By Jim Harding
Saskatchewan people are becoming more informed about energy, as we should. Having twenty times (20 X) the global, per capita, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions challenges us to quickly convert to sustainable energy. Over the last year we’ve had a controversy over the “nuclear option” and the provincial government has now recognized that nuclear power is too costly and inappropriate for our needs. With the nuclear option hopefully put to rest we must seriously explore alternative energy. The Standing Committee on the Crowns is still looking at our energy options, but some of its members are understandably predisposed to conventional systems, such as coal and biofuels. It will take us a while to stop assuming that energy must come from large thermal plants that generate electricity, or large refineries that produce fuels.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
The needed transition to sustainable energy requires democratizing the process of creating energy policy. Public consultations on the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) report were a good start, but the broader citizenry and electorate needs to become more engaged. And enhanced citizen involvement requires more knowledge about energy terminology and concepts.
We all know the term “watt” because we use low wattage incandescent light bulbs in our homes. And we are all learning about energy efficiency because we know that compact fluorescent bulbs can provide as much light while using only about 25% of the electricity. Such moves toward energy efficiency are already our main and cheapest source of new electricity.
We rightly focus on the huge carbon footprint of the gas we use in our cars and trucks; but the related waste of energy has received less attention. Less than 20% of the energy in a litre of gasoline is actually used to move our vehicles; the rest is released as waste heat. Think of the inefficiency! If transportation was “fueled” by electricity from sustainable sources, about 80% of the energy would be used to move our vehicles. Far more “bang” for the buck. Energy efficiency is a win-win: reducing GHGs while creating more energy productivity.
Projections by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries about future energy demand intentionally downplay energy efficiency. However, on a global scale the savings would be staggering. To show this we need some terms based on “watts”. A kilowatt (KW) is a thousand watts, which is how we measure the electricity in our homes. A megawatt (MW) is a million watts, which is how we measure the capacity of our grid, which in Saskatchewan is around 3,600 MW. A billion watts is a gigawatt (GW), which is how countries can measure their capacity, and a trillion watts is a terawatt (TW), which is how we measure global capacity. These terms can all be used for measuring output, for example kilowatt hours (kWh), which is one thousand watts for an hour.
When demand is highest we call it “peak load”. Globally, peak demand is now around 12.5 TW, and conventional forecasters are saying that by 2030 it will rise to around 16.9 TW. The feature article in the November 2009 Scientific American however, disputes this, saying that with efficiencies from shifting to renewables, peak demand in 2030 could be 11.5 TW, which is lower than today. We see these energy savings with compact fluorescent lighting and electric cars, but the process has hardly begun.
RENEWABLE POTENTIAL
Corporations that profit from inefficient, polluting, non-renewables like coal, oil or uranium want to postpone our conversion to sustainable energy as long as possible. One tactic used to obscure self-interest is to downplay the potential of renewables. What does the Scientific American feature say about this? It concludes that globally there is around 1,700 TW of wind energy and that 40-85 TW of this is harvestable with today’s technology. It concludes there is 6,500 TW of solar energy, and that 580 TW of this is presently harvestable. Currently we only get .02 TW from wind and .008 TW from solar.
There’s clearly no shortage of renewable energy, but what might a sustainable energy plan look like? The Scientific American feature suggests we could get 51% of future energy from wind, 40% from solar and 9% from water power, which translates into 5.8 TW from wind, 4.6 TW from solar energy and 1.1 TW from water to meet projected demand by 2030. To accomplish this would require 3.8 million 5-MW wind turbines; 89,000 300-MW solar plants and millions of photovoltaic (PV) rooftop installations; 5,350 100- MW geothermal plants and several hundred thousand small tidal turbines and wave converters along with 900 1,300-MW hydro plants.
Supporters of the energy status quo find fault with renewables wherever they can, but their motives aren’t always pure. Certainly wind turbines must be better located out of the paths of migrating birds and bats. But the impacts of renewables must be judged in comparison to today’s energy impacts: 3.8 million wind turbines may sound like a lot, until you realize that 73 million cars and trucks are produced globally each year. At present these vehicles are highly inefficient while spewing masses of gases into the atmosphere. Were vehicles powered with electricity from renewables, they would neither waste vast energy nor pollute the biosphere.
Land use required by renewables is also exaggerated. Comparatively speaking, all these wind turbines could be placed in 50 square miles, the size of Manhattan. This Scientific American scenario has 30% of the PV electricity coming from existing buildings, and the rest of the solar energy requiring less than one-third of 1% of the earth’s land mass. Seventy percent of the hydro installations within this plan are already in place, and additional hydro could come from low impact run-of-the-river turbines.
If we continue along the business-as-usual approach, GHGs and other environmental health hazards will increase. Without a major shift to wind, water and solar we would see 13,000 huge new coal plants or the equivalent in nuclear plants by 2030. The impact of these technologies through toxic mining, watershed contamination, climate change and radioactive wastes would be astronomical. Choices need to be made!
Originally published in RTown News, Jan 8, 2010.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources are posted at http://jimharding.brinkster.net