Renewable Energy Industry Reacts to State of the Union

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47224

Proponents of the renewable energy industry quickly reacted to U.S. President George Bush's recent State of the Union Address, specifically those portions of his plans addressing solar and wind energy, cutting U.S. gas consumption 20 percent by 2017, raising the fuel standard for renewable fuels, and increasing battery research for hybrid cars.

"Curbing gasoline use by 20 percent over the next decade is a positive goal but it is not enough. It is time to pull out all of the stops and launch an intensive national effort to significantly reduce total energy use and greatly increase the share of energy coming from renewable sources." -- Ken Bossong, Coordinator, The Sustainable Energy Network

"These technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change," said President Bush.

Yet amid slight praise for broaching the topic of how to address climate change through the use of renewable energies, increased R&D for ethanol, and an RFS, many renewable energy advocates agree: it's not enough.

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[leftupnorth]

1. I don't think it will ever be enough

not until we're carbon neutral or actually sinking it out of the atmosphere.

[hankthecrank]

2. What do you think of this study

http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/02-028.shtml

Cost of the entire process is equivalent to about 20 cents per gallon of gasoline — a nominal cost when one considers the recent price fluctuations at gasoline pumps across the nation, Dubey said.

A typical extraction facility that could extract all current carbon dioxide emissions would require only an area of one square yard per person in the developed world. A facility of sufficient size could be located in arid regions, since discharged air that is deficient in carbon dioxide could have consequences on nearby plant life.

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It would seem to me that if we didn't want to start working on this, then we can just run the experiment of dumping extra carbon dioxide into the air some more.
Maybe the rats will like it, not sure even that plants will like it.

This was done 2002 so not sure it paned out.

We don't want to pay the cost of fixing the problem, we can just wait till the problem takes us out.

[GliderGuider]

3. It looks good...

...as long as you're prepared to process every single cubic metre of air on the entire planet, repeatedly.

Why do I think scalability would be a significant problem with this scheme?

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Alas, nothing is coming of it

Most of what is on Google is based on that series of studies, and the long observation that quicklime absorbs CO₂. It does not seem like there is much more happening than a few pilot studies -- a good start, but we need some real action on this problem, and soon.

I've also heard that trees can sink a lot of carbon, and don't have to be "recharged" like quicklime beds. How many trees would we have to plant? Y'know, 200 years ago, Iberia was almost entirely trees and prairie; today it's in the beginning of desertification.

The next step of the problem is figuring out how long it would take to slow down atmospheric CO₂ accumulation and then reduce it to pre-industrial levels of under 300 ppm. As it stands today, most climatologists think that there is about a 50-100 year lag involved.

I am not hopeful. I think we're going to have to ride out the Earth's first artificially-induced Heinrich Event (warm spike(s) followed by a 1000-2000 year long cold wave).

--p!