Renewable Energy Production Surpasses Nuclear In the US 452
mdsolar writes "Renewable energy production has surpassed nuclear energy production in the U.S. according to the latest issue of Monthly Energy Review (PDF) published by the Energy Information Administration. ... During the first three months of 2011, energy produced from renewable energy sources (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar, hydro, wind) generated 2.245 quadrillion Btus of energy equating to 11.73 percent of U.S. energy production. During this same time period, renewable energy production surpassed nuclear energy power by 5.65 percent. In total, energy produced from renewables is 77.15 percent of that from domestic crude oil production."
Re:So then. (Score:3, Informative)
No one has ever said that it doesn't generate power, just that it's cost ineffective, and requires traditionally generated power in any event to even out the peaks and valleys.
Re:Way to grind that axe, buddy (Score:4, Informative)
This is mdsolar - check his comment history, and pay attention to the link in the sig. He runs a company which installs solar panels, so he's not exactly an impartial figure. I'm surprised you haven't seen him before, since he pops up in pretty much every story about nuclear with similarly misleading comments.
Re:So then. (Score:5, Informative)
It also requires a massive amount of salt. Sodium thiosulfate, one of the favored salts for thermal energy storage due to low cost, practical melting point, high heat of fusion, and low toxicity, takes over one ton to store the energy required by the average household for one day. You can reuse it each day, of course, but that's still a buttload of salt for just one city.
Re:Hydro? (Score:5, Informative)
Note that they are also lumping in ethanol, which has already been shown to require more fossil fuel to produce that it can replace (or close to it, depending on the way it's calculated. And ethanol is 10% of all the fuel in all the cars, and is heavily supported by subsidies, so it's not only inefficient, but can't even pay for itself.
Meaningless comparisons (Score:4, Informative)
Why are they comparing the production of ethanol (48% of "renewables") with nuclear? That doesn't make any sense. Nuclear is for electricity. Ethanol fuels cars. And what happens when they factor in all the petroleum used to produce all that ethanol. Last I checked, ethanol barely breaks even. Woops! And what would it even say if the comparison was meaningful? That people are scared of nuclear? No surprise there.
And then they go to compare "renewables" with domestic crude oil. First, why just domestic crude? Why not talk about ALL the crude consumed in the US? Why include anything but ethanol in that comparison? What sense does it make to compare hydropower with domestic crude oil? They're totally different markets.
Re:Cost? - Actuall the growing bit is corn ethanol (Score:4, Informative)
Ironically the troll at the top of the comment tree is correct.
The growth in renewable is actually primarily in biofuels, the majority of which is corn ethanol, which is produced, as Paul Gigot pointed out, by combining corn and taxpayer dollars.