There are so many fallacies in this article.
First, the author doesn't consider solar as a major source which, oddly enough, has been the a major focus of Daniel Nocera's work. They say you could power the entire US with an area of Southwest desert roughly 94 miles long and 94 miles wide. I don't advocate building such a plant, but we can build smaller distributed systems across the country. We have more than enough roof space, particularly on the large flat commercial roofs to make much of the energy we need.They will say that the sun doesn't shine all the time. It may not be at one particular spot, but,it is shining elsewhere and we have a large interconnected grid. Storage and demand control technologies are improving to balance the load. Utility scale thermal plants are actually able to store the heat using various technologies and can provide power around the clock.
Let's go over the technologies the author did highlight:
Biomass:
We do not have to use land to primarily produce energy. We can use the land to produce food or other beneficial crops and use the waste from those crops to produce energy. Another promising biomass technology is capturing carbon dioxide from existing power plants and using it to feed algae which are then converted to fuel.
Wind:
While the author underestimated wind potential on land, he ignored offshore wind. Offshore is where we on the coast are likely to get our power someday and the resource is tremendous.
Hydro:
Future large scale hydro is likely to come from wave and tidal power. In this area, we should try to convert all the small dams we see every day to generate electricity. I see dams that were once used as mills, now just letting the water flow without capturing the potential energy.
Nuclear:
Nuclear should only be a transitional technology. For less than what we are paying in our electric bills to build the new reactors at Vogtle, we could be funding a feed in tariff to provide safer, cleaner energy. We have two reactors 50 miles from me at Plant Hatch of the same design as the Japanese reactors that melted down.
Finally,the world, particularly the US, is extremely energy inefficient. Building codes and product efficiency standards have improved dramatically over the years, but are not where they need to be. Lobbying by those who are afraid of change and those who benefit from the current wasteful practices prevent us from moving forward.
It is easy to cherry pick ideas from an old study to support the status quo, but I really don't understand why someone would want to when a future of clean low cost energy is something we can all look forward to.
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