Green Eco Path: Energy Myths Exposed
Energy Myths Exposed
Solar energy is expensive.
Yesterday’s bulky and expensive solar panels captured only 10% or so of the sun’s energy, rapid innovation and development in the US means that new and future generations of panels will be much thinner, capture far more energy and cost a fraction of what they do today.
Wind energy is unreliable.
During some periods in 2008 the wind provided almost 40% of Spain’s power. Parts of northern Germany generate more electricity from wind than they actually need. Northern Scotland could easily generate 10 or even 15% of the UK’s needs for electricity at a cost that would match today’s fossil fuel prices.
Marine energy is a dead-end.
Designing and building machines that can survive the harsh conditions of turbulent ocean waters is challenging and in the past there have been repeated disappointments. In 2008, however, Britain saw the installation of the first tidal turbine to be successfully connected to the UK electricity grid in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland, and the first group of large-scale wave power generators have been installed 5 km off the coast of Portugal.
Nuclear power is cheaper than other sources of electricity.
The new nuclear power station on the island of Olkiluoto in western Finland is a clear example of the high and unpredictable cost of nuclear plants. Electricity production was scheduled to start in 2008, but the latest news is that the power station will not start generating until 2012. The impact on the cost of the project has been dramatic. When the contracts were signed, the plant was predicted to cost €3bn. The final cost is likely to be more than twice this figure. A second new plant in Normandy, France, appears to be having similar problems. In the US, power companies are backing away from nuclear because of uncontrollable costs.
Electric cars are slow and ugly.
Developing hybrid and electric cars to match the performance of accepted standards, has been slow by automakers. The Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, both designed and built in Japan and the Tesla electric sports car, sold in America but designed by Lotus in Norfolk, Uk, amazed those who drove them. The Tesla with its awesome acceleration and a price tag to match meant that late 2008 probably wasn’t a good time to launch a luxury electric sports car. Each car has proved to everyone that hybrid and electric cars can be exciting and capable.
Biofuels are always destructive to the environment.
Making fuel from food has been a disaster. Hunger, an increased the rate of deforestation caused as farmers have sought to create extra land on which to grow their crops. The failure of first generation biofuels should not mean that we should reject the use of biological solutions. In a few years we will be turning agricultural wastes into liquid fuels by splitting cellulose, the most abundant molecule in plants and trees, into simple hydrocarbons.
Climate change means we need more organic agriculture.
Studies show that yields under organic cultivation are little more than half that achieved elsewhere. Unless this figure can be hugely improved, the implications are clear; the world cannot feed its people and produce huge amounts of cellulose for fuels if large areas are converted to organic agriculture.
Zero carbon homes are the best way of preventing greenhouse gas emissions.
Buildings generate 50% of world emissions, domestic housing is the most important single source of greenhouse gases. making a building genuinely zero carbon is extremely expensive, and just focusing on the about 1% of the housing stock that is newly built each year has no effect on the remaining 99%. In Germany uses a combination of subsidies, cheap loans and education to succeed in getting hundreds of thousands of older properties eco-renovated each year to impressive standards, at reasonable cost.
The most efficient power stations are big.
New types of micro combined heat and power plants are able to convert 50% of energy in fuel into electricity, very close to the efficiency of huge generators. They are small enough to be easily installed in ordinary homes, where not only will they supply electricity, surplus heat can be used to heat the house. This way all the energy in gas is productively used. Certain types of air conditioning can even use the heat to power their chillers in summer.
Proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech.
Leading economies are obsessed with finding hi-tech solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these are expensive and may create as many problems as they solve. Nuclear power is a good example. But it may be cheaper and more effective to look for simple solutions that reduce emissions, or even extract existing carbon dioxide from the air.
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