Environmentalists have been promoting the use of alternative sources of fuel for years because of their fear of carbon dioxide and 27
global warming. Since carbon dioxide is not harmful and the globe is not warming it seems logical that we don‘t need these alternative sources of energy. However, if they are practical and economical then they should be developed by our businesses without government subsidies and assistance. Wind power, solar power, electric cars, bio – mass, ethanol and anything else would contribute to our energy needs and there doesn‘t ever seem to be too much energy for us to have. But, what energy we do develop and use should be determined by economics while considering the environment. Pollution must be a consideration but carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures are not reasons for making decisions concerning alternative sources of energy.
According to the Energy Information Administration renewable resources produced 2.3% of the U.S. electrical supply in 2005.
Biomass was responsible for 1.5%, wind for 0.44% and solar power for only 0.1%. In contrast, coal fired generation produced 49.7%
of the U.S. electrical supplies in 2005, followed by nuclear power at 19.3%, natural gas at 19.1%, hydro power at 6.5% and oil-fired generation at 3%. We have coal, oil, natural gas and the ability to develop nuclear power and refine oil and are not doing it because of the government.
However, in encouraging the development of alternative energy we should stop subsidizing that development. It might be proper to encourage research but it is ridiculous to give tax credits and mandates for ethanol, wind or solar energy as well as loan guarantees and other politically favored energy projects.
We are able to produce a synthetic gasoline (which is now being used by our air force) for about $60 per gallon but no company is willing to spend the money to develop that because they afraid of our government. That synthetic gasoline is produced from coal and also produces CO2 and the environmentalists would holler, scream and yell and the Congress might pass a law restricting emissions.
So, no company will build and produce that synthetic fuel even though it would help tremendously and we have plenty of coal.
Sometimes you wonder if those bureaucrats and Congressman are on our side or if they are just a little insane.
Ethonal
. In Brazil ethanol is produced from Brazilian sugar cane for $.95 per gallon. We produce ethanol from corn for $1.44 per gallon. The logical conclusion is that we should be telling our farmers to grow more sugar cane. But we do not. Instead we subsidize and protect our ethanol producers and encourage our farmers to grow more corn. The biofuels industry receives a 45 cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced or about $3 billion a year. That has caused the price of corn to increase and so now all of our meat products cost more. Each gallon of ethanol blended with gasoline receives a 51 cent tax credit and still remains more expensive than gasoline.
To protect that industry we place a tariff of 54 cents per gallon on foreign imported ethanol as well as a 2.5% duty. That means that we do not import foreign made ethanol. If we really wanted to reduce the price of the ethanol in our country we could eliminate the 54
cent gallon tariff and that would really help our citizens.
There is a blending requirement from the federal government that our gas must contain 10% ethanol (The EPA is recommending that be increased to 15%). If that requirement were abolished it is probable that ethanol would no longer be a problem for the gasoline companies are not thrilled that they have to blend the ethanol in with their gasoline. The CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008 ―the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10% to 15% of the rise in food prices‖.
The water content of ethanol prevents it being shipped by pipeline and so it must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge all of which are more expensive than pipeline.
Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline which makes it more expensive per highway mile. Congress has given a subsidy of about $1.05 to $1.38 per gallon which is a tax on all of us.
So, we promote a more expensive substitute for oil and discourage other countries from trying to sell us a less expensive product. Gov.
Rick Perry of Texas recently petitioned the EPA (why does a governor of a state have to ask an agency of the government for permission to do anything?) to reduce the amount of ethanol to be produced in his state because of the effect on his state of the price of corn but the EPA turned down his request. The cost of corn was hurting the beef and chicken farmers. Presently, it is estimated that 40% of our corm production is used to produce ethanol and this is contributing to a shortage of food for the world.
A recent Time magazine cover story, ―the Clean Energy Myth‖ described how turning crops into fuel increases both food prices and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol consumes roughly four gallons of water and that when you count the water needed to grow the corn it requires 1,7 00 gallons of water, according to Cornell‘s David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. We have been blessed with an abundant supply of water but even that has a limit and the use of corn to make gasoline could have a very detrimental effect on our water supply. Kansas is threatening to sue Nebraska for consuming more than its share of the Republican River.
Writing in Science Magazine, Renton Righelato and Dominick Spracken estimate that in order to replace just 10% of our gasoline and diesel consumption, the U.S. would need to convert a full 43% of its cropland to ethanol production.
According to a 2007 OECD report, fossil-fuel production is up to 10,000 times as efficient as biofuel, measured by energy produced per unit of land.
In the 2005 and 2007 energy bills there were biofuel mandates and subsidies mandated and those should be repealed.
A study co-authored with Robert Hahn and Caroline Cecot stated, ―We used EPA numbers to calculate the environmental benefits of ethanol…We then compared these benefits with the direct costs of producing and distributing ethanol, the environmental costs 28
associated with its manufacture and combustion and the cost of the slew of incentives offered to refiners and corn farmers. If annual production of ethanol increases by three million gallons by 2012 we estimate that the costs will exceed the benefits by about $1 billion a year.
Greenhouse gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. (from ecologists at Princeton and the Woods Hole Research Center)
The water content also makes it less useful in many combustion engines (Brazil has changed their car engines to accept sugar produced ethanol) and so the use of ethanol is limited.
When we add all this up we find that ethanol is more expensive to produce, that it requires subsidies, that it uses too much water, that it is more expensive to transport, that it is limited in its use, that it is less efficient in generating energy and that using corn to produce energy makes the price of corn increase and thus increases the cost of the farm animals that use corn as food. STUPID seems appropriate for ethanol and the main reason for its acceptance was to reduce non-existent global warming and beneficial carbon dioxide. Is it stupidity or are these people ―off of their rocker‖.
Wind
The main attraction of wind is that it is seemingly free. It is also intermittent, erratic and unreliable. In 2009, in Texas, which obtained 6% of its energy in that year from wind farms there was an extended period when the wind slowed down. And, the cost of the windmills, their erection and maintenance are not free. In addition, the wind blows best at places far away from where the electricity is used and the cost of transmission can be prohibitive. The federal government provides a production tax credit of $0.022 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by wind. That amounts to $6.44 per million BTU of electric energy produced by wind. In 2008
the EIA reported subsidies to oil and gas producers were $0.03 per million BTU of energy produced or about 200 times more for wind production.
Europe has adopted wind as an energy source and we can learn much from their experience. Country Guardians is an organization in England that reports on various forms of energy and they are the source for much of the following information.
Denmark, because of its location with water nearly surrounding it is one of the countries that promotes and uses electricity produced by wind. While the cost of erection in the water is higher than on land there are some advantages of having the windmills in the water.
It doesn‘t require getting permits for transmission lines and there is not a problem of complaints about the noise. If birds are killed by the blades they drop in the sea and are not seen.
Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary "greenhouse" gas). So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off. Denmark is just dependent enough on wind power that when the wind is not blowing right they must import electricity. In 2000 they imported more electricity than they exported. And added to the Danish electric bill are the subsidies that support the private companies building the wind towers. Danish electricity costs for the consumer are the highest in Europe. The head of Xcel Energy in the U.S., Wayne Brunetti, has said, "We're a big supporter of wind, but at the time when customers have the greatest needs, it's typically not available."
. Despite their being cited as the shining example of what can be accomplished with wind power, the Danish government cancelled plans for three offshore wind farms planned for 2008 and has scheduled the withdrawal of subsidies from existing sites. Development of onshore wind plants in Denmark has effectively stopped. Because Danish companies dominate the wind industry, however, the government is under pressure to continue their support.
Spain began withdrawing subsidies in 2002. Germany reduced the tax breaks to wind power, and domestic construction drastically slowed in 2004. Switzerland also is cutting subsidies as too expensive for the lack of significant benefit. The Netherlands decommissioned 90 turbines in 2004. Many Japanese utilities severely limit the amount of wind-generated power they buy, because of the instability they cause. For the same reason, Ireland in December 2003 halted all new wind-power connections to the national grid.
In early 2005, they were considering ending state support. In 2005, Spanish utilities began refusing new wind power connections. In 2006, the Spanish government ended -- by emergency decree -- its subsidies and price supports for big wind. In 2004, Australia reduced the level of renewable energy that utilities are required to buy, dramatically slowing wind-project applications. On August 31, 2004, Bloomberg News reported that "the unstable flow of wind power in their networks" has forced German utilities to buy more expensive energy, requiring them to raise prices for the consumer. In Germany, utilities are forced to buy renewable energy at sometimes more than 10 times the cost of conventional power, in France 3 times. In the U.K., the Telegraph has reported that rather than providing cheaper energy, wind power costs the electric companies £50 per megawatt-hour, compared to £15 for conventional power. The wind industry is worried that the U.K., too, is starting to see that it is only subsidies and requirements on utilities to buy a certain amount of "green" power that prop up the wind towers and that it is a colossal waste of resources. In the U.K. (population 60
million), 1,010 wind turbines produced 0.1% of their electricity in 2002, according to the Department of Trade and Industry. The government hopes to increase the use of renewables to 10.4% by 2010 and 20.4% by 2020, requiring many tens of thousands more towers. As demand will have grown, however, even more turbines will be required.
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In California (population 35 million), according to the state energy commission, 14,000 turbines (about 1,800 MW capacity) produced half of one percent of their electricity in 2000. Extrapolating this record to the U.S. as a whole, and without accounting for an increase in energy demand, well over 100,000 1.5-MW wind towers (costing $150-300 billion) would be necessary to meet the DOE's goal of a mere 5% of the country's electricity from wind by 2010. The DOE says there are 18,000 square miles of good wind sites in the U.S., which with current technology could produce 20% of the country's electricity. This rosy plan, based on the wind industry's sales brochures, as well as on a claim of electricity use that is only three-quarters of the actual use in 2002, would require "only" 142,060
1.5-MW towers. They also explain, "If the wind resource is well matched to peak loads, wind energy can effectively contribute to system capacity." That's a big if -- counting on the wind to blow exactly when demand rises -- especially if you expect the wind to cover 20% (or even 5%) of that demand. As in Denmark and Germany, you would quickly learn that the prudent thing to do is to look elsewhere first in meeting the load demand. And we'd be stuck with a lot of generally unhelpful hardware covering every windy spot in the U.S., while the developers would be looking to put up yet more to make up for and deny their failings.
Then we have the problem of size. Pictures from the energy companies show slim towers rising cleanly from the landscape or hovering faintly in the distant haze, their presence modulated by soft clouds behind them. But a 200- to 300-foot tower supporting a turbine housing the size of a bus and three 100- to 150-foot rotor blades sweeping over an acre of air at more than 100 mph requires, for a start, a large and solid foundation. On a GE 1.5-MW tower, the turbine housing, or nacelle, weighs over 56 tons, the blade assembly weighs over 36 tons, and the whole tower assembly totals over 163 tons. As FPL (Florida Power & Light) Energy says, "a typical turbine site takes about a 42×42-foot-square graveled area." Each tower (and a site needs at least 15-20 towers to make investment worthwhile) requires a huge hole filled with steel rebar–reinforced concrete (e.g., 1,250 tons in each foundation at the facility in Lamar, Colo.). According to Country Guardian, the hole is large enough to fit three double-decker buses. At the 89-turbine Top of Iowa facility, the foundation of each 323-foot assembly is a 7-feet-deep 42-feet-diameter octagon filled with 25,713 pounds of reinforced steel and 181 cubic yards of concrete.
The foundations at the Wild Horse project in Washington are 30 feet deep. At Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee, too, each foundation is at least 30 feet deep and may contain more than 3,500 cubic yards of concrete (production of which is a major source of CO2). On Cefn Croes in Wales the developer built a complete concrete factory on the site, which is not unusual, as well as opened quarries to provide rock for new roads -- neither of which activities were part of the original planning application. On many such mountain ridges as well as other locations, it would be necessary to blast into the bedrock, as Enxco's New England representative, John Zimmerman, has confirmed, possibly disrupting the water sources for wells downhill. At the Waymart plant in Pennsylvania, the foundations extend 30-40 feet into the bedrock. At Romney Marsh in southern England, foundation pillars will be sunk 110 feet. For each 6-feet-deep foundation at the Crescent Ridge facility in Illinois, another 24 feet was dug out and filled with sand. Construction at a site on the Slieve Aughty range in Ireland in October 2003 caused a 2.5-mile-long bog slide. The lesson we can learn from Europe is that energy produced from wind is too expensive, unreliable and should be left to private businesses. We should stop all subsidies and support and let them try to develop it. We do not have to fear from global warming nor carbon dioxide production which has been the main reason for developing wind power.
The environmentalists claim that they are in favor of wind generation and solar power but they oppose the construction of the transmission lines necessary to bring the power generated to where it can be used. They are lobbying in California to stop a 150 mile link between San Diego and solar panels. Hundreds turned out to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley and Orange County. Duke Energy and American Electric Power have planned that the construction of 240 miles of transmission lines in Indiana will require 6 years to complete because of the time necessary to obtain government permits and finish the law suits that environmentalists will bring against that. They really should not be assigned all of the blame for even though they are wrong there is no reason for our crazy Congress and government to support them. You would think our elected representatives would be smarter than this or more in favor of doing what is right.
Or maybe they are smarter but just like the campaign contributions and wish to get elected.
Solar energy
The big attraction of solar energy is the thought that it might be free for it obviously exists and is available for use if we can harness it.
There are advantages of using solar energy on individual homes that have another source of power but the lack of reliability make it impractical for industrial use.
The obvious disadvantages are that it only produces during daylight and even during the day the sunlight can be erratic. The other big disadvantage is that under our present knowledge it is very expensive to build and install the necessary semi-conducting materials. It also requires a very large area for installation to achieve a good level of efficiency.
There also is a problem for the natural places where the sun shines – like deserts- are far away from where the energy would be used and so now the cost of storage batteries and transmission add to the costs and the problems.
According to a 2009 report from the Congressional Research Service a great deal of water is involved in generating electricity from solar. Utility-scale solar power works by generating steam that spins turbines. Cooling the system at the end of the process consumes almost twice as much water per megawatt hour as coal fired power plants that use the same cooling technique. Hot, arid regions best 30
suited for solar tend to be short on fresh water. So, add the initial construction costs, the space required, the amount of water and the transmission costs and solar does not seem to be a good answer. The following chart presents the cost analysis.
[edit] U.S. Department of Energy estimates
The table below lists the estimated cost of electricity by source for plants entering service in 2016. No subsidies are included in the calculations. The table is from a January 12, 2010 report of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).[10]
Total System Levelized Cost (the rightmost column) gives the dollar cost per megawatt-hour that must be charged over time in order to pay for the total cost. Divide by 1000 to get the cost per kilowatt-hour. The easy way to do that is to move the decimal point 3
places to the left.
O&M = operation and maintenance.
CC = combined cycle.
CCS = carbon capture and sequestration.
PV = photovoltaics.
GHG = greenhouse gas.
The table, according to the DOE (emphasis added), "provides the average national levelized costs for the generating technologies represented in the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) as configured for the Annual Energy Outlook 2010 (AEO2010) reference case. Levelized costs represent the present value of the total cost of building and operating a generating plant over its financial life, converted to equal annual payments and amortized over expected annual generation from an assumed duty cycle. The key factors contributing to levelized costs include the cost of constructing the plant, the time required to construct the plant, the non-fuel costs of operating the plant, the fuel costs, the cost of financing, and the utilization of the plant. The availability of various incentives including state or federal tax credits can also impact these costs. The values shown in the table do not incorporate any such incentives."
As can be seen from the table the most expensive sources are wind and solar and so they really are not free. If global warming and carbon dioxide are not problems then there are really no reasons to be promoting the use of wind and solar as far as being sources for our energy. We should stop subsidies for them and let private businesses pursue their development if they desire. It makes no sense for the government to subsidize their use. Research might be defended but it is difficult to defend trying to use either as a source of energy.
Electric cars
One of the main problems with electric cars is shown by comparing the cost of two cars made by Nissan. The starting price of the Nissan Versa hatchback is $13,520 and the price of the similar-size Nissan Leaf is $33,000. The Leaf has a battery in it that costs about $15,600. The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of bringing down car-battery costs by 70% by 2014. Jay Whitacre, a battery researcher and technology policy analyst at Carnegie Mellon/University, said in an interview the government‘s goals‖ are aggressive and worth striving for, but they are not attainable in the next three to five years.‖
There are more problems for the range of these cars vary from 50 miles to 150 miles (estimated) for all of them. Recharging time is generally around 8 hours in an in house charger. It is accurate that most people can generally live with that mileage range for most of the time but if you have an electric car you will also need a gas powered car for any trips so it is most practical for two car families.
So, why would anyone buy an electric car which costs lots more money and has a very restricted range? Our government is providing a $7500 rebate to those who purchase electric cars but that still leaves quite a gap in price. Our government has also provided $2.4
billion in federal grants to encourage companies to make the electric cars and develop better batteries. It makes little sense to provide grants to businesses to make cars for we have been making cars for a century. There might be some logic for providing money for battery research but not for cars. Batteries could also be a problem for the future for when they wear out disposal will become a real problem for recycling companies do not like small batteries now and the large car batteries will probably be refused.
At the present time there are four existing electric cars on the market but there are twelve others in development to be introduced in the next couple of years. That may not happen because the developers will naturally see the success of the other electric cars and adjust accordingly. In the first two months of 2011 the Chevrolet Volt sold 500 cars. That will probably cause the others to change their plans. Electric vehicles make sense on the golf course but not as a transportation vehicle.
It is clear that the reason for having electric cars is not convenience, comfort or cost so it must be because of the fear of global warming and the concern over carbon dioxide emissions. If that is the case (and it must be) then it is ridiculous to promote electric car production for the globe is not warming and carbon dioxide is not dangerous. The effect of the scare about global warming and carbon dioxide is really amazing and the amount of money we are wasting for concern about a non-existing threat is astounding.
This chapter is about economically failed energy sources. It is easily solved if we can get our Congress converted. We should stop forcing gasoline companies to include ethanol in their gas but the quickest solution is to stop the subsidies for all of this stuff. If businesses can make wind farms, solar power, ethanol or electric cars profitable then that would be excellent. If they can‘t then we 31
should stop supporting them. At the present time the only reason for supporting them is because of the non-existent fear of global warming and carbon dioxide. Stop the subsidies and save us a bunch of money. $billions ? $trillions ?