POWERFUL!

Two books published in 2021 on related topics - by Katharine Hayhoe and Bill Gates - document sources of human-released carbon overheating our fragile earth and what they are doing and recommending to mitigate further catastrophes. Both books offer clear insights to understand the threat, communicate with other people possessing diverse opinions, and urgently act in the most effective and efficient way to achieve critical solutions. However, there is a major difference I found between the books that needs to be corrected!

In my previous blog, I discuss the cancellation of the Carbon Free Power Project in Idaho to build a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) and losing my consulting job one month ago. Subsequently, I picked up these and other books at the library to see what authors said about all the sources of energy we need to solve our climate crisis.

Dr. Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate professor, briefly mentions new developments in SMR projects in Idaho, the one that just got canceled, and others including by Bill Gates, founding investor of TerraPower, in partnership with GE Hitachi as well as advances in other countries. On page 198 of Saving US, the author states that solar photovoltaics covering an area of about 100 square miles in West Texas could provide all the power needed to supply the United States using present available technology.

Mr. Gates devotes an entire chapter titled “Five Questions to Ask in Every Climate Conversation” including how much power and space is needed? The U.S. consumes about 1,000 gigawatts and a mid-sized city needs about 1 gigawatt. He shows how much power can be generated from various energy sources like nuclear (500 - 1000 watts per square meter), solar (5 -20 w/m2), and wind (1 - 2 w/m2). So a solar farm needs between 50 to 100 times more land to generate power than a nuclear plant. As solar only provides intermittent power during the day and seasonal changes cuts light energy in half from summer to winter, expensive storage batteries must be factored into any comparison with baseload power plants.

Ultimately, we need all the clean energy power sources that we can build as we shut down coal plants by balancing the supply and demand of electricity with combinations of geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, solar, waves and wind.