In general, if you're an American, here's where your electricity comes from. (Pie Chart.)

[NNadir]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html

There seems to be a lot of confusion about this subject going on in WTMusics thread on electric cars.

From my perspective this profile is somewhat different than the mix that runs automobiles in terms of climate change gases.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. A big slice of coal pie. Mmmm...sooty.

But it causes so much gas.

[NNadir]

2. On the other hand, the combined gas free slices are more than a quarter of the pie.

There's little reason either that we couldn't elarge that fraction.

One must also remark on the amount of carbon that is used in transport of the fuels. As I understand it, tankers hauling crude oil from Saudi Arabia burn quite a bit of fuel.

As I see the electricity mix, very little comes from Saudi Arabia.

I am in favor of phasing out coal - which I think can be done fairly quickly.

Glass full/glass empty stuff.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. I'm actually encouraged to see that coal is only 50%. A factor of two is not out of reach.

It's not like it was a factor of 10.

What it would really take would be visionary leadership.
*SIGH*

[NNadir]

4. It is pretty straightforward to displace coal.

It is more problematic to displace natural gas, which is most often used for peak loading, although in some places, like California, it has been used for base load.

In two places, believe it or not, nuclear was displaced by natural gas, in Maine and in California, so this could have been avoided. I'm really not sure how much base load comes from natural gas.

One can always hope that renewables will displace natural gas. I'm not overly optimistic that it will, but we can always hope. Solar would be the best at this, since it is available during day light hours. But as it happens, even compared to the small fraction produced from renewables, solar is trivial.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I used to poo-poo the notion of biomethane, but ...

I'm starting to take it seriously. Part of the reason is that all that manure has to go somewhere, and it tends to produce loads of CH4 anyway. Apparently CA is already very deep into it. (I'm sorry, I'll stop now.)

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/10/biomethane_from.html
"California has particularly good reasons for using biomethane. The state is home to more than 1.7 million dairy cows, with a technically feasible potential for producing about 18 billion cubic feet of methane a year, equivalent to over 150 million gallons of gasoline."

(OTOH, that's less than 12 hr of gasoline consumption for the US as a whole.)

http://westernfarmpress.com/news/06-30-sweden-biomethane-fuels/
"In particular, Sweden has been a global leader in terms of converting biowaste, largely agricultural material and residues, into usable biomethane. This gas is then used to either generate electricity, residential heating, or as a transportation fuel. Roughly 50 percent of the methane used to power Sweden’s natural gas vehicles comes from biological sources.
***
More than 8,000 vehicles in Sweden are powered by a combination of natural gas and biomethane. The vehicles include transit buses, refuse trucks, and more than 10 different models of passenger cars. There are more than 25 biomethane production facilities in Sweden and 65 filling stations. The Swedish biomethane industry has been growing at an annual rate of about 20 percent over the last five years.

Sweden was motivated to develop its biomethane industry because it has no natural gas reserves, to more efficiently manage its waste, and to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Accord. Since biomethane is developed from methane sources that would normally release into the atmosphere, it’s considered one of the most climate friendly fuels. Methane is 21 times more reactive as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Sweden is currently meetings its objectives and schedule as outlined in the Kyoto accord."

Knowing that Denmark has for many years had more pigs than people, I figured the Danes would be very big on biomethane. Not only is that true, but digesters have been in use in Denmark and Germany perhaps longer than anywhere else. And check out this potentially interesting development in biofuels:
http://www.biofuels.dk/Maxifuels.htm
" The MaxiFuels project is constructed to solve the major barriers for bioethanol production from lignocellulosic materials by cost efficient conversion of the raw material, maximizing the amount of biofuels and minimizing the disposal of process water.

Efficient and optimized use of the raw materials with an environmentally friendly technology is the key to future success for the 2nd generation bioethanol production. Therefore the overall process outline for MaxiFuels has been defined to yield the maximum amount of biofuels per unit of raw material and to increase the process benefit by utilization of the residues for further energy conversion and by-product refining.

The main product is bioethanol - but the focus on production of other biofuels such as methane (from a biogas process), hydrogen (from xylose fermentation) and other valuable by-products from the parts of biomass not suitable for ethanol production add full value to the overall process benefit. This focus exploits an environmentally friendly way of producing bioethanol where recirculation and reuse of all streams produced in the process have been fully integrated. For example, reuse of the process water is possible with the integration of the biogas process. "

A shame we're having to wait on all the big innovations to filter our way from Yurp.

[NNadir]

13. I'll believe it when I see it.

One hears these biomethane things and I've been hearing them for years. When the Shoreham nuclear plant was cancelled where I lived, there was a lot of talk about the new program of burning landfill gas on Long Island. In fact, Long Island has actually begun doing that. But the talk on Long Island, ironically enough at Shoreham, is a new natural gas terminal.

Denmark is a joke. They have no plan to dispense with dangerous fossil fuels.

Sweden, I think, takes climate change seriously though. They have fully explored in consideerable detail (with Volvo) how to make dimethyl ether from wood.

Their electricity profile is one of the best in the world, since they use very little dangerous fossil fuels to produce electricity.

[Rindert]

22. Dimethyl ether as 'energy currency'

I feel that if we adopted DME as an 'energy currency', via diesel fuel and natural gas replacement, it would allow a wide variety of renewable hydrocarbon sources to be developed at the grass roots level. Perhaps this would allow our nations competitive and creative nature to be harnessed in finding a solution to global warming. Eg. we recently had a fire at a yard waste disposal facility here in Denver. We might have converted this yard waste to DME. Other possible sources: wood consumed in controlled burns conducted by the US Forestry Service, agricultural wastes, food industry wastes such as spent hops from beer making, grass mowed along road sides. Comments?

*International DME Assn: http://www.vs.ag/ida/

[NNadir]

23. I am without a doubt, a strong supporter of DME from biologically derived carbon.

Although I make some sarcastic comments about incinerators, I support DME produced from the reformation of garbage and other wastes.

I think that it may be feasible - depending on the price of energy - to actually reduce carbon dioxide to give DME via hydrogenation or possible electrochemical means. A great deal of work is being done on this.

I am not a fan of DME that is produced from coal or natural gas or any other dangerous fossil fuel, although I think that a scheme to phase out coal and natural gas while using separated carbon dioxide to produce motor fuels and stored fuels (as DME) is probably a good idea, at least in transition.

An electrochemical or equilibrium driven hydrogenation offers at least in theory a route to DME using atmospheric carbon dioxide. The driving energy for this reaction would come either from nuclear, wind, solar and from waste biomass.

These things are possible and deserve exploration.

[jpak]

7. Nonsense

Maine Yankee's operating license was to expire in 2012 - it would still be operating today if the owners had made the necessary repairs to the steam generators.

They decided this was too expensive and closed the plant abruptly in 1997.

Maine utilities owned only 38% of the plant (~342 MW).

Maine's two large (500 MW) gas-fired plants were built in response to the passage of state's electricity deregulation law and the need for power in southern New England - not Maine (which exports >40% of its electricity).

The decisions to close Maine Yankee and to build the two gas-fired plants were three **independent** decisions.

They had nothing to do with "displacing nuclear with natural gas".

Any assertions to the contrary are absolutely false.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Where did they get the lost electricity from?

:shrug:

--p!

[jpak]

16. Again, Maine was a net exporter of electricity

The "lost" electricity was replaced with in-state biomass and upgraded hydroelectric plants.

[Dogmudgeon]

21. Biomass? I doubt it.

I don't think there are any biomass power plants with an output of 50 MWe, let alone half of the 500 MWe that was lost.

I might be wrong, and the plant might indeed be in Maine, but it would be one of a very few, a sad state of affairs no matter which way you look at it. It would be nice if there were thousands of 50 megawatt biogas plants across North America, but there isn't even significant planned growth (signed contracts), let alone commercial designs.

Hydroelectric? That would be good, for a while at least. The older hydro plants have been getting silted up, so there is probably considerable room for improvement -- i.e., restoration of original capacity. But there are also environmental concerns about dredging silted dams.

Maine was a net exporter? Or is? I had heard that Maine has been hard-hit by rural poverty. Alt-energy or nuclear, a major power plant construction effort would alleviate a lot of that.

Nuclear energy isn't my a priori position. I am primarily concerned by the possibility of a huge base-electricity gap that leads to a frenzy of coal, shale oil, and tar sand mining. I don't think I have to keep harping on the damage that would cause. Maine, in that case, would only avoid having another Superfund site.

--p!

[NNadir]

10. Um, I wasn't talking about who owned the plant...

It has nothing to do with who owned the plant. They used to produce nuclear power in Maine and now they burn gas, lots of gas.

The plants that are physically in Maine stopped producing nuclear power and began burning dangerous fossil fuels.

Let me put it this way. Internal to the borders of Maine - that would be the parts of Maine that are inside Maine, i.e. the surface area of Maine - and let's hope we don't need a lesson in topology here because your math skills are not all that great - they now burn lots of natural gas that they didn't used to burn. If one uses units of energy - things like megawatt-hours - or joules or petajoules or exajoules, one finds that the generators that operate inside Maine are now, in large majority, fueled by fossil fuels, mostly natural gas. When the nuclear plant operated, this was not the case.

Once again, the data, not that you'll be able to deal with any better this time than in the last 10,000 times I posted it:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept04me.xls

Here's a fun fact from the EIA:

If built, the proposed Pleasant Point LNG project would be the highest-capacity LNG import terminal outside of the Gulf Coast region.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=ME

One wonders why Maine would even consider the largest gas terminal in New England. It doesn't sound like they have any plan to phase out dangerous fossil fuels or to stop dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere.

Aren't Mainers the world's experts, after all, on burning wood for electricity?

[jpak]

19. Um - Maine just passed a GHG reduction law and will cap then reduce emissions

http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Portal+News&id=39183&v=Article-2006

Southern New England, New York and New Jersey needs a large LNG terminal - Maine does not.

Furthermore, unless the Canadian government allows LNG tankers to transit their territorial waters, there will be no LNG terminal in Downeast Maine - and all other LNG site proposals on the Maine coast have been defeated by local voters or otherwise withdrawn.

New Jersey imports more fossil fuel generated electricity than Maine generates from all sources each year, and New Jersey plans to import large quantities of coal fired electricity from West Virginia in the near future.

And, New Jersey is fighting Delaware to build a *hugh* LNG terminal at Crown Point.

Looks like New Jersey (and not Maine) is in the market for mass quantities of dangerous fossil fuels...

[TheWraith]

15. Solar is impractical. Wind is a lot more efficient.

In terms of wattage output per installation, wind turbines have vastly more bang for the buck than solar panels. Of course you have times when wind isn't available, but the same is true for solar, and wind turbines can produce at any time, day or night, so if we do end up with an infrastructure that can soak up excess power, ala vehicle-to-grid, they'd be more effective.

[invader zim]

6. pie slices

So where exactly are solar and wind energy on that pie ??? They must be a pretty small slice indeed. So much for renewables saving the world.:shrug:

[jpak]

8. We can thank Ronald Reagan, Bush sr. and jr., and every GOP Senate and House majority leader

since 1980 for that.

And we can absolutely blame the GOP for the defeat of the National RPS in this year's energy bill too...

[NNadir]

11. How about the gas executive, Gerhard Schroeder?

Renewable energy is a failure worldwide.

[jpak]

18. No nuclear is a failure worldwide

More US nuclear plants were canceled than ever built (with $112 billion in stranded costs) and no new US nuclear plants have been ordered since 1973.

Sweden, Italy and Germany *rejected* nuclear power.

The UK privatized its nuclear industry and will not subsidize new nuclear plants.

The Chinese are building new coal plants on a weekly basis - nuclear power cannot compete with cheap chinese coal.

Failure....

[NNadir]

20. Um Swedien produced 45% of its electricity from nuclear in 2005.

Hallucinate much?

Germany more than 30%?

The Germans are building coal plants to replace their nuclear plants. It's international news.

Are you now announcing that renewables are going to stop Chinese coal?

[ramapo]

17. How about blaming the majority of Americans?

Bottom line is that RR, the Bushes, and the rest of them have done basically what America elected them to do. Many people might've been in denial when they pulled the lever but Reagan, et al were quite open about their intended direction.

Clinton didn't do so great either. Most Americans are delusional and/or apathetic. I don't see any big change coming, no matter which party wins in 2008.

[pinto]

12. I favor a multi pronged growth in the energy biz and conservation. Decrease coal,

off the top. Replace with natural gas, as necessary, as a first step. Decrease oil consumption off the top. Set stringent, yet doable CAFE standards for fuel efficiency. Support/increase solar technology/availability, especially in the Southwest (this seems to work best locally, on a per dwelling, building basis at present), support nuclear energy production with clear oversight, safeguards for waste treatment, invest in research for other developing energy production options.

Empower the federal government to have some coordinated oversight on all matters re: domestic energy production in light of national energy needs as well as conservation efforts in light of available supply and environmental trade offs.

(on edit) I didn't mention hydroelectric growth. As a southwesterner I have mixed feelings on this, as it entails more damning of our major waterways, runoff, though it is a clean energy source. It ought to be in the mix, though. The early Sierra lake system, developed by the Edison folks, iirc, and the brainchild of an engineer on horseback, no less - a step down series of water sources - may be a good model for a small footprint hydroelectric power generation.

[TheWraith]

14. Mine's a bit better than that. 23% nuke, 23% hydro, the rest mostly gas, with a little coal and oil.

New York State Electric & Gas. The nuclear power is from the Ginna reactor in Rochester, and the hydro is from the various plants in Niagara Falls. According to the state figures, average emissions for NYSEG customers are well below the state average.