We've talked about biodiesel and nuclear...but of all renewable energy technologies up against each other (biofuels, wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, etc), which one wins?
(And just because there's an image of wind v. nuclear, you're not limited to those two...I just got lazy looking for other images)
Well nuclear isn't renewable, so I'm going to leave it out!
Personally I like solar thermal power because since it stores energy as heat, it can be used for baseload power. Also because there's so much solar energy avaialble, especially in deserts. For example, there's enough solar energy in a fraction of the Sahara desert to power the entire world, assuming you could transport it anywhere. There's also enough solar power in the US southwest to power the whole country. Plus there are already lots of plans to build huge solar thermal plants, like PG&E planning to build 500 MW in the Mohave desert.
PG&E is also building 800 MW of solar photovoltaic in California. However, PV doesn't have the option of easy energy storage, so solar thermal wins.
Wind has the same problem - storage is very difficult, and it's not very reliable. A good cheap source of energy though.
Geothermal is similar to solar thermal, and if you dig deep enough, it's available anywhere. The only question is how much it costs to dig deep enough where shallower geothermal energy isn't available.
There are a few others too (i.e. wave power), but overall solar thermal is my favorite. If we're counting nuclear, then it's probably the worst for various reasons (i.e. radioactive waste, uranium mining, potential for meltdown, etc.).
Nuclear Fusion is renewable, or at least we are highly unlikely to run out of hydrogen atoms before we kill ourselves off or the sun goes red giant, or something like that ;)
I think Solar PV will win. It's scalable, ie drop it on all the rooftops in America and we're pretty much covered (literally!). The efficiency rate for Solar PV is increasing and the cost is decreasing, soon it will hit the magic cost-effective numbers and explode across this country. We can currently use the grid as storage and very soon someone is going to invent a much better battery (for the automotive industry) to overcome the storage issue.
Nuclear Fusion is renewable
It's also non-existant (on Earth)!
Nuclear fusion is kinda the holy-grail of nuclear - just have not figured it out yet... so as far as waste issues, is currently an unknown. Nuclear fission - is what we have today. Messy, concern for a failure or terrorist attack, etc. So if we are counting it at least as alternative energy - even tho it is mainstream - it is my least favorite (worst).
My fav is wind - if you have enough turbines, like a series of turbine farms from Texas to Montana - linked to the grid, the reliability becomes far less of an issue as the wind will be blowing along that corridor all the time in several places. Solar thermal has great potential - with some sort of medium to store the heat energy, like molten sodium, to run 24/7.
I also think that rooftop solar (PV) for commercial and residential sites is key to stabilize the grid as it does it's best in the peak usage hours of the day. It helps consumer costs, and helps avoid the need for peaker plants. ...everything counts!
Tidal needs more time to get the technology right - it holds much promise as well as should be 24/7 power.
Geothermal is great, but seems to be more area limited due to cost if you need to go real deep. I would think Hawaii would be all over geothermal...
I would have to agree with SoCal that I'm optimistic about the potential of solar thermal as well because it isn't relying on the photo-voltaic conversion and therefore isn't dependent on massive numbers of panels made up of expensive, non-renewable, hard to acquire materials (though I do love PV too.)
I'll find a more appropriate thread, but I have some questions about Geothermal. I'll do some research....
I'd agree with solar.
Imagine the potential when we move beyond solar "panels". Solar paint shouldn't be too far away....
