[dohboi]

http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?207268/S ... ignificant

(Link to pdf of report in above-linked article.)

Solar PV power in harmony with nature – new WWF report says land requirements are insignificant

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he report illustrates that PV technology, when well-planned, does not conflict with conservation goals and clarifies that no country or region must choose between solar PV and space for humans and nature.

”Research has found that PV power plants provide considerable environmental benefits, including a low carbon footprint and a short energy pay-back time.

Replacing existing grid electricity with PV arrays significantly reduces greenhouse gas and heavy metal emissions as well water usage,” says Lettemieke Mulder, First Solar vice president for Sustainability.

This new report supports WWF’s vision of 100% RE by 2050. “We are actively promoting investments and measures in Renewable Energy technologies that help to make this happen,” according to Jean-Philippe Denruyter, WWF’s manager Global Renewable Energy Policy.

“As climate change increasingly threatens people and the natural world, it is more important than ever to work for the rapid and wide-scale adoption of well sited, responsibly operated renewable energy power facilities. Environmental protection and renewable energy can and are developing in parallel,” says Samantha Smith, leader of the WWF’s Global Climate & Energy Initiative.

[ritter]

I'm not certain we have the resources required to produce the panels to go 100% solar. Or even 20% solar.

[dohboi]

Good point. That's why it is more of an academic exercise than anything. The authors certainly aren't proposing that we should depend on solar alone. I think they simply want to put to rest the tired argument that solar would take too much land space to be practicable on a large scale.

[sunweb]

It depends on who is assessing the ERoEI.
Solar and wind energy capturing devices are not alternative energy sources. They are extensions of the fossil fuel supply system. There is an illusion of looking at the trees and not the forest in the “Renewable” energy world. Not seeing the systems, machines, fossil fuel uses and environmental degradation that create the devices to capture the sun, wind and biofuels allows myopia and false claims of renewable, clean, green and sustainable.

Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) is only a part of the equation. There is a massive infrastructure of mining, processing, manufacturing, fabricating, installation, transportation and the associated environmental assaults. Each of these processes and machines may only add a miniscule amount of energy to the final component of solar or wind devices yet the devices cannot arise without them. There would be no devices with out this infrastructure.

How else would we do it? There is always the old way. Who of us will go down in the mine first?
A story in pictures and diagrams:
From Machines making machines making machines
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/ma ... aking.html

[rollin]

Of course we have the resources. Mines run on electricity, silicon is purified by electricity and the fabrication plants run on electricity. So all they have to do power the base industries using the first runs of solar panels and after that the energy is not the problem. Silicon is abundant. As far as the doping materials, they seem abundant enough.

[SeaGypsy]

It's about density rollin. The density of energy required to do things like smelting metals and glass is extreme. To extract extreme concentrations of energy from diffuse sources attracts extreme costs and losses. Only nuclear beats fossil fuels in terms of density. Some of the equipment in smelting related industry must operate in an 'always on' mode- furnaces in particular can't be dependent on intermittent energy flows, they must be held above the crucible's annealing temperature or they crack- meaning they need to be shut down and rebuilt. The base idle temperature of these tools is about 3-4 times hotter than your kitchen oven can get running at max, operating temps about double that again. All this means is that you will need to cover half your suburb with solar panels and windmills then build in some not yet existent high capacity storage, to enable one small factory to smelt and manufacture enough solar and wind gear for renewal.

[sparky]

.
@ sunweb
you are quite correct ,
the present price of solar panels and wind turbines is based on the 15Cents\Kw of the present power mix
if one were to build the alternatives generators with alternative prices it would be three times
more expensive with no guaranty of having 8 or 10 hours of power uninterrupted
People don't understand industrial constraints ,
large plants are working 24/7 , some chemical plants like ammonia synthesizers or
or nitrogen oxide unit take days to get back to full production ,
a shut down voluntary or not is a very , very costly business

[ralfy]

There's also an "energy trap" involved:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... ergy-trap/

[dohboi]

Of course, currently, plants mostly use non-renewable energy to make renewables. It's the cheapest stuff around.

But there is nothing inherently impossible about making renewables with renewables. It's been done before for solar. As wind get cheaper and cheaper, it will be done there, too (already is, to some extent, given that wind is a growing portion of the electric energy mix in more and more places).

As the price of carbon sources rises, renewables could be more and more powered by renewables.

But I fully expect 'non-linear' disruptions to prevent any such smooth transition to happen in the real world.

[SeaGypsy]

The <1% line is trite. Call it 1000 miles by 1500 miles, 1.5 million square miles. Probably a similar area to the cities of the world combined. Like that is going to be easy.

[Lore]

The problem is for everyone on the planet dreaming of living like we do here in the US, we'd need the resources of another 4 - 5 earths. What we can expect is the game of musical chairs to speed up.

[dohboi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he <1% line is trite. Call it 1000 miles by 1500 miles, 1.5 million square miles. Probably a similar area to the cities of the world combined.

[peripato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he <1% line is trite. Call it 1000 miles by 1500 miles, 1.5 million square miles. Probably a similar area to the cities of the world combined.

[cephalotus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ritter', 'I')'m not certain we have the resources required to produce the panels to go 100% solar. Or even 20% solar.

[Dybbuk]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'R')ollin, only a few mining functions are electrical, specifically very large drag lines. The rest (trucks, bulldozers, freight trains, crushers, etc.) are not but still necessary to mine silicon and metals in PV panels and wind turbines,

The same can be said for all resource-extraction industries. No one except the tiniest, little, itsy bitsy CSA/farm stand has managed to run a farm on EV tractors. Can't log with electricity either. Or fix a highway. Or mend a transmission line, repair a pipeline, gather mushrooms or diva-spit.

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dybbuk', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'R')ollin, only a few mining functions are electrical, specifically very large drag lines. The rest (trucks, bulldozers, freight trains, crushers, etc.) are not but still necessary to mine silicon and metals in PV panels and wind turbines,

The same can be said for all resource-extraction industries. No one except the tiniest, little, itsy bitsy CSA/farm stand has managed to run a farm on EV tractors. Can't log with electricity either. Or fix a highway. Or mend a transmission line, repair a pipeline, gather mushrooms or diva-spit.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'R')ollin, only a few mining functions are electrical, specifically very large drag lines. The rest (trucks, bulldozers, freight trains, crushers, etc.) are not but still necessary to mine silicon and metals in PV panels and wind turbines,

The same can be said for all resource-extraction industries. No one except the tiniest, little, itsy bitsy CSA/farm stand has managed to run a farm on EV tractors. Can't log with electricity either. Or fix a highway. Or mend a transmission line, repair a pipeline, gather mushrooms or diva-spit.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I')t's about density rollin. The density of energy required to do things like smelting metals and glass is extreme. To extract extreme concentrations of energy from diffuse sources attracts extreme costs and losses. Only nuclear beats fossil fuels in terms of density. Some of the equipment in smelting related industry must operate in an 'always on' mode- furnaces in particular can't be dependent on intermittent energy flows, they must be held above the crucible's annealing temperature or they crack- meaning they need to be shut down and rebuilt. The base idle temperature of these tools is about 3-4 times hotter than your kitchen oven can get running at max, operating temps about double that again. All this means is that you will need to cover half your suburb with solar panels and windmills then build in some not yet existent high capacity storage, to enable one small factory to smelt and manufacture enough solar and wind gear for renewal.

[dohboi]

P said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')f course the main issue is one of growth. It is the knee-jerk assumption on both the Left and the Right that the answer to the problems of growth is just more of the same. 3% economic growth would require a doubling of this footprint every 24 years or so, with its attendant resource depletion and pollution