Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Earlier this month, Representatives Jared Polis (D Colorado), Ben Ray Luján (D New Mexico), and Ann Kuster (D New Hampshire) introduced the National Renewable Electricity Act of 2013 (RES Act), into the US House of Representatives. The act mandates that all US retail electrical suppliers buy an increasing amount of electricity from renewable energy sources, or pay fines for the shortfall. But if the law is passed, it will raise electricity prices for Americans for questionable environmental gains.
The act calls for solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and other renewables to provide 6 percent of US electricity in 2014, rising to 25 percent by the year 2025. Representative Kuster says, “This common-sense bill will help create good middle class jobs, cut pollution and reduce our dependence on foreign oil—all while saving consumers money on their utilities.” Unfortunately, Ms. Kuster’s statement is not supported by actual industry experience and economic data.
Forcing consumers to buy a product that is more expensive, like renewable energy, never saves them money. A prime example is the recently completed California Valley Solar Ranch in San Luis Obispo County that was constructed under the 33 percent renewables mandate of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) law. The solar ranch covers a huge area of 1,500 acres, more than 100 times the area of a typical natural gas-fired power plant, but produces an average output of only about 55 megawatts, less than one-tenth the output of a typical gas-fired plant, at the exorbitant price of $1.6 billion.
Consumers will pay twice for the California Valley Solar Ranch. Electricity from the ranch will be priced at 15 to 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, four times the price of current California wholesale electricity and over 50 percent more than projected prices during the next 25-years. Consumers also paid for a tax subsidy package totaling $1.4 billion, including a 30 percent federal investment tax credit worth $462 million, a $1.2 billion US Department of Energy loan guarantee worth $205 million, and other tax benefits.
Representative Kuster’s comments about reducing “our dependence on foreign oil” are nonsense. Today only 0.7 percent of US electricity comes from petroleum. Claiming that a national renewable electricity standard will reduce foreign oil imports is about accurate as claiming that it will promote world peace.
Politicians repeatedly state that subsidies and mandates for renewable energy will produce “green jobs.” But the Beacon Hill Institute developed more than ten studies on the impacts of state RPS laws, including Colorado and New Mexico, the home states of Representatives Polis and Luján. In all cases, the implementation of RPS laws was found to increase electricity prices, reduce real disposable income, reduce investment, and cause a net reduction in jobs.
Today, 29 states follow renewable portfolio standards laws and another 8 states pursue renewables goals for electricity. The sponsors of the RES Act want to force mandates on the remaining 13 states, the only states with a sensible energy policy. Note that in 2012, citizens in states without RPS mandates paid 10.7 cents per kw-hr for residential electricity, about 19 percent less than the 12.7 cents per kw-hr paid by citizens in states with RPS laws or goals. Higher electricity prices disproportionately impact the poor, as a larger part of their family budget.
Neither is a reduction in pollution a good reason for a national renewable electricity standard. According to Environmental Protection Agency data, all real air pollutants, including lead, ozone, nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides, and carbon particulates have been falling for more than 40 years and continue to decline. US air pollution levels have fallen an aggregate 72 percent since 1970. At the same time, US electricity production from coal is up 115 percent and from natural gas is up 230 percent.
The unmentioned reason for the RES Act is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for man-made global warming. But carbon dioxide, a harmless, invisible gas that trees use for photosynthesis, has been wrongly labeled a pollutant. By forcing the construction of expensive wind and solar plants, proponents of the theory of dangerous climate change believe that they can save polar bears, reduce the strength of storms, curb droughts and floods, and probably promote world peace.
But RPS laws don’t even reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Installation of wind systems creates stop-and-go electrical utilities. Output from wind turbines is erratic, forcing back-up coal and natural gas plants to inefficiently ramp power up and down to maintain continuity of energy supply. Studies of utilities in Netherlands and Colorado show that combined wind and hydrocarbon systems use more fuel and emit more CO2 than stand-alone hydrocarbon-fired plants.
Rather than enacting a national renewable electricity law, we should instead roll back our costly state RPS laws. Suppose we return to energy policy based on economics and common-sense, rather than global warming ideology?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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Gail Combs says:
December 20, 2013 at 5:36 am
“Solar is going to take over anyway, regardless of these laws, it’s on a phenomenon growth rate…
What are you a marketing rep for a solar company? Even Huff & Puff does not agree with you!”
I’m just point out the obvious, solar is growing exponentially, while you point out the conditions in America only, what do you think will happen when solar prices fall further?
McComberBoy says:
December 20, 2013 at 6:44 am
“And as to the storage devices being electric cars? Wow! ”
Lot of people here seem to immediate extrapolate a suggestion to infinity to disprove it… so suggest solar is growing and people here state “solar can’t do it 100% cos it too intermittent”… well who’s taking about anywhere near 100% !
Solar is going to be a large part of the future energy supply but that is all… ultimately all it will do is shave the day time peak to touch zero. I’m not talking about storing for the night, all I’m talking about is storing it for a couple of hours for the mismatched between the demand peak and solar peak. It won’t take much storage just for that…
The main part of future energy will still be base load coal, but it’ll be marginalized there will also be a lot of wind and gas, new wind is already cheaper than new coal or new gas in most countries
Jim says:
December 20, 2013 at 10:09 am
Slide-slip Bob, how does that work when it is overcast for a straight week and our temps in Tejas dip below 20 degrees F multiple days in a row?
Can’t be over cast every where and I’m not suggesting you throw out all other energy means
The whole of the Western world is suffering this scam. Developing nations, if not colonized by Western NGOs, are too smart to fall in line.
The scam: Enviro-zealots hate energy production, of any kind. Unreformed Communists hate Western civilization. The is nexus is a great excuse to destroy Western Civilization
Given this, the only acceptable forms of energy generation are those that don’t work.
I have said that stupidity annoys me, and it still annoys me. There is no warming now and by latest count this means seventeen years. This is not the only no-warming period because in the eighties and nineties there was another 18 year period of no-warming. Put them together and you have 35 years of no- warming, more specifically no greenhouse warming. As a scientist I can tell you that 17 years is enough to tell anyone that greenhouse warming does not exist. Thirty-five years is not needed for that but it is a nice icing on the cake. In case you don’t know where that 18 years comes from, it was hidden by a false warming called “late twentieth century warming” in official temperature curves. Doing research for my book “What Warmng?” I determined that this warming was fake and even said so in the preface to the book. It took two years but eventually the big three of temperature – GISTEMP, HadCRUT and NCDC – withdrew it. They aligned their data with satellites that do not show this warming. It was done secretly and no explanation was offered. And since greenhouse warming is the life blood of the alleged anthropogenic greenhouse warming it follows that there is no such thing as AGW. These amateur electricians want us to pay more for our electricity to stop the non-existent AGW from boiling off the oceans as Hansen warned us. What they are doing is complete stupidity but what their supervisors who permitted this have done is not just stupidity but totally stupid and irresponsible leadership. We are supposed to be a democracy but somehow irresponsible stupidity in high places has taken over.
Are you familiar with the Greek word “idiotes”, from which the English word idiot was derived?
1. A foolish or stupid person.
2. A layman, person lacking professional skill
3. A person of subnormal intelligence
4. A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers.
People like you, Bill, repeatedly making stupid assertions and dumb, baseless claims which the pols (politicians) pay attention and are the crux of our present problem.
Thank you for the living example of same. With the advent of the internet we see more and more of this absolute idiocy and foolishness on display. This is a SURE example that you never worked out the ‘impractical’ at an earlier age on your own time or when attending school at multiple levels or maybe even at a uni later on … instead, you drag these vestiges of youthful, fanciful, totally impractical thinking into adulthood and out into the open and light of day for all to see …
FOR the week of which I alluded to in my intial response to you above, the entire state of Texas and the southwest was under cloud cover … which would have REQUIRED and ENORMOUS reserve to have powered the ‘grid’ for that period of time w/o ‘sun’ …
See, Bill, you just can’t THINK. AT ALL. No critical cognitive or rational thinking power AT ALL.
.
re: wood pellets for UK, mentioned earlier. From private land, managed forests, grown …. well I won’t use “sustainable” because that word has been captured and distorted… grown in a businesslike way such as to preserve the business and cash flow without depleting the resource. Primary alternate use is pulp for paper (powered primarily by waste generated in the process). Yes, its probably silly for the UK to buy and import wood pellets instead of using their domestic coal, but hey, it’s a free market. They aren’t “our” wood chips; they are a privately produced resource put on the open market by Plum Creek, among others. In a smarter world, commodities with highest energy density/cost ratios would be prized — that is — in the world outside government.
Why raise the prices of dependable, efficient and cheap electricity???
“Sunshot Vision Study”
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/vision_study.html
The only way to make the green programs economically viable is to destroy gas/nuke/coal.
A perfect example of the ever increasing numbers of prima donna scientists and politicians slapping each other on the back with one hand while picking the pockets of tax payers with the other.
SideShowBob says:
“Lot of people here seem to immediate extrapolate a suggestion to infinity to disprove it… so suggest solar is growing and people here state “solar can’t do it 100% cos it too intermittent”… well who’s taking about anywhere near 100% !”
Well SideShow, numerous eco-groups ARE claiming that renewables can provide us with 80% of our energy needs. If wind and solar are major components of that claim, then the claim is nearly as irrational as a 100% claim.
SideShow, you need to understand that (here in the U.S. anyway) the solar energy campaign dates back to the late 1970s when the first government bureau or agency (I can’t find the reference to it now offhand) was created to start the solar energy ball rolling. In the 35 years time since then, the solar industry has made remarkably little inroads into the U.S. energy market. The government’s energy website (www.eia.gov) tells us that solar only provides 1% of our energy needs — after 35 years! Maybe I’m wrong here SideShow, but I think that if solar was capable of making meaningful inroads into this country’s energy markets, we would be seeing it by now. 1% after 35 years doesn’t cut it, and I for one am not impressed by it.
The reasons why this is so shouldn’t be hard to understand. Solar is a weak, low density, and diffuse (spread out) energy source, especially in the northern parts of the U.S. The panels provide decreasing amounts of energy as they age, and are usually kaput after 20 years if not sooner. Traditional power plants (including nuclear) last much longer. For these and other reasons, the energy return on our investment (EROI) in solar energy is a really lousy one compared to other energy sources. A good EROI number matters for economic reasons among others.
Nuclear is the ONLY clean, green and worthwhile energy source that can completely displace our fossil fuel power plants. The energy density of nuclear (especially thorium, see http://www.flibe-energy.com) has solar beat by a million miles. The ONLY reason the solar energy industry is still alive today is because of the political clout that it’s supporters enjoy in Washington. Thus we have the government financial support and legal mandates that feed into its one and only lifeline that keeps it going. If and when Uncle Sam’s support for it dies someday, so will the industry itself. It’s time for you to understand all of this and move on.
CD (@CD153) says:
December 21, 2013 at 11:30 am
_Jim says:
December 21, 2013 at 5:46 am
“See, Bill, you just can’t THINK. AT ALL. No critical cognitive or rational thinking power AT ALL.”
I’m telling you, generators are in deep trouble from cheaper and getting cheaper still wind & solar, if you don’t believe me maybe you’ll believe a utilities analysts at investment bank UBS
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/ubs-utilities-face-perfect-storm-from-renewables-storage-75876
Meanwhile nuclear is getting ridiculously expensive with ever greater safety regulations and multiply redundant systems they have to put in.
Bill
You obviously haven’t heard of new generation nuclear plants, or of the rapid progress made by the US, China, and India on Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors. Wind and solar are getting more expensive because when they constitute a higher percentage of total power on grids they destabilize the grids and still require spinning backup, which in total is inefficient and produces more GHG than without the wind and solar. Wind generates less than 30% of rated capacity, and solar only about 12%. You have to build a lot to get a little.
Why raise electricity prices?
Because they can. And WE have to pay for THEIRS. 🙁
Barbara Skolaut says:
December 21, 2013 at 5:41 pm
“Because they can. And WE have to pay for THEIRS. :-(”
So do something about it, buy a solar PV system like Anthony did, pay it off in a few years and get free electricity after that.
You should insulate yourself because i see bad things happening to the grid and utilities and electricity prices…
SideShowBob – The only way solar PV prices out is with government rebates and tax credits, which is another way of saying taking the money from other peoples’ pockets with no benefit to them. Cost without rebates is $60,000, useful life is less than 240 months, cost is $250 per month, or almost double the average per household in Northern California. To install on my coastal property among the redwoods I would have to cut down an acre of CO2-hungry redwoods. 90% of my neighbors would have to do the same.
You scratch the shiny green off a progressive and underneath you find a dark authoritarian.
ALWAYS.
As far as I can determine, not one of the names at http://reneweconomy.com.au/about have ANY science based qualification least of all anything relating to climate science. About as useful as t%$ts on a bull.
“The main part of future energy will still be base load coal,”
“but it’ll be marginalized”
Those two statements are not compatible with each other. One or the other must be wrong, so to put them in the same sentence is untenable.
“Meanwhile nuclear is getting ridiculously expensive with ever greater safety regulations and multiply redundant systems they have to put in.”
Yes Bob, it is being regulated out of the competition (well at least in most Western economies, meanwhile China, Russia and India seem to be able to build them much cheaper). Many of the ‘safety regulations’ and ‘redundant systems’ aren’t needed and don’t add to safety. They have been added by regulators in what is either the most massive show of stupidity ever by any government in all of history OR they are added with full knowledge and intention to make nuclear power uneconomical.
@jim: Don’t forget central valley California. Home of tulie fog. Comes on in fall. Leaves in spring. MONTHS of no wnd and no sun… when heating and light demand is highest… Never knew the sky could be sunny in November until I moved several hundred miles away…
@D.D.Palmer: I took the “marginalized” to mean social emotional, not energy quantity…
Nat gas was the darling of greens as a marginal “trasitional” fuel. Now they are starting the vilification since it threatens the wind and solar dogma… Thorium will be made significant by
China, with old US designs.
SideShowBob says:
December 21, 2013 at 5:58 pm
“So do something about it, buy a solar PV system like Anthony did, pay it off in a few years and get free electricity after that.”
Make sure to plan for inverter failure; they don’t last as long as the panels.
When the price of grid electricity is increased enough through taxation, at a certain point self-generated electricity becomes economic; that’s a no-brainer; a different question is whether it will be allowed to generate electricity for yourself without paying another tax. Perishing states have lots of ideas. Spain already instated a tax on solar generated electricity.
The unviability of solar and wind is only caused by competition. Holland became a superpower in the 17th century by increasing the efficiency of their windmills, using them for sawmills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawmill
to build their fleet.
If you can convince all other nations to use only windpower, windpower is sufficient to be competitive. Same for solar obviously. If you can’t, it isn’t. You can still go isolationist though; at least until somebody forces your borders open.