Today in Biofuels Opinion: “[Wind, solar, geothermal] – it’s not there yet.”
Energy Secretary Steven Chu interviewed 3/13/2008 in the PBS documentary “The Big Energy Gamble“:
Q: Is California ready to turn to renewable energy—wind, solar, geothermal—to provide base load electrical power?
Chu: No, it’s not there yet. We need to solve the problem of energy distribution and energy storage before renewables becomes, for example, 50 percent of the base load electricity. There’s no way it can become 50 percent until we have a mass-energy storage system or a huge international or national distribution system.”
Brent Dewar, Global VP for Chevrolet: “Biofuels have a large role to play in part because they displace the demand of petroleum-based products and can be very cost-effective. It’s not electric versus biofuels versus gasoline versus diesel versus hydrogen. It’s all of the above. We have to find the energy, environmental and economic solution on a global basis. And there are lots of ways to make biofuel – it can be made out of the waste products, out of agricultural products, even garbage into cellulosic. The food-for-fuel debate was just totally misstated. We have farmers in America who were getting paid not to grow anything. The whole thing was just a misstatement of the fact.” (The quote is in the October 29, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone, p 70, not yet online)
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Joelle Brink | Nov 3, 2009 | Reply
Having lived through the catastrophic US/Canada grid failures of the 1970s,I believe that a new national interactive grid and energy storage system should not be a precondition for the viability of renewable power.
In fact the trend today is in the opposite direction, with increasing numbers of home owners and businesses opting for energy independence, either off grid or using independent backup systems with their grid-tied power generation equipment.
Integrated grid-tied power systems also present a tempting target to terrorists and others interested in a strategic knock-out blow, as well as being vulnerable to EMF interference.
Finally, such a system would be a huge expense for the US at a time when we are borrowing heavily just to keep our existing human, technical and economic infrastructure running and to provide a safety net for the unemployed.
Waiting a decade for a new national grid is not an option for today’s renewable energy producers, and by the end of that decade renewable energy ix likely to account for a much larger proportion of national power generation than it does today.