Re: How Africa's desert sun can bring Europe power

T. Keating was asked about his claim of high EROEI for wind, solar:
Any source for that claim?

T. Keating responded (in part):
Large Wind turbines are already producing energy in the 80 to 1 EROEI
range. See.

http://www.windpower.org/media(444,1033)/the_energy_balance_of_modern...

Mr. K -- I am sure that you are a decent guy, but that report was
written for the wind energy industry, based on work done in Denmark
which is pushing export of Danish wind turbines. If you saw something
about oil written by ExxonMobil, would you be so quick to accept it
uncritically? That is not to say the report should be dismissed,
simply that the prudent reader should acknowledge the source. For
some strange reason, the authors also seem to complicate the report
unnecessarily by using different units for energy investment and
energy production.

But let's assume the report is correct, and that a windmill over its
life will produce about 80 times the energy invested in it. So why
are wind factories found only where they are given direct & indirect
subsidies? Why aren't people prepared to pay high fees to get the
chance to build them?

I suspect the answer is that the report makes optimistic assumptions
-- like 20 years trouble-free life; like the way they choose to
account for recycling (giving them an energy gain).

Oil, Coal, NG, Nuclear all enjoy high levels of subsides, (DOD
expenses, pollution, RightOfWays, insurance, etc) .

Now with subsidies, you are talking fancy accounting again. The oil
industry pays a lot of taxes; governments hand a small part of those
taxes back to the industry with strings attached to get the industry
to make certain investments. Not quite the same as Big Wind, where
the industry pays little in taxes and gets money from the government
directly & from consumers indirectly through mandated purchases at
premium rates. Not quite the same thing.

Equally, people have argued that US Defence expenditures are in part a
subsidy for oil (protecting supplies). But the EU imports more or
less the same amount of oil as the US, yet EU defence expenditures are
very much smaller. And Russia exports substantial amounts of oil, and
yet its defence expenditures are substantial & growing. What is the
basis for claiming that defense expenditures are a subsidy for oil
imports?

There is a disconnect between claims that wind, solar have high EROEI
and what we can see in the world around us. Just for comparison,
people claim that nuclear fission has a high EROEI, yet nuclear
constrruction is in the doldrums in much of the West. However, we can
understand why nuclear plants are not getting built -- political &
regulatory obstacles. Where that kind of political correctness does
not exist (China, Russia, France, Finland, etc), nuclear plants are
getting built.

If we are going to talk meaningfully about EROEI for wind, etc, we
really need more data, based on real operating experience and
validated by independent organizations.
.

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