"Green" energy. Not so green.

[ABMax24]

The whole Biomass industry in the US is backwards. Growing corn to make ethanol, clear-cutting forests to make wood chips and pellets to sell to Europe. It's one thing to use the waste from industry to make these products, doesn't make much sense to use virgin material to do it though.

We have a couple powerplants in town the use wood chips to make electricity, but both of them use waste wood chips, saw dust, bark etc to generate the electricity, which makes more sense than just burning it.

I think it's totally different though on a smaller scale though, people that harvest deadwood, or wood that needs to be cut down anyway and use it to heat their homes makes a lot more sense.

 

[maxwell]

i like the part where they add in the Tires to make the fire hotter LOL

 

[Luke The Drifter]

i like the part where they add in the Tires to make the fire hotter LOL

Those are clean burning, organic rubber tires. Nothing to worry about.

 

[catalac]

My take on the biomass was that ok to use up wood chips / chaff etc but cutting trees and burning as they showed and said was unsustainable long term in that If you created all the electricity required in the USA from trees it would deforest the country in one year. And second point was that emissions were far worse than natural gas and possibly coal. Green energy is code for how can we extract billions from government in subsidies that rolls straight into elites pockets and phony green orgs such a Koch’s / 350 / Bill Mckibben etc.

 

[RXN]

Sounds like he hit a nerve.

https://trib.al/rMpZDqw

 

[catalac]

Sounds like he hit a nerve.

https://trib.al/rMpZDqw

Global is such garbage too, used to enjoy their news. Climate expert Josh Fox described as “climate activist” f me that’s like hiring the ceo of Brp to give a review of the new axis.

 

[ABMax24]

I think the real irony here is the posts on this thread are calling out renewable energy because it funnels billions into the pockets of the elites. Yet those of us that work in the oil & gas industry defend our industry, yet we are just peons in the process of funneling billions into the pockets of the elites at the top of our food chain. But I guess we're okay with it because we all make a living from it.

Yes I know there are less subsidies for the oil and gas industry which makes a difference, but there are still some subsidies and tax breaks.

 

[catalac]

Think you missed the point green renewable energy isn’t cutting trees down burning them for “green” energy when natural gas is abundant and far cleaner. In one year if all the USA electricity came from biomass the entire country would be clear cut.

Bill McKibben and Al Gore are hypocrites and imo are quite different from successful oil and gas entrepreneurs. There is no irony in promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative to biomass.

 

[ABMax24]

Think you missed the point green renewable energy isn’t cutting trees down burning them for “green” energy when natural gas is abundant and far cleaner. In one year if all the USA electricity came from biomass the entire country would be clear cut.

Bill McKibben and Al Gore are hypocrites and imo are quite different from successful oil and gas entrepreneurs. There is no irony in promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative to biomass.

No I got the point of biomass, my post at the top of this page clarifies my view on that.

Natural gas is cleaner burning as to PM, NOX, and VOC emissions. But the fact remains that it is releasing carbon that has been stored in the earth for millions of years, biomass releases carbon that was stored from the atmosphere over the last few hundred years. But to say Biomass releases more carbon than natural gas or coal is misleading at best, when plants and trees die then rot the vast majority of the carbon in them returns to the atmosphere as they decompose, using biomass as fuel just speeds the process. But again I only agree with using waste products as a fuel source.

I'm also not going to argue the character of McKibben or Gore, I have no use for either of them. Biomass isn't the only renewable energy talked about in the film, and natural gas doesn't even compare to solar power in "cleanliness".

 

[Mike270412]

Carbon dioxide is plant food ,not pollution.

 

[Bogger]

I watched it last night an I'm glad it was Gibbs narrating as opposed to Moore. I think Moore is a genius storyteller, he can prove/disprove any point of view on any topic based on the inclusion or exclusion of information but I hate watching and listening to him. I think the biggest takeaway is that a lot of the money used to subsidize these "green" technologies is wasted based on unicorn & lollipop dreams. Solar is not clean - the production of panels carbon intensive and not environmentally friendly not to mention the fact that the land mass required to produce even a fraction of our energy needs is unimaginable. It is great for temporary power need like off grid camping or assisting with individual home or commercial power needs but it still needs to be backed up by a traditional power source. Why do you think campers, cabins and houses still come equipped with back up generators or ties to the grid. Solar will not practically run high draw appliances and applications. Then storage capacity is another issue all together.

The biomass thing - sure you could argue that the carbon release would have happened anyway through decomposition but when they are adding natural gas or shredded tires to increase the BTU levels it defeats the purpose.

The long and short of it is...… Our population growth and energy "needs" are non sustainable without the use of coal/oil/LNG not to mention the fact that the byproducts from those fossil fuel sources are required to produce other required goods and raw materials. When all the Coal plants in Alberta are shut down where are we going to get the fly-ash we need to meet our concrete production and roadbuilding needs?

I'm not willing to give up my V8 boat, 2 stroke sled, heated shop, V8 tuck, V6 sportscar...etc.stc….. I am part of the problem, I know this and I refuse to change this. Now consider all the 2nd & 3rd world countries who have lived in poverty for decades if not centuries who now have a chance to improve their standard of living and join the middle class, do you think that they will choose not to improve their own lifestyle for the sake of saving the earth???? not a fawking chance....

99% of the extreme environmentalists are 100% hypocrite. They are funded by big industry directly or indirectly, they drive cars, utilize all the modern conveniences and berate the very industries and companies that make the lifestyle they enjoy possible and ignore inconvenient truths just like the rest of us.

The human race will continue to survive, at times thrive, and consume everything we can from the planet to sustain the lifestyle we want ad the basic needs of life we require. At some point I'm sure it will be a natural disaster or multiple disasters of some sort that will do us in... Asteroid, earthquake, solar flare, volcano, 5G, virus etc. etc. Just think about what the world must have been like when the Rocky Mountains were formed, plates smashing and being thrust 1000's of feet into the air. The accompanying earthquakes and environmental changes would have been like nothing mankind has ever witnessed, eventually the west coast will fall into the pacific and the ensuing tsunami will wipe out everything from Indonesia to the East coast of Russia. It will be SO COOL...… and at that point none of this chit will matter

 

[ABMax24]

I watched it last night an I'm glad it was Gibbs narrating as opposed to Moore. I think Moore is a genius storyteller, he can prove/disprove any point of view on any topic based on the inclusion or exclusion of information but I hate watching and listening to him. I think the biggest takeaway is that a lot of the money used to subsidize these "green" technologies is wasted based on unicorn & lollipop dreams. Solar is not clean - the production of panels carbon intensive and not environmentally friendly not to mention the fact that the land mass required to produce even a fraction of our energy needs is unimaginable. It is great for temporary power need like off grid camping or assisting with individual home or commercial power needs but it still needs to be backed up by a traditional power source. Why do you think campers, cabins and houses still come equipped with back up generators or ties to the grid. Solar will not practically run high draw appliances and applications. Then storage capacity is another issue all together.

The biomass thing - sure you could argue that the carbon release would have happened anyway through decomposition but when they are adding natural gas or shredded tires to increase the BTU levels it defeats the purpose.

You make it sound like green energy are the only items that require materials to be mined from the earth to produce them. Everything we buy, and everything we own came from a mine, oil well, forest, field etc from somewhere. It is generally accepted that solar panels repay the energy used to make them in the first year of production, most panels have warranties to 25 years and are expected to last a lot longer than that. Many of the first solar panels that were installed in the 80's are still generating electricity today. The area of these projects also becomes much less of a concern if rooftop solar is used, most houses and commercial stores have enough roof area to generate all of their own electrical needs. There was also a study done in the US a few years ago that if all the land area used for oil and gas leases in the US was converted to solar power the nation could run entirely off solar with something like 2 times more energy than they need.

Storage is absolutely a huge issue though, lithium batteries are expensive to produce and aren't really expected to last much past the 15 year range right now, making the recycling of them critical. And better methods like pumped hydro-storage bring about another set of environmental concerns associated with them. But in places like Alberta we could easily add 2000 Megawatts of solar generation to our electrical grid without ill-effects, we already have fast-acting natural gas power plants to cope with the already existing daily and seasonal load changes. Solar would likely help to flatten out the load, as peak load always occurs in the province during daylight hours.

I've bolded the particular point of you post that needs to emphasized, the film picked and chose a lot of worst case scenarios to present. None of the biomass plants that I'm aware of in this area of the country burn tires or other garbage, and the natural gas use is a small fraction of the energy consumption for those that do burn it. Arguing that adding natural gas to the biomass defeats the purpose is like saying you don't need to burn gas in a sled as it will just run off the 2-stroke oil, the natural gas is a small fraction of the total BTU's. There are waste to energy plants in the Vancouver area but they burn garbage because of the lack of anywhere else to put it, making electricity is just a bi-product.

 

[Bogger]

I agree that everything we consume and manufacture must initially come from natural resources and as we have developed and our standard of living has evolved we have become dependant on the byproducts of fossil fuel energy production. Also Solar & Wind are the ones that claim to be environmentally friendly, and sure the end product may very well be but they purposely ignore the environmental and human rights impact on the production of their products. Yes most oil is produced in countries lacking environmental and human rights controls but THAT is the argument for Canadian fossil fuel energy production - Coal, Oil & Gas Ours is the most environmentally sustainable and ethically produced in the world.

As for the land mass required for oil & gas production vs. solar, I believe the difference is that with oil, gas & coal the majority of the footprint is mining which is eventually (or should be) reclaimed where as solar installations would need to remain on that footprint for perpetuity. I don't know if your numbers are correct and I don't have the time to do a bunch of research but in the film they kept throwing out the 400X number. You would need 400X the surface area to produce the same amount of energy, I have no issue with solar as a part of the system but lets not put it on a pedestal and ignore the impact if we are going to criticize the other processes - I have no use for Wind Turbines, everything is wrong with them from production to disposal to birds/bats and they are Fugly and the whoop whoop whoop is horrible.

 

[Cdnfireman]

You make it sound like green energy are the only items that require materials to be mined from the earth to produce them. Everything we buy, and everything we own came from a mine, oil well, forest, field etc from somewhere. It is generally accepted that solar panels repay the energy used to make them in the first year of production, most panels have warranties to 25 years and are expected to last a lot longer than that. Many of the first solar panels that were installed in the 80's are still generating electricity today. The area of these projects also becomes much less of a concern if rooftop solar is used, most houses and commercial stores have enough roof area to generate all of their own electrical needs. There was also a study done in the US a few years ago that if all the land area used for oil and gas leases in the US was converted to solar power the nation could run entirely off solar with something like 2 times more energy than they need.

Storage is absolutely a huge issue though, lithium batteries are expensive to produce and aren't really expected to last much past the 15 year range right now, making the recycling of them critical. And better methods like pumped hydro-storage bring about another set of environmental concerns associated with them. But in places like Alberta we could easily add 2000 Megawatts of solar generation to our electrical grid without ill-effects, we already have fast-acting natural gas power plants to cope with the already existing daily and seasonal load changes. Solar would likely help to flatten out the load, as peak load always occurs in the province during daylight hours.

I've bolded the particular point of you post that needs to emphasized, the film picked and chose a lot of worst case scenarios to present. None of the biomass plants that I'm aware of in this area of the country burn tires or other garbage, and the natural gas use is a small fraction of the energy consumption for those that do burn it. Arguing that adding natural gas to the biomass defeats the purpose is like saying you don't need to burn gas in a sled as it will just run off the 2-stroke oil, the natural gas is a small fraction of the total BTU's. There are waste to energy plants in the Vancouver area but they burn garbage because of the lack of anywhere else to put it, making electricity is just a bi-product.

Sorry, I gotta pluck on most of what you say....you use the same words the proponents use to describe green energy.....”most, many, generally accepted, likely” etc etc. Just about every large solar power generation system/ site in the USA exists only because of huge government subsidies and if they’re removed, they quickly die. I notice you don’t post your solar info anymore. Not so useful between November and may is it?

 

[ABMax24]

Sorry, I gotta pluck on most of what you say....you use the same words the proponents use to describe green energy.....”most, many, generally accepted, likely” etc etc. Just about every large solar power generation system/ site in the USA exists only because of huge government subsidies and if they’re removed, they quickly die. I notice you don’t post your solar info anymore. Not so useful between November and may is it?

I don't deal in certainties, if you would care to take notice all most posts are worded that way, not just on these threads.

I'm also not sure what you intend to gain out of this. Every renewable energy thread on the forum you enter and begin to ask questions in an attempt to re-assert your own view that all renewable energy is bad. You usually get well written responses to those questions in which you then re-word the question, or you ask the same question again a few pages later. Eventually other members get sick of writing the same reply over and over again and you quit getting answers at which point you must think you win or something?

I also don't understand what logic you subscribe to that makes you believe a large scale photovoltaic solar plant requires huge injections of government money to stay running once built. Yes many have received subsidies to be built, but to think you need constant cash injections to a solid-state generating technology with a free fuel is laughable.

I've also been nothing but open and honest in my solar thread about the fact that solar generates less energy during the winter months, or days when it's cloudy and there is no sun. You post like it's some big revelation that solar produces less energy in the winter, like no sh!t sherlock.

But since you asked here are my numbers, to this moment right now I have produced 82% of my electricity since January 1st from my solar panels:







Last year I produced 8% more energy than I used:

 

[X-it]

When these solar panels expend what is going to happen to the tons of toxic waste? Who's problem should this be..the home owner? David Suzuki's should get a few train loads dumped on his retreats. A needles disaster in the making https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/15/the-solar-panel-toxic-waste-problem/

 

[Cdnfireman]

I don't deal in certainties, if you would care to take notice all most posts are worded that way, not just on these threads.

I'm also not sure what you intend to gain out of this. Every renewable energy thread on the forum you enter and begin to ask questions in an attempt to re-assert your own view that all renewable energy is bad. You usually get well written responses to those questions in which you then re-word the question, or you ask the same question again a few pages later. Eventually other members get sick of writing the same reply over and over again and you quit getting answers at which point you must think you win or something?

I also don't understand what logic you subscribe to that makes you believe a large scale photovoltaic solar plant requires huge injections of government money to stay running once built. Yes many have received subsidies to be built, but to think you need constant cash injections to a solid-state generating technology with a free fuel is laughable.

I've also been nothing but open and honest in my solar thread about the fact that solar generates less energy during the winter months, or days when it's cloudy and there is no sun. You post like it's some big revelation that solar produces less energy in the winter, like no sh!t sherlock.

But since you asked here are my numbers, to this moment right now I have produced 82% of my electricity since January 1st from my solar panels:

View attachment 224979

View attachment 224980



Last year I produced 8% more energy than I used:

View attachment 224981

View attachment 224982

Whatever.... you're obviously a strong proponent of government subsidies for green energy systems that the world over have proven to underperform and require fossil fuel backups to supply reliable power when the renewables inevitably come up short. Older windfarms, solar collector systems are now at the end of their lifespans, and the operators are either walking away from them or begging for more government handouts to decommission them. In the future, all these current huge windmills and solar farms and litihium batteries will be a huge environmental disaster, just like asbestos and PCB's....industrial hazardous waste on a massive scale....and guess who will get to pay for the clean up.....you will sell your house long before the solar assembly on the roof starts to fail, leaving the mess for some poor sucker to deal with....but for now, you feel self righteous about your decision....

 

[ABMax24]

Whatever.... you're obviously a strong proponent of government subsidies for green energy systems that the world over have proven to underperform and require fossil fuel backups to supply reliable power when the renewables inevitably come up short. Older windfarms, solar collector systems are now at the end of their lifespans, and the operators are either walking away from them or begging for more government handouts to decommission them. In the future, all these current huge windmills and solar farms and litihium batteries will be a huge environmental disaster, just like asbestos and PCB's....industrial hazardous waste on a massive scale....and guess who will get to pay for the clean up.....you will sell your house long before the solar assembly on the roof starts to fail, leaving the mess for some poor sucker to deal with....but for now, you feel self righteous about your decision....

No I don't agree with industry leaving a mess of their old facilities for the government to cleanup with tax-payer dollars, I'm not sure where you got that from. I'm also not sure where you come up with all these renewable facilities that have been left for the government to clean up, there has been 1 wind farm dismantled thus far in Alberta, this was Cowley Ridge in 2016 and Trancanada (the owner and operator) paid for the dismantling of this site.

Since you like to bring up the topic of fossil fuels why don't we talk about that for a moment? Shall we talk about all the liquid and solid waste disposal sites scattered across the province that process hazardous wastes containing among other things; heavy metals, benzene, naturally occurring radioactive materials, drilling fluids, hydrocarbons etc? Sites particularly landfills that are being filled to the brim with these wastes, what happens when they are full, what happens when the companies that own them walk away, who will clean up the inevitable mess when they breach their liners and begin to leach these compounds into the groundwater? Or shall we talk about the Alberta Orphan Well Association, a program that had to be setup by the provincial government and the energy regulator because so many wells were being walked away from at the end of their productive life, how about the fact that Alberta has known for at least the last 10 years that this program was underfunded and industry and 3 consecutive governments failed to implement any meaningful change? Or even better yet, that $1.7 billion of taxpayer money was just recently given to this program from the federal government to start cleaning up some of these wells and facilities?

Don't get me wrong I am a supporter of Canadian Oil and Gas, but the orphan well program is a huge thorn in my side when multi-billion dollar companies can't pay for the cleanup of their sites at end of life. Or worse yet when large oil companies try to sell some almost end of life wells to smaller companies that will never be able to reclaim them, like Shell Canada tried to do when it wanted to sell 284 wells, 66 facilities and 82 pipelines to Pieridae Energy last fall. Quite frankly this should anger most Albertan's as we all stand up for oil and gas in this province and promote it as the most environmentally sound and ethically sourced oil in the world, the least these oil companies could do for us in return is not burden us taxpayers with the cleanup of their facilities.

Yes I agree that renewable energy products need to be recycled at the end of life, and I would be okay with paying a fee at the time of purchase on these products that pays for their recycling, much in the same way we pay fees on tires, electronics etc. These technologies are still coming on line, and in the instance of solar we are still 10 years away from needing large scale processing facilities. Though these facilities already exist in Europe and Australia.

At the end of life of my solar panels cleanup would be extremely easy, I could get onto my roof and easily remove them in a weekend, it's not rocket science, a few bolts holding the panels down, a few more to remove the racking, patch the holes where the bolts went through the shingles, disconnect the wiring and done. Drop off the inverters for recycling as you would any electronics, and drop off the panels for recycling. The real issue with them is in the likely scenario that the panels outlive the shingles and having to remove them to replace the shingles and then have to re-install the panels, it's nothing extravagant just more work.

 

[Cdnfireman]

No I don't agree with industry leaving a mess of their old facilities for the government to cleanup with tax-payer dollars, I'm not sure where you got that from. I'm also not sure where you come up with all these renewable facilities that have been left for the government to clean up, there has been 1 wind farm dismantled thus far in Alberta, this was Cowley Ridge in 2016 and Trancanada (the owner and operator) paid for the dismantling of this site.

Since you like to bring up the topic of fossil fuels why don't we talk about that for a moment? Shall we talk about all the liquid and solid waste disposal sites scattered across the province that process hazardous wastes containing among other things; heavy metals, benzene, naturally occurring radioactive materials, drilling fluids, hydrocarbons etc? Sites particularly landfills that are being filled to the brim with these wastes, what happens when they are full, what happens when the companies that own them walk away, who will clean up the inevitable mess when they breach their liners and begin to leach these compounds into the groundwater? Or shall we talk about the Alberta Orphan Well Association, a program that had to be setup by the provincial government and the energy regulator because so many wells were being walked away from at the end of their productive life, how about the fact that Alberta has known for at least the last 10 years that this program was underfunded and industry and 3 consecutive governments failed to implement any meaningful change? Or even better yet, that $1.7 billion of taxpayer money was just recently given to this program from the federal government to start cleaning up some of these wells and facilities?

Don't get me wrong I am a supporter of Canadian Oil and Gas, but the orphan well program is a huge thorn in my side when multi-billion dollar companies can't pay for the cleanup of their sites at end of life. Or worse yet when large oil companies try to sell some almost end of life wells to smaller companies that will never be able to reclaim them, like Shell Canada tried to do when it wanted to sell 284 wells, 66 facilities and 82 pipelines to Pieridae Energy last fall. Quite frankly this should anger most Albertan's as we all stand up for oil and gas in this province and promote it as the most environmentally sound and ethically sourced oil in the world, the least these oil companies could do for us in return is not burden us taxpayers with the cleanup of their facilities.

Yes I agree that renewable energy products need to be recycled at the end of life, and I would be okay with paying a fee at the time of purchase on these products that pays for their recycling, much in the same way we pay fees on tires, electronics etc. These technologies are still coming on line, and in the instance of solar we are still 10 years away from needing large scale processing facilities. Though these facilities already exist in Europe and Australia.

At the end of life of my solar panels cleanup would be extremely easy, I could get onto my roof and easily remove them in a weekend, it's not rocket science, a few bolts holding the panels down, a few more to remove the racking, patch the holes where the bolts went through the shingles, disconnect the wiring and done. Drop off the inverters for recycling as you would any electronics, and drop off the panels for recycling. The real issue with them is in the likely scenario that the panels outlive the shingles and having to remove them to replace the shingles and then have to re-install the panels, it's nothing extravagant just more work.

Most of the abandoned renewable sites are in the southern states. And you’re right, the oil industry has a horrible record when it comes to cleaning up their mess. They are learning however, and modern oil facilities will be much easier to decommission when the time comes. I just hope the renewable energy sector is taking this into account when they design their facilities and that it’s factored into the mix when they consider their costings.

 

[bobsledder]

Shell Canada tried to do when it wanted to sell 284 wells, 66 facilities and 82 pipelines to Pieridae Energy last fall. /QUOTE]

Shell did sell all that junk to Pieridea.