From: William Gerhard
Scipio
The drive for renewable energy is critical to lowering our carbon footprint.
The question of how best to do this can start many arguments, but the need for low-cost and abundant energy is a mainstay of our consumer lifestyle.
It seems the need and desire for low costs, with an ever-increasing demand, makes our goal of improving our carbon footprint unattainable.
One of the reasons for this is the cost of production and transmission to the end users. I understand that it is necessary to produce about twice as much electricity as needed due to loss over transmission lines. If we could eliminate much of this need, we could just downsize or eliminate some of the outdated coal and gas plants — though easier said than done. Solar panels and wind farms in rural areas help some, but there is still the transmission issue needed to produce twice the need.
I would suggest putting energy pockets in the metropolitan areas. We could do this by placing wind generators above the thousands of cars parked in the parking lots of large industrial complexes or major shopping malls. This could eliminate the need to replace energy lost to transmission.
Our major cities all have huge aqueducts and water lines. There are millions of gallons of water flowing through these lines over hundreds of miles past numerous communities. By placing several rotary turbine generators in the water lines along the route these communities could have electric power with a nominal amount of transmission. This could be done by getting these different entities talking to each other.
Also, there is a need to change regulation and write laws that would make new and radical approaches worth considering while keeping cost to minimum for producers and end users.
Our energy needs will only continue to increase, so we need to think of ways to supply it and not add to the pollution level.
