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from the my-solar-panels-are-covered-in-soot dept.
Ken_g6 writes:
Wired today reports on continued coal use around the world and efforts to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Today coal produces more than 40 percent of the world's electricity, a foundation of modern life. And that percentage is going up: In the past decade, coal added more to the global energy supply than any other source. Nowhere is the pre-eminence of coal more apparent than in the planet's fastest-growing, most populous region: Asia, especially China.
Many energy and climate researchers believe that CCS is vital to avoiding a climate catastrophe. Because it could allow the globe to keep burning its most abundant fuel source while drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot, it may be more important - though much less publicized - than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come. No less than Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist who was US secretary of energy until last year, has declared CCS essential. "I don't see how we go forward without it," he says.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects that solar power will be cost-competitive with other electricity sources in the US by 2033. So will we build more coal plants or tear them down?
(Score: 1) by atan on Thursday March 27 2014, @02:44PM
Fixed link: http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml [withouthotair.com]
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:43PM
Hmm, it's somewhat ambiguous there, it doesn't state whether what that 16kg of fossil fuels includes indirectly consumed energy for manufacturing and transport of consumed goods. Does that text go into that figure anywhere?
Also, from the next page:
"...no-one has yet demonstrated uranium-extraction from seawater on an industrial scale"
If no-one figures that technology out and industrial/transport energy use isn't included in the calculations, those uranium lifetime calculations are meaningless.
The figures he uses are crap too. The personal allowance calculations are also based on a planetary human population of 6 billion, not 7.1, so the actual figure for breeder reactors and ground uranium is more like 27.9khw/d per human and dropping on a daily basis. Let's not murky the waters further by uttering the words "energy poverty" either, this really isn't the place to open that can of worms.
I still can't find that article asserting the decades-long lifespan of the uranium supply given certain usage cases, it's bugging me now. I remember it was published on The Register a few years, but that's all. I think it may have been from a UK-only standpoint now I think about it, I'd love to run the figures by you. Kerr!