…Americans Are Being Badly Served…
Activists who support radical action to combat climate change will not listen to opposing views, and will, in fact, attack anyone who tries to bring forth facts that undermine their beliefs. For example, Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island wants to use the RICO laws to prosecute global warming skeptics.
AGW is a religion that cannot be questioned.
Because they will not listen, they are forcing the implementation of policies that are not in the best interests of most Americans.
For this reason, it will be up to ordinary Americans to stand up for their interests and stop the extreme programs being foisted on Americans at the behest of AGW extremists.
This is most evident in the policies requiring the adoption of renewables, i.e., wind and solar, for the generation of electricity, and the forced idling of nuclear, coal-fired and natural gas power plants.
America is best served by abundant, low-cost, reliable availability of electricity.
The forced adoption of wind and solar is undermining the ability to meet such an objective.
A fixation on renewables results in:
- An ever increasingly high cost for electricity
- A less reliable grid that endangers the lives of Americans
The evidence is abundantly clear, but AGW extremists will fight the truth with gobbledygook nonsense to persuade policymakers to continue with the implementation of bad policies, ostensibly to cut CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Cost
There is proof that the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for wind and solar is higher than for natural gas or coal-fired power plants. See, Boring, But Important LCOEs and Picking and Choosing.
But the costs go far beyond the formal LCOEs.
There are a plethora of ancillary costs needed to allow wind and solar to function, and these costs will continue to balloon as more and more wind and solar are added to the grid.
A few of these additional costs include: The use of backup power plants to fill in when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine; The need for inertia to smooth over glitches in voltage and frequency when it isn’t provided by traditional power plants; Increased investment in transmission lines; The need for storage of electricity.
Without abundant and costly storage, the over production by solar and wind is wasted, which is what is happening in California today.
The cost of electricity in California is already at least twice the cost of electricity (19 vs 10 cents per kWh per EIA) in states that rely on fossil fuels for power generations, such as Arkansas and Louisiana.
Displacement of utility generation and hollowing of utility revenues without eliminating the need for baseload power to meet demand when the sun sets.
Requires availability of baseload power sufficient to meet demand when the sun sets while also requiring sudden ramping up of power plants.
Meanwhile, utilities are being driven out of business. See, The Duck Speaks (April 30, 2015) and The Duck Speaks Part 2 (May 5, 2015)
Grid Reliability
There has been widespread adoption of wind and solar generation, with some areas, such as California, New England and New York, reaching the point where the reliability of the grid is being threatened.
Blackouts can kill people. Elevators that are stuck, no street lighting or traffic lights, no heat for homes and offices, and no refrigeration are a few of the effects of blackouts.
ISO-NE has issued a warning that blackouts are likely to occur over the next few years. SoCalGas has warned that there may not be sufficient natural gas to ensure grid reliability.
See, Blackouts Are Coming to New England and Another Utility Voices Reliability Concerns
ISOs have asked FERC for permission to use special features and fees to protect the grid, but AGW extremists have objected to these proposals. See, Pending Disaster
The auction system being used by several ISOs has guaranteed the adoption of wind and solar power in preference to electricity generated by nuclear, coal-fired and natural gas power plants. See, The Market for Electricity is Rigged
Unelected bureaucrats are in charge of ISOs and FERC, so the average citizen has no ability to directly control their actions.
Conclusion
There is serious doubt the grid can be saved from the policies being forced on Americans by AGW extremists.
Reliability of the grid and availability of low-cost electricity should not be a political issue.
Unfortunately, it has become a political issue. The PEW research center identified that the vast majority of Democrats approve of AGW policies. It is also clear that Democrat governors and legislatures have endorsed the policies promoted by AGW activists.
Some Republicans are also inclined toward adopting AGW policies. For example, the Climate Leadership Council, headed by high ranking Republicans, has proposed the adoption of a carbon tax.
But if Americans are to save the grid, it will require political action to vote the proponents of AGW policies out of office.
The issues of climate change and ISO auctions are complex, but the facts outlined above make it clear that action is required to stop the AGW extremists and to elect people who will have the interests of Americans at heart.
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Don: Please note that the following sentence in quotes should also apply to alternatives to electricity, like the direct use of natural gas.
“America is best served by abundant, low-cost, reliable availability of electricity.”
The “AGW extremists” want to do away with the the direct use of natural gas and have formed a pact with the electric utility industry to do so. This is already well underway in California and it’s spreading.
California is attempting to get rid of NG also, and that’s a problem for grid reliability. My article Another Utility Voices Reliability Concerns pointed out that SoCalGas has asked for dispensation which highlighted what you are saying.
Politicians are blocking construction of NG pipelines in NY and New England and this is another example of AGW extremists harming grid reliability.
And now flush it down brown has signed legislation mandating maximum water use per person. 55 gallons a day and you can’t wash clothes on the same day you water. These (people?) have completely lost what little feeble mind they had. Next they will regulate how much air you can breathe.
Commiefornia is on its way to being a complete dictatorship.
Thanks for your comment.
Atlanta, Georgia city government is claiming it will use 100 % Clean Renewable Energy for its operations by 2015. Renewable Energy is defined as solar, wind, moving water, and geothermal. Nuclear energy is not clean. I assume natural gas used for hot water, heating, and cooking will be replaced by solar energy. In Georgia, a 1 kilowatt solar panel will produce 1300 kilowatt-hours per year. This most certainly would cost more than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour or $65. The 1300 kilowatt-hours has an energy content of 4.4 million Btu. So solar electricity for heating costs $15 or more per million Btu. Natural gas sells for less than $5 per million Btu and would be a far cheaper source of energy for heating.
For Atlanta taxpayers, replacing natural gas with solar energy will quadruple the cost of energy used for heating, hot water, and cooking. This is millions of dollars per year in a city with roads strewn with pot holes, a school system K-to prison, and a police force so short of officers the stores in Buckhead are told don’t call for police help to arrest shoplifters because we don’t have the officers. On top of this, car thefts are dozens per day.
This is another Democrat energy policy that robs the public.
Thanks for a great comment. A real-world example of the impracticality and high cost of solar.
Natural gas does not qualify as clean unless it’s used to generate electricity
Why is that the case? What about for heating homes, etc.?
Because clean energy does not include the direct use of natural gas by conventional definition.
I think we are playing word games. Most people will accept that natural gas is a clean fuel
Most people yes. The department of energy no.
I looked at the DOE website and see that they omit natural gas from the clean energy page. By omission, they would categorize natural gas as something other than clean. Wikipedia also doesn’t say that natural gas is clean.
From the point of view of reality, natural gas is as clean as some of the other energy sources listed on the DOE clean energy page where they list geothermal and bioenergy as clean, which neither are.
I think we are dealing with semantics. Hopefully, DOE will get around to fixing its website that still contains incorrect information about global warming. For example, it says that the most destructive 10 hurricanes of all time happened in the past ten years. That’s wrong, and they are using dollar costs to make the claim, which is absurd. The Galveston hurricane killed more people than any hurricane in the past fifty years. There are more people living by the ocean so of course, there will be more damage as measured by inflated dollars. Anyway, I’ll stick to calling natural gas a clean fuel.
Thanks for your comments.
There is nothing clean about biofuel regardless of what they claim.
Thanks. I agree.
Donn:
You probably found this DOE page:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/mission
EERE’s mission to “transition to a global clean energy economy” is s joined at the hip with the UN mission for “deep decarbonization” and “beneficial electrification.” The following EERE web page, published just before Trump was sworn-in, is harder to find:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/downloads/eere-strategic-plan
The full strategic plan and presentation are downloadable at the end. Page 20 of the presentation, titled “Energy Efficiency Success Indicators,” is key. Note that the default metric for energy efficiency is site based; i.e., 3,412 Btu/kWh. Thus, replacing gas water heaters with electric resistance water heaters helps achieve EERE goals. As does replacing furnaces with heat pumps.
“But wait; there’s more.” Electric resistance water heaters are now deemed solar energy storage devices.
Maybe Perry didn’t get the Trump memo about quitting the Paris Accords. Or maybe he doesn’t want to take on EERE staff or Congressional supporters of EERE’s mission. I’d rather not speculate but the fact is nothing has changed. I will speculate that in a stalemate, the entrenched eventually wins.
Thanks for the additional information.
I don’t know why they are taking so long to clean out the misinformation left over from the Obama administration.
You may be correct in Perry not wanting to upset the political applecart.
It’s the path of least resistance. And Perry likes to tout his “clean energy” cred.
Thanks again.
You are probably right.
And I appreciate your work and willingness to discuss.
In Washington State even our hydro power is considered non-renewable due to perceived environmental damage. However it’s difficult to ignore the immense supply of power with spring snow melt. In response, the wind farms are paid to take the wind machines off-line to allow access to the grids by the hydro sources.
Yes, it’s true that hydro is opposed by environmentalists. And in your case, wind is being paid to not produce electricity.
Complete insanity.
Read “CO2 Is Innocent” at https://sciencefrauds.blogspot.com and clip-copy, print, take to a Chemistry or Physics teacher for authentication of chemistry, stoichiometry and physics, do the demo-experiment for a few Dollars and see for yourself that CO2 additions to the atmosphere on the order of those expected do not raise the temperature of air and we explain why. Anthropogenic global warming is panic pushing propaganda promoting political power.
Adrian Vance
I happen to agree that CO2 is not a threat to the climate. See my brochure We Have Nothing to Fear from CO2
Thanks for your comment.
the (no) problem has an easy solution; nuclear all the way wherever and whenever possible.
Thanks for your comments.
It’s all a matter of perspective. Using carbon footprint alone, nothing is totally clean, including hydro. Its just that some are “cleaner” than others, if you base your scale on carbon footprint alone. Where you draw the line between “clean” and “not clean” becomes somewhat arbitrary. If you look at the 400 grams of CO2-equivalent per kwhr for the most efficient CCGT plant, that is an order of magnitude or more than things like hydro, wind, and nuclear. If you consider the latter “clean”, and an order of magnitude jump upward as not clean, then NG and almost all other carbon combustion processes aren’t clean.
Thanks for your comment. It’s one way to apply a metric to the question, but it’s limited to CO2.
There are pollutants such as SOx and NOx that need to be measured if there is to be such a metric.
But I applaud your effort to arrive at one.
Considering sulfur in the overall pollution metric certainly tips natural gas into the “clean” category you favor, since NG has a big advantage over coal by that reckoning. Likewise on PAHs when considering gas vs. biomass.
If we’re going to use NG in an industrial society, I’d rather see it used in applications where direct combustion is most efficiently applied, such as household uses and industrial heat. It also has a place in the transport sector, at least for non-aviation use. Use nuclear for the baseload electricity sector and save the NG for other uses.
Great. Thanks for the additional comments. My preferences for baseload generation are, in order of preference, Hydro, Nuclear, Natural gas, coal, PV solar (However cost effectiveness limits PV solar to SW US and Hawaii in the US). I’m never in favor of wind and seldom in favor of concentrating solar.
I assume you dislike wind because of the intermittency and I am on board on that. I also don’t like the visual clutter. Vermont has ruined one of their premier attractions (gently forested ridgelines that stretch to the visual horizon) by installing those monstrosities in a completely overwhelming manner. Concentrated solar is a train wreck and if any good comes of the Ivanpah boondoggle it will be to demonstrate that. But that still leaves us with the conundrum of making LWR technology viable again, which will take more than ZECs and other market interventions (which I think are useful as long as renewables are so outrageously subsidized).
Yes, wind has many bad features and very few benefits.
Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, nuclear has a tough future.