, director of the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group at the University of Stellenbosch has visited the test site many times. “The technology looks good to me. I’ve seen it working and I believe it meets the efficiency goals. The technology is proven with years of performance in the navy.”
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Rather unconvincing for application outside certain environments, the article admits it. If we all switched to electric transport and heating it would look far less convincing. We only get so many watts per square metre from the Sun and no more.
 
That amount of Watts per Square Metre is plenty to to power the entire planet though. We just don't harness enough of it yet.

I heard the other day that the Canary Islands is the first "country" to be powered completely from renewable energy. They store extra solar during the day and use it to pump water up high, then use that gravitational potential for hydro power at night.
 
It definitely appears that we're moving towards solving the storage issue - which (as noted in the article) will allow renewables to provide baseline load, and we can finally phase out fossil fuels.
 
Also:

The first South Africa plant at Redstone – with no subsidies – will deliver energy at around $US124/MWh, as RenewEconomy revealed in January.
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There arent many easy decisions in government, but a price of $145/MWh for dirty nuclear against $124/MWh for clean solar is a no brainer.
 
Visage said:
It definitely appears that we're moving towards solving the storage issue - which (as noted in the article) will allow renewables to provide baseline load, and we can finally phase out fossil fuels.
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yep, that's the key. didn't see how much land space is needed but it's noticeable how quickly solar has advanced. hedge funds investors and the like have piled into it!
 
It was always going to be the case - new technologies will (almost) always get cheaper as you get economies of scale. And when you think whats on the table - the trillions of dollars spent per year on oil - its obvious that investors will be interested.
 
Visage said:
It was always going to be the case - new technologies will (almost) always get cheaper as you get economies of scale. And when you think whats on the table - the trillions of dollars spent per year on oil - its obvious that investors will be interested.
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there's a few things they like - short construction period, relatively low risk compared to other tech, good chance to sell on at a premium post 1 year ops, so fast money turnaround.
 
I don't think people appreciate the scale of the problem in terms of how we use energy resourses. It is one thing to look at domestic energy usage but another to look at the entire human agriculture/industry requirement. Hydrocarbon fuel will dominate for decades if not longer but any industrial scale replacements are likely to be a mix to address local resources, nuclear will be a necessity like it or not. Don't expect Moore's law to apply to energy generation technologies. Sorry to be a pragmatist, I'm certainly no technophobe but am aware of physical limitations.
Incidently all forms of energy generation, transportation, storage and use have risk associated with them. The future with hydrocarbon usage is better utilization and management of toxins produced. There is a good way to go even with the internal combustion engine for example, within short timescales quite possibly.
 
No-one's suggesting that renewables will replace fossil overnight. They need to start coming in in a big way now though, and governments should be spending heavily on the infrastructure wherever possible.

Priority will rightly be on personal and business use as that's where the government will get the most money back. Industry will follow on from that as the technology, efficiency and price improves.
 
The Bear said:
No-one's suggesting that renewables will replace fossil overnight. They need to start coming in in a big way now though, and governments should be spending heavily on the infrastructure wherever possible.

Priority will rightly be on personal and business use as that's where the government will get the most money back. Industry will follow on from that as the technology, efficiency and price improves.
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I don't think such will occur when money is put disproportionatly into powder puff wind and solar as it is at present. By all means reasearch at small scale but be wary of backing the wrong horses at scale. In any case China and India will carry on as they choose. I don't blame them.
 
China and India are far from bastions of clean industry anyway. They'll switch to renewable once it's cost effective. That's not going to happen sitting around waiting for fossil fuel to run out.

Governments need to fully commit to investing. They'll waste more money by trying to drip-feed the technology into full scale commercial use.
 
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