Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
there is not one real or proposed independent, freestanding solar or wind power plant. All of them require
backup—except that “backup” implies that solar and wind work most of the time. It's more accurate to say
that solar and wind are parasites that require a host.
Here's an analogy. Imagine you have a company of highly productive, efficient, reliable workers. Then
there is an initiative to bring in “renewable” workers, who will supposedly live forever, but they are ex-
pensive and you don't know when they'll show up. A document produced by them is not as valuable as
a document produced by someone else—because you don't know when theirs will arrive. A company can
handle a few such workers, but it can't be run by them.
I remember watching an interview of a doctor in Kenya who had to try to run his practice with renew-
able energy. His clinic was run on solar and could not produce enough electricity to keep both the lights
and the refrigerator on at all times, so he had to choose one or the other. When he tried switching on both,
an alarm sounded, signifying “out of power.” 22 Out of power is exactly the danger to the extent we try to
substitute solar and wind for fossil fuels.
Another Kenyan, James Shikwati of the Inter Region Economic Network, explains why he resents pro-
grams to encourage underdeveloped countries to use solar or wind.
The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy,
but for us we are still at the stage of survival. I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel in-
dustry, how a solar panel is going to power a railway network, it might work, maybe, to power a small
transistor radio. 23
Why do environmentalists focus so much on solar and wind, despite their intractable problems? The
traditional explanation is that they don't generate CO 2 —leaving aside the coal and oil needed to manufac-
ture them (you can't build a windmill with a windmill). But as we'll see later, there are other, much more
scalable forms of energy that don't generate CO 2 (hydroelectric and nuclear), which environmental leaders
oppose.
Regardless of one's views on the risks of fossil fuels, it is profoundly irresponsible to claim, as many
advocates of solar and wind do, that they are powering Germany, let alone supplying 50 percent of the
power. Energy is a life and death issue—it is not one where we can afford to be sloppy in our thinking and
seize upon statistics that seem to confirm our worldview.
It seems that there's more focus on getting energy directly from the sun, which is often considered “nat-
ural,” than there is on getting it in a way that will maximize human life. It is deeply irresponsible and
disturbing that environmental leaders are telling us to deprive ourselves of fossil fuels on the promise of
what can charitably be described as a highly speculative experiment, and can less charitably be described
as an ill-conceived, resource-wasting, perennial failure.
There is one much more reliable source of renewable energy that is endorsed by many environmental
leaders, though with some reluctance: biomass energy. For example, in order to meet renewability man-
dates, which usually exclude hydroelectric power, Germany and various other countries are turning to a
renewable biomass fuel from the past to make up for the fact that solar and wind scale so poorly: wood.
THE PROBLEMS WITH BIOMASS: PROCESSING AND SCALABILITY
 
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