A look at the energy-efficient future of the 2030s

An interesting site and story - that yielded 237 comments between 26/29 October.

After peak oil predictions. Some positives with much more electrified train travel, for instance, but much to be concerned about.

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237 comments on USA 2034: A Look Back at the 25th Anniversary Year
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wouldn't that be in this case "killing two [i]turds[/i] with one stone"? [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

pardon my attempt at humour. i didn't realise levity was a potential thread derailer. in future i will attempt more gravitas and brow furrowing while posting.

it's an interesting scenario though, that i'm still trying to read, but the context certainly changed for me negatively at this point early on....

[QUOTE...]The North American electrical grid failed in it’s goal of 90% non-GHG generation due to a hotter than expected summer, but 89.7% is still a major step forward ! Wind turbines supplied nearly half the total MWh, and nuclear power over a quarter.[b] For the first time the USA completed six nuclear reactors this year (with one each in Canada and Mexico as well)[/b]... [/QUOTE]

any vision including nuclear in the mix is dystopian in my view, which is why i'm skimming the rest of it. and with all the electrical talk, not a single mention of battery storage solutions, essentially making the nuclear component irrelavent. if even a fraction of the money spent developing more nuclear was spent developing long term industrial sized battery storage for the electricity generated by intermittant sources like wind and solar, we could achieve alot more than this scenario, much sooner.

well jingles, that consumption is the real issue. the fellow that wrote this piece appears to be an electric rail expert/enthusiast, so it seems to me that the whole piece isn't about reducing consumption, just shifting production of the electricity to "non GHG" fuels, which nuclear is considered by some misguided souls to be part of.

in toronto, we have the provincial Liberal government, last term approving and beginning construction on the Portlands Energy Centre, a 550mw natural gas fired pollution factory right on our beachfront downtown. the rationale? peak load consumption in toronto can't be maintained with current transmission capacity. the reality? due to Toronto Hydro's aggressive conservation and consumption education programs, toronto has reduced it's total consumption for the past two summers, noted as two of the hottest on record. this is the opposite of the rest of the province.

so tell me why we need a peak load power plant, using a fossilfuel with only about 9 years supply left in the country, when we are reducing our consumption?

the answer simply seems to be that certain corporate interests must have ways of making money off fossil fuels. period. this plant is not and never was necessary if conservation and consumption controls that were suggested and fully costed were put into place.

this vision of the future outlined in this article seems to be one of increased electricity, not less. that wouldn't be a problem if it was self-generated and non-fossil, and you didn't need to burn it or spit atoms to get it. but that doesn't appear to be the case.

ah, bliter i see now the haste you were referring to! i was wading through mr. electric train's treatise and assumed the bit you quoted was further on than i had read.

the algae thing is interesting, from a transitional fuel point of view i think, but it still involves burning something, which produces pollution. the faster we can get away from burning things to make fuel, the faster we move to a better world in general.

i saw the part about the excess energy being stored behind dams in the form of water, but that is what we do now. in order to properly utilise intermittant sources of power generation like wind and solar, there needs to be a way to store the actual power, hence batteries. there is a very cool concept called a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery]flow battery[/url] that i linked to in other threads on energy, and i've seen printed literature that looks amazing. the problem is research and development.

Using the example of the powerplant earlier at 700million dollars and counting, imagine the research that could be done to make household sized storage for power! each home could have a solar array, and smaller scale wind turbines could be sited in neighbourhoods providing district power.

this isn't a dumb thing to pursue, contrary to the fossil fuel lobby would have you believe. what is dumb is blowing that cash on obsolete fossil fuel burning and the companion plan in Ontario to spend another $40-60 BILLION!!!!! on more nukes! nuclear power was and is almost entirely subsidised by public money. so why not use that money to create an industry and then export the technology? that would be a future i could like. and with more decentralised, self generated power, and ways for individuals to monitor it, people might begin to make the connection between consumption and generation.