DOE Energy Reports In: Yippeeeee!!
Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 11:20:24 PM PDT
This diary is going to be an outline of US energy generation.
All energy activists...meaning all you opinionated folks here on the Dailykos who think you know something about energy production and consumption and who want to follow up on this by actual political activity: listen up.
The US Department of Energy has issued their reports on electrical generation for the year 2006 after totaling up all the information from utilities, generators, operators and other sources. The issue this report every October. Additionally, they issue tons of other reports you all ought to read. We'll examine some of them here. One of these reports is once called Cost and Performance Characteristics of the New Central Station Electricity Generating Technologies. That's a mouthful. It ought to be. It's the DOE's projection of "Overnight costs" by on dollars-per-Kilowatt installed. Some FASCINATING numbers. This is a report that projects out into the future and is supposed to be a guide for how much it would cost to build a new nuke, wind, solar thermal, hydro or hamster powered electrical generating station.
All these numbers should be suspect on the grounds that the DOE is filled with "industry shills" "trolls" "fakers" and "corporate cronies of kleptomaniac capitalism". Oh, and "Republicans", don’t' want to forget them. Now that we got that out of the way, it should be noted that these reports are some of the only reports of their kind so everyone on both sides of the energy issue (gas vs coal, coal vs nuclear, solar vs hamster, etc) uses them to varying degrees depending if it adds to their arguments. Obviously.
Two reports, specifically, are not disputed. This one: Existing Capacity by Source and Planned Nameplate Capacity Additions from New Generators, by Energy Source.
So lets do this. One of the things to notice in the report that planned coal fired electrical generations is going UP. Big time. Between 2007 and 20011, 4-5 years, a total of 29698 MWs of new coal plants are coming online. That is 29 GWs for those who like the shorter numbers. This is approx. 33 plants depending on size. NONE of these plants are "clean coal" plants or IGCC or Carbon Sequestration. Why? Cuz it costs too much money to build them, that's why. Actually, they are 'clean coal' because the marketers like the term so it'll all be 'clean coal'. It would take only about 22 nuclear power plants built on current locations to eliminate these new coal plants. What a waste folks.
The rationalists would say, this is a dumb thing. As a rationalist myself, someone who believes in science and putting people before profits, I agree. The total amount of extra carbon and particulate and uranium and heavy metals that will now be spewed into the atmosphere is going to go up because we don't use nuclear power plants that spew nada into the air my and my children breathe (ok, 'child', I have only one). It is truly insane what US energy policy is.
More interesting items...There will about 5 times that amount of new natural gas plants, which also spew carbon and particulate, albeit at a much lower rate than coal, but at a fuel cost about 5 times as much. Well done. NG has so many uses but our policy is to burn it up.
We can see from the Existing Capacity by Energy Source report that in 2006 the name plate capacity for all coal plants was 335,830MWs or, for those that are counting: 336 GWs. This is "name plate capacity" not how much they actually generated from burning up dead dinosaurs and cypress trees. Nuclear capacity was 105 GWs and natural gas was 442 GWs. But...oddly, we all know that coal is 50% of the generation in the US so what gives? Why isn't gas the leading performer? Because gas fire plants are far less reliable that coal or the winner in reliability, nuclear. That's why. The plants break more often, and in some ways they are more complicated than 'regular' steam plants like coal or nuclear fired plants. Gas plants more and more are the combined cycle gas turbine kind which use big-ass jet engines to spin a generator, capturing the exhaust heat to make steam to spin another turbine that spins a generator. Having worked at one I can attest to the "coolness" factor of these puppies. But they are still every expensive to run, they break all the time and still pollute.
It would take about 360 nuclear power plants to replace the 442 GWs now produced by burning expensive polluting natural gas. Oh, yeah, "Renewables" nameplated out at 26 GWs. Yeah, right. So you know, "renewables" is defined by the DOE in the following manner:
Wood, black liquor, other wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind.
Everyone, bar none, hates this. They need to separate this out. It doesn't help anyone to throw solar thermal in with black liquor (whatever the hell that is) with wind with geothermal (which, actually, is not really renewable). BTW...is it just me or does "wood waste" and "sludge waste" sound 'clean' to you?
What is really, really, really interesting is the DOE's projection on renewables. They project a downward capacity increase over the next few years. From a high of 5 GWs last year to only 2 GWs this year, by 2011 it's down ½ GW of newly installed power. In other words, folks, it appears to be GOING AWAY. Now, to be fair, there is NO reading at all for nuclear because no COL applications have yet to be approved, even through though there appears to be close to 40 GWs of new nuclear planned down the road. But the DOE is correct, IMO, not use this number until the plants are actually approved and financed.
Lastly, on categorization. The DOE does not have categories like "Clean" and "Dirty". Or CO2 emitting or "Carbon free". Or "Amount of material used to create one actual KW of power". We can only hope for clarity down the road.
These reports are easy to read and fascinating. They show the obvious that we need more nuclear power and less of everything else. Of course that is this lefty atomic advocate's point of view.
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