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Global Economy Bursting?

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Renewables are a loser! Natural gas wins!
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I remember talking to our guide after a tour of Hoover Dam generating facility.
Forgive me for the order of magnitude spread, it's been 15 years;
Guide said their cost to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity was either $0.005 or $0.0005
Bonds that built the Dam were long-ago paid off.
Sure capital cost is huge, but long term benefits / payout also huge.
So why isn't there more Hydro power in USA?
--- aside from the snail-darter Greens, who would not have been a factor until early 1960's.

I remember reading an 'expose' about electric power many years ago;
Consolidated Edison (N.Y. City Electric Co.) back in very late 19th and early 20th century, bought up
hundreds of small Dams that were producing electricity for small towns throughout lower NY State,
then after dismantling the dams, resold the land, with a deed restriction
- Owner can never build a dam and generate electricity.
Hah.... No more competition from these low-cost providers.
BTW: Government Agencies mostly allow an Electric Utility to make a fixed percentage profit over their cost to generate electricity.
More cost = More profit
.
As usual, you want to know why X, Y, and Z happened like that - Follow the money
.
 
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Most of the good spots to locate hydro plants have already been taken. In the early part of the century hydroelectric plants supplied a bit less than one-half of the nation's power, but the number is down to about 10 percent today. With environmental laws and restrictions, permits, etc., hydro plants cannot compete with other forms of generation of electrical power today.

Interesting to note that China, Canada and Brazil have greater hydroelectric power generation than the U.S.
 
Small Hydropower’s Negative Impact on The Environment

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Ene...owers-Negative-Impact-on-The-Environment.html

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A belief that 'small' hydropower systems are a source of clean energy with little or no environmental problems is driving the growing interest in mini, micro, and pico hydro systems that generate from less than 5 kilowatts up to 10 megawatts of energy.

Hydropower appears to be the cleanest and most versatile of renewable energy sources.

Unlike fossil-fuelled power plants, hydropower plants produce no gases or fly ash emissions (fine particles generated by burning coal). And, unlike nuclear power plants, there is no radioactive waste to contend with. Nor is any resource consumed, because water is neither lost nor polluted. Reservoirs can also enhance the scenery, attracting picnickers and tourists.

As soon as the world took note of these virtues in the 1950s, hydropower became popular. Developing countries including Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey built increasingly larger dams, generating anywhere from a few hundred megawatts to more than 10 gigawatts.

Egypt's High Aswan Dam has become an iconic symbol of these projects — and their environmental impacts.

Projects like these fundamentally altered river ecosystems, often fragmenting channels and changing river flows. Natural lakes take hundreds of years to evolve from oligotrophic (low in nutrients) to eutrophic (rich in nutrients) status. But man-made reservoirs underwent this transition within a few years, degrading water quality, harming fisheries, bringing siltation and invasion by weeds, and creating environments suitable for mosquitoes and other disease vectors.

And where reservoirs displaced people or suddenly changed resource availability or agricultural capacity, they brought major socio-economic problems.

It was during the mid-1970s, some 20 years after a number of major hydropower projects had been commissioned, that reports of their adverse environmental impacts began to emerge.

By the end of 1970s it had become clear that the very optimistic, almost reverential, attitude towards hydropower projects that had prevailed during the early 1950s was misplaced. These projects damaged the environment as seriously as fossil-fuelled power projects.

The mistake had been to see only the virtues, and to not prepare for possible problems, some of which surfaced only once a large number of projects had been commissioned at different locations.

The big question is: are we set to repeat the same mistake with 'small' hydro?
 
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The old fashion Mill dam has a minimal impact on the environment and is available whereever running water exists. The larger facilities alter the ecosystem, the smaller dams do much less impact...less impact than the numerous homeowners who buy up a riparian property then promptly clear the trees back from the shore line and start mowing grass. The Corp of Engr. held a meeting with adjacent landowners on Beaver Lake near me and the average complaint centered around not being allowed to mow down to the water line. They complained they couldn't have a clear veiw of the lake, they had snakes, people were using the corp land to fish and picnic on ....duh, they paid taxes too. Move off the lake if you don't like the rules. Clearing the shoreline and installing septic tanks damage a lake or river.

Further tidal power could be harnessed as easily as wind power. Geothermal power is the most under utilized means of generating electricity
 
Central Banks Boost Yen-Asset Holdings 25%, Supporting Bonds

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...holdings-25-supporting-bonds-nikkei-says.html

Yen assets held by overseas central banks more than doubled in the past four years. Such portfolios of Japanese assets rose 25% to about 35 trillion yen ($437 billion) last year. Central banks may be increasing purchases of yen-denominated assets to diversify their foreign-exchange holdings. China, the owner of a record $3 trillion of foreign-exchange holdings, has expressed concern that U.S. monetary and fiscal policies may pose risks to the value of its dollar-denominated assets.
 
Dropouts look to learn from Zuckerberg

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f9849650-9eb0-11e0-a4f1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QOORqdjx

An increase in the number of students dropping out of US universities to launch start-up companies in Silicon Valley may be the latest sign of an internet bubble



Why many star students are dropping out

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e7c3324c-9eb4-11e0-a4f1-00144feabdc0.html

Some say the emphasis in US society on having a college degree has created “a bubble in education”, in which the professional value doesn’t match the $200,000 price tag
 
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