Willem Post's Blog – March 2018 Archive (7)

The US Environmental Protection Agency, US-EPA, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, VT-DEC, and the Independent System Operator of New England, ISO-NE, calculate the CO2eq of Vermont’s electricity sector. They use different methods and obtain results that are significantly different from each other.

In this article I propose another method, which allocates the NE grid CO2eq to each state, based on the percent load each state imposes on the NE grid,…

Currently, we have energy storage in the form of fossilized carbon deposits. A stream of energy is being extracted from mines and wells to keep the world going; about 40% of that stream is used to generate electricity. Many 100% RE proponents, almost all of them never designed or analyzed any energy system, want to stop that stream; "leave it in the ground".

They would substitute the stream with weather and sun dependent, variable, intermittent, wind and…

Vermont Business Magazine reports:

“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions estimates in Vermont continued to rise for calendar year 2015, increasing from 9.45 million metric tons CO2eq in 2014 to 9.99 in 2015. This increase puts Vermont approximately 16% above the 1990 baseline value of 8.59 and adds to the difficulty of reaching the statewide goal of 50% below 1990 emissions levels by 2028.” So what?

- If Vermont reached the goal of 50 percent below 1990 (two…

The usual custom among energy systems analysts is to make projections regarding future energy consumption and work back from those projections to what is required to meet them. Following business-as-usual practices, Brussels projects a doubling of Europe’s energy consumption by 2050, and that 60 - 80% of the energy generation in 2050 will be renewable, but likely not CO2-free.…

My first reaction to the aerial photos of Fukushima power plant site was: why did they put the auxiliary transformers, that provide power to the plant, and the emergency diesel-generators, that provide power to the auxiliary transformers, on the OCEAN side? They should have been on the land side, protected from earthquakes, and out of reach of any tsunami.  

The lack of emergency power to operate the cooling pumps caused the reactor cores to overheat, melt and evaporate and…

Elements that contain unstable nuclei are radioactive; they are called radionuclides. They decay by releasing mostly alpha and beta particles accompanied by gamma rays. An alpha particle has low-energy, is positively charged and consists of two protons and two neutrons, i.e., a helium atom without its 2 electrons; it can be stopped by tissue paper or human skin.  A beta particle is a high-energy, negatively charged electron (negatron) or a positively charged positron; a sheet of aluminum can…

Proponents of wood burning often claim it is “carbon neutral”, so it is ok. In addition, wood burning provides jobs for loggers, etc.

Proponents fail to add “over a period of at least 80 years”.

Assuming a tree is harvested after it is has sequestered CO2 for about 40 years. Burning that tree immediately releases that CO2.

That CO2 would take at least 40 years to be sequestered again due to new tree growth.

That process…