“I want to really challenge the idea that we can’t move into renewable energy sources a lot faster. We put a man on the moon pretty fast…What is really sad now is that Obama is not using this moment as a teachable moment to bring the country together.” – Arianna Huffington (on KCRW’s Left, Right, and Center).
The challenge President Obama faces, if this is indeed a teachable moment, is what to teach.
I took the liberty of drafting a speech for President Obama a while ago. He chose not to use mine, but you can see what might have been.
Draft: “Our Energy Future”
My fellow Americans, I know there’s a Boston-L.A. playoff game on tonight and you want to see it and not me on the screen so I will be brief.
I have heard the talk about America’s need to use this moment to decrease our dependence on the burning of fossil fuels. That we if can put a man on the moon, certainly we can put science to work to develop ways to put oil, coal, and other fossil fuels into the dustbin of history.
The BP (BP stands for “Bad Planning”) disaster has quite literally placed a black mark on our environmental record for offshore drilling. Oil continues to spew from a pipe a mile underwater. Birds and turtles are already washing ashore covered in oil. Fish die by the score. Shrimpers, oystermen, and fishermen can’t work. In all, it will cost billions in lost revenue and cleanup. This is the second largest spill into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a big mucking deal.
Therefore, I am declaring the affected coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida disaster areas and as such they are entitled to federal funds for help. I’ll be sending BP the bill to reimburse the costs.
Offshore oil drilling carries risks, but risk also comes with other forms of energy. Ever since humans climbed out of the trees and used fire to cook their food, warm themselves and ward off animals they’ve recognized the dual nature of energy: using it carried risks and rewards. Over time we learned to use other forms of energy. Through the ages, humankind has worked toward more getting more power from smaller packages until we succeeded in harnessing the power of the atom.
Let me be clear: getting free of petroleum by 2050 using renewable energy sources like wind and solar ain’t going to happen. Expecting renewable energy to grab a greater share of production over the next 30 to 40 years when it has declined over the past 60 years, despite tens of billions in subsidies, is wishful thinking.
Let’s consider wind turbines popping up on hillsides like toadstools. Every state and every country that has tried wind turbines has learned they do not lower carbon dioxide emissions while also being poor investments that hurt their economies. Wind requires massive subsidies and erases more than two jobs for every one wind power job created. That is a recipe for failure.
My fellow Americans, math, chemistry and the laws of physics are stubbornly non-partisan. They care not a whit whether you are conservative or liberal, right or left, green or tutti-frutti. The Energy Information Administration released projections on the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act” that passed in the House of Representatives last June; if our nation adopts the bill’s 25 percent renewable power electricity standard, the EIA estimated carbon dioxide reduction of a paltry 4.9 percent. This does not cut the mustard.
Natural gas and nuclear power plants are magnitudes more efficient than wind or solar, while emitting far less carbon than coal. So, in the future, we’re going to move toward natural gas and nuking the renewables. Nuclear energy is safe, reliable, and proven technology that works now, not a century from now. Let us invoke the ancient prophecy of Isaiah and “turn our swords into plowshares” and use nuclear energy for the good of our nation and our planet.
Thank you, God bless America, and Go Celtics!
The speech is a pipedream on my part; obviously the low power density approaches of wind, solar, and ethanol will reap huge subsidies in the wake of Blunder Petroleum’s accident. Robert Bryce, managing editor for the Energy Tribune sums up the choice this way: “(Political leaders) want to replace high power density sources that are dispatchable, reliable, and relatively low cost with low power density sources that are not dispatchable, highly variable, and high cost. This makes no sense. I’d call it insane but it’d be an insult to crazy people.”
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Reference and Source material:
Bentek Energy, “HOW LESS BECAME MORE…Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences in the Colorado Energy Market (http://ipams.org/wp-content/uploads/BENTEKStudy_How_Less_Became_More.pdf)
Congressional Budget Office. “How Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Affect Employment “
David L. Greene and Paul N. Leiby, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “Oil Independence: Realistic Goal or Empty Slogan?” (http://lugar.senate.gov/energy/links/commentary/08_greene_full.cfm)
Carl Mortishead and Angela Jameson, Times online, “Green energy levy would add £20 to bills”
C. le Pair & K. de Groot, “The impact of wind generated electricity on fossil fuel consumption” (http://www.clepair.net/windefficiency.html)
Hugh Sharman and Henrik Meyer, CEPOS: Center for Politiske Studier. “Wind Energy – The Case of Denmark.” (http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf)
US Energy Information Administration, “Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/hr2454/execsummary.html)
US Energy Information Administration, “International Energy Statistics.” (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=54&aid=2&cid=&syid=1989&eyid=2009&unit=TBPD)
If the landlord replaced the White House spokesman nice to ah!
It’s not so much that I’m doom-stricken about it, more that I’m risk averse type of bod and, as they say in the financial services industry, past performance is no guarantee of future success. The world’s unrecognisable now even from what it was in 1980. Let’s hope someone is going to come up with an energy solution that has no downside, because currently everything does. But the incentive and stimulus needs to be there to push science in that direction, and that’s what debate such as you engage in does – good stuff!
The British government today announced policy which will both put up taxes and freeze my salary. So I won’t have as much money to spend anyway, that’s always a good incentive to do less of something.
K
Sorry K, I didn’t mean to imply you were a doomster. It’s that it seems obvious that our resources are finite. Yet, we are clever (many would say too too clever) and learn new ways to do things.
BTW, If you’ve not found Google’s new graph tools or Gapminder, you should. Here’s a Gapminder graph of how we are living longer and getting richer (http://bit.ly/aEyqxF).
As for salary and wages, I know what you’re going through. Good luck. As a former civil servant, I can empathize. No matter which party is in charge (and with your coalition government that’s anyone’s guess) you the “bureaucrat” are the problem. Never mind that you carry institutional memory and know that a “radical new idea” has already been tried and failed utterly. Hang in there.
By the way, your blog post on the poppies has some very good descriptive prose. Nicely done!
[…] A teachable moment […]
Hi Norm
We Brits just love paying taxes. We quite like sarcasm too. The more serious question is whether the standard of living any of us in the developed world enjoy is actually sustainable, no matter how much we pay for it.
K
🙂 I’m a fan of irony myself. I knew I was treading on thin ice with the taxes. But the US does have the lowest tax rates of any OECD country (I think).
You asked if our standard of living were copied by the developing world is sustainable. I think so, yes, based on historical precedent. People have been predicting doom for humanity for a long time.
In the third century, Tertullian wrote, “Most convincing as evidence of populousness, we men have actually become a burden to the earth, the fruits of nature hardly suffice to sustain us, there is a general pressure of scarcity giving rise to complaints, since the earth can no longer support us. Need we be astonished that plague and famine, warfare and earthquake come to be regarded as remedies, serving, as it were to trim and prune the superfluity of population.”
In the 18th century Thomas Malthus wrote, “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”
We have more doomers in the 20th century and into the 21st.
The Club of Rome funded an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) computer graduate to develop a program that would mathematically/scientifically define human limits. The result was the bestselling “Limits to Growth.” According to Wikipedia the 1972 book, “Five variables were examined in the original model, on the assumptions that exponential growth accurately described their patterns of increase, and that the ability of technology to increase the availability of resources grows only linearly. These variables are: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The authors intended to explore the possibility of a sustainable feedback pattern that would be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables.”
In 1968 Paul R Ehrlich wrote in “The Population bomb,” “[within a decade] the world will undergo famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
Ehrlich repackaged the classic Malthusian catastrophe with what is now called the IPAT formula: I = P × A × T (where I = Environmental Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology). There you have with pseudo-mathematical clarity, we were the seven hundred pound gorilla playing with china plates.
Most doomer books that argue that we (developed OECD nations) aren’t living sustainably and that shortages of resources are just around the corner.
In 1980, the late Julian Simon, an economist, famously posed a bet to doomists that the price of any raw material would decline indefinitely. (The price of a material indicates its abundance, the more abundant it is the cheaper it is.) Ehrlich took the bet. Ronald Bailey wrote about it in his book EcoScam, “In October 1980, Ehrilch and Simon drew up a futures contract obligating Simon to sell Ehrlich the same quantities which could be purchased for $1,000 of five metals (copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten) ten years later as 1980 prices. If the combined prices rose above $1,000, Simon would pay the difference. If they fell below $1,000, Ehrlich would pay Simon. Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07 in October 1990.”
I recommend this post, “Peak Everything” by Ronald Bailey:
http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/27/peak-everything
Cheer up. Things could be worse. Besides, sackcloth is icky and itchy.
Cheers, Norm
Hi Norm
I wondered if it was something which is debated in the US. It is here because the geography of sites such as the Severn Estuary make them look ‘tempting’ for power production. Until you think it through and realise the impacts a barrage would have on birds, fish, etc. Nothing’s simple. I believe there is some technology for something in the sea bed which might be preferable.
That’s quite a difference in the cost of energy between Denmark and the US. I just checked my electric bill and tried to convert to dollars and it’s somewhere between $0.2 and $0.3/KwH (different rate at different times). Do you think power is too cheap in America and would upping the cost reduce demand and approach the supply issue from a different angle? Of course we’re talking about domestic tariffs which is far from the whole picture.
Just one more idea to throw into the debate. Your heat exchanger idea sounds interesting. They’re sometimes included in new build property here, but retro-fitting is where the big expenses come in as you’ve found.
K
Hi Katharine,
Wind and solar are discussed the most. Occasionally someone will bring up tidal.
The energy price differences probably reflect our (yours, mine, and Denmark’s) nation’s tax structures. According to http://www.energy.eu/ the cost of a kwh is ~0.23-0.27 euros ($0.29-0.33) in Denmark and ~0.13-0.14 euros ($0.16-0.17) in the UK. And, according to http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html the nationwide average for all sectors was ~$0.10 (note that there’s a whole lot of variation from state to state and the usage). UK and European taxes on oil products are such that petrol costs half as much in the US than in the UK or Europe. Ever since we (Americans) got upset over “taxation without representation,” we’ve been tax averse. The result then is fewer public transits systems and less of a safety net for Americans in need. Note our congress’s acrimonious passage of a semi-almost-not-quite-universal health care bill this year as an indication of (some) Americans’ dislike of taxes (even for the public good).
As to whether our electricity is too low, this translates to lower prices for goods and services which, in effect, gives people a better standard of living because they have more money in their pockets.
Still, I favor a small carbon tax (see http://www.economist.com/node/16377337) for fostering public transport and better walking and bicycling infrastructure. Currently, little planning is given to anything other than motor vehicle traffic and that is near-sighted at best since walking and biking are excellent ways to exercise and keeping our aging population healthier.
Hi Norm
is there any potential for tidal power generation off the American coastline?
K
Hi K,
I suspect that there is potential for using the ocean for power. I’ve heard that such schemes affect whale migrations (or something like that). Externalities remain no matter what our energy choice is.
Certainly we are better off now (using petrol) than in the late 1800s to early 1900s, where we used horses for much of the transport. New York city around 1900 had to deal with half a million pounds of horse manure daily and the acreage needed to support the horses was immense.
I’ve thought of placing a heat exchanger into the lake (or into the soil of our yard). The temp gradient can be used to generate power.
At the moment, alt energy systems are incredibly expensive. The Austin man who I mentioned for the PV example put up 27 PVs for $22,000. At $0.10/KwH he saves $380 in elec bills each year. At 0% interest, he starts making a profit at around 60 years. In Denmark where elec is around $0.40/KwH (I think) the payoff price is around 15 years (at 0% interest).
Pardon, the Austin PV panel example I cited is on tomorrow’s post.