One of the most important energy matters to understand is
that popular “renewable” electrical energy sources are not even
remotely equivalent to our conventional energy sources.
Of course lobbyists don’t want consumers and politicians to
think about that fact, so they go to great lengths to disguise
it. Everything they propagate is based on an “equivalency”
between “renewables” and conventional power sources that does not
exist in the real world.
Even generally objective sources like the Department of
Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) seriously err
when they show such things as levelized cost charts that have
wind energy and nuclear power in contiguous columns.
The first problem encountered here is the term
“renewables.” This is bantered about as if it were: 1) a
scientific definition, and 2) a homogeneous group of energy
sources. This is lobbyist sleight of hand, as neither is true. It
isn’t my purpose here to go into the details of this charade but
suffice it to say that the definition is very subjective,
and there are extraordinary differences between various
“renewables.” (See here
and here.)
After you’ve grasped those details, the heavy lifting
begins. The trick here is to get our heads around the fundamental
difference between something like wind energy and nuclear
power.
I’m just a physicist and not a professional communicator,
so wordology doesn’t come naturally to me. However, what I have
learned is that most people have a better chance of understanding
complex matters when an analogy is used. Let’s try that
here.
My suggested comparison is to look at two types of
transportation (a parallel energy sector), using concepts we are
all familiar with.
Let’s say that we have a business that repeatedly needs to
get 50,000 pounds of goods from New York City to Denver, in two
days, and cost is quite important. (In the electricity business
this translates to satisfying a demand [load], through
dispatchable energy, reliably and economically.)
So who do we subcontract this job to? A good option is to
put this merchandise on an 18-wheeler and send it on its way.
Will it always get there 100% of the time without fail? No,
flukes do happen. However, if this experiment were repeated 100
times, the truck would arrive well over 90% of the time, on
schedule and within budget. This is equivalent to using a
conventional energy source, like nuclear power.
Now let’s say greenologists are introduced into the
equation, and they arbitrarily add a new requirement that
no fossil fuel can be used. Oops. Our options are
now severely restricted.
The parallel choice to using wind energy is to send the
merchandise with golf carts (battery powered so no fossil fuel
will be consumed during transport). The question is: how many
golf carts will it take to dependably replicate the performance
of one Mack truck?
Let’s say a golf cart can carry 500 pounds (two golfers
with sticks). To transport 50,000 pounds that would work out to
100 golf carts.
This is essentially the message that the lobbyists want you
to buy: that approximately 100 golf carts
(wind turbines) will do the job of one
18-wheeler (conventional source: e.g. a coal
facility). They want you to blink and move on. Do not
look behind the curtain! But wait! Can the golf carts get really
there in two days? Of course not. The lobbyists answer is to add
more vehicles: use 1,000 carts!
Does this “solution” really solve anything? No, but it
further confuses politicians not used to critical thinking. What
it also does is to insure more profit for the cart industry —
which is the only concern of the
lobbyists.
What if the load is a hundred 500 pound pianos? Even though
(on paper) a golf cart can carry 500 pounds, can a golf cart
transport a piano across country? The lobbyists’ answer:
disassemble the load and use more carts. (Yes,
they are slick.)
And will the cost of the golf cart option be comparable to
the truck choice? Just to begin with there are 100+ drivers vs.
one — so I think you know the answer, right?
And what else will be needed to support this “alternative”
source of transportation? A lot: like battery recharge stations
throughout the country. And who will pay for that? Duh.
And what is the source of the electricity used to charge
the cart batteries? Mostly fossil fuels. Oops.
In the face of this evidence, the lobbyists and their
academic coconspirators distractingly wave their hands and say
such non-sequitors as “Don’t worry about these details. give us a
huge subsidy and we’ll do a grea job. Everything will make more
sense mañana.”
This isn’t how science works. Before we pay them
to run this route, these promoters should tell us exactly how
many golf carts it will take, and then prove it by
actually running this route dozens of times. We would then have
real-world evidence of the reliability and cost of their
proposal. This is exactly what we have not done with
wind energy.
They have not only skipped right over the proof stage,
right now the golf cart lobbyists are working on convincing our
politicians that since businesses have been “resistive” to using
their transportation product, that they need a law
mandating that 20% of all goods from NYC to Denver go
the golf cart route! Senators Kerry & Lieberman are now
agents of these lobbyists, and have now introduced such
legislation!
And the claimed benefit of all of this? Economic
recovery. There will be lots of new jobs in the golf
cart business! What about the economic loss due to the higher
shipping cost, or the slower transportation? Don’t worry about
it. Come back mañana.
Hopefully this analogy makes things clearer, as this is the
insane path we are now on. (For a more thorough
discussion of this situation, go here.)
