Originally posted by twhitehead
Wikipedia is back up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
Apparently wind power already supplies "about 2.5% of worldwide electricity usage."
So if we increase wind farms 50 fold, we can get 100% of the worlds electrical power from the wind. I honestly don think that is impossible, nor is it going to hurt the ecology of the world significantly.
...[text shortened]... above figures?
Also read this section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_energy
I think the world wide consumption of electricity is about 14 terawatts, 14,000 gw.
If wind does 2.5 percent, total would be 350 odd gigawatts. I didn't know there was that much coming off wind.
But if we did multiply it by 50, there may be ecological consequences we don't see now.
At any rate, nobody would suggest hanging our hat on one energy technique.
For one thing there is too much politics going on to quickly kill coal for instance, and then there is the Nuke lobby, all these forces will ensure the lasting signature of these supplies. That is world wide, not just in the US. For instance, China is now the worlds largest user of coal for energy production, already passed the US and now is the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses, although they are trying to get rid of coal as fast as they can but economic giant or not, you can't do it overnight.
I found this wiki piece, it has somewhat different figures:
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).[8]
Still, if we want to depend on electricity as our main source of energy, there will have to be massive upgrades to the high voltage distribution lines because the renewable resources are seldom in the area where the lines are so new ones have to be built and that would probably total in the trillions for the world, estimates put it at half a tril in the US alone for distribution upgrades.
Your point about H2 being delivered by pipeline I don't think will fly because of the existing infrastructure of petrol, too much invested in a proven energy distribution system.
It isn't that much of a technological jump to go from petrol at room temperature to liquid hydrogen, since we already have major companies doing just that.
I work in the semiconductor cleanroom industry and have worked directly on LN2 and O2 liquids and the trucks that carry those products carry liquid hydrogen.
For instance, NASA uses millions of gallons of H2 already in launch vehicles since H2 combined with O2 is just about the best chemical rocket fuel available cheaply on the periodic table.
Liquid H2 is a very small part of the expense of launch, NASA has developed the delivery technology for decades now, it can relatively easily be expanded to cover the whole US for starters.
Not that I am saying that is the best way to go, I am just saying if the lobby dudes and the money dudes get together, they may do just that.
Even given all that infrastructure of trucks, H2 still has to be generated and as efficiently as possible.
If H2 is used as a fuel it would be infinitely more desirable than petrol and can run in the same engines with little modification. That is the up side of the deal.
One big problem with all these energy consumption numbers is that is how it is now. If you look at those figures I supplied, Solar, for instance, can provide about 4 times the total energy consumption of TODAY.
If we continue on the same energy consumption curve, in a hundred years we may need to use more energy than we can get from ANY renewable. What if the energy consumption goes up to 100 Tw average? 200 Tw? What resources would we have for that kind of energy use?
It looks to me like fusion energy better come on line pretty dam soon. It's a source always 20 or 30 years in the future and that future better happen soon or we will not have enough energy for our lives when we have 10 billion population, 15 billion and so forth.
Unless there is a major catastrophe such population numbers are inevitable.
I think we are headed for a major correction myself, within the next 100 years. Of course not many of us will be alive then that are alive now, my grandkids maybe but if we don't kick the fossil fuel habit soon there will be dire consequences.