Posted By docjenser on 10 Aug 2017 04:12 PM
There is one important factor you forget.
What for example was the monetary ROI (or payback) of putting a catalytic converter in each car? It actually made cars more expensive, and cost infrastructure investment, and the cars got less efficient.
And where would we be today without it?
If someone drives by a wind farm and see the turbines, feel privileged, there are parts of the world where you cannot see further than 500ft.

China and India are not most environmentally conscious, but their economy gets so negatively impacted, that it is cheaper to with renewables than continuing as they do. It is like Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. Imagine they would not have gotten their emissions under control. Plus it gives them a nice economic boost.

With both China & India there are multiple factors driving them toward home-grown renewables, air & water pollution being just one of them. In both countries just the raw demand growth for electricity is a driver- renewables can go up more quickly than fossil burners & nukes, and they don't have fuel or cooling water requirements. In India even some of the existing thermal power plants get curtailed seasonally due to constrained supplies of cooling water, and the ONLY way to get around that is with water-free generation such as wind & solar.

In both countries there is also a non-trivial international trade balance issue with fossil burners- they can't dig up coal as fast as they are burning it now and have to spend hard currency reserves importing from the Indonesia, Australia, and the US. If they continue to build more coal the drain rated on the national currency reserves increases.

China may be curtailing SOME existing coal burners as more renewables come on line for air quality reasons, but that's not the case in India. New Delhi has the distinction of having the worst urban air in the world, but the growth rate in electricity demand, and the less autocratic economy hasn't allowed them to simply cut back. But they are developing renewables at breakneck speed, and as more gets built locally and the transmission grid capacity expands to allow more wind & solar power import from southern India to the northern cities that may eventually come to pass on the raw economics of cheap wind, cheap solar.

India has also taken the policy step of banning the sale of internal combustion engines for transportation by 2030, which will also dramatically improve urban air quality. (Cars & trucks there to not have US or European type emission standards, and are a large fraction of the urban smog, as well as the huge fleet of rickshaws & 2-wheelers.) Electrifying the transportation fleet will also save a HUGE amount on money leaving the country to pay for oil as more & more Indians start driving. There is already a rapidly growing EV business in India for 2 & 3 wheelers, (hopefully all of those oil-puking rickshaws will go away WELL before 2030), but the full-on electric car & truck business is still creeping along, due to the much higher initial cost still unaffordable compared to a gas or diesel version. As nail-biting as Modi's Hindu Nationalist regime may be in some respects, under minister Piyush Goyal's guidance they seem to be on the right policy path regarding grid, energy & transportation growth.

Posted By docjenser on 10 Aug 2017 04:12 PM
feel privileged, there are parts of the world where you cannot see further than 500ft.

It is so flat here you can see your dog running away for three days. But it is going to get to where you can't see 500' everywhere in the world if they keep putting up more of those wind turbines. I agree we need to reduce emissions. But there always seems to be a catch. We always seem to find out later that what we thought was a good way to reduce emissions, has negative side effects that outweigh the benefits. Until they have been out long enough to get some real science on the environment impacts of wind turbines, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. My guess is the overall carbon footprint of mining, manufacturing, transporting, and maintaining a wind turbine will be more than it would save by not actually burning fossil fuel.

Posted By Valveman on 10 Aug 2017 06:50 PM

Posted By docjenser on 10 Aug 2017 04:12 PM
feel privileged, there are parts of the world where you cannot see further than 500ft.

It is so flat here you can see your dog running away for three days. But it is going to get to where you can't see 500' everywhere in the world if they keep putting up more of those wind turbines. I agree we need to reduce emissions. But there always seems to be a catch. We always seem to find out later that what we thought was a good way to reduce emissions, has negative side effects that outweigh the benefits. Until they have been out long enough to get some real science on the environment impacts of wind turbines, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. My guess is the overall carbon footprint of mining, manufacturing, transporting, and maintaining a wind turbine will be more than it would save by not actually burning fossil fuel.

Again, don't guess, do the math, or find credible sources of those who have done the math.

Carbon-accounting of renewables is heavily scrutinized by promoters & detractors of the technology alike, and utility scale wind is hands-down a net win from an environmental point of view.

For example, take it from a pro-nuclear carbon accounting analysis (See Table 2, p6, and the graphs on subsequent pages):

http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf

As of 2011 when that document was assembled the full lifecycle carbon footprint of for wind power was comparable to that of hydroelectric power. But since that time just the incremental improvements in capacity factor make new-wind effectively 10-25% lower carb than wind power built in 2011.

Posted By Valveman on 10 Aug 2017 06:50 PM

Posted By docjenser on 10 Aug 2017 04:12 PM
feel privileged, there are parts of the world where you cannot see further than 500ft.

It is so flat here you can see your dog running away for three days. But it is going to get to where you can't see 500' everywhere in the world if they keep putting up more of those wind turbines. I agree we need to reduce emissions. But there always seems to be a catch. We always seem to find out later that what we thought was a good way to reduce emissions, has negative side effects that outweigh the benefits. Until they have been out long enough to get some real science on the environment impacts of wind turbines, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. My guess is the overall carbon footprint of mining, manufacturing, transporting, and maintaining a wind turbine will be more than it would save by not actually burning fossil fuel.

I might look at many windmills, but I can still breath the air ...Maybe I have been to many times to Beijing and New Delhi.... And I hope you realize that fossil fuel do not show up without any carbon footprint at your house door or local gustation, but needs to be extracted, refined, transported, and the infrastructure needs to be maintained.

Well lets just backup to the root cause of the problem. Yes humans are destroying the planet. We do things that cause way too many emissions of lots of things. But we are also eating all the food, have already deforested most of the planet, contaminated and used up all the fresh water, ect, ect. Until people admit that there are just too many humans period, they are not really willing to solve the actual problem. Any discussions about CO2 emissions, water contamination, food supply, etc, without first addressing over-population is a waste of time. But oh boy am I going to get blasted for even mentioning this. I am not talking about killing off any humans, just stop having so many babies. We can reduce the number of humans on this planet by just not reproducing faster than we are dying off. Instead we keep paying people to have more babies, helping those who already have more children than they can afford or take care of, and do many other things to encourage people to reproduce like rabbits. Religious people want larger congregations, government wants more tax payers, corporations want more customers. All of which is fueled by population growth. Even mentioning that we should reduce the population can get you shot from many different directions. But those who won't admit humans are a parasite that have completely infested the earth and will most certainly destroy it simply by over-population, don't really want to solve the problems, they just want to profit from the continued destruction of the earth. Wind energy companies like most other corporations are fueled by population growth, and population growth is the real problem, not just CO2 emissions. 7B people is already more than the earth can accommodate. Just wait until there are 50B, then tell me solar, wind, or any renewable energy will solve the problem. Yeah look at Beijing or New Delhi, and think how it is going to be in a few short years when the entire world looks like that. If we don't do something to reduce the population, mother nature will do it for us, and it won't be pretty. Now blast away all you people who want to keep jousting at windmills (literally).

Most developed economies (including the US) are reproducing at less than population-replacement rates. The US is only staying steady (or sometimes growing) in population due to immigration. Japan's population is projected to decline sharply in the next 50 years.

One of the things that is most effective at bringing in population growth in the developing world is the arrival of electricity, and providing education for women & girls. (Electric lights gives them something better to do at night- such as get an education.)

Beijing's air pollution problems have peaked and are beginning to recede, primarily due to curtailment of coal power as more renewables come on line. Chinese policy driving the electrification of the transportation sector will accelerate that, just as Indian energy policy will in New Delhi.

Now that PV + batteries are cheaper than large thermal generators + grid, the nascent developing world can electrify more quickly and cheaply with small micro grids. As EVs become cheaper than internal combustion cars in the course of the next decade, there won't be any new Beijings or New Delhis in Africa other than those that already exist. Lagos (in oil-producing) Nigeria currently has pretty horrific air pollution, primarily from internal combustion engine emissions, made worse by a national policy of subsidizing gasoline & diesel. Outside of subsidized liquid fuel transport countries electric vehicles will soon be cheaper than internal combustion versions (they already are on a full lifecycle basis.)

The transition to electric transport is closer in time than most people think. Stanford University's Tony Seba likens it to the speed at which cars displaced horses for urban transport in less than a decade a bit over a century ago. But this time around it's a little bit in stealth mode, since EVs don't look dramatically different from internal combustion cars. The lifecycle economics of EVs already favors electric over internal combustion on maintenance & per-mile marginal operating costs, even when factoring in the higher up-front cost. But the learning curve of batteries is steep, and even accelerating. In a decade or less even the initial cost numbers will be comparable or lower for EVs. Analysts within car companies see it as tough going on making money on EVs in the next 5 years, but smooth sailing (and higher gross margins) thereafter, even as the cars get cheaper.

Posted By Dana1 on 11 Aug 2017 03:55 PM
One of the things that is most effective at bringing in population growth in the developing world is the arrival of electricity, and providing education for women & girls. (Electric lights gives them something better to do at night- such as get an education.)

Now that is something I agree with. Educated people reproduce less. And if battery technology continues to increase, I can see where PV could be could be a game changer. But there are lot of moving parts to wear out on a wind turbine, among other problems, so I still have my doubts about those.

Looks like Dandelion might actually survive (at least for awhile longer), having sold 70 geothermal systems in under a year of operation! They have gotten some second round funding! See:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/dandelion-raises-4-5-million-in-latest-funding-round#gs.fWo_o8I