Better power lines, dammit!

Steam pollution

The Times' Matthew Wald finds that warming rivers may hamper the water cooling on which all steam-generating reactors depend:

 Using computer projections of climate change possible outcomes, the researchers wrote that generating capacity in the United States could fall 4.4 to 16 percent on hot days from 2031 to 2060. And the number of days when river water is at a temperature that is now considered extremely high will be triple the number today, on average, they said.

But here's the spit-take moment:

It found that in addition to making electricity harder to generate, warm weather would make peaks in electricity demand even higher. That would raise costs, it said, because utilities might need more generating stations that would run for only a few hours a year, during the peak summer demand periods.

It also pointed out that if rainfall patterns changed, hydroelectric dams would be less productive.

The solutions to this problem are not obvious. Wind generation might not help much, because the wind usually does not blow much in hot weather. Solar photovoltaic cells could help, but they do not generate much in the last hour before sunset, and not at all after that. That is the period in which many utilities experience peak demand, as people return home from work and turn on air-conditioners, television sets and ovens.

Mr. Wald is talking about the energy of the future -- two to four decades out, no less! -- but assuming we will still be saddled with the same inefficient power grid in which -- due to technology, local energy monopolies, and a Balkanized regulatory environment -- power is mostly generated and consumed within a couple hundred mile radius.

Make it easy to exchange power over a few thousand miles, practical with the current lines, or even further, with HVDC upgrades, and you do have an easy solution to peak demand at sunset -- get the power from somewhere it's not sunset. Spread your turbines over a wider area so that torpid spells idle only a fraction of them. Build your nuclear plants in cooler climes and send the power southward (or northward, as the case may be.) And so on.

Seems like a pretty obvious solution to me -- and one that happens to involve opening up local monopolies to competition and simplifying and streamlining local regulations. Seems like Heartland would want to get right on that. Perhaps they're a bit preoccupied.

How to get serious about green jobs: 4 keys

1. We could upgrade the nation's rail infrastructure with electrified rail replacing diesel engines and with the addition of double-track lines to minimize traffic congestion that can slow trains to an average of 2mph on some routes.

2. We could weatherize every home in America. (Heating, ventilation, and cooling puts paid to about a third of all the electricity used by US homes.)

3. We could fully fund fuels management on all federal lands:

Another issue is funding for fuel reduction. Funding and acres treated rose (roughly doubling) between FY2000 and FY2003, and have stabilized since. Currently about 3 million acres are treated annually. However, 75 million acres of federal land are at high risk, and another 156 million acres are at moderate risk, of ecological damage from catastrophic wildfire. Since many ecosystems need to be treated on a 10-35 year cycle (depending on the ecosystem), current treatment rates are insufficient to address the problem.

UPDATE: A recent study found fuels management increases greenhouse emissions. So while it might or might not be worth it, it's off my list of green jobs.

4. We could construct a backbone of HVDC lines connecting the regional power authorities across the United States, an "interstate highway" system for the power grid. This would cut transmission losses, today approximately 6.5% of all electricity generated. (Cutting those losses in half would be the equivalent of bringing 45,000MW of clean energy onto the grid -- and reliably linking the US power grid from coast to coast would greatly reduce the indeterminacy problem of high levels of wind and solar -- while the wind does not blow nor the sun shine all the time, if a thousand wind and solar plants are contributing to the grid, the law of averages will inevitably push their contribution towards a steady state.)

 Incentives to develop wind, or solar, or geothermal energy are all very well and good, but it is difficult to pick an industry and make it successful, especially if an important part of your motivation is to create jobs. Even successful industries may not create very many jobs, and there is nothing to stop the successful, once established, from taking those jobs elsewhere.

What we can and should do is radically upgrade our national infrastructure and our management of public lands. Those tasks cannot be left to the private sector. The private sector cannot set a new standard for rail lines, cannot protect federal lands from wildfires, cannot improve disaster response capabilities. True, a hefty carbon tax would advance many of these goals, including weatherization. But not only are the politics of such a tax difficult right now, but it would fail to provide the short-term stimulus and job creation which our economy needs.