The way its currently operating seems highly inefficient, but the point about biopower stations is that they aren’t introducing more carbon into the carbon cycle. These trees would have died eventually and returned to the carbon cycle naturally, they are just controlling the process for human power. Imagine if it was running off of a tree farm that was geographically next to the power plant, for instance.
It’s a matter of time scale. When burning wood from old trees, and planting new trees instead, and it take several decades for tree to grow old enough to compensate for what released on day 1. The emitted particules affect air quality, and emitted carbon will affect climate for decades. One of these effects is an increase in forest fire, and a burned tree cannot capture carbon.
Unfortunately we cannot wait decades to reduce emissions.
Similarly, burning fossil fuel isn’t introducing more carbon into the earth, it’ll eventually be absorbed by planctons, trees, etc and will make it back in the ground. That cycle is longer however, housands or million of years.
Sure of the first point I guess? I’m not some huge advocate of this technology, I’m just saying it’s not an apples to apples comparison where you can simply say its 4x worse.
On the second point, no. It takes 10s or 100s of millions of years for coal/oil to form. And most of the stuff we mine/drill for was formed from trees before bacteria/fungus evolved ways to break down cellulose, so dead trees just piled up. Its plausible that its never removed from the carbon cycle unless we are the ones to put it back where we got it from. It will certainly not happen on human time scales.
I think there’s some new initiatives for deeper drilling to make geothermal feasible in most areas now. Would be great because geothermal is probably the best energy source available to us.
The risks are pretty minimal, especially after the drilling & building is done. And in exchange you get basically unlimited free base load safe energy. Wind and solar still have issues with the materials used and their recycling, but I suppose that’s more of a problem for “other people”.
AFAIK geothermal is not renewable, in other words, all of the underground heat is just stored there from the formation of earth, but once consumed, it doesn’t regenerate.
Earth’s core’s heat is renewable, but only in geological timescales. Not in the next 1000 years. Same as oil. That’s why we don’t count it as renewable: It’s not renewable on a human timescale.
Fissile nuclear is clean enough. It has been smeared and misregulated through lobbying, propaganda, and donations to genuine believers among environmentalists by the fossil fuel industry. But even today uranium fuel cycle power plants produce less lifetime pollution per kWh than solar panels. Solar panel technology will improve, but so would nuclear with thorium or more technical improvements in reactor design.
Once solar panels don’t require rare earths anymore and once some new technology is developed to store electricity between peak production and peak consumption without massive pollution in quantities sufficient to meet everyone’s needs, it makes sense to phase out fission. But we’re still pretty far from that.
No its not and it uses shit loads of water that aren’t available at all times. Its not good enough to help, we shouldn’t decommission the already existing ones (if safe), but focus on stuff that is faster to scale up, like solar and wind (and maybe geothermal).
Oh and modern solar panels don’t require rare earths:
So don’t build your nuclear reactors in a place that doesn’t have shit tons of water?
Solar and wind can’t handle peak consumption without obscene amounts of heavily polluting storage. They should definitely get the majority of the attention and budget, but nuclear is still important and will still be faster to scale up faster in many
specific locations. Get as much solar in the subtropics and tropics as possible, get wind in windy locations, get geothermal and tidal where that is viable, but get nuclear in places with plenty of water that are further than 45 degrees/5000 km from the equator in areas with little wind, and for peak consumption in places without hydroelectric or other power that isn’t best to keep at the max 24/7, and for quick response to fluctuations in wind and solar in places where other regulators aren’t available.
The articles you link are about experimental or niche tech, expensive or inefficient or both. Rare earths are still used in pretty much all solar panels that are actually being built. They’re also not the only form of pollution from solar panel manufacturing, transportation, installation, and recycling/disposal.
Clean energy can only be wind water solar or a yet to be invented source like fusion
Clean energy can come from many things, but not from burning stuff.
Hydropower, tide-powered water turbines, osmotic power, etc can be clean.
The way its currently operating seems highly inefficient, but the point about biopower stations is that they aren’t introducing more carbon into the carbon cycle. These trees would have died eventually and returned to the carbon cycle naturally, they are just controlling the process for human power. Imagine if it was running off of a tree farm that was geographically next to the power plant, for instance.
It’s a matter of time scale. When burning wood from old trees, and planting new trees instead, and it take several decades for tree to grow old enough to compensate for what released on day 1. The emitted particules affect air quality, and emitted carbon will affect climate for decades. One of these effects is an increase in forest fire, and a burned tree cannot capture carbon.
Unfortunately we cannot wait decades to reduce emissions.
Similarly, burning fossil fuel isn’t introducing more carbon into the earth, it’ll eventually be absorbed by planctons, trees, etc and will make it back in the ground. That cycle is longer however, housands or million of years.
Sure of the first point I guess? I’m not some huge advocate of this technology, I’m just saying it’s not an apples to apples comparison where you can simply say its 4x worse.
On the second point, no. It takes 10s or 100s of millions of years for coal/oil to form. And most of the stuff we mine/drill for was formed from trees before bacteria/fungus evolved ways to break down cellulose, so dead trees just piled up. Its plausible that its never removed from the carbon cycle unless we are the ones to put it back where we got it from. It will certainly not happen on human time scales.
hydro? geothermal?
Hydro is water. And geothermal is something i forgot, its however not really possible to use in most areas from what i know.
I think there’s some new initiatives for deeper drilling to make geothermal feasible in most areas now. Would be great because geothermal is probably the best energy source available to us.
I would argue wind and solar are, geothermal from deep drilling carries risks
The risks are pretty minimal, especially after the drilling & building is done. And in exchange you get basically unlimited free base load safe energy. Wind and solar still have issues with the materials used and their recycling, but I suppose that’s more of a problem for “other people”.
The problems of solar aren’t that big and Geothermal has Seismic problems from what i last heard
Also baseload is a outdated concept according to modern experts
AFAIK geothermal is not renewable, in other words, all of the underground heat is just stored there from the formation of earth, but once consumed, it doesn’t regenerate.
That’s why i’m not a big fan of geothermal.
That’s like saying the Earth’s core or the sun / solar is not renewable.
Earth’s core’s heat is renewable, but only in geological timescales. Not in the next 1000 years. Same as oil. That’s why we don’t count it as renewable: It’s not renewable on a human timescale.
It’s also not going to run out anytime soon.
Fissile nuclear is clean enough. It has been smeared and misregulated through lobbying, propaganda, and donations to genuine believers among environmentalists by the fossil fuel industry. But even today uranium fuel cycle power plants produce less lifetime pollution per kWh than solar panels. Solar panel technology will improve, but so would nuclear with thorium or more technical improvements in reactor design.
Once solar panels don’t require rare earths anymore and once some new technology is developed to store electricity between peak production and peak consumption without massive pollution in quantities sufficient to meet everyone’s needs, it makes sense to phase out fission. But we’re still pretty far from that.
No its not and it uses shit loads of water that aren’t available at all times. Its not good enough to help, we shouldn’t decommission the already existing ones (if safe), but focus on stuff that is faster to scale up, like solar and wind (and maybe geothermal).
Oh and modern solar panels don’t require rare earths:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/28/are-rare-earths-used-in-solar-panels/
https://interestingengineering.com/science/efficient-alloy-based-solar-panels-created-free-of-toxic-metals
I get the feeling that you are seriously illinformed about solar.
So don’t build your nuclear reactors in a place that doesn’t have shit tons of water?
Solar and wind can’t handle peak consumption without obscene amounts of heavily polluting storage. They should definitely get the majority of the attention and budget, but nuclear is still important and will still be faster to scale up faster in many specific locations. Get as much solar in the subtropics and tropics as possible, get wind in windy locations, get geothermal and tidal where that is viable, but get nuclear in places with plenty of water that are further than 45 degrees/5000 km from the equator in areas with little wind, and for peak consumption in places without hydroelectric or other power that isn’t best to keep at the max 24/7, and for quick response to fluctuations in wind and solar in places where other regulators aren’t available.
The articles you link are about experimental or niche tech, expensive or inefficient or both. Rare earths are still used in pretty much all solar panels that are actually being built. They’re also not the only form of pollution from solar panel manufacturing, transportation, installation, and recycling/disposal.
🤦