Posted on 12/29/2010 2:48:01 PM PST by thackney
The amount of coal used to produce electricity falls more than 50 percent. Natural gas nearly doubles its share, becoming the main fuel to generate power.
And the amount of renewables, including wind and hydropower, climbs more than 50 percent, producing nearly as much power as coal.
These aren't the musings of a hopeful environmentalist. Instead, they're part of Black & Veatch's forecast for the country's electric industry and North American power generation through 2035.
Black & Veatch, a global engineering and consulting firm based in Overland Park, recently presented that outlook to its clients, who include electric utilities.
The forecast joins other government and private outlooks that differ in some respects but generally agree that a transformation in energy markets is ahead. Climate policies, growing natural-gas supplies and less-developed countries' appetite for more energy will be felt.
The International Energy Agency predicts that nearly all the additional energy the world uses in the next 25 years will go to meet demand in China and other emerging countries. Their rising energy use already is one factor pushing up world oil and fuel prices, a trend that's expected to continue.
The U.S. will increasingly find itself in a secondary role with at most modest increases in energy demand. But stable demand won't mean the domestic supply picture stays the same -- coal will decline, and natural gas and renewables will rise.
Long-term forecasts are inherently tentative and can be affected by future government policies and technological advances. But the forecasters all see changes ahead.
"One crystal ball is not enough," said Mark Griffith, a managing director for Black & Veatch. "But it's hard to consider a future that stays the same."
And even the relatively stable U.S. demand will be something of a change from the past, because post-recession recoveries usually...
(Excerpt) Read more at downstreamtoday.com ...
If wind becomes a major source of energy for the US there will by consequence many more power outages, brownouts, and grid failures in the future.
Natural gas is more expensive and the Dims are heavily invested in it.
We'll also tap the aurora in Alaska.
Natural gas prices dropped this year. starting in the early nineties the utilities panicked at the low reserve and started building natural gas fueled plants. Last I looked natural gas fueled power plants made up over 30% of the US generation capacity. The demand from the huge number of plants spiked gas prices. Then the utilities cut back since those are easily started and stopped. Last I read, a little over half of the plants were idled.
With the recession I don’t see where a large increase in demand can develop. Combine that with all the mfg we’ve sent to China and I think B&V is full of it. It’s wishful thinking at best and their shot at getting into the utilities’ pockets.
This story is a glossy sales brochure for consumption by power companies who hire B&V's over-priced contractors to implement new market models that can never turn a profit, and usually aren't even implemented completely before they are canceled.
B&V has no clue what the market is going to look like next year, but they sure can sell the sizzle.
Care to elaborate on the 'nonframe' part?
No mention of lightning; THAT'S the trick I want to see ...
Just a big ol’ magnetic field with no obvious supports or constraints. Maybe some of our Starwars Plasma Beam/Laser technology has already made this possible.
I'm missing something here; I thought the idea was to extract energy somehow (ostensibly from ocean currents moving thru earf's mag field by your first comment), not expend energy ... so, why are are you creating this mag field again?
Capture lightning for power.
In a high voltage class while getting my BSEE we had to calculate the energy in a lightning strike.
The power is immense, but the energy is actually relatively small due to the very short duration.
Even in Florida it would cost more to build than the energy recovered over a couple decades.
I know that and YOU know that BUT I want the answer to come form muwiah ....
Presumably the liquid or gas has more energy to extract than it takes to create the field.
You burn coal and run the hot gases through a magnetic field and create fluctuations sufficient to generate a current.
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