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Originally Posted by sendler
"Renewables" including hydro (which has topped out decades ago and no one will let us build anymore) for ELECTRICITY production.
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The words renewable electricity and the word energy are commonly erroneously conflated. Multiply electricity production 5x to get it's proportion of energy. The fact that big hydro is actually (foolishly) being lobbied to tear down rather than increase also makes lumping it into the word "renewables" misleading when the inference is that someone is referencing wind and solar build out.
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The PROPOSED data on the new 12 MW wind turbine is vaporware. We must wait and see what the actual output over a year is.
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Pollyanna optimism of wind and solar replacing all energy along with a complete electrification retrofit of all systems breeds complacency to undertake the real societal changes that are required for a controlled step back down toward sustainable levels.
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Renewable is a term used freely since 1974 when the Arab Oil Embargo hit.I use it since it's been in the public domain since then.
I don't have any control over what language the US Department of Energy uses.They use renewable to encompass geothermal,solar,hydro,biomass,and wind.
For 2017,the US produced 87.64-quads.
Renewables were 11.14-quads.That's 12.71% of the total.
We had to buy 23.70-quads of foreign energy to make up our shortfall to satisfy Barbie and Ken's eleven trips to town per day in their Mattelmobile,uninsulated house,and running their incandescent light bulbs 24-7-365.
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Would you like to flesh out your comment about 5X to get the proportion?
I'm not acquainted with that metric.
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Is there an explanation for tearing down hydro? There's no discussion about it in the media,or articles about US energy policy addressing it.Any info would be welcome.
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Since 'renewable' is the term some love to hate,I use it when it's used in formal discourse by those intimately familiar with it.
Hydro is part of the official mix,and until it's gone,it should be included in all discussions about renewable.EIA uses it.I'll share that.
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As to the GE turbine.They built it,perhaps they're the experts on it's performance.Wind surveys have been conducted long before the 1970s,for the entire US.Direction,amplitude,frequency,duration,spatial distribution,have been catalogued and archived.I suspect that GE has a pretty good statistical confidence of their products performance.
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For vaporware,look to the 3-nuclear plants recently abandoned after cost and timescale overruns.The smartest people on Earth couldn't make those happen.
GE will sell you a turbine 'today.'
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I'll go with Pollyanna.A creation of Walt Disney,who's corporate-owned television networks,today, advertise renewable energy on a daily basis.
The Republicans imply that there's no problem satisfying demand with renewables.They're the smartest people in the room,yes?.It's just that their client's campaign contribution golden goose,and golden parachutes are threatened by disruptive technology.
Nobel Prize-winning economist,Kenneth J. Arrow's endogenous growth theory may win out over the doom and gloom your economist favorites promote.
Arrow said that he learned that economics,as a 'science', was no guarantee of exactness.He was one pot that was authorized to call the kettle black.