Living in a home with four kids and two dogs, one child’s
“clean” can mean “unacceptable” to an adult — think barely visible
shower scum or machine-washed plates
without phosphates.
And necessary energy levels and types mean different
things to different people: A back-to-nature maiden who practices
what she preaches needs much less than a multitasker who watches
her LCD TV while researching on the Internet and listening to her
iPod.
And as we know from years of observation of political
discourse, one man’s “standard” is another’s moral
abhorrence.
Put them together in a “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) and
you ask for real trouble.
But that’s not stopping Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico
and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who on Monday — as Chairman and
Ranking Republican respectively of the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee —
issued a “white paper” that solicits
comments on what should constitute a CES. You might remember that
in his State of the Union address last January 25, President Obama
proposed that the federal government impose an 80 percent standard
by the year 2035.
In the past Bingaman and others have proposed a national
Renewable Electricity Standard, which would have required electric
utilities to generate a specific percentage of their power from
“alternative” sources such as wind, solar, biomass, or other
impractical technologies. So the president wants a mandate that
requires four-fifths of utilities’ total electricity production to
come from what a future law would define as “clean energy” by
2035.
Thirty states presently have Renewable Portfolio Standards
(RPS; some call them Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards). Most
are fairly specific in their definitions of what qualifies as
acceptable in their schemes, but each has its own percentage
targets and dates. You can view specific states’ requirements via
an interactive map at American
Tradition Institute.
But expanding the mandate to a “Clean Energy Standard”
worsens an already costly, ineffective policy. ATI and
others, in
conjunction with the
Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University
in Boston, have analyzed
RPS’s in several
states and found they universally drive costs for
electricity up, because they force utilities to replace efficient
power generators like coal with inefficient sources such as wind or
solar. For example, ATI’s Colorado
study determined that the state’s utility
customers would pay $11.8 billion more for electricity between 2011
and 2020 because of the state’s RPS.
Recognizing the unlikelihood of a national cap-and-trade
law and Bingaman’s repeated attempts at a national RPS, ATI also
commissioned Beacon Hill to do a study on
potential national mandates of 15 percent, 20,
percent and 30 percent by the year 2021 (Bingaman co-sponsored a
bill last year that called for the 15 percent national RPS). Under
the ambitious 30 percent scenario — a likely intermediate goal
that would be required to attain President Obama’s target — the
U.S. economy would
take a hit in the trillions of
dollars.
The white paper questions
that Bingaman and Murkowski ask only complicate matters.
Because the president was vague on what a Clean Energy Standard
would look like, Congress is left to navigate the rippling waters
between what environmentalists and
alternative energy rent-seekers want defined
as “clean.” Free-marketers need not advise, but I will do so anyway
based upon reality, instead of the fantastical answers the Senators
are likely to get:
Q. Is the goal to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, lower electricity costs, spur utilization
of particular assets, diversify supply, or some combination
thereof?
A. None of the
above, because it cannot do any of the above. Instead it will set
up uninformed government meddlers as authorities to dole out favors
and tax breaks to undeserving technologies that have capable
lobbyists as the only thing going for them.
Q. Depending on the goals,
is a CES the right policy for the nation at this time?
A. It doesn’t
matter what the goal would be. A CES establishes bureaucrats and
lawmakers as decision-makers, rather than individuals who can
determine the form of electricity that best meets their power and
environmental needs. A CES would be an economic disaster
(see ATI
study mentioned earlier).
Q. Should any states or
portions of states be specifically excluded from the new program’s
requirements?
A. You mean
a Cornhusker
Kickback-type exclusion, which
undoubtedly some Senator wanting to protect constituents from
higher energy costs would seek? No.
Q. Should the definition of
“clean energy” account only for the greenhouse gas emissions of
electric generation, or should other environmental issues be
accounted for (e.g. particulate matter from biomass combustion,
spent fuel from nuclear power, or land use changes for solar panels
or wind, etc.).
A. I don’t know
— ask the environmental
experts who
can’t even agree on what is
clean and green.
Q. Should partial credits be
given for certain technologies, like efficient natural gas and
clean coal, as the President has proposed?
A. Depends on
if you need to buy them off too in order to pass a
bill.
Q. Is there a deployment
path that will optimize the trade-off between the overall cost of
the program and the overall amount of clean energy
deployed?
A. If there is,
do you think the government is capable of determining that ideal
path?
Q. Should there be a banking
and/or borrowing system available for credits and, if so, for how
long?
A. So you want
to bring back cap-and-trade?
Q. How might a CES alter the
current dispatch order of existing generation (such as natural
gas-fired power plants), which has been driven by minimization of
consumer costs, historically?
A. Depends on
how much you want to keep spending to subsidize expensive energy
losers like wind and solar.
Q. To what extent does a CES
contribute to the overall climate change policy of the United
States…?
A. Not at all
— do you have any proof, or even scientific (I use that term as
loosely as climate alarmists do) projections that it
does?
I trust that these answers have been helpful, if not for
Sens. Bingaman and Murkowski, then for you, faithful readers. May
Tea Party principles prevail.
