From stomv, on whether our state’s GHG reductions are really all that:
A few observations
1. It’s 30% reduction since 2005. Since pre-frack. In fact, in a post-fracking world, it’s closer to a 15% reduction — we got the first half from economic switching from coal to gas.
2. We’re going to get another few percent “for free” due to compliance with MATS, CASPR, regional haze, 316(b), effluent, and CCR. Those are all regulations that govern things other-than-carbon, and for some (old and/or small) coal plants, it’s cheaper to retire than to retrofit. Since we’re not building any new coal plants, any time a coal plant gets retired it’s energy is replaced with gas, and that means reduced carbon emissions.
3. Massachusetts certainly deserves credit for energy efficiency programs, ranging from subsidies to building codes to 100 things in between. However, the bulk of the CO2 reduction has been from reducing consumption of coal and oil and replacing it with natural gas.
Bottom line: the 30% includes a head start, and much of it is because of low gas prices induced by fracking. If we’re to get to that goal (and surpass it!) we’ve got to work harder at energy efficiency nationwide and build far, far more renewable generation, ranging from 5 kW rooftop PV to 500,000 kW offshore wind projects.
via Blue Mass Group | You wanted Hope and Change? Well here ya go..
Right. And for all that solar and wind deployment have gaudy percentage increases over the last few years, unfortunately it’s all based on a tiny baseline. Much more to be done.
danfromwaltham says
Is this for real? Or is this similar to the old story about Ford making a 70 MPG engine back in the 70’s but kept it from being produced?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways#description
kirth says
Thu 15 May 12:41 PM
Charley on the MTA says
I’m not really sure why we’d need them. Space for solar is not really the primary issue — it’s cost, interconnectivity and financing.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/blogs/solar-roadways-dont-believe-the-hype-on-this-boondoggle-of-a-project
The real innovations in solar will be financial: The plummeting cost of panels, securitization, etc. http://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/14/look-solar-securitization/
kirth says
First Solar May Sell Cheapest Solar Power, Less Than Coal
Solar to match coal in China by 2016, threatening fossil dominance
Rooftop Solar Will Soon Be Cheaper Than Coal in the EU
It’s happening. Any day now, we’ll have heard the last of the pessimists claiming renewables can’t compete.
ryepower12 says
that’s certainly looking like it will happen soon…
but will solar roadways?
Buried under dense glass, then exposed to soot and pollution?
I think the solar roadways project is really cool and worth investing some real research dollars in, but I think there’s a reason why the team behind it has been rather skimp on details in terms of how much energy their project would really produce.
Moreover, I doubt Charlie or any pro-solar person here would take issue with anything you said about solar becoming much more cost efficient than it used to be.
But that they can compete soon or already doesn’t mean they can compete — yet — embedded in roadways.
Beside roadways? Over roadwaves? On rooftops. You betcha — and that’s what your links suggest — but none of your links suggest they’re ready to be competitive now or soon as road surfaces.
I’m all in favor of investing in the tech to someday make it be… but we’re not there yet in that one specific area, and if we were, venture capitalists would be all over it.
kirth says
None of the comment you seem to be replying to has anything to do with roadways. My first link has a utility ready to buy power at half the cost of coal-produced electricity. I’d call that “is now,” not “may soon be.” The solar road thing is a nice idea that may never happen. Solar power competing head-to-head with the cheapest fossil fuels is happening now. Maybe we can even bring dfw into the 21st Century!
jconway says
Nor does it have the political or economic pull pundits ascribe to it
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117984/coal-country-backlash-over-obama-rules-wont-swing-midterm-elections
ryepower12 says
They’re way better than solar roadways.
ryepower12 says
For example:
What part of fracking is “natural?”
How “cheap” will natural gas be when everyone is on it and everything uses it… and we have LNG terminals all around the country to ship it all over the world?
What is the point of reducing CO2 if we replace it with CO, Carbon Monoxide, released in much greater number from using “natural” gas? Carbon Monoxide is far worse for the environment than Carbon Dioxide — and the switch from coal to gas has been more or less a climate wash, as I understand.
How much more do we want to rapidly expand our gas infrastructure when we’ve proven incapable of maintaining what we already have — to sometimes disastrous effects.
Natural Gas companies have been very successful marketing their product like Poland Springs — making people think it’s somehow cleaner and fresher than alternatives when it’s not, and the reasons why it is cheaper in this country is artificial since we don’t yet export it to any great extent — something that will change in not too long a time.
If the bulk of what we do to get to off coal and oil is switch to natural gas, we’ll make no real progress on climate change, we’ll continue to destroy areas through fracking and land exploitation of epic proportions and we’ll be burdened by the same costs for it all.
Solar and wind is cheap enough to build now and once we make the initial investments, it will be basically free energy for decades thereafter.
Maybe this deal is some kind of progress, but it’s nothing I’m going to get excited about — and does the same thing we’ve always done, which has gotten us in trouble all these years: display an unwillingness to be honest with ourselves about real problem.
stomv says
I believe gas is better than coal for a few reasons:
1. No SO2. With no SO2, you don’t have emissions leading to respiratory disease or to smog. That’s a good thing. Also, no Hg or other heavy metals.
2. No mountaintop removal. MTR mining is clearly detrimental to the landscape in a way gas extraction isn’t.
3. Ash. The coal ash left over after combustion is nasty, nasty stuff. A bunch of it just recently emptied into the Dan River in North Carolina in a little town called Eden.
4. Dispatch. Coal is slow. By that I mean that a coal fired power plant has to run for many hours (12-30) before it can be turned off, and once turned off it must remain off for many hours (6-30). Once on, it can increase or decrease it’s output slowly, and within relatively tight bounds. Gas CT or CCs, on the other hand, are more nimble. They can change their output more quickly and have wider ranges of operation. This matters because as we integrate more intermittent renewables (wind and PV), we’ll need a more nimble dispatchable system to work with those intermittent renewables. Coal and nuclear, because of their inflexibility, serve as a operational barrier to integrating more wind and solar.
You’ll note that I didn’t claim that natural gas is better with respect to climate change. That result hinges on how much methane (CH4) leaks during extraction and delivery. If it is any more than 1-2%, the CO2 reduction is offset by the potency of the increased methane in the atmosphere. The EPA under 111(d) is assuming that this leakage is very small (zero?), and if that assumption changes, the ability to comply with 111(d) by fuel switching from coal to gas will be diminished.
It’s clear that real progress will require energy efficiency, renewable generation, and switching our transportation and space heating infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewables, probably by switching those entities to electricity. Bottom line: more renewables and more energy efficiency is the cost effective, environmentally appropriate way to fight climate change, and we should continue to pressure our lawmakers at federal, state, and local levels to decouple our economy from carbon.