Alternet reports
According to the latest Energy Infrastructure Update [PDF] from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, solar and wind energy constituted more than half of the new generating capacity in the country for the first half of 2014. Solar and wind energy combined for 1.83 gigawatts (GW) of the total 3.53 GW installed from January to June.
This despite the fact that Congress let tax credits for renewable energy expire in 2012.
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Half of All New Energy Capacity in the US This Year is Renewable
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:49AM
What really should have been the focus of this article was the abysmal number of 3.53GW. Greenies want green power but not in their back yard. And not where any animal at all will be inconvenienced or upset by having to look at a power plant. Which effectively rules out everywhere. But try to build a thorium power plant that's an assload greener and safer to wildlife than any officially green power and they scream how wonderful green power is like they're shitting hedgehogs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:28AM
broken record "im so smart, theyre so dumb" heard it all before...
(Score: 0, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:32AM
Maybe listen the next time you hear it then and it will be said to you less often.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:16AM
Maybe listen the next time you hear it then and it will be said to you less often.
"im so smart, youre so dumb" man, you really are a broken record...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:41AM
This. Germany's wind capacity alone increased by more than the total new energy capacity for the US. Germany is industrialized, but far smaller, than the US.
As for thorium, there's still R&D to be done before it's a viable option; the Indians are very, very close to it, though, and the Chinese are working on it. The US, inventor of atomic energy and photovoltaic cells, is sucking hard on the coal/natgas exhaust pipe because of NIMBY and fear.
The overall takeaway seems to be that the US is underinvesting in gross new generation capacity, in diversified (i.e. "green") capacity, and in R&D for future needs. I wish to god that people would discuss this in terms of capacity, needs, and economics rather than "green" and whatever new term appeals to one side of the political spectrum only; there's a pressing economic need for new generation from diverse sources, and it's getting buried in the political bullshit. The hippies are going to drag us into the third world not because they're wrong (we do need cleaner energy) but because they don't do anything except piss off the anti-hippies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:24AM
> The hippies are going to drag us into the third world ...
> because they don't do anything except piss off the anti-hippies.
Considering that the set of "anti-hippies" significantly overlaps the set of "champions of personal responsibility" it seems incongruous to blame the "hippies." Do people now get a pass because they have a sincere and deeply held dislike of some other group?
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:43PM
Your contention is that economy is more important than environment. You couldn't be more wrong.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:17PM
Yeah, yeah, but I'm sure Germany has lots more wind than the US!
Yes, this is a reference to http://climatecrocks.com/2013/02/07/fox-news-germany-has-lots-more-sun-than-the-us/
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:46AM
Greenies want green power but not in their back yard
I'm a Greenie and I want it on rooftops. EVERYBODY'S rooftop.
For starters, that doesn't use up any extra real estate and doesn't impact any more wildlife habitats.
A third of the USA[1] could -easily- supply all its energy needs from sunlight using current technology.
If our cesspool of a government would stop subsidizing dirty energy and direct that cash toward clean energy, we'd have it licked in no time.
...and there are self-supplying solar communities in Canada and Germany (above USA latitudes), so it's do-able in all the other parts of the USA too.
Alaska? Don't know. It's a big place.
.
a thorium power plant
- Unproven technology.
- Produces waste--dangerous waste.
- Takes a decade to build a nuke plant. Takes multiple decades to decommission too.
(A neighborhood can get solarized in a week.)
.
The future of energy is diverse, distributed, and renewable.
Get used to it.
[1] That third is also the place where everybody has been moving to for the last 40 years.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:30PM
You are both wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:49PM
Fixed that for you.
(Score: 1) by dcollins on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:19AM
"But try to build a thorium power plant that's an assload greener and safer to wildlife..."
Of course, there's the issue that thorium power plants are fictional (i.e., do not exist anywhere in the world). Other than that, solid argument.
(Score: 2) by keplr on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:30AM
And remember that the government subsidizes the security of nuke plants, and stewards the uneconomical parts of the fuel cycle. If they had to fully pay for their own security forces and waste disposal nuclear power would be a lot less competitive compared to renewable sources.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:00AM
You forgot to mention the nuke industry don't pay for insurance either.
In fact, the gov't lets them off with a slap on the wrist every time they massively screw up yet again.
There is absolutely no cost for bad behavior.
If they had to buy insurance on the open market, that industry would have never gotten off the ground.
...but they do produce bomb material, so...
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:46PM
Only because people demand more security than is necessary, and demand that the waste be a million miles from any life form.
There's some recent reports showing that the stress from the fear of nuclear radiation has caused more harm to the people of Fukushima than the radiation itself. THAT is the biggest problem of nuclear energy -- the largely irrational fears. More people die falling off their roofs trying to install solar panels than have ever even been injured from nuclear power.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Thursday July 24 2014, @12:41PM
There's been a few thousand deaths from nuclear power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll [wikipedia.org]
How many have been from falling off a roof whilst installing solar panels?
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 24 2014, @01:28PM
100-150 per year in the US alone. And we don't have all that much solar deployed.
Nuclear: 0.04 deaths per TWh produced
Solar: 0.44 deaths per TWh produced
www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Worth keeping in mind too that the VAST majority of those thousands of nuclear deaths you're talking about are someone getting cancer years or even decades later. The solar deaths are all going to be pretty much immediate.
Also, most of those nuclear deaths were in the Soviet Union...where they did damn near EVERYTHING wrong in deploying nuke plants. Several listed on that Wiki page are medical or research accidents too. In the US, we lose more to solar in one year than we've EVER lost to nuclear...despite generating 790TWh/yr of nuclear compared to around 10TWh/yr of solar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @01:35PM
Unfortunately that source is unclear about how he made his estimate. Clearly roof falls is something that is in the stats, roof falls as a result of fixing or maintaining solar panels isn't.
Worth keeping in mind too that the VAST majority of those thousands of nuclear deaths you're talking about are someone getting cancer years or even decades later. The solar deaths are all going to be pretty much immediate.
From family experience, the immediate death being far preferable to the cancer one.
Several listed on that Wiki page are medical or research accidents too.
Sure, that's why I said thousands, instead of adding up every one on that page.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:25AM
> Of course, there's the issue that thorium power plants are fictional
> (i.e., do not exist anywhere in the world). Other than that, solid argument.
Well, I'll be! A smug internet know-it-all actually turns out to be a know-nothing?
That's a first!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:23PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_thorium-fueled_reactors [wikipedia.org]
Also there are a lot of ways to burn Th, resulting in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Scotsman_problem [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by keplr on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:23AM
I happen to be wearing my Green Party T-shirt today. We have the space in the USA to install acres of wind and solar plants where NO ONE will ever see them, other than the technicians who install and service the installation. And there'd be virtually no ecological impact, certainly much less than compared to coal.
Personally, I'd love to have a wind farm off in the distance near my home. They're majestic, beautiful, works of engineering. There's very little NIMBY syndrome with regard to wind and solar. It's a much bigger problem with nuclear. I have a nuke plant just a few miles from where I live. They're testing the warning sirens this week, which is the only time I ever think about it being there. When I do think about it, I'm thankful that it's not a coal plant, spewing pollution (including radiation) into the air. We used to have one of those, too. Air quality improved dramatically when it was decommissioned. People here still remember this, so my area is both environmentally conscious, and pro-nuclear.
It's a more complicated issue than you think.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @08:12AM
have a nuke plant just a few miles from where I live[...]I'm thankful that it's not a coal plant
Let me guess: You're not near San Onofre.
They "fixed" some steam generator tubes there.
The "fix" was supposed to last for 40 years.
The "fix" failed within 15 months. [allthingsnuclear.org]
The sociopaths at Edison asked the Public Utilities Commission if they could run this thing that they KNEW was defective at "reduced power".
Translation from sociopath: Let's see how hard we can push it before it blows up.
To get and keep a license to operate a nuke plant, a power company's entire board of directors and all executives should be required to live within 1 mile of the plant.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:28PM
"Personally, I'd love to have a wind farm off in the distance near my home. They're majestic, beautiful, works of engineering. There's very little NIMBY syndrome with regard to wind"
One proof that we do not have investigative journalists is no one researches the astroturf claims that people hate windmills. I suspect the few people who complain have ties to the coal industry or owe political favors.
Of course a problem with "it looks cool" is the only thing cooler looking than a windmill is a nuke plant.
Coal plants are merely filthy industrial sites.
Natgas peaking plants (at least the ones I've toured) are kind of in between.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:27PM
What really should have been the focus of this article was the abysmal number of 3.53GW.
On what basis is it "abysmal"? Is it more, or less than other 6 month periods? Do you even know?
Meanwhile demand has remained pretty constant since at least 1999, the ealiest year in the list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Greenies want green power but not in their back yard.
In my experience greenies want it on their roofs. If they own rather than rent the property and can afford the up-front investment. And I don't know many that don't like the sight of a wind-farm. Those people who you see on TV complaining about renewable power facilities are conservatives masquerading as conservationists. They aren't greens, and generally don't even claim to be.
But try to build a thorium power plant that's an assload greener
Transitioning away from fossil fuels probably does require nuclear plants, and they are greener than those fossil fuel plants. But they aren't greener than renewables. For a start thorium like uranium is a finite mined material, and thus by definition isn't renewable, which loses it green points right there. Even if you don't consider contamination risks.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:00AM
Well, mostly because <blockquote> is part of html whereas <quote> isn't. Fear not though. 14.08.01 release will have that complaint taken care of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:15AM
Now lets get the numbers that matters. Actually produced and consumed energy in joules. Oh and that solar and wind tend to vary which means some power network stability issues. Have fun ;)
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:27AM
Page 4 of the posted PDF: 1,161.72 Gigawatts total installed capacity. (4.1796e+12 Joules for the unit obsessed.)
About 6% of that is wind and solar. So an increase of 3.5GW is vanishingly small.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:55PM
Installed capacity doesn't tell how much of that can be used under real conditions. Comparison of power vs energy also fails because it's different things. That this source of power is small doesn't tell if it can be used as a majority base power.
The problem is that supply and demand in the power grid must be meet and power sources that fluctuates in power output must be compensated with other power sources that are easy to regulate. So it's more of a control system issue than a power-energy issue.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:03PM
But Kaszz, I was just answering your own question.
Actually produced and consumed energy
If I knew you were just asking so that you could reject answers, I would have sent you here: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/ [eia.gov]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:42AM
all new installed energy capacity on my roof this year is renewable.
-
srsly though, that's like misleading as hell.
so total capacity is 1 TerraWatt.
the total capacity grew by 3 promill since janauary 2014 (or 0.3 percent).
of that new growth, 1 promill was solar and wind combined. (or 0.1 per-cent)
wow not!
-
per-cent: .01
promill: 0.001
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:50PM
That is all.