Why I am a beliver in Ground Source Heat Pumps
1. Ground source heat pumps are THE most efficent electric heat source.
2. Electricity is the ONLY source of energy we can produce that is renewable and is carbon reducing.
3. 1/2 the source energy for a GSHP comes from renewable sources. Drilling wells will have your GSHP tapping convective energy coming out (or up) from from radioactive decay in the earth's core. A buried ground loop will tap into solar energy soaking down through the soil.
Renewable electricity from wind farms is now competitive (Costs remain higher due to bias given to fossil fuels which enjoy less Enviornment Impact Protests, easier siting, and a rule in utiltiy rate calcs skewed to force wind and solar to show much shorter paybacks than coal fired elec. gens., and of course, totally ignoring the savings on grid costs of distributed wind and solar, along with the carbon reduction - which global warming or not, translates into less cancer, fewer dead lakes from acid rain, etc. down wind of the generator) that makes it necessary to subsidize it yet - it's handicapped, and, it's the LAW!. Solar thermal is there already. Tidal is coming along. Energy storage is feasible if we realize the enviornmental and economic impact of pumped storage projects is less than coal fired power plants.
Renewable energy I'm not waiting for:
Bio-Fuels, so far, usurp our food supply and encourage the farming of more and more fallow or wild lands. Bio - fuels in the US have been usurped by big agri - business to bloat their profits. The US gov't even banned the import of lower cost, more environmentally responsible bio - fuels from overseas to protect the profits agri - business are reaping. Brazil and Europe mandate bio - fuel does not eat into or increase the costs of our food supplies. How? They use unfarmed marsh land for sugar cane, marginal farm land for rapeseed and similar oil seeds - that produce far more bio - oil per acre than the US choice, soybeans.
Gene - cultured algae scares me nearly as much as oil. Imagine what happens WHEN, not if, hyper growth enabled algae gets loose in our water ways. Don't even think about algae cultured to produce hydrocarbons directly, yet I fear, someone is... actually making them.
