Green Energy

[Visirale]

It's becoming more and more apparent that green energy is much more than a pipe dream. The downfalls of oil become more blatantly obvious daily. Environmental concerns have reached a fever pitch. It is obvious that the status quo is not going to cut it anymore.

How do you see the future of green energy?

I was thinking about it today, and there is no reason that green energy couldn't be as profitable as oil. Once it is properly developed and works efficiently, it should take off and get absolutely huge... Wherever it is developed and created will become the Texas and Saudi Arabia of tomorrow... Instead of oil barons we will have bio-diesel barons.

I'm trying to get an internship with a biofuel company this summer to get a better understanding of the blossoming industry. If the research going into the technology pans out, this could be the most active industry we've seen in a while.

Your thoughts?

[Fontaine]

Originally Posted by Visirale

It's becoming more and more apparent that green energy is much more than a pipe dream. The downfalls of oil become more blatantly obvious daily. Environmental concerns have reached a fever pitch. It is obvious that the status quo is not going to cut it anymore.

How do you see the future of green energy?

I was thinking about it today, and there is no reason that green energy couldn't be as profitable as oil. Once it is properly developed and works efficiently, it should take off and get absolutely huge... Wherever it is developed and created will become the Texas and Saudi Arabia of tomorrow... Instead of oil barons we will have bio-diesel barons.

I'm trying to get an internship with a biofuel company this summer to get a better understanding of the blossoming industry. If the research going into the technology pans out, this could be the most active industry we've seen in a while.

Your thoughts?

as a petroleum eng. student, i say your foolish. Oil will never be out of the picture. "green energy" is a looooooooooooooong way from dominate

[bassrique]

It's very interesting and will be the future, but restructuring our entire [mega-humongous] infrastructure to technologies we don't have yet will take time. Like T. Boone Pickens says, "we need a bridge to the future". That means domestic natural gas, oil, wind [where feasible] and beaucoup nuclear.

[Visirale]

Originally Posted by Fontaine

as a petroleum eng. student, i say your foolish. Oil will never be out of the picture. "green energy" is a looooooooooooooong way from dominate

I don't think so. Biofuel is entirely possible very quickly but will take a large initial investment and will require a paradigm shift.

Also, without getting political, it has been made blatantly obvious that green energy is at the forefront of our nation's political agenda and economic funding is about to skyrocket for it. I'm not saying in the immediate next few years, but in 10 or 20 I think we will be seeing a completely different energy landscape.

[bongomania]

Originally Posted by Fontaine

as a petroleum eng. student, i say your foolish. Oil will never be out of the picture. "green energy" is a looooooooooooooong way from dominate

Good thing you're not an English student. Green energy doesn't need to be dominant, yet, and of course it isn't yet- that's point. We need to redirect our efforts.

[bassrique]

The current biofuel reality ain't what it's cracked up to be. In time, it will be, and that's a good thing.

[mvw356]

green energy is on the rise and sooner or later will replace fossil fuels. the most important part is that we reduce the amount of fossil fuels used to generate electricity which can be substituted with CO2 neutral sources, like wind, solar (photovoltaic and direct conversion of solar heat into electricity (don't know the exact term for it)) and geothermal power. it will take a while until we find cars that run as well as they do today on other fuels, but cars only play a minor role in the pollution of our planet so it's not that urgent.

regarding costs as many critics like to say that green electricity is expensive. i kinda agree with that, but the price you pay for your electricity is not really reflective of the cost to produce it. the whole production process of nuclear/ coal/ gas based electricity is heavily subsidised and has been for the last 60 years, and of course green energy can't compete with that. until there is a level playing field it's hard to say what costs what. what does pollution cost? hard to say. we do know how much a kw/h of CO2 free electricity costs and it's not much more expensive than what we pay now, if any.

[MJ5150]

I tried to get some solar panels on our house. The guy who came out to do the bid said it would take 15-20 years to pay off the initial investment. So I said "no thank you".

It doesn't help that I live in an area where it is sunny for like five weeks a year.

-Mike

[Fontaine]

Originally Posted by Visirale

I don't think so. Biofuel is entirely possible very quickly but will take a large initial investment and will require a paradigm shift.

where is all the biofuel coming from?

[mvw356]

Originally Posted by Fontaine

where is all the biofuel coming from?

biofuel is nothing new, the brazilians have been running their cars on it for the past 25 years. new installations to make biofuel are expensive but so are refineries and oil platforms. the only problem i see with biofuel is that it's produced on the back of the rainforests or starving kids in africa, but that can be overcome.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Alot of the biofuels wont cut it IMO, there are just too many problems, and not enough fields to grow crops when we still need to eat

However, the sooner we get onto some sort of alternate fuel the better, as oil is still our only source for a number of other things, not just fuels.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Originally Posted by mvw356

biofuel is nothing new, the brazilians have been running their cars on it for the past 25 years. new installations to make biofuel are expensive but so are refineries and oil platforms. the only problem i see with biofuel is that it's produced on the back of the rainforests or starving kids in africa, but that can be overcome.

In brazil they mix ethanol with petrol dont they? While it does reduce the amount of oil used, it isnt really moving away from it.

[mvw356]

Originally Posted by i_got_a_mohawk

In brazil they mix ethanol with petrol dont they? While it does reduce the amount of oil used, it isnt really moving away from it.

just checked on wiki, ethanol represents 18% of all fuels used in brazil, including diesel. that's not so bad and a good step into the right direction.

[Philbiker]

Green energy is a fantasy. We're going to waste a lot of money and effort trying to make it work.

Massive scale Nuclear energy holds the only hope for the future of civilization.

Unless we are willing to destroy the planet, we need to stop burning stuff for energy, and that includes burning 'biofuels'. It's the burning itself that is the problem not the source. Whether the plants and other biological feedstock lived two weeks ago or two million years ago the result - CO2 going out tail pipes and smokestacks - is the same.

The concept of EROEI is all-important. Energy Return On Energy Invested. Biofuels are almost always energy negative - it takes more energy to make them than you get out of them. Some are energy positive, but none are even close to the energy return of fossil fuels. That is not sustainable. Oil, natural gas, coal are all massively energy positive. So is Uranium and Thorium.

Most importantly, we need to use a lot less energy than we do now. We need to stop driving.

Over the next decades our way of life will change in ways most of us can not comprehend right now.

[mvw356]

Originally Posted by Philbiker

The concept of EROEI is all-important. Energy Return On Energy Invested. Biofuels are almost always energy negative - it takes more energy to make them than you get out of them. Some are energy positive, but none are even close to the energy return of fossil fuels. That is not sustainable. Oil, natural gas, coal are all massively energy positive. So is Uranium and Thorium.

i am familiar with that concept, but i think it's flawed. it should be about the emission of CO2 and/or other greenhouse gases. if the energy you need is produced CO2 free (or close as zero emission doesn't exist) you can waste as much as you want.

what does it help if oil has a positive energy balance, it is bad for the environment to drill, refine and burn it.

your argument would be a good one against the hydrogen powered cars cos they have an insanely negative energy balance, and yet claim to be environmentally sound. if the electricity used to make hydrogen is produced C02 free they'd be right, but that's still far far away.

[Philbiker]

Originally Posted by mvw356

i am familiar with that concept, but i think it's flawed. it should be about the emission of CO2 and/or other greenhouse gases. if the energy you need is produced CO2 free (or close as zero emission doesn't exist) you can waste as much as you want.

what does it help if oil has a positive energy balance, it is bad for the environment to drill, refine and burn it.

your argument would be a good one against the hydrogen powered cars cos they have an insanely negative energy balance, and yet claim to be environmentally sound. if the electricity used to make hydrogen is produced C02 free they'd be right, but that's still far far away.

I'm not sure you actually do understand the concept. It's just like ROI in finances. The only energy sources that make sense are the ones where there is a positive net energy effect, just as the only investment that makes sense is one with a positive return.

If it takes more energy to make the biofuel than the energy you get out of it, that makes no sense on any level. Even if you can get the biofuel to be energy positive, if the biofuel emits CO2 and other pollutants (burning anything does this) it's going to wreck the planet.

We need to stop burning stuff.

[Phalex]

Anything that you use faster than you can replace is non-sustainable. Nuclear is an option certainly, but we aren't actually making anymore uranium. Sooner or later we're going to run out. Same with coal and natural gas. They take a very long period of time to form, and not so much time to burn. If we can get more energy out of biofuels than it takes to produce them, they are a step in the right direction, but I think Solar and Geothermal are going to be the things that are actually renewable. Once the interior of the planet cools, or the sun quits producing, we're going to have bigger problems than a sustainable energy source.

[baba]

We can buy time with other methods (at what cost?), but I think nuclear energy is ultimately our future and there is no way getting around it.

[mvw356]

Originally Posted by Philbiker

I'm not sure you actually do understand the concept. It's just like ROI in finances. The only energy sources that make sense are the ones where there is a positive net energy effect, just as the only investment that makes sense is one with a positive return.

If it takes more energy to make the biofuel than the energy you get out of it, that makes no sense on any level. Even if you can get the biofuel to be energy positive, if the biofuel emits CO2 and other pollutants (burning anything does this) it's going to wreck the planet.

We need to stop burning stuff.

i agree about 'stop burning stuff', but we can't just stop driving cars or bikes. energy and finances are not the same thing, if they were we'd happily continue with gas and oil. it's about CO2 and other greenhouse gases. going back to the hydrogen example, it uses much more energy (electricity) to produce than it will set free if burned (or whatever it does in a car) if the electricity can be produced CO2 free it doesn't matter any more that the energy balance of hydrogen is negative. on top of it one should balance the emission of CO2 per mile of a petrol car v emission of CO2 per mile of a hydrogen/ biofuel....car. burning biofuel is less damaging than fossil fuels.

green electricity is the future

[MakiSupaStar]

I think in a lot of ways it's going to drive the next surge in our economy. Creating alternative energies that are stable, easy to work with, and setting up an infrastructure around them can be the next boon our economy is looking for. No we won't be completely dependent from oil. That's a long way out, but piece by piece we can chip out better solutions for things, and I believe there is a market for it.