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America’s Unrequited Love of Alternative Energy
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- October 3, 2011 – 2:35 pm
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Like many Democrats, President Obama wants to believe — wants desperately
to believe — in the technologies that can safely be assumed to be
alternative. Most of them are used for electricity generation; and while
in principle they are many, in reality they are few. Two in fact: wind
power and solar power. Hence, the Solyndra affair and the willful missteps
that led up to it.Though subsidized with tax breaks and other incentives, wind is
established – and embraced by utilities, with varying degrees of
enthusiasm. Solar has had a harder time getting a hold in the marketplace.
It's not that solar doesn't work, but that it's expensive and beset with
other problems.Enter Solyndra, looking like the next generation of solar — if you will,
the new-and-improved solar. First, it used new materials in its solar
cells instead of the dominant silicon. Second, it offered an entirely
different kind of panel made up of rows of long, cylindrical tubes, or
“modules,” designed to capture more of the sun's rays than a traditional
flat one.When I first saw these displayed at an Edison Electric Institute
convention, I was intrigued and filmed a short segment for my television
program on the technology. It appeared to offer a big step forward – the
kind that believers in alternative energy would like to take. They'd like
to vault ahead of the limited market penetration (about 3 percent for wind
and hardly measurable for solar).Leaving out the behind-the-scenes politics, Solyndra was compelling for
any White House that wanted to be seen as befriending alternative energy
technology. This included the administration of George W. Bush.There's still much of the Solyndra story that has not been told,
particularly the role of the Chinese in swamping the world market with
cheap silicon cells. Yet, Solyndra was a sophisticated company and it must
have known that China was the Goliath to its David. Also, the Department
of Energy must have known how fragile Solyndra's market position was.Yet, fatally, when politicians and scientists want something to happen,
they are no wiser than teenaged lovers.A much bigger question than why the government loved Solyndra too much is
why are Democrats, and liberals in general, so passionate about
alternative energy? Since the 1970s, they've held out hope that
electricity can be made in less than traditional ways, although those ways
are proven and abundant; but as with all large industrial actions, they
aren't without consequences.Coal, which provides about half of our electricity, is dirty to mine,
transport and burn. It can be cleaned up somewhat, under the rubric of
“clean coal.” Natural gas — now in abundance because of improved drilling
and extraction technology in combination with better turbines — offers a
modified environmental impact and is less damaging than coal to extract;
and twice as clean as coal to burn. It provides about 25 percent of our
electricity and is in growing demand, but it's still controversial.Then there's nuclear. And here's the rub: It accounts for some 20 percent
of our electricity and maybe 80 percent of the controversy in electric
generation. Nuclear is a favorite of electric utilities the world over
because it's so efficient. One large reactor is available round the clock
and produces as much electricity as 1,000 windmills.But it's been the target of environmentalists since its golden age of
expansion in the 1960s.The attacks have covered such a range of issues,
from radiological emissions to cooling water flows to the disposal of
wastes, that one has to conclude that there's an extreme pathology
involved.If traditional power sources are troublesome and nuclear is detested,
there must be alternatives, no?Thus, the love affair with wind and solar. It's a case, perhaps, among
Democrats of not being so much in love as in love with love, overlooking,
as love does, some major flaws, like the unpredictability of wind and the
cost of solar.Obama, coming from Chicago where Exelon operates 17 reactors, must know
something about the efficiency of nuclear. But his support for it has been
contradictory: He has talked up nuclear but canceled the Yucca Mountain
repository (at a cost to taxpayers of $15 billion), bowing to Senate
Democratic leader Harry Reid and to many in his party and in the White
House.The difficulty with coal and the hatred of nuclear, has left Democrats in
need of some dream-angel form of energy to love. The Solyndra affair will
pass, but Democrats longing for something other than the obvious in energy
won't. - one response
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An Era of Emptiness Awaits Huge Change
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- September 4, 2010 – 1:20 pm
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- 3 responses
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Obama’s Energy Policy: A Labyrinth of Contradictions
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- April 5, 2010 – 10:04 am
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When it comes to energy, there is an incoherence to President Barack Obama’s policies.
This incoherence is embedded in his administration in the person of Carol Browner. She is largely regarded as the agent of a kind of reactionary environmentalism that once haunted the Democratic Party.
Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, is a special assistant to Obama for energy and environment. To a wide variety of industries, though, she is the agent of regressive, just-say-no environmentalism.
Browner’s background–from environmental jobs in Florida to working with Al Gore–dooms her to suspicion of zealotry, which is probably unjustified. Her defenders (just about all in the environmental movement), see her as a great public servant and standard-bearer.
But she is largely out of sight these days; her writ and her influence unknown.
To the energy industries, from the ever-embattled nuclear sector to the euphoric-for-now natural gas producers and the mostly happy wind farmers, Browner and her role remains a mystery. Why is she there? How much does she influence Obama? Or, for that matter, does he care more about the politics of energy and the environment than he does about the issues?
The answer, like so much that can be said of Obama, is some of this and some of that.
The administration is opening up the Atlantic coast and part of the Alaskan coast to oil drilling. But it is keeping the California shoreline free of new exploration. (There are a lot of environmental voters in California).
As for nuclear power, the actions of the administration are the most confusing. Obama looks like a host who having welcomed a guest to dine, snatches the guest’s chair away when the meal is brought in.
He has advocated nuclear power and has endorsed loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors. But in a piece of blatant political opportunism Obama has canceled all work, and even licensing, on the Yucca Mountain waste repository site in Nevada. Yet, Yucca Mountain was the cornerstone of the civilian nuclear revival.
To understand why Yucca Mountain has been abandoned, together with $10 billion of taxpayers money, look no further than the senior senator from Nevada, Harry Reid. And to understand Reid’s stubborn rejection of a national patriotic role for Nevada, look no further than the gaming tables and slot machines of Las Vegas. At least part of Obama’s energy policy is influenced by fruit machines.
Obama first declared against Yucca Mountain during the campaign. Many thought that his opposition would, in the way of campaign promises, melt in the sunshine of reality.
But the politics of the Senate triumphed. Obama’s need for Reid, the majority leader in the Senate, became utter dependence in the health-care debate. So the will of previous Congresses for a sophisticated and vital nuclear industry, was trumped by Reid. The Joker came out of the pack face up.
Good thing for energy policy that Nevada has no other big energy issues. Part of its previous attraction for nuclear was its small population and remote location. But the wheel of fortune spins in politics as well as roulette, and unpredictably Reid rose to be the most important Democrat in the Senate.
The offhand way the administration has junked Yucca Mountain should worry all in energy supply. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the abandonment of Yucca Mountain as being done on “scientific grounds.” If you believe that, the tooth fairy is your sister.
So the administration has pushed nuclear in the full knowledge that California and other states by law cannot approve new plants without a viable repository for their spent fuel. In a stroke, the administration has converted certainty to limbo.
The squeezing of coal is similar. EPA is moving ahead with classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant, presumably in order to pressure Congress to pass the highly criticized cap-and-trade legislation.
This giving and taking away should give pause to those who think oil and natural gas drilling will proceed apace in the Atlantic and off Alaska. Browner and the president himself must know that a slew of lawsuits will be filed and will tie up action for years, if not decades.
One foot forward, 12 inches backward. That is the Obama energy quick-step. –For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
- one response
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New Oil Discoveries Threaten Obama’s Energy Strategies
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- March 4, 2010 – 4:01 pm
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“When an irresistible force such as you
“Meets and old immovable object like me
“You can bet just as sure as you live
“Something’s got to give …”
– Johnny Mercer
When Johnny Mercer penned those words, he was speaking of love not politics, and not the politics of energy. But he could have been.
In energy, there are two great forces that collide: public policy and the market. Despite the love affair of recent decades with markets, neither is always right.
Consider the struggle between old energy –market-tested and with a mature infrastructure — and new, alternative energy.
Public policy, under Republicans and Democrats, has sought to discourage the nation’s ever-greater dependence on imported oil (about 60 percent). But the market has sung a siren song, tempting us to more oil consumption.
Back in the 1970s, when we imported only 30 percent of our oil, the country was frightened into making great efforts in research and development to find alternatives to oil. Most of those concentrated on oil substitution and new ways of making electricity. None of the new ideas penetrated the market in any serious way, with the possible exception of wind, and that took many years to gain general acceptance and to overcome institutional and technical issues.
The Big Enchilada, oil, proved to be recalcitrant. President Jimmy Carter wanted to make it from coal; a nascent ethanol industry was tentatively testing the forbearance of government in seeking tax breaks and subsidies.
The search for a way out began after the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, and reached a zenith with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Many well-intentioned programs were undertaken, concentrating primarily on coal — coal as a gas, coal as a fluid and the improved combustion of coal.
But it was then, as it is now, a wild time for new entrants. Dozens of projects were funded including magneto-hydrodynamics, in situ coal gasification, garbage to electricity, battery research, cryogenic transmission research and energy storage in fly wheels.
Some, if not a majority, of the projects were pure science fiction.
The energy establishment favored not so much the new as the duplicative. Its members leaned to coal, oil shale, more oil and gas leasing and more nuclear. The old Mobil Oil Company paid a whopping $212 million for a Colorado oil shale lease without regard to how it could be worked.
Across the Southwest, banks lent to every energy project that came through the door. Natural gas got short shrift because it was wrongly thought to be a depleted resource.
Then in the mid-1980s, Saudi Arabia opened its oil spigot all the way (10 million barrels a day) and the market annihilated expensive energy from new sources. With gasoline cheap again, SUVs hit the roads in giant numbers; a string of Southwest banks collapsed; and the energy debate turned not to changing consumption but to deregulation, facilitating profligate use across the board.
The market spoke and it shouted down concerns about national security or technological substitution. Public policy surrendered to the market. Despite fine speeches from secretaries of energy on the danger of exporting our security and our money, the market continued its advocacy of excess.
The George W. Bush administration identified our vulnerability in oil and identified a looming crisis in electricity. But it faltered when it came to government coercion of markets; for example, getting more nuclear plants built.
Bush himself fell for the temptations of ethanol from corn and the possibility of switch grass. Now these are under threat from new discoveries of oil off Brazil and far greater estimates of oil production from Iraq. In fact, Iraq is being touted as a rival to Saudi Arabia with Brazil right behind it.
The Obama administration is hell-bent on getting off old energy. It loves “alternatives” and it’s committed to doing something about global warming.
But in research, money does not equal results. While the Department of Energy is chock full of money for new energy research and development, cheap natural gas and new potential oil from unexpected quarters may do to Obama’s new energy hopes what it did to Carter’s: undermine and expose them to ridicule.
Public policy may again be pushed around by the irresistible force of the market, even if it is not serving the national interest.
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Naming the Decade of Arbitrary Facts
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- December 24, 2009 – 9:53 am
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Tradition dictates that we now play “Name That Decade.” To play the game, we need to list the seminal events of the past decade.
Dominating was the bloody, evil and heinous attack on the World Trade Center, setting Christendom at odds with the Muslim world and causing people all over the world to wonder where and why Islam had gone so wrong.
The decade had begun with an enthusiastic innocence about the United States being the only superpower and under its new president, George W. Bush, becoming a kind of international homebody: no nation-building, foreign adventures or radical changes at home.
The Bush administration was to be about creating an echo of Ronald Reagan. If there were to be bumps, they would be the bumps necessitated by the need, as seen by Bush and his supporters, to eradicate the worst excesses of Clintonism.
Out went treaties — especially the Kyoto Protocol — and in came a kind of arrogance through ideology. To win was simple: Straighten up and think right. If you got the philosophy right, everything else would fall into place.
Oddly, this was the same thinking that bedeviled countries in Europe and Africa after World War II. Successive British Labor governments, starting with the Attlee government of 1945-51, said as much. They believed in the theory of pure heart: Get that right and everything else would work out.
In Britain it meant financial crisis after crisis; and the uncontrolled growth in trade-union power, accompanied by a surge of immigration from former British possessions including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India the Caribbean and Africa. Islam gained a foothold in Britain that looks like a bridgehead today.
Reality met liberalism and trounced it. Having the right philosophy turned out to be more liability than asset when it came to governing.
But philosophy — dogma really — retains its allure for the right as well as the left. The Reagan years left the impression that if you had the right philosophy, you could accomplish big things. If George W. Bush had any far-reaching idea, this was it: Get the philosophy right and the walls of any evil empire will tumble, including militant Islam.
So began one of the decade’s outstanding aspects: the manufacturing of facts to justify actions motivated by, er, philosophy.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair believed so fervently that all people yearned for democracy and only bad leaders kept them from being free in the Western way, that they manufactured facts about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
This led to the real awfulness of this decade: the idea that facts do not matter. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat from New York, said you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.
Alas, the first decade of the new millennium became a place where rhetoric is uncontaminated with facts.
Do you prefer the fact-free or the lying decade? Politicians lied, but they always have.
The decade ended with another seminal event: the election of Barack Obama as president.
Again, there was euphoria. It did not last. The great expectations of the campaign were dampened by realities of governing.
The man who was voted into office to end the American wars in the Middle East found that in Afghanistan, he had facts that required an extension, an escalation. He never revealed these facts. The right clapped with one hand and the left sank into misery.
The mid-term elections in 2010 will pit left-wing facts against right-wing facts. But they are not facts; they are claims posing as facts — about war and peace, energy and climate, immigration, health care and taxation. –For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
January 30th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011