Part 3 of 3: Alternative Reality
This is part three of a three part series on alternative energy. Previously I wrote about alternative power sources and alternative fuels. In this article I take a look at alternatives that I’ve heard tossed around that won’t be able to break our dependence on oil.
So what are the magic bullets that are going to kill our dependence on oil? Just imagine: Cheap, renewable, green, safe, American energy. There are a bunch of people who will tell you it’s possible. Unfortunately, such dreams are just flights of fancy.
Hydroelectric Dams
I’m in love with dams. Really, I am. I “bah” at the green freaks who try to go on about fish not being able to swim up river and the loss of habitat. It’s clean, it’s renewable, it provides a reservoir of water in the event of severe drought, and they serve as great recreational areas. Dam it all, damn it!
So why don’t we? The United States is the fourth largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world. We’ve been building dams since 1895. With demand for energy so high, building dams is common sense.
Well, the geography of the area has to be just right to build a dam and hydro power has been such a great idea that we’ve dammed up pretty much every place we can find that is suitable for such projects.
If you’ll pardon the pun, we’re all tapped out.
Hydro power supplies 10% of American electricity, and we’ve built dams everywhere we can think of putting them. I’m all for building one or two more wherever we can squeeze them in, but we’re nowhere near close to having the capacity to solve our energy problem.
There is something we can do for our hydroelectric energy though. Most dams in the United States are over 50 years old and using the generators that were originally installed in them. By retrofitting old dams with modern power generation systems, we can extend the life and boost production of our existing hydro plants. The government can help by retrofitting the plants under it’s control and encouraging private sector dams to do the same.
Geothermal
Geothermal power offers another major contender for best power source ever invented. The way you get geothermal power is fairly straight forward, in theory. You drill a hole into the ground deep enough to reach the natural heat that is present under the surface of the earth, pump water into the hole, and when it comes out it’s hot enough to power steam turbine generators.
Sounds awesome in theory, but it’s not so easy in practice. The problem, like with so many other environmental approaches to energy, is that you have to find areas that are suitable for building geothermal plants. Areas that have hot spots closer to the surface (such as volcanoes, hot springs, and fault lines) aren’t things you can find digging around in your backyard. It takes intense geological searches to find suitable sites for geothermal sites that can take up to 15 years to bear fruit. Once a good location is found, holes have to be dug sometimes as much as 6 miles deep to exploit them, a feat which until recently wasn’t even possible.
The United States is the largest producer of geothermal energy in the world. It provides us will less than one half of one percent of our national electric needs. The largest geothermal plant in the world provides 750Mw of energy. To put that into perspective, that is half of the output of an average reactor and the largest nuclear power plant in the world provides 8,100 Mw of energy.
Geothermal power, I love it, but there’s just no chance it will solve all our problems. With that said, every little bit helps. The good news is the government has already done something to encourage the construction of new plants by granting geothermal plants access to tax credits that were previously only available for wind producers. There are currently 75 plants under construction in 12 states that are expected to double the geothermal energy production of the country.
If you’re counting, that means we’ll soon have just under 1% of our energy coming from clean, safe, geothermal sources.
Wave Power
Generating energy by using the cyclical nature of wave motion is a new thing. There are only two wave farms under construction, the larger of which will produce an estimated 12 Mw of energy. If you’ve been skimming through, that’s less than 1% of the production of the average nuclear reactor. While it has enormous potential (proof of concept rigs have been able to convert up to 90% of a wave’s energy into electricity) it also has significant issues to overcome before it becomes a major part of our energy policy.
The biggest problem comes from the ocean. Severe weather systems, salt water, boats, and even animals can damage the power generation apparatuses. Stronger designs are less efficient. Less efficiency means higher costs.
I have hope for wave power, but I get the feeling that it’s at least 10 years away from being even remotely viable. I am encouraged by the activity in the private market and the relatively low cost of the prototype models. Despite my cautious optimism, it will never save us from our dependency on oil.
As for what the government can do to help? I’m not sure just yet. As far as I am aware, it’s looking fairly viable without much help. We’ll have to wait and see if there is anything we can do to speed it up or if there are any policies we have which might be slowing it down.
Oil Shale
It’s not shale and it doesn’t have oil in it, but we call it oil shale. When heated to temperatures over 700 degrees this sedimentary rock liquefies into a wretched goop that can then be super heated into a gaseous state which can then be refined into usable hydrocarbons.
Naturally, heating something to such extreme temperatures requires massive amounts of energy. Repeat after me: It has to come from somewhere. The estimates on how much energy it takes to refine oil shale into usable oil vary wildly depending on the quality of the shale and the efficiency of the refining process. Those estimates say that it takes between seven and 130 barrels of oil worth of energy needed to get ten barrels from refining oil shale. That wasn’t a typo.
To put that into perspective, it would take several power plants that could individually take care of a city of 5 million people to produce one million barrels of oil a day – and that’s just to power the refinery. That doesn’t include the energy it takes to mine the deposits or take the oil to market once made. Note: The United States uses 20 times that amount.
There is a method currently proposed by Shell that could use as little as 3 barrels of oil for every 10 extracted. The method involves liquefying the shale in place and pumping it up using the same pumping technology that is used in regular oil drilling. The problem with this method is that liquefying the shale in place causes it to seep into the ground water resulting in not just oil contamination, but also lead, mercury and other extremely hazardous materials finding their way into our drinking water and food supply.
Speaking of water, for every barrel of oil pulled from oil shale, the process uses 3-5 gallons of water, about 2.5 of which are unrecoverable. With the location of the deposits being where it is, setting up a refinery on-site (or even near-site) would consume approximately 10% of the water in the Colorado River and set the region up for a potential social and economic crisis as people and industry struggled to get the water they needed to survive.
But the hazards to the environment don’t stop at drought conditions. To produce a million barrels of oil a day, the plant would have to produce 100 million tons of greenhouse gasses. Again, not a typo and again, we use 20 million barrels of oil a day.
I’m not a tree hugging hippie. There’s a difference between Green Peace’s definition of unacceptable pollution and my definition of unacceptable pollution. There’s bad and then there’s bad. This is “OH MY GOD WHAT THE #$*& WERE YOU THINKING?!” bad. This is China fog bad. This isn’t “climate change warning” bad, this is “you’re going to get cancer and die” bad.
Oh, and to top it off, there is a moratorium on oil shale. Republicans helped pass it. I support it. I don’t really care how callous you are when it comes to global warming and the environment. Oil shale is horrible for our environment. You can debate global warming. You can’t debate the serious health threats of contaminated air and ground water contamination.
I support the moratorium on oil shale production. The only two things that would make me reconsider on the subject are new technologies that solved the numerous problems with the method or war which cut off our oil supplies – and even then I would still be much more in favor of liquefied coal and ethanol.
A Few Parting Words
Our energy problems won’t be solved overnight. There are no perfect solutions and no free lunches. I encourage everyone to both think about alternative energy sources and to keep in mind the realities involved in bringing those sources to market.
The bottom line is that our energy is going to have to come from somewhere and unless we start making the compromises and the investments to solve our problem, we will remain addicted. We can do this, but we need both will and wisdom to make it happen.
