Can Someone Please Help Me On The Topic Of Green/Alternative Energy?

Question

can some one tell me the postives and negatives of green energy

Than You

Best Answer will get 10pts

Answer 1

I like much of what donfletc.... says.

I would like to expand on one or two comments and add a couple.

Dealing with wind power, (beside the points already made) is that since wind is not a constant source of energy that in order to keep a continuous supply of electricity without regular power cuts, it is actually more wasteful at this time.

To keep power supply available un-interrupted, you need a backup. and because these generating stations can not just switch on and off, they still need to be running whether they are supplying power to the grid or not. To me this is a tremendous waste.

The amount of fuel that a power plant is consuming is nearly a constant value, whether it is at 'full output' or in it's idle state.

The turbines still have to run to be ready to pick up the slack when needed.

I will disagree with the damming causing the loss of farm lands since I don't know of a situation where this has occurred or is likely to occur since dams are placed in strategic locations in ravines and canyons to contain and utilize the water in areas that are not now, or ever would be used for farming purposes.(I could be wrong, and if you do know where this has happened please let me know)

Now let's get to some more (and possibly the most important) negatives of 'Green Energy'.

1)When you levy 'Green Taxes' on the public, (especially with fuel taxes) you are hurting everyone, including yourself.

Why? The answer is simple.(yet too difficult for any politician to comprehend).

As fuel prices increase the cost of transportation of goods increases. This cost is passed on to the consumer. The prices go up accordingly, and everybody suffers.

2)Whenever the individual tries to save some money by converting to a cheaper alternative, and enough do change, then all of a sudden that cheaper alternative starts to increase in price!

It began with diesel, a few years ago and now it is LPG.

This has nothing to do with anything other than another opportunity to take away our 'hard earned money', now in the disguise of a twisted, sick, and disgusting farce.

Answer 2

If energy is truly green, we likely accept it without much debate.

But when a green energy has any environmental downside, it can be opposed very strongly, even by Greens. For example, Wind energy... we want it but not in my back yard. We want to have giant turbines a km or more away so that we can not hear them even when they are operating at maximum capacity. We do not want them placed close to bird flyways. We do not want the visual disruption of man made and moving devices cluttering up the landscape.

But people who run electric grids have very different reasons to object to large amounts of wind power. Wind power does drop to very nearly zero output, so someone on the grid must provide an alternative power source, be it coal, oil, gas, or very variable nuclear. This means we must have unused capacity to generate, just sitting idle for the time the wind does not blow.

To use wind extensively we would need to use intelligent electric panels that turn loads on to use up low cost wind when it is available, and off when it is not.

Solar electric has far fewer real enemies. There are no birds being killed, no noise pollution, and wonder of wonders, it supplies a predictable amount of power right when it is needed most, during the daytime.  That fits in very well with the needs of the grid, allowing the grid to operate with even less surge capacity.

But solar electric power, thus far has been more costly than most any other energy... the cost of the collectors and the area they must occupy are both very large.

Bio fuels be it bio diesel or ethanol or methane from manure require consumption of resources that may be needed to feed a hungry world. This could be a critical balancing act. Our free market system may not have the wisdom to feed people in preference to feeding engines.

Water power comes in a lot of different forms, and some of those forms have a lot of opponents, particularly when the  form causes rivers to be dammed, flooding large areas of good farmland.

Most alternate energy strategies can be improved to eliminate most of the problems people object to, if developers of those systems would just pay some attention to solving the problems!