Dan,
Thanks. This is the sort of information that is needed to lift the fog that
shrouds the discussions amongst environmentalists and energy providers. I
don't have time right now to study the reply by Jon Rosales in detail, but
will do so a bit later.
Chuck Vandergraaf
Pinawa, MB
> ----------
> From: Dan Eumurian[SMTP:cen09460@centurytel.net]
> Reply To: hope4you@centurytel.net
> Sent: Saturday July 22, 2000 12:52 PM
> To: Vandergraaf, Chuck
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu; hope4you@centurytel.net
> Subject: Re: End of Cheap Oil
>
> Vandergraaf, Chuck wrote:
> >
> > The link that Dan supplied is, unfortunately, not the type of
> information I
> > would be looking for. Rather than supplying a list of links to
> > environmental groups, what I would want to know, for alternatives, are
> > answer to, at least, the following questions: 1),what is the TOTAL cost
> to
> > the environment of your proposed alternative and 2), what fraction of
> the
> > TOTAL required demand can be met by your proposed alternative.
>
> Chuck, Glenn and list,
>
> I picked a link, conveyed the question, and received this reply. Hope it
> sheds some light.
>
> Dan Eumurian
> hope4you@CenturyTel.net
>
> Subject: Re: Total costs of solar energy
> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 21:54:45 -0400 (EDT)
> From: John Michael Byrne <jbbyrne@UDel.Edu>
> To: hope4you@centurytel.net
> CC: Jon R Rosales <jrosales@UDel.Edu>
>
> Dear Mr. Eumurian,
>
> Thank you for your inquiry. I would welcome the lyrics of "Use It Again,
> Sam!"
>
> I have tried below to answer the questions posed by your colleague. I
> have
> also copied one of our doctoral students, Jon Rosales, who is currently
> in
> Minnesota. He can elaborate on my comments. Please let me know if you
> find
> that responses, as they often do, generate more questions. Regards, John
> Byrne
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> John Byrne, Director Phone: (302) 831-8405
> Center for
> Energy & Environmental Policy FAX: (302) 831-3098
> University of Delaware E-mail: jbbyrne@strauss.udel.edu
> Newark, DE 19716-7301 USA Website: http://www.udel.edu/ceep
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Dan Eumurian wrote:
>
> > Dear Dr. Byrne:
> >
> > I am a music teacher, piano dealer/tuner, singer-songwriter-publisher
> > specializing in environmental songs among others,
>
> REPLY: I envy such a life. I played piano as a child and then forgot
> --my
> biggest regret.
>
> > and a member of the American Scientific Affiliation listserv. The ASA
> > is comprised of Christians in the sciences, theology and philosophy. I
> > hold an M.A. in theology.
> >
> > One of our ASA list members recently posed a series of questions on
> > energy costs. I found your website through a link from the website of
> > Joyce Johnson Rouse, an environmental singer and friend of mine. Would
> > you be so kind as to respond as you see fit to these questions, or to
> > steer me toward sources which might address them? I apologize for the
> > man's skeptical attitude.
>
> REPLY: No apology needed. As you well know, questioning is how we learn!
> >
> > "What are the costs, financial and environmental, of producing the
>
> > photovoltaic panels (including the energy required in production
> of
> > the silicon cells, handling and disposing of the wastes generated
> in
> > the production of the panels),
>
> REPLY: By conventional measures of cost, PV panels cost about $5 per
> peak
> Watt of electricity supplied. Throughout most of the US, this would be
> equivalent to $0.20 per kWh, compared to dirty coal plants which can
> produce electricity at $0.05 per kWh ... and warm the planet. As long as
> the latter is not a cost that we address (and currently we don't), dirty
> coal plants are more "economical."
>
> > how much real estate is required per MW generated,
>
> REPLY: I think that your colleague is getting at the fact that solar
> light
> is diffuse and needs a larger area to collect its energy than dirty
> coal,
> for example. But the real estate question has a couple of problems. If
> you
> consider the geology of fossil energy, then real estate must become a
> three-dimensional question. In which case, PV -- a 2-dimensional energy
> collector -- will require a lot less real estate than dirty coal. And if
> you consider that dirty coal degrades the "real estate," while PV does
> not
> (at least while it collects energy), you're probably more interested in
> PV
> than dirty coal from a "real estate cost" standpoint. But the bigger
> problem is that sensible use of PV (see below) would use as its "real
> estate" rooftops and wall surfaces, i.e., areas that already are in use.
> Thus, it should have litle in the way of real estate requirements.
>
>
> > what is the upkeep (how do you keep bird poop, dust and debris from the
> > surfaces of the solar panels and what are the risks in doing so, e.g.,
> > workers falling off the panels and being injured or killed),
>
> REPLY: Yes, like car windshields and home and office windows, you have
> to
> wash panels once or twice a year. I don't know how many workers fall off
> panels per year; I also don't know how many workers are injured while
> washing windshields and windows -- but PV maintenance is unlikely to add
> considerably to the statistic, since sensible use of the technology
> would
> mean co-maintenance of windows/windshields and panels.
>
> > what is the expected life of the panels,
>
> REPLY: Panels are now rated to last 25 years. Field experience suggests
> that this is about right.
>
> > how does one recycle
> > them or dispose of them (and what is the environmental impact), etc.
> >
> REPLY: Actually, there is already a vibrant recycling market. Because PV
> panels contain valuable processed silicon, companies sell the old panels
> to others who extract the silicon from them. One company in Delaware,
> AstroPower, actually makes panels from recycled cells.
>
> > Once I have these data, I'd want to know how much of the demand for
> > electricity would be supplied by these panels, whether they could be
> > used in urban areas or only in rural settings,
>
> REPLY: Your colleague asks excellent questions here. Indeed, these are
> the
> core issues. Let me begin with urban energy demand. By shifting the bulk
> of the costs of energy use to the natural environment and to future
> generations of humans and other species, the industrial era brought
> about
> its ally -- the cheap energy era. In this era, we demand a lot of
> energy.
> Indeed, the carbon released from energy combustion is now over 7 billion
> tons per year ... and rising. Please note that currently only 40% of the
> world's population -- the urban part -- have access to "reliable"
> commercial (i.e., you have to pay for it) energy services. As that
> number
> grows, we'll be releasing 2-3 times as much carbon as now. How much is 7
> billion tons? More than the tonnage of all steels and other major metals
> produced worldwide per year. It also is enough to change the chemistry
> of the atmosphere. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up I
> couldn't imagine that human beings could change the sky. So, we have an
> enormous demand for energy in urban areas, measured not only by its
> quantitative amount, but by its environmentally disruptive power.
>
> PV cannot supply that enormous energy demand. Nor should it.
>
> If PV is to make a difference -- ecologically, socially, technologically
> -- it should offer an alternative to the enormous energy demand of the
> cheap energy/industrial era. What is that alternative? To begin, PV
> should
> be used to cut energy demand in urban societies by collecting solar
> energy
> at the peak of energy demand -- hot summer days ... the same time when
> solar energy is at its greatest availability. In this role, PV reduces
> energy demand and the scale of energy systems. Instead of using
> conventioanl energy only during these peak periods, we would use PV to
> run
> the meter backward by supplying converted solar energy back into the
> grid.
> Note that our cheap energy era has resulted in energy demand during peak
> months that is almost twice as high as the average. The result is that
> we
> build our power plants to meet these peaks ... and 30-40% of the
> capacity
> of these plants (MW) sits idle, unused, for 80% of the year. With PV
> deployed on rooftops of urban buildings (what is called the solar
> shingle), we can cut our extravagant energy demand. Also, since these
> very
> large plants lose about 20% of their energy in transmission and
> distribution, rooftop PV allows us to reduce the transmission and
> distribution capacity of our energy systems. And we can then move away
> from large-scale plants that are hopelessly beyond democratic control.
> Currently, our cheap energy system requires experts to run it for us and
> they get very confused, even so! That's why we experience loss of power
> periodically; and why, probably for the computer you are using, you have
> purchased an uninterruptible power supply (a fancy way of saying
> batteries
> for energy when the lights and computers go out). When you use rooftop
> PV
> (which comes with battery storage to smooth out its supply) to cut peak
> demand and provide emergency power services, its economics are quite
> good.
> Indeed, we have published a stream of papers over the last 5 years
> showing
> that the savings in energy bills and the cancelled need to buy emergency
> power equipment equals the cost of PV at today's prices. That is, PV's
> economic benefits, measured in the (inaccurate) unit of cheap energy
> prices, pay for its current costs (capital and maintenance).
>
> This e-mail is getting VERY LONG, so I won't take you through how
> essentially the same function can be served by PV in urban transport.
>
> For rural needs, the role of PV is different. Please note that most
> people
> in the world do not have reliable access to electricity. Living in rural
> areas, families have no light at night except that provided by candles
> or
> kerosene lamps; no refrigeration for medicines; water pumps that require
> great human and animal exertion to work. We have worked for 7 years on
> the
> high plain of Inner Mongolia in China to learn about the needs of rural
> people. It's been an amazing lesson. Unlike urbanites, rural people do
> not
> live life by the motto of more is better. Balancing demand with nature's
> supply is a fundamental idea applied in every aspect of life. Working
> with
> rural communities in one of the most beautiful parts of our planet, we
> have tried to design very small wind-PV systems that can provide about
> 30
> kWh per month. This would mean lighting at night for community education
> -- people are busy during the day with farm and animal chores;
> refrigerated medicines so that animals live -- and women and children
> eat
> (when meat is scarce, children and women are often the last to eat in
> the
> countryside); improved water pumping for better yielding fields,
> healthier
> animals and healthier people. For comparison, urbanites use about 2,000
> kWh for non-transport energy. Demand is amply served in the rural areas
> by
> very modest wind and PV systems. Indeed, you need only a 400 W wind
> turbine and 50 W of PV (not much real estate -- a few square feet!) to
> change lives and livelihoods in Inner Mongolia. And cost? If you compare
> the cost of running a small diesel generator to serve rural needs -- and
> include the expenses of transporting the fuel and travelling back and
> forth to rural towns to get parts and to have maintenance work done on
> these small generators -- the wind-PV system we learned how to design
> from
> rural families costs about one-half that of a diesel generator per kWh.
>
>
> > and under what weather and climatic conditions they can be used. For
> example, in > Yellowknife, NWT, or Fairbanks, AK, solar panels are not
> much help in the winter!
> > Even along the west coast of BC, there are often long periods of rain.
>
> REPLY: The wonderful thing about renewable energy is that it is
> available
> EVERYWHERE. While solar energy may not be abundant in Yellowknife, wind
> (harvested by very small wind machines -- you can buy the 400 W machines
> from factories in China -- they have over 60,000 sold across western
> China; no US or Canadian company makes such small wind machines) is
> abundant; and the region has geothermal, small hydro (not the big stuff
> that destroy rivers and communities), and a host of other options. Of
> course, I presume that we are not trying to build a New York City in
> Yellowknife -- hopefully, we can leave some real estate for other
> species.
>
> >
> > The same calculations need to be done for wind power, biomass,
> etc.
> > Only then can we determine if these alternatives are economically and
> > environmentally viable. Yes, I know that environmentalists will point
> > at government incentives to oil companies and the displacement of
> > aboriginals due to hydro-related flooding, but these costs can be
> > quantified. I also am aware that we can do a lot by using passive
> > solar heating, increase insulation, and plant trees to decrease a
> dependence
> > on air conditioning. However, even the cost of increased insulation
> needs
> > to be factored into the equation and the costs and risks of the disposal
> > or recycling of insulation material must be taken into consideration."
>
> REPLY: Quite true. We should also factor in the costs of a warmer
> planet,
> a less biodiverse planet, and a less democratic and less equitable
> planet
> if we leave things as they are.
> >
> > This e-mail is already long, so I will simply offer to send you the
> > lyrics to my recycling song "Use It Again, Sam," from my cassette
> > "Challenges: We Need Each Other," at no cost or obligation, if you might
> > be interested. Thank you in advance for your kind consideration.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Dan Eumurian
> > 1634 Barlow St.
> > La Crosse, WI 54601
> > (608) 788-8637
> > hope4you@CenturyTel.net
>
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