In the United States approximately 67% of power production is from fossil fuels,

Question

In the United States approximately 67% of power production is from fossil fuels, with Indiana being the 3rd highest coal user.l.

Fuel and utilities purchased by Indiana University Utilities Department annually totals

3,829 tons of Indiana coal, 1,389,914 Dtherms of natural gas with transportation, 330M kW hours of 12.5 kV power, and (771M gallons of water and sewage)*not used for calculations*,

1. In one year how many KWh of electricity could be generated with the amount of coal IU purchases? (1 short ton (2,000lbs) of standard coal = 19.34 million BTU of energy and Coal = 10,498 Btu/kWh)?

2. In one year how much electricity could be generated with the amount of natural gas IU purchases (see conversions at the bottom)?

3. How much total electricity does IU use if we included the possible electrical generation from purchased sources as well as coal and natural gas possible generation?

4. Explain why we would need to consider different efficiencies of power production from different fuel sources for power generation?

5. Is it feasible to produce energy with wind turbines in Indiana? Use this link to look at the wind map- http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/windmaps/residential_scale.asp (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

6. Is it advisable for IU to consider wind power production as a long-term goal to meet energy demands? Please elaborate on your response, not just yes or no.

7. Is it feasible for IU to consider the use of solar panels for long term energy use?

8. What other types of alternative energy could IU consider in diversifying their energy use?

9. How many metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents would be produced by using as much electricity as IU purchases? Additionally, Provide 2 examples of the proportion using this website for the question. http://www2.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Use the answer from number 3 for this calculation)

If you use any other resources besides the websites provided you need to provide a citation with the assignment

Useful Information:

Fuel heat contents

Coal = 19,340,000 Btu per Short Ton. Note: heat contents of coal vary widely by types of coal

Natural Gas = 1,023,000 Btu per 1,000 Cubic Feet (Mcf) or One therm =100,000 Btu

Petroleum Fuel Oil = 5,861,814 Btu per Barrel (42 gallons) Note: Heat contents vary by type

Average Heat rate in 2012 for specific fuel sources: Coal = 10,498 Btu/kWh, Natural Gas = 8,039 Btu/kWh, Petroleum = 10,991 Btu/kWh

Nuclear = 10479 Btu/kWh

Last updated: January 15, 2014 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=667&t=2

Explanation / Answer

Question-7:

Is it feasible for IU to consider the use of solar panels for long term energy use?

Question-8:

What other types of alternative energy could IU consider in diversifying their energy use?

Answer for the above questions 7& 8:

All renewables are cursed with fundamental problems that make their future stand-alone (i.e. unsubsidized) viability as anything but a marginal energy source highly questionable.

With respect to electricity generation, the major renewables (wind and solar) are both intermittent and diffuse. These are obstacles inherent in the source of the energy that will be difficult to surmount. One illustration. Here in Texas, when it gets hot—and the demand for electricity spikes—the wind stops blowing. Given the fact that we need generation most when it is hot, this is a serious deficiency. Solar has greater potential, given the prospects for innovations that improve the efficiency of solar panels and reduce the cost of producing them. But even for solar, the vicissitudes of the sun (which vary by season and location) and the diffusive nature of solar power limit its potential.

What's more, the revolution in natural gas undermines the economics of these technologies.

Countries that have been quite aggressive in their pursuit of wind and solar have realized that their aspirations greatly outpaced the technology. Both Germany and Spain have announced that they will substantially curtail their government support for wind and solar.

With respect to transportation fuels, the outlook is even more problematic. Battery technology has proved a major constraint on the ability to turn electricity (including electricity generated from renewable sources) into an efficient transportation fuel. Ethanol produced from food crops is an economic monstrosity that would require far more space than available here to spell out in proper detail. Ethanol produced from nonfood sources (e.g., non-celluosic ethanol) does not suffer from some of the worst aspects of ethanol derived from corn, say, but has proved stubbornly resistant to commercially economic production. The idea for producing ethanol from wood dates from 1898. It was commercially uneconomical then. It is commercially uneconomical now. It will remain commercially uneconomical for the foreseeable future. That said, it is a technology that has more attractions than the alternatives.

And again, the potential for natural gas as a transportation fuel, and the revolution in natural-gas production, undermine the economics of renewable motor fuels.

Insofar as renewables have desirable environmental attributes (and some—notably corn-based ethanol—may not), the preferable approach is to price these attributes and let the market choose the technologies that produce the best balance between environmental and non-environmental considerations.

Two renewable energy sources are already major energy sources. Hydropower currently provides about 16% of the world's electricity, which is greater than the percentage produced by nuclear power, and a far greater share than all other renewables combined. In fact, the largest power plant by capacity in the world, as well as four of the five largest power plants in the world are hydroelectric plants. However, most of the world's best sites for hydropower have already been developed, so global growth in new hydropower capacity is forecast to be slow.

The second major source of renewable energy is traditional biomass, which accounts for two-thirds of the renewable energy in the world. In developing countries, the overwhelming majority of the energy consumed is provided by fuel wood (often unsustainably sourced), which is generally the cheapest fuel option available. Fuel wood is the main energy source for cooking for most of the developing world, and is the primary source of energy for over 2 billion people.

Solar and wind power have both experienced explosive growth over the past decade, but both still account for a very small portion of the world's energy. Global wind power capacity grew from under 5 gigawatts (GW) in 1996 to nearly 240 GW by 2011—a nearly 50-fold increase. But that translated into only 2.8% of the electricity produced in the U.S. and 1.6% of the electricity produced in China.

Likewise, since 2010 solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity has been added in more than 100 countries, and the estimated global capacity at the end of 2011 was 70 GW—a tenfold increase over the previous five years. But this resulted in only 0.5% of the global electricity demand in 2011.

Solar heating—consisting of solar water heating, space heating for homes and industrial process heat—is often overlooked in discussions of renewable energy. However, global capacity of solar heating applications is far larger than that of solar PV. According to the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report, at the end of 2011 total global capacity of solar hot water and space heating was 232 gigawatts of thermal energy (GWth) (including a solar water heater on my own roof in Hawaii).

So there are some very-fast-growing renewable energy options, and there are also some that are well-established. But if I had to put my money on one option that will likely command a much larger share of energy production in the future, it would be solar PV.

Several renewable-energy sources are technologically mature. Several already are making a significant contribution to energy generation, such as hydropower in Brazil, biomass in Finland, onshore wind in Denmark, solar photovoltaic in Germany or geothermal energy in Indonesia. Apart from hydropower, this strong footprint so far has largely been accomplished through strong regulatory support. Future growth of renewable energy will increasingly be driven by cost competitiveness with fossil-fuel based generation: The cost of renewables will continue to decline while the cost of fossil fuels is expected to increase further. Today, solar and wind have already reached this point in several countries that have abundant resources and high cost of electricity.

Moreover, an increasing share of fluctuating solar and wind energy will drive higher demand for flexible and dispatchable "green energy" sources. If electricity storage becomes cheap, as expected, that could be a true game changer.

In general, adoption of a diversified mix of different renewable energy sources including storage will benefit power quality and overall security of supply.

Looking at the global picture, therefore, I do not believe there will be one winning renewable technology. Rather, there will be a healthy mix that depends on specific regional factors.

We expect that by 2020 there will be at least one major competitive renewable energy source in most countries. The exact future mix will vary by region, depending on the availability both of renewable resources and grid infrastructure and on their contribution to the local economy. Germany for example, whose government has defined a vision for the country's energy future that strongly emphasizes renewable sources and energy efficiency, is currently pioneering a total transformation of its energy sector.

Three Reasons Solar Will Succeed

If I had to bet on one renewable source ultimately making a very large impact it would be solar. There are three big reasons to look to solar over other renewable energy supplies.

Solar can take advantage of improvements in materials, computing and nanotechnology in ways other technologies can't do nearly as effectively. Energy innovation is at its most powerful when it can leverage gains in other sectors. Solar also has a host of initial niches it can grow in, from rooftop generation in places like California, to off-grid and micro-grid energy in often-sunny developing countries that lack good infrastructure. Having moderate-sized markets to grow in is critical to scaling technology and bringing costs down. Solar is also a much better match for our energy demand than wind is. Solar power peaks when it's hot—exactly when people want to crank up their air conditioners. Wind power peaks in the middle of the night when people are using a lot less power.

The biggest barrier for solar is probably the cost of installing it—even if solar panels were free, the technology still would often be uneconomical. That will need to change for solar to fully take off. As I argue in a new book out in a couple of weeks, it would be unwise to bet on any renewable energy technology as our energy savior, but it would also be unwise to write renewables off.

Look Out for Wild Cards

Wind and solar technology are already on a scale where they can be considered "major" in some jurisdictions (e.g. wind turbines in Denmark, solar PVs in Germany). However, almost all large installations of these technologies have occurred only because of strong (and costly) government incentives. Unsubsidized wind is borderline cost-competitive where wind resources are good, but solar remains far out of the money just about everywhere. (One mistake people sometimes make in declaring solar to be at "grid parity" is to compare the levelized cost of solar generation with the retail price of electricity, rather than to the levelized costs of other energy technologies.) Parts of developing countries that lack grid access and cheap fuel supplies may be an exception where small solar can already find a viable economic niche even without big subsidies.

Energy from intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar will continue to be disadvantaged by the fact that they can't be turned on whenever they are needed, at least until:

1) Electricity storage technologies become much cheaper, and/or

2) Regulators permit dynamic pricing of electricity that sends price signals to consumers to conserve when intermittent resources are unavailable.

Making progress in these two areas could help wind and solar become more important contributors to our energy supply, as could finding ways to expand transmission infrastructure from where renewable energy resources are best (e.g., for wind, in the middle of the U.S.) to where most people live.

The most intriguing renewable energy technologies are those that have the most room to improve. Continued incremental improvement in wind and solar PV technologies should keep adding up over time, but the fact remains that these technologies have been around for a long time and are comparatively mature. More surprises may come from wild cards with which there is less experience. Perhaps concentrating solar power can make significant strides as we learn from the first large installations. Maybe the same subsurface expertise that has made unconventional oil and gas economic can lead to breakthroughs in enhanced geothermal systems, in which a hydraulic-fracturing-like process is used to create channels in rock through which fluid is pumped to absorb the heat at greater depths.

It Depends Where You Are

This is one situation where the right answer really is "All of the above." Energy issues are inherently regional: Different parts of the country have different natural resources and energy needs. We see that in the oil-and-gas sector, with big new discoveries in North Dakota and California, but no major resources in the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest, for example. Same goes for renewables: Some parts of the U.S. are windier than others, some are sunnier, some have better access to hydroelectricity or geothermal resources…. You get the point.

But unlike traditional energy sources like oil, gas and coal, renewable energy can be "extracted" in every single state in the nation. In a paper I co-wrote last year for Next Generation and the Center for American Progress, we identified six distinct advanced energy regions in the U.S., each with its own unique strength in a particular form of clean energy. These regions have found competitive advantage in their ability to build on these strengths to innovate, manufacture, and deploy clean energy for their own residents, and for export to other regions.

As for the time frame: Renewable energy is already a major energy source. Even here in the U.S., where we have yet to make a national policy commitment to renewable energy (and where fossil fuels are still heavily subsidized), we're still deploying enough to make these technologies cost-competitive. Wind energy, for example, is already the cheapest new source of electricity in many parts of the country, and in fact more megawatts of wind energy were installed in 2012 than any other kind of generation, including natural gas. Solar, too, is booming: Citigroup recently reported that rooftop solar has already reached residential "grid parity" in California. And just imagine how cheap these renewable technologies would become if we decided to charge the real social cost of burning fossil fuels, which would add between 14 and 35 cents per kilowatt-hour.

We're beyond talking about the promise of renewable energy. It's a reality. It's time now to talk about how to make it a far bigger part of our nation's energy future.

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