A Waste of Energy

Here is an interesting idea from Michael E. Webber and Sheril R. Kirshenbaum, both of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy. They advocate creating a cross-disciplinary curriculum on energy in universities through the creation of energy departments on college campuses.
The problem, they say in a piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education Web site, is that there are a lot of people positing on energy who don’t understand all the facets of it. Energy involves engineering, politics, social trends, and several other disciplines. Often people in decision making roles are familiar with one of these areas but almost totally ignorant of the others, hence the need for energy as a discipline. (I ran into this myself last year on a trip to an energy research facility with a group of other journalists. It soon became evident that one of the other journalists in the group — a widely read energy policy analyst — had no concept of what ac current was. Yet this was a guy who many in the energy industry read religiously.)
Basically, the two researchers claim that current situation is just too specialized to do students much good. “Undergraduates are being ushered through an outdated and compartmentalized system in which the education has not kept up with scientific advances. Energy is poorly defined at institutions of higher education, appearing to be an ambiguous professional pursuit or a subset of umbrella departments such as petroleum engineering or geosciences, which tackle only a single slice of the energy pie,” they say.
They say there is progress in this area through certificate programs some universities now offer in energy, but there is still a ways to go.
The whole post can be found here:
http://chronicle.com/article/Its-Time-to-Shine-the/130408/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

There’s a story making the rounds in the Internet these days about the 14,000 wind turbines that sit abandoned, mainly in California.

The reports seem to be based on a story that ran in the American Thinker more than a year ago: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
The wind turbines it refers to are those residing in California’s Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio areas. These kilowatt-scale units were put there in the 1980s during the first alternative energy boom. They were installed not because their economics were compelling but, apparently, at least in part because the government subsidies of the time were lucrative. When the subsidies ran out, the wind turbines were abandoned.

The author cites this information as a cautionary tale pertaining to the situation today, where subsidies of any sort get intense scrutiny, and where wind power is again trendy. There is something to be said for the planning of a wind farm’s the end-of-life. The operational life of a wind turbine is generally pegged at 20 years, and many wind farm operators today have been operating for much less than 20 years; who knows what entity will be in charge of things when today’s turbines are ready to be scrapped.

Finally, the original piece makes the point that subsidies are intended to help new technology during its “ramp up” period before it has matured, when its economics cannot compete with established methods. But the original wind subsidies were in the early 1980s, some 30 years ago. That being the case, there are some asking, justifiable, just when the “ramp up” period for wind will come to an end.