RSS Feed MenuBoth liberals and conservatives have a case of cognitive dissonance when it comes to their favorite energy technologies.
Liberals demand energy resources that are easy on the environment. They get nervous, however, when concerns are raised about renewable energy projects’ environmental impacts.
Conservatives demand that energy choices be left to the market. They are remarkably quiet, however, about government favors bestowed on the nuclear power industry.
In pushing for expanded use of renewables, liberals don’t often make clear how much land would be involved. By one estimate, meeting one-sixth of our total energy demand with wind, for example, would require spreading turbines across an area the size of California.
Further, the best renewable resources are in remote, lightly populated areas of the country. That means long transmission lines through many scenic areas and backyards would be needed to move the juice to power-hungry cities.
The potential for conflict is high.
One is breaking out in the California desert, where liberal enviros are getting fidgety at persistent questions about the water and wildlife habitat impacts of concentrated solar power plants.
Conservatives championing expansion of nuclear energy are no better at full disclosure when it comes to nuclear’s dependence on government, including research, waste management, and the federal liability cap for power plant accidents. Repeal that cap and it’s hard to imagine that the industry could remain commercially viable.
Nuclear advocates point out that France obtains some 80 percent of its power from nuclear. They neglect to mention that the French nuclear power industry has been a ward of the state since its beginning.
Conservatives’ arguments for nuclear energy would have more strength if they acknowledged the industry’s dependence on government and explained why it is consistent with their free market principles.
Likewise, liberals do the public no favors when they fail to describe forthrightly how much land would be required to scale up wind and solar energy to the hundreds of thousands of megawatts that they envision.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I can’t believe there are actually adults that think wind and solar power are viable base load power sources. That has always been a pipe dream. It’s not surprising that this guy voted for Obama…he lives in a fantasy world, not reality.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm
He’s trying to get rich by get obtaing subsidies for his personal finanicial interests, natural gas and wind power. He’s not interested in sound energy policy, he’s interested in tax payers making him richer.
balconesfault // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:12 pm
“We would end up with lots of wind farms but no significant reduction in petroleum dependence.”Intellectual exercise – remove the wind power from the equation, and tell me what happens to our petroleum dependence?Also, the author in discussing natural gas seems ignorant of the wave of LNG terminals which are currently coming on-line.A few more things. While the standard for the last few years, 1.5 MW turbines are now becoming lower end – a lot more 2.0 and 2.5 MW turbines are coming into play.The author is correct that Pickens numbers have some bait and switch to them. That’s T Boone Pickens. He’s a salesman. But it seems specious to make the argument that the massive increase in wind power wouldn’t reduce by an equivalent amout the amount of fossil fuels that we needed to consume.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:22 pm
A column by Jerry Taylor with the Cato Institute:The Pickens plan is nothing more than a call to rig the market to direct private dollars toward the fuels that Pickens has invested in and away from the fuels that Mr. Pickens has not invested in. Gee, what a visionary.The market needs to be rigged because the fuels that Pickens champions — wind power and compressed natural gas (CNG) — would otherwise get little attention from energy producers. Doubt me? Ask the trade association representing wind energy or CNG what happens to their market share were the corporate welfare directed at their industries to disappear.The claim that Pickens’ wind energy ideas “make a lot of sense” is correct only if your last name happens to be Pickens. Wind energy is a dubious investment for a number of reasons. First, absent subsidies, it’s nearly twice as expensive to produce as coal-fired electricity, and the subsidies on the books, although lavish, have not managed to close that cost gap. Second, wind turbines produce most of their electricity during off-peak hours, when wholesale electricity prices are lowest, and very little electricity during hot summer days, when wholesale electricity prices are highest. Third, because wind speed is variable, wind energy production is variable, and undependable dispatch usually forces wind producers to operate or contract for back-up fossil fuel electricity generation to meet commitments to the grid when their wind facilities cannot. Fourth and finally, because wind energy can only be profitably sited in places where consumers generally are not, the cost of getting that electricity to ratepayers is far higher than it is for conventional power plants, which likewise adds substantially to cost. All of that largely explains why wind energy today only supplies two-thirds of 1% of the electricity market.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Column continued:Compressed natural gas is relatively more attractive, yet employing it in large quantities in the transportation sector requires all-new vehicles or costly retrofits of existing vehicles and an entirely new fuel delivery infrastructure. Hence, the transition costs aren’t cheap. While natural gas is currently cheaper than conventional gasoline, how long this might be true is unclear, particularly if we assume a massive increase in natural gas demand for motor fuels use. Energy economist A.F. Alhajji calculates that even if all natural gas consumption today were dedicated toward automotive transportation, only 65% of our motor needs would be met.If either wind or CNG has economic merit, then no market rigging would be necessary; the promise of future profit would be enough to provide all the money necessary to jump-start those industries. If neither wind nor CNG has economic merit, then no amount of market rigging will bestow it. All it will do is take money from relatively more worthy investments.Economists of virtually all stripes would concede that, as a general matter, leaving the decisions about what to produce to producers and what to consume to consumers will produce more efficient economic outcomes than leaving those decisions to government planners or would-be central planners like Pickens. And that’s doubly true because market actors make decisions (however flawed) based on economic merit, whereas governmental agents invariably make decisions based on political merit. Only by the sheerest of chance will politically attractive ideas also prove to be economically attractive ideas.That’s the main reason why even Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, agrees with me that the best energy plan is to remove everyone’s subsidies and regulatory preferences and let the best fuel win. Unfortunately, the Pickens plan goes in the opposite direction.If the idea is to promote more environmentally friendly energy or energy from domestic sources, then the most direct and least costly means of doing so is to impose a tax on pollution equal to the damages caused by that pollution, or a tax on foreign oil equal to the alleged social costs of the same and let markets sort out what to do. While I don’t support such taxes because I’m not convinced that there are significant costs associated with either electricity generation or energy imports, those who are so convinced have better places to shop than Pickens’ website for good public policy.
balconesfault // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:35 pm
“If either wind or CNG has economic merit, then no market rigging would be necessary; the promise of future profit would be enough to provide all the money necessary to jump-start those industries.”Nope, because that viewpoint ignores that successful wind and CNG implementation will actually have the effect of lowering the price of oil in the future. Every BTU that doesn’t need to be generated from oil for energy or transportation moves where we societally are on the price-demand curve, and lowers oil prices.So by lowering the cost of competing fuels, wind power actually harms its own economics.Now from a societal point of view, this reduction in oil consumption and costs have huge benefits – it has the potentially to significantly improve our balance of trade. So the basic question is whether government has a role in using tax dollars to invest in things which will save us money as a nation in the long run – or should government step back and allow market forces to completely dictate what alternatives will be available to us in the future.This is a question for the ballot box, of course.
sinz54 // Jun 10, 2009 at 7:14 am
balconesfault sez: “T Boone Pickens is looking for federal subsidies because he’s a businessman, and he has been buying leases on a lot of wind rich/transmission poor land that other developers wouldn’t touch with the hope that through his lobbying efforts federal subsidies and new transmission would increase the value of those leases. It may end up paying off for him.”This is precisely the type of corporate welfare that the Left *and* the Libertarians are supposed to be against. It’s hypocritical for the Left to be decrying “corporate lobbyists” winning favors from Congress, while at the same time boosting Pickens as some kind of visionary hero. Pickens is just one more corporate lobbyist winning favors from Congress.
sinz54 // Jun 10, 2009 at 7:23 am
Dr. Tesla sez: “leaving the decisions about what to produce to producers and what to consume to consumers will produce more efficient economic outcomes than leaving those decisions to government planners or would-be central planners like Pickens.”That is true ONLY if the true costs of all resources are known and calculated in.Ever since human civilization began, we’ve been using Earth’s atmosphere as a seemingly infinite waste dump. AFAIK, no one has ever had to pay for the use of the *air*, when they run an engine that works on combustion, which uses oxygen from the air and then dumps its combustion byproducts into the air.But Earth’s atmosphere is NOT infinite, and dumping waste gases into it has effects which can be costly. (Ask any asthmatic about the effect of smog on his health, and the meds he has to take to deal with that.) So if Earth’s atmosphere is a finite resource, how much is it worth to use it?So what this entire global warming issue comes down to is this: How much is Earth’s atmosphere worth, both locally (the smog bank over an American city) and globally (the ozone layer and greenhouse gases)? If we put a price tag on Earth’s atmosphere (one price tag for local use and one price tag for global use), the market economy would start to make different decisions as to what types of energy, transportation, etc., to employ.To anyone who still doesn’t believe that human activity can affect the atmosphere: I’m not interested in debating with you. You’re just out to lunch altogether.
balconesfault // Jun 10, 2009 at 10:12 am
sinz – it doesn’t bother me that someone is going to make money off government – so long as (a) its something that government should be spending money on, and (b) government drives a hard bargain.For example, I have no illusions that Lockheed Martin lobbies Congress to allocate more money for certain jet fighters so that it will profit them. The mere fact that this is the basis of their lobbying – no matter how many flag pins they’re wearing when they make their pitch – doesn’t mean that we should reject spending money on their fighter jets.In this case, I do believe that the US needs to invest money in transmission infrastructure. Yes, some people will make money off it. Personally, I’d create special rate systems/tolling charges so that government recouped some of the windfall Pickens would reap if the transmission crosses properties he’s leased. Corporate welfare comes, imo, when government clearly does NOT drive the hardest bargains it can when making decisions that benefit specific sectors of the economy.
sinz54 // Jun 10, 2009 at 2:33 pm
balconesfault: Not all government contracting is corporate welfare. Most government contractors deliver an honest day’s work for the money they’re paid.Corporate welfare is when a company gets special favors without necessarily delivering anything of value to the government; or for delivering something of value that the government could have gotten anyway (perhaps from some other contractor) without those special favors.In this case, the handing out of subsidies and leases to Pickens just so he can build windmills, is helping him a whole lot more than it’s helping America. It’s going to enable him to offer VERY expensive electrical power (due to lack of economies of scale) which no customer would buy if it weren’t for the Government stepping in yet again to bail him out with special deals to encourage customers to purchase that power. That’s money that could have been put to more productive use elsewhere.You want to encourage alternative sources of energy? Fine. Start by removing the subsides we give *other* types of energy. Charge ExxonMobil a heavy tax for the U.S. Navy’s protection of their supertankers. Etc.