This commentary was first published January 2, 2022 at the Washington Times
by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels – January 4, 2022
Anticipating earlier in December that Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) might scuttle his climate plan (which he did Dec. 19 on Fox News), President Biden signed an Executive Order commanding that all the electricity that the federal government uses be from “100 percent carbon pollution-free” sources by 2030.
The order means that federal juice either has to come from zero-emission sources (like solar and wind) or that any carbon dioxide emissions be sequestered away, which usually means burying them underground. There hasn’t been sufficient success with this “sequestration” to make any dent in the growing global emissions curve. Biden’s non-carbon dioxide sources explicitly include electricity from nuclear fission, which his green allies are doing their best to put out of business.
Our Energy Information Agency (EIA) claims fully 40% of our power is already carbon dioxide-free, with 20% from “renewable” solar energy and wind turbines and 20% from nuclear.
Nuclear is pretty much off the table. California is about to shut its lone nuke at Diablo Canyon, which supplies nearly 10% of the state’s power. Last April, (then) Governor Cuomo shut down one of New York’s, the Indian Point plant, which the AP cheekily headlined “Gone Fission”. There are three reactors remaining in the state.
So how is the government going to come up with the remaining 60% of electricity by 2030, which now comes mainly from natural gas (40%) and coal (20%)? It won’t be made up with nuclear, as there’s only one new plant in the current pipeline, Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant, scheduled for a 2024 completion. There’s not likely to be any other until after 2030.
Biden’s order means that all of this power is going to come from wind and solar. (Non-emitting new hydropower is a political nonstarter.) But they are terribly unreliable. The sun is below the horizon half of the time, and too close to it to produce much electricity for at least an hour after sunrise and before sunset. Ninety percent of incoming solar radiation can be blocked by dense overcast. And some of the coldest temperatures occur when the wind doesn’t stir the air, which also peaks electricity demand with no supply from the wind.
Because a stable electrical grid requires stable power, quick backup can only be provided by maintaining a large reserve of gas-fired generators. The importance of this became obvious last February in Texas , when improperly insulated gas plants couldn’t make up for shortages in wind generation. The Texas grid, which is independent from the rest of the country, came to within minutes of a complete black crash, restarting from which would take up to a month. Given the cold temperatures, that would have been one of the greatest disasters in U.S. history.
Besides courting disaster, Biden’s Executive Order is fantasy. The government can’t deploy enough solar and wind — let alone making it reliable — to supply all of its power without carbon dioxide emissions. There is no battery technology that can reliably accommodate for the intermittent failures of wind and solar. Protecting this fragile grid from its obvious inability to supply a steady stream of power 24/7 will require massive backup from a nimble source like natural gas.
It’s not clear at all that Biden — or whomever is handing him the note cards before he faces the camera — is interacting with reality when ordering the federal government to do what is simply impossible.
Fortunately, people are catching on. The likelihood that he will have any legislative authority after next years’ election is vanishingly small. The Democrat Party made a deal with unreality when it thought it could push such a weak and compromised president for four years without an intervening electoral disaster. Barack Obama lost 65 hours seats because of political overreach in the 2010 congressional races. Biden’s poll numbers — as shown by the generic congressional ballot — are even worse, much worse. Currently, the largest repudiation of a governing political party in U.S. history seems not only possible but likely.
Dr. Patrick J. Michaels is a Senior Fellow at the CO2 Coalition in Arlington VA, Virginia State Climatologist 1980-2007, and Past-President of the American Association of State Climatologists. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Science and Environmental Policy Project
This commentary was first published January 2, 2022 at the Washington Times
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I say great! Let them try. It will affect the federal government so they’ll be their own victims. They’ll never get Congress to allocate that much money for the boondoggle regardless of who’s in charge.Let the planning begin so the people understand what they’re on the hook for.
If Biden’s new “Executive Order” can be safely ignored because it is impossible to realize, can we just ignore the one he signed to stop the Keystone XL pipeline?
No matter how much Biden or Kerry or others complain about the dangers of “global warming”, neither Biden nor Congress can repeal the laws of thermodynamics.
Biden should try to lead by example–instead of returning from Delaware to the White House aboard fuel-guzzling Air Force One, he should ride a bicycle. That would have been lots of fun in last weekend’s snowstorm!
I don’t know, maybe it would be a good thing for the Federal government to shut down every time the wind stopped blowing. 😃
California voters passed a “sunshine” or “transparency” or some such word, law to prevent all the back room, you-will-never-know, deal making of public law for private interests. All gatherings for such dark doings now include a lawyer sitting in so they can claim attorney privilege and thur reveal nothing. Nothing else changed. The feds would continue to do whatever they want, you would just know even less about it than now.
Attorney privilege only allows the attorney to refuse to answer, Shirley?
It, with exceptions, applies also to client communications with his attorney.
It worked in CA to totally bypass the voters mandate. Of course, the courts generally want whatever the legislature wants.
Politicians make their own wind, from both ends.
The wind never stops blowing from the orifices of politicians
It’s easy the old fool will be dead long before 2030. It won’t be his problem. Executive orders last the length of his rein of incompetence, which hopefully will be short.
The alarmists blame climate change on the mistaken assumption that CO2 started it.
Alarmists have fooled a lot of people with that assertion (which is a mistake). Their entire theory is based on the false assumption that warming was initiated by CO2 increase and water vapor increased as a feedback to the temperature increase. Apparently they never actually checked or they would have discovered that WV has increased far more than possible from just temperature increase (the relevant feedback).
The simple algorithm to calculate WV increase from temperature increase reported by UAH is included in Sect 8 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com The results for temperatures reported by HadCRUT4 are graphed in Sect 7 of https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
Temperatures calculated using measured water vapor make an excellent match to measured average global temperatures since before 1900 as shown here.
Where is the warming of the 30s?
The graph is average global temperature as reported by HadCRUT4 with 5-year smoothing. It includes the warming thru the 30s.
Any graph that has 1945 being far hotter than the 1930’s is obviously fake.
RH,
I don’t make fake graphs. I suppose that someone who makes fake graphs might think everyone does. You obviously did not look at the HadCRUT4 reported data or the graph.
Meanwhile, in the UK, as in the USA, inflation is a big political issue, especially rising energy prices. So the UK Labour Party is calling on the Government to abolish the 5% VAT on domestic gas and electricity bills. Political expediency trumps climate change yet again.
I moved into a house and my elec bills dropped 50%. Surprised as it is a larger house. Elec supplier , bulb, put my direct debit up by 75% in autumn. Their sell was green energy. 100%. When the price of ff went up they hit me with the rise just had my latest bill… I’m in debt by about a month’s payment. They’re bust and are run by administaters because they can’t pay their gas bills!!!! How fn green is that. Oh, BTW the gov price cap is removed in April.
Inflation? You mean printing huge mountains of pretend money causes inflation?
Wow, who’d’ve thunk that?
Federal Government electricity is mostly not independent of other electricity. It is a completely shared resource outside of secure military installations like naval ships.
The lawn surrounding the White House would be a good start for windmills, and solar, and John Kerry’s place too.
The wording “carbon pollution-free” can no doubt be interpreted in many ways, especially within the legal system where words frequently don’t mean what they mean to the rest of society. It does not say “carbon free”, it could be saying only carbon sourced electricity is allowed, but that source has to not pollute, “pollution” itself being a very subjective word.
Perhaps it means free carbon pollution?
I think my latest article is related:
https://www.cfact.org/2022/01/04/environmentalism-has-lost-its-way/
Paving the countryside with solar slabs, killing huge numbers of birds with wind choppers, and then using toxic chemical energy to process the juice, violates all the basic principles of environmentalism. They have lost their way.
David, its the old question: “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” Calling unreliables green doesn’t make them environmentally friendly.
The Australian Capital Territory, a similar seat of federal government as DC in the USA, achieved 100% “renewable” electricity a few years ago. It was not hard to do.
It is a simple contractual fiddle where you have a supply auction that is open to any generator anywhere in the network. You agree on a price for all their output and then onsell that output into the wholesale market.
The federal government would simply set up an auction that all “renewable” energy generators could participate in and keep then rolling until they have enough energy locked in supply contracts to match their use – wallah 100% “renewable”
In Australia, the ACT government is not the Federal Government and must burden electricity consumers and rate payers with any folly they get into through the contracts. What is now hurting said consumers and rate payers in the ACT is the negative wholesale prices. Contracted generators have sold their output in advance so are no longer sensitive to market signals. There is no curtailing when the price goes negative.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7197512/evoenergy-wants-a-big-rise-in-electricity-prices-to-cover-acts-renewables-targets/
Federal agencies have unlimited funds so the difference between struck rates for an auction and the wholesale price is not a problem.
If you have stayed with me, you may realise this is essentially a ponzi schema where the early adopters can make hay until more intermittent generation is encouraged into the network without recognising their real cost. Once intermittent generation in the network averages around 20%, it gets very expensive to keep the grid stable. Think of the issues in Texas last year occurring every day without decisive load management.
“Decisive” load management is the goal of many players. It is actually “decisive” control of peoples’ lives for ideological purposes.
The whole renewable energy/net zero notion is so stupid it takes my breath away. There is only one way to put a stop to this nonsense and that is to control the amount of energy delivered to each household. I would like to say we should limit the energy available to the government also but even I recognize that some departments are truly essential. However if we cut the amount of energy delivered to government workers residences it won’t take them long to wake up.
It is simple really: Biden will just claim to be using the 40% that is already “green”, and then blame everyone else for not doing their part.
The Democrats feel they must accede to extreme greenism lest the Green party run a spoiler / vote-splitter presidential candidate, as happened in 2000. This explains their apparent irrationality and their refusal to listen to climate contrarians.
He is only demanding that the government use only CO2 free energy. So if all the nuclear and some of the wind goes to government uses, everyone else can use gas and coal, no?
We can get pretty close to Biden’s lofty goal fairly easily if we start closing down federal agencies. They’ll be using zero energy—renewable or otherwise—and saving American taxpayers money and grief. Let’s go, Brandon!
Whoever, not whomever. C’mon, you’re writing for public consumption. Is there nobody who knows the difference between the nominative and accusative?
Sad
Ooh that’s a big gotcha! My Latin and composition teachers at Benet Academy (the latter being one of the great ones, who just retired) would be very unhappy. I appreciate you reminding me to be a bit more careful.
PJM
Seriously? I thought we all knew by now, grammar is racist.
Somehow, with sky high inflation, the border wide open, FFs under attack, public schools teaching CRT, and most of our elites hell-bent for Marxism, I just can’t get worked up over the “difference between the nominative and accusative”. Sorry, but I just can’t…
When their printing press for money gets sold out they will be using coal and wood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Power_Plant
They have tried with the US Capitol area.
This wiki article could use an update.
The author appears to be confusing various different things. In 2017 the EIA stated that the total US government’s energy usage was about 1 quadrillion BTU which includes fossil fuel use for vehicles which is the majority of it. In contrast the total renewable energy output in 2020 was 11 quadrillion BTU and included 7 quadrillion BTU worth of energy generation. So in other words there is at least 6.5 quadrillion more BTUs of electricity than is needed for Biden’s executive order. All the federal government has to do between now and 2030 is to sign contracts with existing renewable energy suppliers rather than fossil fuel based energy suppliers.
You and your stupid ideas.
Joe Biden will not be president in 2030, therefore his executive order will not have any effect.
Notice the word “executive”. It only has meaning if you are one.
Executive orders issued many decades ago are still ruining people’s lives today.
I wonder how many diapers Biden goes through a day ? And if Dr. Jill has to change them ? And if those diapers could be used for power plant fuel ?
This a classic policy, and should be a case history when the history of the climate wars is written.
First, as the piece points out, the policy is impossible to implement. Wind and solar are not reliable enough sources of generation to power any large organization, including the Federal Government.
Second, even were it possible to implement, it would not reduce Government emissions by a large percentage. Nationally electricity generation is about 25% of total emissions (Source: EPA). So the most you can reduce Government emissions by is going to be 25%.
Third, even if it were possible to implement, Government emissions are a fairly small percentage of total US emissions. I haven’t found figures for how much, but we can get an idea from sector emissions:
Land use & forestry 12%
Agriculture 10%
Industry 23%
We know none of these are government, and then of the remainder only a fraction will be government. You can get an idea from the total number of Federal employees, which was about 2.3 million in 2020.
It seems unlikely based on all this that government is doing more than about 10% of total national emissions, and of that 10%, only a quarter will be from electricity, so the proposed measures can’t reduce national emissions by more than about 2.5%.]
Whatever, do the calculation however you like, there is no way that electricity consumption by the Government can account for a significant proportion of US national emissions.
Conclusion, even if possible, the measures will not significantly reduce US emissions.
Fourth, even more obviously, they are not going to reduce global emissions. Say the US is emitting about 5 billion tons a year out of a global total of about 37 billion. So the measures might reduce global emissions by about 2.5% of 5 billion, which is, have I got this right? 125 million tons out of the 37 billion and rising. Say the estimates are off, say that the total is double that. Its still not significant, its still going to be overwhelmed by Chinese increases in emissions in a year or so.
Future historians of this moral panic will want to analyze carefully how it came about that the best and brightest in the US and the UK became focussed on doing things that were at the same time impossible and, even if possible, totally ineffective.
There are parallels in the UK – the crazed Net Zero project, which consists of replacing cars with EVs, home heating by heat pumps, andat the same time electricity generation with wind and solar, and at the same time converting gas grid to hydrogen… Again, impossible to do and useless even were it possible.
Future historians will probably point out that this wave of irrationality and denial was not confined to climate, it manifested in the gender and race wars also. And they will probably point out how the problems it created were not confined to climate, gender and race. By far the largest costs will be attributed to the real problems that were crowded out by this focus on non-problems with topics of little real importance, while the real crises developed unnoticed in the background.
Big Federal Government is not sustainable. It runs out of funding. Availability of staff is another question mark. Decentralization and privatization will be done for the remaining government activities.
Global and federal solutions do not match peoples’ need everywhere. A thing that works in California, may not be appropriate in Alaska. Biden already said that there is no federal solution to .. you know the thing.
States, counties, towns and villages will be back in power.
The Feds would just do what the “100%” towns and companies do, which is buy green certificates. Where and when the green power is produced is irrelevant. However a national renewable portfolio standard, which the Dems want, would destroy the certificate market.