One big challenge facing anyone debating technical issues is the challenge of facts. Finding facts in this day and age seems so easy with inter-net resources yet if we use our personal bias blindfolds we will never see the whole problem or the whole solution. If you only find the fact that describes the elephant’s trunk and I find only the fact that describes the elephant’s toe nail, we might never get to agreement on the fact that we are talking about elephants until we remove the blindfolds.
So it is with the debate about how to power the United States economy. There are many different "facts" to be evaluated. It presents a daunting challenge but as citizens we have two choices. Either we agree with the facts and choices used by our utility companies or we don’t.
I prefer not to get bogged down in a greenhouse gas (GHG) debate at this point although, for many this is the only reason to debate "what powers the U.S.A".Yet, the issue of "we will run out of it someday" is also a good reason to tackle this challenge. To me they are intertwined motives. "Running out" won’t matter much if the planet’s ability to support life is compromised. Thinkers far more advanced than I have already coined plenty of slogans for this: "There is no business to be made on a dead planet"; "We must protect the environment as well as the economy or some day we will have neither". Quotes like that.
For more about those GHG details please read Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. If you agree with Al, you can feel smug about having such a nice guy to agree with. If you disagree with Mr. Gore, you will at least find out how "those people" think. So, it’s a good thing to read it no matter what opinion you hold on the impacts of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Some day I think we will all agree that the only people confused about the science of global climate change are the people pretending to be scientists. The real scientists all seem to agree we have a problem.
Fact:"The United States relies on electricity to meet a significant portion of its energy demands, especially for lighting, electric motors, heating and air conditioning. Electricity generators consumed 34 percent of U.S. energy from fossil fuel combustion in 2004. The type of fuel combusted by electricity generators has a significant effect on their emissions. For example, some electricity is generated with low CO2 emitting energy technologies, particularly non-fossil options such as nuclear, hydroelectric or geothermal energy. However, electricity generators rely on coal for over half of their total energy requirements and accounted fo 94 percent of all coal consumed in the Unites States in 2004. Consequently, changes in electricity demand have a significant impact on coal consumption and associated CO2 emissions." (pg 7 of 18 Executive Summary , Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2004 (April 2006) USEPA #430-R-06-002
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads06/06ES.pdf 12/05/06)
On June 19 2006, the 2006 Energy Biz summit gathered eight leading electric utility executives together to discuss issues relating to electricity generation in the US. Energy Biz Magazine recently made pod-casts available providing summaries of some of the material.
http://www.energycentral.com/centers/energybiz/eb_summit_list.cfm
Several striking conclusions come from listening to these presentations. The main one that I agree with says that citizens in the USA are not really aware of the growing "base load" crisis. Rolling brown outs in the north east, cascading power outages in the Midwest and billing shenanigans in California are symptoms of a larger problem. While experts on both sides may effectively argue that "pilot error" or "pilot greed" caused these problems, the fact that human problems can trigger these repercussions points to one fact. The demand for electricity is rising faster than construction for new sources of electric generation.
The second interesting item from Energy Biz summit, points to the current reality that renewables will not soon take the place of base load generation. It is not a simple matter of sticking up more wind turbines and solar panels to harvest free and non-polluting energy. New renewable energy industries simply cannot bring enough reliable power on line soon enough to meet the need. One executive even added his belief that no single technology will be able to keep up with the growing demand for electricity.
If you don’t believe this, try a simple sample problem with your house. Find an old electric bill. Pick a shoulder month so it won’t be a real high or real low bill. Find the total kilowatt hours used (kWh). Its on your bill somewhere. Now, go to the GAIAM web site and order a copy of the Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook. If you are really into alternative energy and really hate your utility company, this will be the best $35 (plus shipping) that you ever spend. In that book find the Solar Energy Worksheet. You can use it to figure out how to size your equipment to deliver the kWh amount you got off your electric bill. Then you can go to the product pages and figure out the cost for that equipment. If your house is like mine, it will be many years before your electric rates get high enough to make the purchase of that equipment a good idea for your wallet. Making use of most alternative energy fuels will require a lot more fundamental changes in our lifestyles then simply changing the source of power generation fuels.
Let’s move on to "interesting item number three". Amory and Hunter Lovins (http://www.rmi.org/) must have gotten tuckered out lately because you rarely hear about "Negawatts" any more. The concept of "demand side management" was mentioned in these summary pod-casts, but the phrase, "energy conservation" was once again noticeably absent from the discussion. Regional groups like Western Resource Advocates, still argue that conservation could effectively cut the growing electricity demand in half in some western states. (http://www.westernresourceadvocates.org/energy/clenergy.php)Yet, eight utility executives gloss over this "resource" without much comment, and here is why.
Interesting item number four: These guys like to build big power plants and coal is currently the cheapest fuel to buy for running them. Sadly, the tone of the Final Remarks show an attitude that makes the normal uninformed citizen like me, angry at utility companies. Their collective feeling seems to be that if the environmental crazies and the damn ivory tower regulators would just get out of the way, they could provide all the electric power generation the world will ever need. "We can build these things". "This is great stuff", they proclaim. This is a great solution. They get to take action and the costs for these huge multi-billion dollar projects get passed on to us, the rate payers.
Its too bad, in an exciting world where so many options could be used to solve our energy problems and improve environmental health; a world where we could all be working together to solve our energy problems; we still have major utility businesses run by men using the same thinking that got us into this mess. The time has come. We can no longer afford to confuse size with imagination.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment