The Plan

He claims we can't produce more oil, though I think that is debatable, since we haven't really explored where the oil is in the USA for decades.

That said, this evil big oilman is offering a plan to reduce or eliminate our dependency on foreign oil imports. It's worthy of consideration, as is any proposal. Here it is in a nutshell:

First, we spend $1.2T building a windmill farm in the Rockies that will produce as much as 20% of our electricity needs. The power generated by this farm will replace the power we generate using natural gas.

Second, we focus on natural gas for power instead of gasoline. It burns cleaner and costs a LOT less than gas does now. He claims our domestic natural gas reserves are 2x what our oil reserves are.

And that's it.

My reaction to the plan is that I'm dubious.

It really calls for spending several $trillions when you consider retrofitting our current infrastructure to be able to fill up with natural gas at the gas stations. Either that, or there may or may not be a place to refill convenient to you when you might run low (like on a long trip).

Our electricity needs are only 30% of our energy needs. Factor that in, and a $1.2T investment in windmills ends up generating 20% of 30% (or 6%) of our total energy requirements.

Then there is that he's an oilman. Oil and natural gas are closely tied together. If you've ever seen stock footage on TV of an oil well and seen them burning off the natural gas as they pump for oil, you might connect the dots. In reality, it's a boon for T. Boone's industry.

There's a nationalistic appeal in his pitch. "We're sending $700B a year overseas, costing many times more than the Iraq War... blah blah"

There's no consideration for the increasing energy demands we have all the time. It's a short-sighted plan.

I have a plan of my own that is superior, IMO. I'll share it next post.

 

So here's my plan.

First, I would come up with a comprehensive strategy for deploying hundreds of new nuclear power plants.

This strategy would include studying what's been successful in France (where they generate most of their power via nuclear) and adjust our badly thought out and outdated regulations. For example, the French reprocess their spent fuel into more energy and less lethal waste and our regulations forbid that.

A key part of the strategy would be to come up with a single blueprint for all these reactors and to build the exact same plant over and over again. This would streamline just about everything there is to building the plants as well as safety monitoring of the plants once they're online.

As our energy requirements increase over time, which they surely will, we use the same blueprint to build more plants.

The French have been disposing of nuclear waste for decades and nobody's ever heard of any accidents there or repercussions from storing the waste. It's not rocket science; it's proven and safe.

There's an obvious construction boom to be had in building these plants and manufacturing the parts to build them.

Second, if we're going to spend $1.2T to address the problem, use it to subsidize people buying electric cars and research into better and better batteries.

With all the really cheap electricity produced by the new nuclear power plants, charging up the batteries for electric cars would be cheap and no need to ration who gets to fill up (by price).

We already have a fairly robust infrastructure for distributing electricity. It's not much work for an electrician to install circuit breakers and outlets in parking lots and other obvious places to let people charge up their batteries.

It'd be an obvious boost to Detroit where we once had a manufacturing powerhouse for automobiles. Someone has to build these electric cars, after all.

A simple back of the envelope kind of calculation. $1T buys 10,000,000 electric cars at $100,000 per. It subsidizes 1/2 the cost of 20M cars. Would an electric car really cost $100,000 mass produced? No, more like $25,000 or less. At $25,000, $1T buys 40M cars, of subsidizes 1/2 the cost of 80M cars. Now we're talking!

For most people who commute, electric cars are more than adequate. A range of 200 miles on a single charge isn't far fetched, if not already achieved. Most people might commute 100 miles per day (both ways) or far less.

Third, we have to exploit other energy sources here at home.

Electric cars charged by nuclear power plants isn't the be-all, end-all solution to our energy needs. We're still going to need gas powered vehicles for industrial purposes and other situations where the limited range of electric vehicles will not suffice. For example, a truck moving some goods across country isn't going to be workable if it's electric powered. There are other jobs where people need to travel more than 1,000 miles per week, so gas vehicles are their only option.

There's absolutely no reason not to drill for oil where it is, even if it's 2-10 years before it is available at the pumps. No matter what you say now, in 2-10 years if we're in a worse situation, we'll be wishing we drilled today.

Though I call solar a scam, there is some value to it as part of a comprehensive plan. The energy cost of making them no longer is an issue, since we get plenty from the nuclear power plants. Petroleum (that we're drilling for now) is a key component of plastics like those the solar panels are made from. They may have a better application as a means to extend the range of electric cars by 10 miles per charge, which is worth considering.

Fourth, if there's a need for a Manhattan Project for energy research, it's batteries.

Double the charge a battery can hold and electric cars become some combination of lighter and more range. Double their life span and we'll save ourselves the hassle of replacing batteries every 3-5 years.

 

Hydrogen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster

 

Here's an electric car with MSRP of $32,500 and goes at least 60MPH. Only 100 miles per recharge, tho.

http://www.zapworld.com/electric-vehicles/...-cars/zap-alias

 

Here's a car that goes 75+MPH and 120+ miles per charge, costs $43,500:

http://www.hybridtechnologies.com/products/cars/dash

And a similar one for $39,700 (75+MPH, etc.)

http://www.hybridtechnologies.com/products/cars/wise

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TheBeef @ Jul 23 2008, 11:15 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Im posting this video to demonstrate that just about anything can be dangerous under the right circumstances....


<div align="center"><div><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z865Wow8sfg&"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z865Wow8sfg&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350" /></embed></object></div></div>

Nuclear Power is the bunny rabbit of the 21st century....it could be dangerous, under extreme circumstances, but not nearly as dangerous as many other entities....</div>

Forget the silly rabbits.

Think about what happens when you crash your car filled with hydrogen.

Or think about what kind of shielding (and what it weighs) to minimize the risk

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Thoth @ Jul 23 2008, 01:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Jul 23 2008, 11:57 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Second, if we're going to spend $1.2T to address the problem, use it to subsidize people buying electric cars and research into better and better batteries.</div>

Electric cars use lots of water. Color me an alarmist but think water is the one resource we really need.
</div>

The cars don't use the water, the power plants that make the electricity use the water.

 

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/i....xml&coll=7

<span style="font-size:18pt;line-height:100%">Wind whips up health fears</span>
Hundreds of giant turbines in the Oregon desert will bring power, but residents nearby raise concerns about health effects and an end to their quiet way of life

Sunday, August 10, 2008
RICHARD COCKLE
The Oregonian Staff

BOARDMAN -- Sherry Eaton pulled into the driveway of her rural, high-desert home to see one of several giant wind turbines being assembled a half-mile away.

"I started to cry," Eaton, 57, recalled of her first sight of the Willow Creek Wind Project in late July. "They're going to be hanging over the back of our house, and now there's the medical thing."

"The medical thing" is new research suggesting that living close to wind turbines, as Eaton and her 60-year old husband, Mike, soon will be doing, can cause sleep disorders, difficulty with equilibrium, headaches, childhood "night terrors" and other health problems.

Dozens of wind turbines are taking shape along Oregon 74, a designated Oregon Scenic Byway, near the home the Eatons have shared for 19 years.

Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, N.Y., coined the phrase "wind turbine syndrome" for what she says happens to some people living near wind energy farms. She has made the phrase part of the title of a book she's written called "Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on the Natural Experiment." It is scheduled for publication next month by K-Selected Press, of Santa Fe, N.M.

In contrast to those who consider wind turbines clean, green and an ideal source of renewable energy, Pierpont says living or working too close to them has a downside. Her research says wind turbines should never be built closer than two miles from homes.

Pierpont, 53, is a 1991 graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has a doctorate in population biology from Princeton University. Her interest was piqued by a wind farm being built near her upstate New York home, and she studied 10 families living near wind turbines built since 2004 in Canada, England, Ireland, Italy and the United States.

Effect on inner ear

Pierpont's findings suggest that low-frequency noise and vibration generated by wind machines can have an effect on the inner ear, triggering headaches; difficulty sleeping; tinnitus, or ringing in the ears; learning and mood disorders; panic attacks; irritability; disruption of equilibrium, concentration and memory; and childhood behavior problems.

Concerns also are coming out of Europe about low-frequency noise from newly built wind turbines. For example, British physician Amanda Harry, in a February 2007 article titled "Wind Turbines, Noise and Health," wrote of 39 people, including residents of New Zealand and Australia, who suffered from the sounds emitted by wind turbines.

According to Pierpont, eight of the 10 families in her study moved out of their homes.

"All these problems were resolved as soon as these people got away from the turbines, got in the car and drove away from the house," she said.

Mike Logsdon, director of development for Invenergy, developer of the 48 wind turbines under construction in the Willow Creek Wind Project, said he's heard of Pierpont's findings, but his 5-year-old company doesn't find them credible.

"We've had a number of other wind farms over the country and residents living by them and never had any problems," Logsdon said.

Invenergy has built and operates wind farms in Canada and Poland and in 12 states in the United States, Logsdon said. The company has 1,200 megawatts in production and is building 600 megawatts this year. The 72-megawatt Willow Creek Wind Project near the Eatons' home is scheduled to start producing electricity Jan. 1.

If Pierpont's theories gain acceptance, decisions on where future wind energy farms are built could be affected. Last year, more than one-third of all new power capacity in the United States, roughly 5,000 megawatts, was generated by wind turbines, said Joseph Beamon, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.

Demand will grow

Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Energy report said demand for electricity is likely to grow 40 percent in the next 22 years in the United States alone, with 20 percent of the nation's power generated by wind turbines, he said.

The Eatons and their neighbors have more to worry about than the Willow Creek Project. Approval was given July 25 by the Oregon Facilities Siting Council for construction of as many as 400 more wind turbines in the nearby Shepherds Flat Wind Project spanning parts of Gilliam and Morrow counties. The planned 909-megawatt project by Caithness Energy of Chicago is expected to be the largest wind farm on Earth, generating enough peak energy to power 225,000 homes.

"Man, this whole country is going to be windmills," said a dismayed Denny Wade, 59, a railroad worker and neighbor of the Eatons.

He and his wife, Lorrie, a 53-year-old schoolteacher in Hermiston, live three-quarters of a mile from one of Willow Creek's turbines. The Wades had planned to sell the home where they've lived for four years and build a retirement home on a knoll 200 yards away with a view of Mount Hood.

"Now, the view that it had is all windmills," Wade said. "I didn't move out there to view windmills."

But Denny Wade's larger concern is his vulnerability to migraine headaches. Although not everyone living near wind turbines experienced headaches, Pierpont's research suggests "everyone with pre-existing migraines" developed headaches by living near the wind generators.

The Wades scrapped plans to build a new home and hope to sell their 42 acres and move, they said.

Issues never raised

Morrow County planner Carla McLane said potential health issues never were raised during the planning process in her county, and the opportunity to appeal has passed. The potential effects of turbines on the scenic values of Oregon 74 never were brought up in hearings he attended, said Terry Tallman, Morrow County Commission chairman.

Generally, wind energy farms have been welcomed in this sparsely settled corner of the state, Tallman said. Tax revenues from the wind farms will be distributed to the counties, public schools, park and recreation districts and fire departments, he said.

"Everybody that I've talked to has been very happy," he said, adding that some on whose property the turbines are being built intend to retire on the income they receive.

"I think it's a good thing," Ron Wyscaver, 40, a neighbor of the Eatons and Wades, said of the wind turbines.

Caithness first proposed a 105-megawatt Shepherds Flat Project in 2002, then applied to the state for the larger project two years ago, McLane said. The project was so large it went to the Energy Facilities Siting Council, where it received the go-ahead to start construction.

Potential medial problems aside, wind turbines will wreck the tranquility that Mike and Sherry Eaton came to this remote place to find, Sherry Eaton said. She drives 90 miles a day to and from her job in Hermiston so they can live in the high-desert setting.

"When you come home from work, everything drains away from you because it's so quiet and peaceful," she said, adding that's about to end.

"Now we are going to have to listen to those windmills: Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!" she said.

Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle@oregonwireless.net