Highly informed sources (don’t you love that phrase) tell us that
Senate majority leader Harry “Hands-Off-Yucca-Mountain” Reid will
be pushing for the Senate to adopt a national renewable energy
portfolio within the next two weeks.
Reid has reportedly told Senator Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), chairman
of the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee, he wants a
bill on the Senate floor within two weeks. Bingaman is balking at
the timetable but is not opposed to the bill.
And so the Senate may soon be leading us down the path trodden by
California (the state with the $40 billion budget deficit) on its
way to the California Electrical Shortage of 2000. Democrats have
been historically feckless on energy, but apparently you ain’t
seen nothin’ yet.
What is a renewable portfolio? Well, it’s what we used to call an
“unfunded mandate.” The premise is that the government has
perfect foresight on where our energy future is going and as good
legislators it’s their responsibility to hasten its arrival.
Corporations and utilities, you see, are generally too greedy and
stupid to perceive the future so they have to be prodded on their
way. In their wisdom, the legislators will mandate that by
2000-whatever the state or nation shall derive XX percent of its
electricity from “renewable sources.” It’s up to the utilities to
do the job. California pioneered this strategy in the 1990s but
26 states have now followed suit, although four make it only
voluntary.
All this is likely to make electricity more expensive, which is
what is holding the utilities back. Solar electricity now costs
about 24 cents per kilowatt-hour and wind 14 cents, as opposed to
5 cents for coal or natural gas. Utilities will pay the bills but
then will inevitably pass them along to consumers. California now
pays the highest electrical rates in the country, precisely
because it will not allow coal or nuclear plants but has pursued
a 30-year strategy to develop renewable energy.
The best criticism of renewable portfolio standards (“RPS” for
short) comes from Fred Krupp, executive director of Environmental
Defense, who is (please don’t tell anyone) a closet conservative.
In his book, Earth: The Sequel, Krupp writes: “Mandates
presume that the government already knows the best way
to proceed on energy. But the government doesn’t know any better
than anyone else. The best thing to do is to level the playing
field, through something like a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, and
then let the market sort things out.” Krupp is talking here of
course about reducing carbon emissions and I happen to agree with
him. Democratic politicians, however, don’t like leaving
decisions in the hands of ordinary people and so we are likely to
get an RPS instead.
So just what is a “renewable” source of energy? Well, it depends
on whom you ask. Wind is definitely renewable (although some
people are pointing out that if we put up too many windmills we
may start changing wind patterns, which will affect the climate).
Solar heat and electricity are renewable because the sun shines
every day. Geothermal energy is renewable because the heat of the
earth will always be with us. It is generated by the breakdown of
uranium and thorium atoms in the earth’s crust. (That’s why I
titled my book on nuclear power Terrestrial Energy.) If
we take those same uranium and thorium atoms and put them in
something called a “nuclear reactor,” however, that is
not renewable because — well, because it isn’t, that’s
why.
Things get a little fuzzier when we get to hydroelectricity and
biofuels. Hydroelectric dams have been with us since the 19th
century and provided 40 percent of our electricity in 1940. They
also provided the environmental movement with its first cause for
objection. The Sierra Club opposed construction of the
Hetch-Hetchy Dam in 1911 and is still campaigning to
tear it down even though it provides water and electricity to 2.5
million people in the San Francisco area. The Club also opposed
the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s, proposing a nuclear plant in
its place. Now someone has come along forty years later, however,
and said hydroelectricity is renewable energy! That can’t be
true. So environmental groups have decided only small
dams — “low-head hydro” — are authentically renewable. Big dams
don’t count. Whether large hydro should be included in a
renewable mandate is always a matter of fierce debate.
Biofuel, on the other hand, has to be one of the most irrational
pursuits ever undertaken by a mature industrial nation. The idea
is that burning a portion of our crops for fuel each year is
somehow “sustainable.” All this ignores that humanity has spent
most of its history trying to build a sustainable agriculture,
but that’s another story. We’re past that now. So each year we
now burn one-quarter of the corn crop to feed our gas tanks and
are headed for more. All this has created havoc and food riots in
that other portion of the world that still practices agriculture.
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization is calling
biofuels a “crime against humanity,” but what do they know? They
just don’t share our vision of a clean and sustainable energy
future.
Thus, in one of the more bizarre developments, Midwestern
utilities have now started substituting wood chips for coal on
the basis that it is “more sustainable.” Wood has only half the
energy density of coal and creates just as much carbon dioxide
and air pollution. Lung disease is the leading cause of death
around the world because people in underdeveloped countries spend
their whole lives breathing wood smoke. Moreover, it would take a
1000-acre forest to feed one 1000-MW power plant on a sustainable
basis. Yet we are reverting from coal to wood in order to protect
the environment.
California began pursing a renewable strategy in 1980 when
Governor Jerry Brown decided to pursue Amory Lovins’ “soft path.”
From 1980 to 2000 the state built no new major power plants.
(Diablo Canyon Nuclear Units 1 and 2, started in the 1960s, were
finally brought on line in 1984 and 1985.) The Golden State
pursued the most aggressive conservation-and-renewables program
in the nation. It turned every garbage dump in the state into a
1-MW methane plant. Businesses as small as nursing homes and golf
clubs were encouraged to generate their own electricity,
capturing the steam for heat. The state developed its remarkable
geothermal resources. (Geothermal vents are common along
earthquake fault lines.) It built what was the largest windmill
farm in the country at Altamont Pass. By 2000 it had the lowest
per-capita electrical consumption in the country, the highest
percentage of non-hydro renewables (10 percent as opposed to 1
percent nationwide) — and not enough electricity to run its
traffic lights.
Urban legend now has it that Enron actually caused the California
Electrical Shortage. The company did play games in order to dodge
state price controls, but the state’s electrical shortage was
caused by a shortage of electricity. California only recovered by
tossing aside environmental review and throwing up 12,000 MW of
natural gas generators over the next three years. Except for
renewables, however, natural gas is the most expensive way to
generate electricity. So Google has moved its server farms to
Oregon and North Carolina, Cisco is expanding into Texas, and
manufacturers are generally fleeing the state as fast as they
can. As a result, the California economy is in a shambles.
And this is what Harry Reid now wants to do for the rest of the
country. Hang on, it’s going to be a heck of a ride.
