What's Greener?

Zman

If you are paying 11 cents a KW/Hr for electric and $2.34 a gallon for propane you are paying the same price per BTU/hr (see attached sheet).
The electricity is usually produced using a various fuels (mostly coal in my area) and generally has an overall fuel to use efficiency of 30 %.
The propane has a much better combustion efficiency, but a great deal of energy is use to refine it and get it into a liquid state. Don't forget the cost of trucking.

This one is easy to calc from a cost point of view but what is "greener"

BobC

That oil price won't last forever and the low gas price is likely to last for a good while yet. Right now in my area gas is still almost 20% lower in price than oil. There is also the reduced maintenance that comes from using a cleaner fuel when it comes time to clean the beasts.

Bob

icesailor

BobC said:

That oil price won't last forever and the low gas price is likely to last for a good while yet. Right now in my area gas is still almost 20% lower in price than oil. There is also the reduced maintenance that comes from using a cleaner fuel when it comes time to clean the beasts.

Bob

That oil price must be from a few years ago, And Nat. Gas for a buck-a therm? Really? Divide the total bill that you write the check for and then divide that by how many therms you used. That's the true cost per therms,

That spread sheet must have been computed by a gas or electric company as a sales tool.

#2 heating oil on Cape Cod Massachusetts today averages $2.30.

Zman

Ice and Bob,
The spreadsheet was put together by the DOE using formulas that are accurate. The prices used are irrelevant. You are supposed to put in your local pricing.
Do you have a comment on my original question or are heading on another "off topic" journey?
Thanks,
Carl

hot_rod

Zman said:

If you are paying 11 cents a KW/Hr for electric and $2.34 a gallon for propane you are paying the same price per BTU/hr (see attached sheet).
The electricity is usually produced using a various fuels (mostly coal in my area) and generally has an overall fuel to use efficiency of 30 %.
The propane has a much better combustion efficiency, but a great deal of energy is use to refine it and get it into a liquid state. Don't forget the cost of trucking.

This one is easy to calc from a cost point of view but what is "greener"

By "greener" do you mean the carbon footprint of each energy?

I think you would need to know the source of each fuel, how close the energy is to the location where it is used, etc.

I'm on LP here in Missouri, and the large tank farms that they pull from are a few hours away in OK, and the refined product is from OK and Texas.

My electricity is from a small Co-Op and they buy on the open market from coal, nuke, and a portion wind.

My greenest energy could be the PV array and multiple solar thermal arrays on my roof. depending on where those modules were manufactured, I suppose. Tough question.

Jamie Hall

Oh my... talk about a can of worms! Determining which possible energy source is greener is very very difficult, particulary if one is trying to be really honest about it and consider complete life cycle aspects.

Further, comparing based on current cost is almost certainly misleading, since many energy sources are not fully costed -- and some benefits or problems of many energy sources are not costed at all, and are nearly impossible to put a cost figure on, and some of the costs are what might best be termed social costs -- arising from questions of legal liability or regulatory demands which are not intrinsic to the energy source (never mind distorting subsidies!).

That said. From a pure engineering standpoint -- leaving out subsidies, litigation, and other hard to quantify distortions -- the greenest (from the standpoint of "save the environment" and public health) energy source available today is electricity from nuclear power. Hands down. Further, if one removes the enormous regulatory and legal liability costs associated with it, it is the least expensive on a life cycle basis.

However...

icesailor

"" "off topic" journey? ""

I think I just posted my last "Off Topic" journey".

Jamie Hall

Oh don't say that, Ice! I love your off topic journeys!

Mark Eatherton

HR said "By "greener" do you mean the carbon footprint of each energy?

I think you would need to know the source of each fuel, how close the energy is to the location where it is used, etc.

I'm on LP here in Missouri, and the large tank farms that they pull from are a few hours away in OK, and the refined product is from OK and Texas.

My electricity is from a small Co-Op and they buy on the open market from coal, nuke, and a portion wind.

My greenest energy could be the PV array and multiple solar thermal arrays on my roof. depending on where those modules were manufactured, I suppose. Tough question."

END QUOTE

There is a term bantied about by energy professionals called Cradle to Grave energy consumption. Although PV and ST may appear to be green, the embodied energy in producing each (glass, copper, aluminum, arsenic, silenium, silver, gold etc) has to be taken into consideration in order to assess its cradle to grave performance.

Some technologies (like Hybrid automobiles like the Toyota Prius) are NOT as clean as they would appear to be on the outset when taking into consideration their overall environmental impact. Honestly, with the exception of hydro electric power, I don't think ANY of our current energy sources would really rank as "Green"… Maybe some are less brown than others, but green?

Now, my solar thermal system in the mountain is completely recycled. It was headed for land fill before I interrupted its path. That has to count for something, no?

Interesting topic, and as HR said, tough question to answer.

And we haven't even begun discussing the SOURCE… LP is a common byproduct of the production of gasoline.

Regardless of the source, hydronics will ALWAYS be the best means of transportation of said energy to final destination from generator (boiler, chiller, etc) to load.

Where does waste heat recovery fit into all this scheme? 40 to 60 % reduction in base energy consumption?


ME

Rich_49

A good read . Electric utilities are coming up with strategy .

http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf

Transmission losses are completely unacceptable when discussing electric . Site generated , site derived and storage are the future folks . The utilities are ready to go to war and are figuring out ways to stay profitable .
Carl , as for your original question , that calculation is a wash . All system design must take into account area specific pricing for all available technologies . In todays world you'd be hard pressed to find anything electrically powered that will last a good long time . We still have many advantages by burning fuels to do what it is we do .

Paul48

I guess the greenest would have been the electricity, Tesla was going to harvest from the atmosphere, and give freely as a gift to humanity. I wonder how that would have changed "the world, as we know it".

Zman

This is Awesome!
I have been thinking about this for a while and it is fantastic to hear more viewpoints.
All very good, well thought out opinions.
Thanks,
Carl

BobC

Nuclear power could be the greenest but only if it's thorium based. The uranium reactor was only supposed to be a stop gap step for electric production, it was supposed to be supplanted by liquid salt thorium reactors. Thorium is MUCH more energy dense, can not be used for weapons, and has almost no long term waste products.

Research on thorium was stopped in the 70's for political reasons. another gift for posterity from tricky ****.

Bob

unclejohn

Thorium safe? You never saw Dr. Strangelove obviously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI

BobC

That is one great movie, completely inaccurate but still a classic.

Bob

Gordy

NG is 60 cents a therm here in northern illinois....after tax, title, and license. No transportation to get it to you. So for me it's 3.51 for same btu match with electric, or 60 cents for NG. Neither require trucking costs. Electric is nuclear produced.

SWEI

Jamie Hall said:

From a pure engineering standpoint -- leaving out subsidies, litigation, and other hard to quantify distortions -- the greenest (from the standpoint of "save the environment" and public health) energy source available today is electricity from nuclear power. Hands down. Further, if one removes the enormous regulatory and legal liability costs associated with it, it is the least expensive on a life cycle basis.

The biggest problem with nuclear from a business perspective is the unlimited liability assumed on behalf of us taxpayers by the feds. Thorium might indeed be the silver bullet one of these days.

Passive solar design offers by far the best EROI. A number of people around here have batch preheaters made from recycled water heater tanks (painted black, housed in salvaged foil-faced foam board and glazed with scrap glass.) Pretty tough to beat that.