“Dirty Oil” — Duck Images

March 9, 2010 by admin.

For some time now, the media reported on the case of the ducks who died at a Syncrude tailings pond, near Fort McMurray, in Northern Alberta.  First it was claimed that about 500 ducks had been killed.  That claim was later revised upward to 1,600 ducks in the incident or incidents.

The front page of the March 9, 2010 issue of the Edmonton Journal carried an article that reported Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach as stating that he had not seen the images of the ducks coated with bitumen at the Syncrude tailings pond, quite properly casting some doubt on Ed Stelmach’s claim that he had not seen those all-pervasive images.

The insinuation by the article in the increasingly liberal Edmonton Journal was that the pro-industry Alberta Government’s premier is in open denial of the truth, namely that the oil industry is deadly to the environment and specifically has little regard for the death toll it imposes on Alberta wildlife.

The deaths of 1,600 ducks appears to be a red herring dragged out to draw attention away from the death toll inflicted by “environment-friendly” alternative sources of energy, particularly wind power.

No doubt, environmentalist are ready and eager to crucify Ed Stelmach for daring to — either deliberately or inadvertently — belittle the deaths of the ducks in Fort McMurray.  The goal of the environmentalists’ exercise has been achieved.  Ed Stelmach’s denial is evidence of the Alberta Government’s program to insert “dirty oil” into the world market for oil production.

The deaths of the 1,600 ducks in the Syncrude tailings pond needs to be put into perspective.  The Alberta Government is an ardent promoter of alternative energy in the form of wind power, even though wind-power production cannot be justified economically and can be kept alive only through massive taxpayer-funded subsidies.

However, with respect to the impact of wind power on the lives of birds, the simple truth is that wind power is at least thousands of times more deadly to the lives of birds than the Fort McMurray tailings ponds could ever be feared to be.

 “Bernd Koop, based on monitoring studies conducted in Holland by Winkelman, estimated there would be 60,000 to 100,000 bird collisions per 1,000 megawatt installed capacity in his country - annually (13) . . ..Applying his estimate to Germany´s 17,000 MW, we obtain: 1,020,000 to 1,700,000 bird collisions per annum. And the closer we are getting to territorial saturation, the lower the chances for migrating birds to find safe routes through the maze, especially if we add the deadly power lines.

Already, birds in Germany die in great numbers from collisions with 70,000 km of high-tension lines that criss-cross the country - 30 million birds per year is an extrapolation found in Hoerschelmann, Haack & Wohlgemuth, based on a study along 4.5 km of high tension lines - electrocutions excluded (14). - As windfarms need more power lines, this mortality will increase as well; there is already evidence of this : Windfarms - the bird massacre continues. (Please follow this link, photos must be seen; author.)

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Source:
Wildlife Conservation Examiner

Deadly blades; death toll mounts as wind farms massacre birds of prey
August 7, 8:52 PM; by Cathy Taibbi

Not that anyone should downplay the unfortunate deaths of the ducks at Fort McMurray, but if we wish to measure the impact of energy sources on wildlife, let’s do justice to all sources of energy.  By objective measures, wind power is far more deadly to wildlife than the Syncrude tailings ponds are.

At least Syncrude is trying to do something, and largely successfully, about protecting ducks and other migratory birds, while most environmentalists who harp on Alberta’s “dirty oil” are totally silent about the massive deadliness and excessive costs of wind power.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, Fines & Penalties, Pollution: Health Issues, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

Wood making comeback as power source

November 11, 2009 by admin.

By Traci Watson, USA TODAY

One of the world’s oldest energy sources is making a comeback.

Across the USA, power plants are turning to wood to make electricity. The move is spurred by state mandates to encourage renewable power and by bills moving through Congress that require more renewable electricity nationwide.

Wood power’s rise is “meteoric,” says William Perritt, editor of Wood Biomass Market Report. One wood-burning plant started up in 2007, seven in 2008 and a dozen in 2009, he says….(Full Story)

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Ostensibly, wood waste will be burned in those wood-burning power plants, but, as the article points out, the demand will soon be for wood chips that are produced by clear-cutting.

That will save the planet?  The only thing that is certain is that it will cause clear-cutting and pollution, besides, burning wood is the burning of carbon and will produce carbon dioxide.

Although Schilda is a real town in Germany, it is also the name of a fictional town inhabited by fools known as “Schildbürger” [Schilda-citizens], see Wise Men of Gotham.

Examples of the actions of the citizens of Schilda:

Schildbuerger Streich

The Germans have a series of allegorical tales in which the citizens of Schilda (the SchildBuerger) embark on a range of schemes that seem, at first sight, logical but on closer inspection turn out to be totally misguided and pointless.

A famous story runs like this – the Schildbuerger have no salt and so must buy it from the nearest big city. This is expensive and the people of Schilda are not rich. They call a town meeting and decide that something must be done. ‘Surely’ says one man “ if we grew our own salt plants there would be an endless supply for us”. The others agreed that this was a great idea. They set about collecting money from all the people to buy two large sacks of salt from the merchants in the big city.
The salt duly arrived and one of the local farmers volunteered his best acreage as a salt field, greedily hoping that he would get a bigger share in return. The salt was ploughed into the soil and the Schilda congratulated themselves on their superb cleverness.
In autumn they returned to harvest their salt plants, but found only a field of nettles. The farmer could never get crops to grow in this field till the end of his days…. (Full Story)

The Invention of the Window

A German Volksbuch (”folks book”) story tells about the difficulties that the citizens of Schilda had, as they were trying to illuminate the interior of their council house.

They went to the extreme of going outside with all types of baskets and bags, in order to collect as much sunlight as they could, and carry it inside the house.

Since that did not work, they also tried removing the house roof. This worked perfectly, until the winter came.

One day, a Schilda man accidentally hit himself against the wall on the way out of the council house. This caused a ray of light to enter inside the house through a tiny wall fissure.

And this is how the Schildans came to think about windows. That simple part of a house, the story says, was never invented but found by mere accident…(Source)

One can’t help but wonder what future generations will write and tell about climate alarmism and the supposed cures for global warming.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | 1 Comment »

Wind Energy — The Case of Denmark

September 17, 2009 by admin.

Wind energy is a renewable alternative energy source whose alleged capability to serve as an acceptable and even desirable solution to the problem of ever-increasing fossil-fuel consumption is much touted by politicians who would like to demonstrate that with the help of billions of dollars in tax revenues they will save the world.

Regardless of their continual history of lack of success in implementing global policies, things like that are relatively easy to do for politicians.  Politicians make money for themselves whether the solutions they propose and try to push through are realistic or not, whether those solutions can be made to pay for themselves or lose trillions of dollars in gross domestic product.  Usually — the climate hysteria is a case in point — the greater the failures of politicians and the losses caused by them, the more the politicians stand to gain, and the more we — the ordinary people trying to make a living — stand to lose.

The political system is a growth industry that is being supported by a cancerously-growing, ravenous bureaucracy and ever increasing taxation.

It would be a great thing if Mother Nature’s bounty, as in the case of “free” wind energy, would help to offset the losses caused by the grand schemes rammed through by politicians, but wind energy is not free.  Wind energy is much more expensive than to generate energy by burning fossil fuels.  Wind energy generating capacity installed must be matched by corresponding generating capacity that is based on hydroelectric-, nuclear- or fossil-fuel-powered power generation.  In other words, as far as the utility of large-scale wind energy generation goes, it is as useful as tits on a boar and as precariously and potentially harmful as a second functioning steering wheel on a car.

A September 2009 study report by CEPOS (Center for Politiske Studier), “Wind Energy — The Case of Denmark” makes for fascinating reading. It addresses the illusions that anyone should hold regarding wind energy.  The study report should be of interest to a wide variety of people, such as tax payers, electrical systems operators, politicians and policy makers.

Here is the executive summary of the study report.

Executive summary

PART 1: The real state-of-play and its hidden costs

Denmark generates the equivalent of about 19% of its electricity demand with wind turbines, but wind power contributes far less than 19% of the Nation’s electricity demand.

The claim that Denmark derives about 20% of its electricity from wind overstates matters. Being highly intermittent, wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5% of Denmark’s annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7%.

In the absence of large-scale electricity storage, any modern electricity system must continuously balance electricity supply and demand, because even small variations in system voltage and frequency can cause damage to modern electronic equipment and other electrical equipment.

Wind power is stochastic [that is, “random”, essentially difficult or impossible to predict], especially in the very short term (e.g., over any given hour, 30 minute, or 15 minute period). This has created a completely new challenge that transmission system operators (TSOs) all over the World are only now learning how to handle. Some draw from Denmark’s experience. But Denmark’s special circumstances make its experience of limited transferability elsewhere.

Denmark manages to keep the electricity systems balanced due to having the benefit of its particular neighbors and their electricity mix. Norway and Sweden provide Denmark, Germany and Netherlands access to significant amounts of fast, short term balancing reserve, via interconnectors. They effectively act as Denmark’s “electricity storage batteries”. Norwegian and Swedish hydropower can be rapidly turned up and down, and Norway’s lakes effectively “store” some portion of Danish wind power.

Over the last eight years West Denmark has exported (couldn’t use), on average, 57% of the wind power it generated and East Denmark an average of 45%.The correlation between high wind output and net outflows makes the case that there is a large component of wind energy in the outflow indisputable.

The exported wind power, paid for by Danish householders, brings material benefits in the form of cheap electricity and delayed investment in new generation equipment for consumers in Sweden and Norway but nothing for Danish consumers. Taxes and charges on electricity for Danish household consumers make their electricity by far the most expensive in the European Union (EU)[1]. The total probable value of exported subsidies between 2001 and 2008 was DKK 6.8 billion (€916 million) during this period. A similar amount was probably exported prior to 2012[2] and larger quantities will be exported following the commissioning of 800 MW of new offshore wind capacity in 2013.

The wind power that is exported from Denmark saves neither fossil fuel consumption nor CO2 emissions in Denmark, where it is all paid for. By necessity, wind power exported to Norway and Sweden supplants largely carbon neutral electricity in the Nordic countries. No coal is used nor are there power-related CO2 emissions in Sweden and Norway.

Wind energy has replaced some thermal generation in Denmark. It has saved an average emission of about 2.4 million t per year CO2 at a total subsidy cost of 12.3 billion DKK or an average cost of 647 DKK (€ 87 or $124) per ton CO2. Wind power has proven to be an expensive way to save CO2 emissions[3].

The cost of Denmark’s wind capacity to Danish consumers is exacerbated by its inability to use so much surplus electricity. The surplus will increase in 2013 when 800 MW of new offshore capacity is commissioned, increasing Denmark’s wind production by 2.7 TWh per year. Nearly all the additional wind power will be exported and this will further depress prices; nearly all the subsidies paid by Danish consumers will also be exported without achieving any significant fossil fuel use nor any CO2 reduction. Achieving own-consumption of all its wind power is technically impossible in the short term and will remain entirely hypothetical until electricity consumption rises and new technical and demand-side solutions have been developed and implemented. In most cases, these have yet even to be invented, let alone proven and costed.

Notwithstanding its many disadvantages, wind power’s one striking advantage is that, like nuclear, its marginal costs of operation are very small once the capital has been paid. However, unlike nuclear, many ten to fifteen year-old turbines are past their useful life. By contrast, most conventional rotating power plant can enjoy a working life of 40 to 60 years, as evidenced by most power plants in Europe today. This puts into question the strategic, economic and environmental benefits of a power plant that may have to be scrapped, replaced and resubsidized every ten to fifteen years.

The Danish Parliament reached a political consensus during 2008 that in 2025 50% of Denmark’s electricity demand must come from renewable resources, mostly wind power. The Ecogrid Study Group has concluded4 that if the extra wind power is to achieve this aim, drastic re-engineering of the whole energy system will need to take place, including the retirement of much expensive, high quality, existing capacity. Wisely, it has not tried to estimate the costs of doing this. In any case, Sweden and Norway will be unable balance the extra wind capacity planned that is also planned for Germany and Netherlands.

PART 2: Wind Energy’s effect on employment

Denmark has been a first-mover in the wind power industry for over ten years, and its leading wind turbine manufacturers have been able to maintain a very strong global position. This has been a consequence of a concerted policy to increase the share of wind power in Danish electricity generation. The policy has only been made possible through substantial subsidies supporting the wind turbine owners. This indirect subsidy has in turn generated the demand for wind turbines from the manufactures. Exactly how the subsidies have been shared between land, wind turbine owners, labor, capital and shareholders is opaque, but it is fair to assess that no Danish wind industry to speak of would exist if it had to compete on market terms. This paper documents the experiences gained in Denmark with regard to the employment effect of subsidizing the wind industry.

Substantial subsidies have been directed to the Danish wind mill industry over years. From 2001-2005 the yearly subsidy has been 1.7-2.6 billion DKK.

The Danish Wind industry counts 28,400 employees. This does not, however, constitute the net employment effect of the wind mill subsidy. In the long run, creating additional employment in one sector through subsidies will detract labor from other sectors, resulting in no increase in net employment but only in a shift from the non-subsidized sectors to the subsidized sector. Allowing for the theoretical possibility of wind employment alleviating possible regional pockets of high unemployment, a very optimistic ballpark estimate of net real job creation is 10% of total employment in the sector. In this case the subsidy per job created is 600,000-900,000 DKK per year ($90,000-140,000). This subsidy constitutes around 175-250% of the average pay per worker in the Danish manufacturing industry.

In terms of value added per employee, the energy technology sector over the period 1999-2006 underperformed by as much as 13% compared with the industrial average.

This implies that the effect of the government subsidy has been to shift employment from more productive employment in other sectors to less productive employment in the wind industry. As a consequence, Danish GDP is approximately 1.8 billion DKK ($270 million) lower than it would have been if the wind sector work force was employed elsewhere.

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1. 1. According to the OECD, Denmark has the World’s highest tax burden. This applies across a slew of tax sources, including personal income and value added tax.
   2. The wind power subsidy arrangements before 2001 were made directly by Government and are not available to the public.
   3. The “value” of European emission allowances since the European emission-trading scheme (ETS) started has varied between € 1 and €30 per ton of CO2.
   4. http://www.energinet.dk/en/menu/R+and+D/EcoGrid/EcoGrid.dk.htm

(See full study report; 2.8 MB, 39 pages,  PDF document)

The population of the Province of Alberta  (3.6 million) is comparable in size to that of Denmark (5.5 million), while its area (661,848 km²  or 255,541 sq mi) is 15.4 times larger than that of Denmark (43,098.31 km² or 16,640 sq mi).  It follows that the politicians’ push to create wind-energy generating capacity in Alberta will come at a considerably higher cost per capita than it does in Denmark, at considerably more than the Danish experience of $49 in GDP loss per annum per capita in Denmark.

The pursuit of the illusion of “free” wind power comes at a very real cost that we would be wise to avoid.

Posted in Energy Issues, Alternative Energy Sources, Climate Change, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

Some energy issues of interest and concern

June 22, 2009 by admin.

You may wish to bookmark the following link to help you to keep up-to-date on discussions of energy issues:

http://www.icecap.us/

Today, here are some of the articles that will probably interest you.Jun 21, 2009

The Wong-Fielding Meeting On Global WarmingBy David Evans on Joanne Nova’s blog

The article relates to a meeting between government officials and government-funded climate change alarmists on the one side, and reputable climate scientists in Australia who fall into the camp of the so-called climate-change “skeptics” on the other side.

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Jun 20, 2009 “World cooling has set in and it will stay colder for at least 100 years predicts scientist”

By Piers Corbyn, WeatherAction

Piers Corbyn is an astrophysicist-turned-weather-forecaster whose long-range weather forecasts - based on solar activity trends and their influence on Earth - are remarkably accurate.

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Jun 22, 2009 United States, Great Britain and Russia Climate Action In the News

Obama Gives Green Light to Canadian Oil Sands

Climatico, 21 June 2009

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Britain Green Suicide Note: 5,000 Pound Power

By Louise Barnett, Consumer Editor

That will be the combined costs of electricity and natural (or city-) gas by 2020.  Costs are projected to go up by as much as 42% a year.
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Jun 21, 2009 Appeal to Authority

By Norm Kalmanovitch

From the article:

See large image here.

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Jun 20, 2009 A Move to Put the Union Label on Solar Power Plants

By Todd Woody, New York Times Business

Posted in Energy Issues, Weather, Alternative Energy Sources, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

Britain under fire for failing to join renewable energy league

January 30, 2009 by admin.

Guardian.co.uk
January 2009 16

Britain under fire for failing to join renewable energy league

By Terry Macalister

Britain’s attempts to position itself as a centre for the green power industry suffered a blow today when it emerged that ministers have refused to commit the country to a new international body set up to promote renewable power.

The German environment secretary, who came up with the idea for the International Renewable Energy Agency, said he was disappointed countries such as the UK and America were dragging their feet….(Full Story)

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, Pollution: Health Issues | Print | No Comments »

Are compressed-air-powered cars practical?

December 30, 2008 by admin.

A friend sent to us some information on compressed-air-powered cars.  Those are being produced and being put on the market in India.  A search for “compressed-air-powered cars” provides about 1,200 entries on the search-return list.  Here is the first of the entries on the list:

Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 - Zero Pollution …
22 Feb 2008 … A New York-based startup wants to make the first air-powered car to hit US roads a $17800, 75-hp equivalent, 96-mph, four-door version of …

The price range of the Indian compressed-air-powered cars is from about $3,000 to $17,000, depending on size of a car and the number of passengers it is designed to carry.

At first glance, the idea to use compressed air to power cars is great, but I have a couple of concerns, one easily explained, the other requiring a lot more words.

1. If a tank containing that compressed air explodes, would that cause less damage than having a terrorist explode a car bomb?

It can take less than gallon of gasoline to blow up a house, but when a gasoline tank leaks, that is not necessarily a catastrophe, unless the conditions are right, not even if a gasoline tank splits wide open.  If the equivalent amount of energy in the form of compressed air is released all at once, that would instantaneously kill the occupants of the car that carried it, plus it would possibly kill everything for some distance around.  It would destroy much property in the vicinity of the car that exploded.

2. Ethanol is more than joke, it is a scam.  Ethanol consumes almost twice as much energy for its production than it contains.  Therefore it also causes far more pollution than it is said to save.  Furthermore, the production of Ethanol is taxpayer subsidized.  In addition, it caused food prices to rise enormously and thereby caused an increase of starving people in the world. Comparable issues come into play with cars powered by electrical energy that has been stored in batteries and with compressed-air-powered cars.  Neither of the latter alternative energy sources would have the devastating consequences for poor people that ethanol has.  After all, the corn required to tank up a family car with ethanol just once could feed a family for a whole year.

However, what is used for energy to power those compressors that put compressed air into cars?  I have no idea on the efficiency of the compressors and of the engines that use compressed air.

The reality of that is that to propel a car requires energy.  That is a considerable amount of energy.  The energy used to compress air to the required pressure must equal the energy used by the car plus the energy wasted by the car plus the energy wasted in compressing the air.

That would be about equivalent to the energy required to power a car with electrical energy from a battery (energy wasted by the battery charger when charging a battery, plus energy lost in the transition from electrical to chemical energy in the battery when it is being charged, plus energy lost when converting chemical energy in the battery to electrical energy in the car’s electrical motor, plus the energy lost in the electric motor that drives the car, plus energy lost in the transmission, plus the energy required to propel the car.)  All of those losses are somewhat compensated for by using kinetic energy from decelerating and braking to produce chemical energy stored in the car’s battery, but that process, too, suffers from conversion losses.  All of those losses are quite considerable.  Only about ten percent or a bit more of the electrical energy for use by battery-powered cars  that is injected at the generating source into the transmission and distribution network will actually result in putting and keeping the car in motion.

Where does the energy for compressing air come from?  What are the total energy requirements, plus all of the applicable energy losses, to put a car into motion and keeping it moving?  Will each service station have a fossil-fuel-powered compressor, or will that compressor be using electrical energy from the network (with transmission and distribution losses that are very similar to those in the case of battery-powered cars)?

Furthermore, battery-powered cars recover some of the kinetic energy generated by decelerating or braking, to convert it to chemical energy that is stored in their batteries, thereby reducing the overall energy losses of those cars a bit.  However, I see nothing comparable along those lines in the descriptions of air-powered cars.

Without examining all of those issues it is not possible to determine whether compressed-air-powered cars are more efficient or cheaper as far as energy consumption goes than battery-powered cars are.  Anyone wishing to make a profit from the production or sale of compressed-air-powered cars is not likely to tell anyone about peripheral costs of the generation and distribution of energy required for converting and storing of that energy in the form of compressed air.

There is no question that as far as the engineering and production of air-powered cars is concerned, air-powered cars will not only be cheaper to produce and to dispose of, but their production and ultimate disposal will be far more environmentally-friendly.

I have great doubts that the overall energy requirements (including all of the losses of energy at the various stages of transporting energy and the applicable conversion processes) of either air-powered or battery-powered cars will be able to compete with or come close to the relatively low cost of the transportation, distribution and consumption of energy used by fossil-fuel-powered cars.

So far there is no cheaper or more effective way to store, distribute and use energy for cars than in the form of the chemical energy contained in fossil fuel.

Lastly, the bottom line: What will the cost be per km of driving for the three different solutions that need to be compared.  Cost subsidies such as those used for the production of ethanol come out of tax revenues and require taxpayers to pay higher taxes.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.  Not only that, but the government will want to collect the taxes it presently derives from fossil-fuel consumption.   The production and use of compressed air will have to be taxed to an extent that produces at least the amount of tax revenues collected from the use of fossil fuels.

Battery-powered cars may cause the electricity rates to go up.  Existing distribution networks require massive upgrading if more than one household in every seven will use battery chargers to charge the batteries in their cars.  In addition, if the distribution networks need to be upgraded, then you can be sure that the transmission network needs to be upgraded as well.  One single transmission line from Fort MacMurray to the US border costs a few billion dollars, and I shudder to think of how much money we would need for many such construction projects if we wish to replace the distribution of energy in the form of fossil fuel with a system of distribution in the form of anything else.  Anything other than fossil fuel requires electric energy in massive quantities.  It even requires the construction of many new power plants at the cost of about $1.6 billion each.

I am certain that some comparable concerns apply to compressed-air-powered cars.  Somehow, the enormous amount of energy required by all of our cars needs to be transported to all those service stations we need to equip and provide for that.  It is all in place now.  I doubt is very much that we can afford to replace it.  Until we can, both, compressed-air- or battery-powered cars will be a curiosity that is impractical and too expensive to have for all.

By the way, we did not wish you a Merry Christmas.  To make up for that, I offer you a story of a modern Christmas that I am sure you will enjoy.  The story will drive home the point of how much things have changed over the last 2000 years and that, no matter how hard we all tried to have Paradise on Earth, the harder we tried, the farther away from it we got, even though we now live on average a lot longer than people did then.

Our best wishes for the new year to you and yours,

Walter (and Ruth)

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | No Comments »

The problems with wind farms

November 1, 2008 by admin.

5M Proven Technology in new Dimensions is a presentation on the specification, manufacturing and construction of a 5 MW wind turbine, by REpower Systems AG, Hamburg.

The complexities of the design, manufacturing and construction of the wind turbine of that size described and illustrated in the document are mind boggling.  Still, given that the document is in effect a sales brochure, there are implications that the document does not mention.  Just to bring up a few:

• The practical capacity of a wind turbine in about one quarter of its rated capacity at optimum wind speed.  That means that if using a wind turbine of the massive size promoted in the document practical power output would be 1.24 MW.  That would require the construction of 1,200 such wind turbines to replace a single thermo-electric power plant with 1.5 GW (average size).
• To locate that many wind turbines would require a total land area of about 286 square kilometers.
• A thermo-electric power plant produces electric power about 95% of the time, with maintenance shutdowns requiring to fire up large scale standby power generation that requires about three days to be put on line and therefore needs scheduling well in advance.  In contrast, when the wind stops blowing below the speed where a wind farm can produce even only a quarter of its optimum rated capacity (or if it need to shut down if the wind speed is too excessive), the demand for energy and the sudden lack of 1.5 GW of energy that the wind farm should be producing will bring the distribution network to its knees.  1.5 GW standby capacity cannot instantly be brought on line.  Even gas-turbine-generated energy requires as much as three hours to be brought on line.  However, even though that source of replacement or standby energy is feasible, natural gas is the most expensive conventional energy source.

Wind farms are not cheap, nor is the power they produce.  On account of the expensive nature of the absolutely necessary standby power generation required by wind farms during so much of their operating time, the power generated by wind farms is just about the most expensive electric power imaginable that is on the market.

A more detailed discussion of those issues is contained in Windmills for Suckers: Pickens’ Genocidal Plan (PDF file), by 21st Century Science & Technology.

More on the topic of alternative energy sources.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | 1 Comment »

Alter NRG Corp. finalized purchase of Erco Site, in Lamont County, east of and adjacent to Bruderheim

September 17, 2008 by admin.

Alter NRG Corp. announces the finalization of the plant siting for the first Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power facility in Canada.

TSXV - NRG CALGARY, Sept. 15 /CNW/ - Alter NRG Corp. (”Alter NRG” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has closed the previously announced acquisition of a project site in Bruderheim, Alberta (approximately 60 kilometers northeast of Edmonton) for $3.1 million, including $0.6 million in costs related to settlement of existing transmission commitments. The Company plans to use the site to develop Canada’s first IGCC facility with the first phase to be operational as early as 2010. On commencement of operations, the facility is expected to be capable of producing approximately 120 megawatts (MW) of electric power using a blend of natural gas as well as synthesis gas (syngas) produced using Alter NRG’s proprietary plasma gasification technology. The facility will be designed for carbon capture and storage (CCS) with approximately 600,000 tonnes per year of captured CO2 to be injected into nearby geological formations or used at nearby oilfields in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects….(Full Story)
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Comments by folc.ca : It is obvious that lawyers had a heavy hand in wording the long list of exceptions and cautionary notes stated at the end of the Alter NRG news release, under the heading, Advisory Respecting Forward-Looking Statements. The list of exemptions shown there is very long. In combination with that list, the following key statements contained in the Advisory loom large and heavy:

The forward-looking information and statements included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance and should not be unduly relied upon….

The Company cautions that the foregoing list of assumptions, risks and uncertainties is not exhaustive. The forward-looking information and statements contained in this news release speak only as of the date of this news release, and the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required pursuant to applicable securities laws.

Translating the legalese into English for normal mortals and in the process condensing it into something that is more useful, what that means then is that, quite possibly, none of the information in the news release by Alter NRG is necessarily final or subsequently true after having been published.

The news release contains information that should worry people living close to the proposed Alter NRG power generating plant, some within less than half a mile, with the eastern boundary of Bruderheim being as close as half a mile to the plant.

The following identifies a few of the statements contained in the news release and also some of the concerns relating to them.

1. On commencement of operations, the facility is expected to be capable of producing approximately 120 megawatts (MW) of electric power using a blend of natural gas as well as synthesis gas (syngas) produced using Alter NRG’s proprietary plasma gasification technology.

Comment by folc.ca: Natural gas is a natural resource that is the primary fuel for home heating in Alberta. Alberta’s natural gas is also a resource that is rapidly being depleted, as a result of which the price of natural gas is escalating.  The production of electric energy from natural gas and its substitute, syngas, is wasteful and will increase the demand for natural gas and syngas. That will cause increases in prices for gas used for home heating.

2. The facility will be designed for carbon capture and storage (CCS) with approximately 600,000 tonnes per year of captured CO2 to be injected into nearby geological formations or used at nearby oilfields in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects.

Comment by folc.ca: The news release states nothing about the fact that CO2 is not a pollutant. More importantly, the news release makes absolutely no mention of pollutants that the plant will produce and how those will be dealt with, so as to prevent their injection into the environment, for instance, nitrous oxides and sulphur dioxide, of which especially the latter has the potential of creating serious and very harmful degradation of the local and general environment.

Nevertheless, there are issues of great concern that directly relate to the scheme for CO2 capture, transport and disposal.

The process of CO2 capture and injection into nearby geological formations requires transportation of an average of 1,700 tonnes of CO2 each day.  How will that be done and by what means?  If the transporting is by trucks, that means that there will be an enormous increase in road traffic, in the order of an average of at least 280 trucks a day (assuming an average of six tonnes of CO2 carrying capacity per truck), about 12 trucks every hour (assuming that the trucks operate around the clock) and considerably more than that if the trucking operations cease during the night.

Furthermore, the logistics of the whole process seem daunting and are not likely to work without flaws or bottlenecks.  If CO2 capture, transporting and injection into the ground should at any time and for any reason be below the required average of 1,700 tonnes per day, will the power plant be shut down, or will it make use of as yet unidentified buffer storage on site?  That storage facility will have to be substantially large and be capable of containing CO2 under great pressure.

Nothing is perfect.  The storage and transporting of large volumes of CO2 present dangers to people and property in the vicinity of the plant and transportation routes.  Aside from the increased likelihood of vehicle accidents in Bruderheim and vicinity, what are any other dangers the scheme of CO2 capture, transporting and injection will pose to residents in the area?

3. The project is expected to be completed in two phases in order to take advantage of near-term capacity needs in the Alberta power market.

Comment by folc.ca: Alter NRG cannot be faulted for wanting to take advantage of the increasing market demand for electric energy. However, the escalating shortage of electric energy is a result of the Alberta government’s failure to create effective policies for the construction of large-scale power plants for the generation of electric energy. That massive problem will not be solved by increasing reliance on Band-Aid solutions, such as energy production through wind-turbine farms (of primary benefit only to the main producer of wind turbines in North America: General Electric) and through natural-gas-fired power plants.

Electric energy production from natural gas or syngas will add to demand for natural gas and for syngas. That will drive up the price for home-heating fuel and for fertilizer (the price for fertilizer is presently at about $2,000 a tonne).

4. NGCC facilities are the cleanest fossil fuel power generation technology available today.

Comment by folc.ca : That statement is true, but it is not all of the truth. Aside from increasing the demand for natural gas — with associated price increases, the demand for increased production of natural gas will also increase the production of sulphur. Especially new natural gas sources produce sour gas, meaning gas that must be stripped of its large content of hydrogen sulphide before it can be injected into the Alberta gas distribution system.

The inventory of Alberta’s waste sulphur is presently at about $11 million tonnes. Large-scale use of natural gas will escalate Alberta’s problems with issues arising from stockpiling waste sulphur.

Canada is one of only two nations in the world (the Russian Federation being the other one) that presently and unreservedly permit the stockpiling of waste sulphur. Large scale electric energy production from coal can without a doubt be made to be as clean as that from natural gas. The current technology for that is to store waste sulphur produced from coal-fired power plants in the form of relatively inert gypsum (much like the gypsum pile at the Agrium Fertilizer Plant south of Redwater).

5. The regulatory process is underway, as regulatory permitting is critical for early implementation of the first phase. The Company expects timely issuance of the required permits.

Comment by folc.ca : Whatever it may mean that the “regulatory process is underway,” that process has not yet progressed to the point where any of the residents who are concerned parties in the vicinity of the proposed power plant have been formally notified of any hearings or other aspects of the required “regulatory process” and environmental reviews.

6. The second phase of the project will use petroleum coke and oilfield waste, which are both available in the nearby area, to create syngas using the Alter NRG proprietary gasification system.

Comment by folc.ca : Neither that statement nor anything else in the Alter NRG news release mentions that petroleum coke and oilfield waste contain potentially very large portions of sulphur and other pollutants that need to be stripped from either those primary fuel sources or from the syngas produced from them or from the flue gases of the Alter NRG power generating plant, so as to meet environmental pollution parameters dictated by Alberta Environment.

What will Alter NRG do with the pollutants, such as waste sulphur, it would produce at its proposed power generating plant to be located just a few hundred meters east of Bruderheim?

7. The Bruderheim facility will capture up to 90% of the CO(2) produced by the plasma gasifier (up to 1,700 tonnes per day) which is expected to be sold to oilfield producers in the nearby area for EOR.

Comment by folc.ca : What that means is that ten and more percent (how much more is left unspecified) of the CO2 produced will not be captured.

Still, the fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant, and that no one should worry about it, except people like Al Gore (who makes a good living from the brokering of carbon credits and from promoting the fears required to make that carbon credit brokering a viable enterprise).

However, we must worry about the pollutants that the Alter NRG news release does not mention at all. It is worrysome in the extreme that the Alter NRG news release does not mention any pollutants other than the ostensibly polluting but in reality environmentally-beneficial CO2.

_________________

Without a doubt, benign and even environmentally-beneficial CO2 is a major component of the emissions of the power generating plant proposed by Alter NRG.  Still, another potentially benign and major component of the proposed power plant’s effluents, water (not mentioned by Alter NRG), will in all likelihood have a very detrimental impact on the environment in the immediate vicinity of the proposed power plant.

Water is a major by-product of the combustion of hydrocarbons. The water vapour that would come out of the flue stacks of the proposed power plant would be invisible for varying distances from the flue stacks. However, the distance of that invisibility varies with the weather — humidity and temperature.

In extremely cold weather, the water vapour turns into a large cloud that, depending on local weather conditions, lingers in the local environment and adds to the often and increasingly severe fogs that have become more and more prevalent in and around Bruderheim.

Given that the fog to be produced by the proposed power plant will contain sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides, the fog will be acidic. Alter NRG stated nothing about that. That is extremely worrying and needs to be addressed in the environmental review process for the plant, of which, so far, we have heard absolutely nothing.

SULFUR COMPOUNDS (SOx)

The primary reason sulfur compounds, or SOx, are classified as a pollutant is because they react with water vapor (in the flue gas and atmosphere) to form sulfuric acid mist. Airborne sulfuric acid has been found in fog, smog, acid rain, and snow. Sulfuric acid has also been found in lakes, rivers, and soil. The acid is extremely corrosive and harmful to the environment….

Historically, SOx pollution has been controlled by either dispersion or reduction. Dispersion involves the utilization of a tall stack, which enables the release of pollutants high above the ground and over any surrounding buildings, mountains, or hills, in order to limit ground level SOx emissions. Today, dispersion alone is not enough to meet more stringent SOx emission requirements; reduction methods must also be employed….

Flue gas desulfurization systems are classified as either non-regenerable or regenerable. Non-regenerable FGD systems, the most common type, result in a waste product that requires proper disposal. Regenerable FGD converts the waste by-product into a marketable product, such as sulfur or sulfuric acid. SOx emission reductions of 90-95% can be achieved through FGD. Fuel desulfurization and FGD are primarily used for reducing SOx emissions for large utility boilers. Generally the technology cannot be cost justified on industrial boilers.

Emissions Cleaver Brooks Package Boiler Systems 2002 08 17

Note: Given the escalating world sulphur glut, converting “the waste into a marketable product” requires solutions that have not yet been found to be practical or viable. Still, it is wrong or only partially correct to state that “Generally the technology cannot be cost justified on industrial boilers.”

The controlling factor is not cost justification (that would make it a discretionary option) but environmental regulation and is therefore mandatory, not an option. –Walter

–Walter Schneider
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Related story:  Alter NRG powerplant east of Bruderheim put on ice (Oct, 22, 2008)

Posted in Explosions & Fires, Community & Industry, Alternative Energy Sources, Acid Rain, Nitrogen-Oxides, Hydrogen-Sulphide, Emission Incidents & Issues, Sulphur-Dioxide | Print | 1 Comment »

Common sense solution to energy crisis

June 30, 2008 by admin.

Newt Gingrich offers common sense solution to energy crisis. Watch his video.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | No Comments »

Alternative energy source for vehicles: wood chips.

June 25, 2008 by admin.

Gas prices spark interest in alternative energy source for vehicles: wood chips.

It’s very real, and there is nothing new about it. Many people my age and older will remember.

It’s not funny. The other day we had to buy a new washing machine. It cost us just under $500. After we got back to town, I filled up our truck. That cost me another $138. Mind you, with the amount of driving we can afford now, that’ll be good for a couple of years or more, as long as no one figures out how to get a siphon hose into the truck’s gas tank (or perhaps he may even take the whole truck again, as they did last year).

There is a solution to gas shortages and prohibitive gas prices that is about 70 years old that our neighbour (and even owners of buses) used, “der Holzvergaser” (”the wood-gasifier”). That required a steel container about the size and shape of a hot-water tank to be installed in the trunk of the car. It stood upright and projected through the lid of the trunk. It required a hole to be cut through the trunk lid — eh, come on, what’s a hole in the trunk lid when there is nothing that you can get or afford to put into your gas tank?

I don’t know what the gas mileage was per sack of wood chips. The neighbour’s car made a top speed of maybe 40 klicks and every few miles (for him it was about three miles) one had to stop to stoke the gasifier to keep the fire going that produced the smoke that kept the car going. Now and then the “gas” lines and a few traps had to be cleaned out to remove the creosote and tar. It stank like the dickens, but the car would run (as long as one had enough patience for the warm-up period; if I remember right, that was about a half hour or more). I guess a big advantage was that if one ran out of wood chips, it was always possible to top-off the tank as long as there was a fence nearby.

You think that I am joking? Not at all. Check this Mercedes truck, this Adler car, and here is a whole raft of wood-gasifiers installed on various more modern vehicles and a few older stationary engines (click on a given thumbnail image at the latter web page to see a full-blown photo). That was a hobby for the owners until just recently, when it became a necessity.

I never thought that things like that would become real again without having Hitler around to make them necessary. Although Hitler caused a general gas shortage and gas rationing to develop, even he didn’t have the gall to drive gas prices through the roof. For that to happen we needed a few people far more powerful than Hitler was.

So, let’s see. A barrel of syncrude costs about $16.50 to produce, make it about another five dollars to turn that into gasoline and another dollar to pump it into the fuel tank at the service station. Roughly calculated, that leaves $53.42 in “windfall profits” for the oil companies and only $75.92 in profit for the provincial and federal governments per barrel.

Der Holzvergaser gets to look better all the time. A tip: stock up on highway flares. One of them will light the wood gasifier without any effort at all. Don’t try to use matches. Don’t worry about driving slow and holding up traffic. There will be less and less traffic as prices go up.  That is the aim of the game, right?  Got to save that globe, and no price it too high for that, right?

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | 1 Comment »