Comments on: Europe Turns to Coal Again, Raising Alarms on Climate

By: JOHN

JOHN — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:45:02 +0000

Has anybody heard of sustainable energy such as
wind, Hydra, Solar, Wave, kinetic.
This type of energy production is far more sustainable and green. This is the way to go

By: Bill Hyde

Bill Hyde — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:38:47 +0000

There are all sorts of ideas that might produce enough power, one of these days. But our problem is now. We must start building immediately, or we’ll end uplike South Africa, blackouts, and more to come for five years – because they faffed about, waiting for the market to provide a proper power station.

Fact is, the only way we KNOW that we can produce power we need in the quantities we want is nuclear.

By: jkace

jkace — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:39:45 +0000

Carbon sequestration remains the biggest question mark. While economical methods exist for carbon dioxide capture, what to do with that CO2 is the real issue.

Sure, natural gas and oil have fewer greenhouse gas emissions, but it doesn’t take an economist to realize that on a global scale a moratorium on coal will adversely effect the prices/supply of other fuels.

Global warming is the sort of problem that requires an equal sacrifice from all energy-hungry countries… making it an impossible problem to solve from a capitalist perspective. If everyone is working in their own self interest, everyone loses. An interesting parallel can be drawn to the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”, a concept used in game theory. Very interesting article here: http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~clemons/blogs/prisonersblog.pdf
I guess in this example the US is staying silent while Europe rats us out.

In terms of efficiency, the article notes that the new Italian plant uses the waste heat stream from the coal plant for a fish farm. This has me wondering, can you further increase the efficiency of the plant by adding some sort of stirling engine or organic rankine cycle? This would apply to nuke plants, as well, i suppose.