Politics: a roadblock to going ‘green’
Kurt Brouwer September 9th, 2009
Two pieces from the Los Angeles Times illustrate the crazy state of politics when it comes to going green. On the one hand, we have this report about a state mandate to utility companies that they produce more and more power from wind, solar and other alternative sources:
…boosting the use of solar power, wind generators and other renewable energy sources is seen as a boon for both the environment and the economy in electricity-hungry California.
But with two weeks left in the legislative session, Democrats are hustling to fulfill a commitment they made to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pass a law to require all utilities to get a third of their power from “green” sources by 2020...
Then there is this conflicting report, also from the LAT, about Senator Feinstein’s opposition to alternative energy development on vast swathes of land:
…In a move that could pit usual allies — environmentalists and the solar and wind industries — against each other, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is preparing legislation that would permanently put hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land off limits to energy projects. The territory would be designated California’s newest national monument…
And people wonder why it is hard to get things done these days. Assuming developing major sources of alternative energy is a worthwhile goal, then it would seem to follow that those projects have to be built somewhere.
(LA Times pieces via Small Dead Animals Blog)
As we have pointed out before, there are a lot of significant issues that have to be addressed if we are really going to produce meaningful amounts of electrical power from alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, biofuel and so on.
Powering the Electrical Grid
This piece from the New York Times was published last year, but it ably covers the issues facing us. In the photo below, we see kids splashing around in their backyard pool overlooking the Maple Ridge Wind farm near Lowville, N.Y. [emphasis added below]:
Source: New York Times / Mike Groll / AP
Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits (New York Times, August 26, 2008, Mathew L. Wald)
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
These are the hard, technical limitations on energy and on switching to alternatives. Our energy infrastructure has been built up over decades and it will be expensive and time-consuming to make significant changes. I think we need to do so, but we should avoid the assumption that this will be easy or that it can be done without other environmental tradeoffs.
The NY Times continues:
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
…The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
…Transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, near Lowville, N.Y., have sometimes become so congested that the company’s only choice is to shut down - or pay fees for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.
Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.
I think we know what this last paragraph really implies, which is that our political leaders in Washington really don’t have the desire or the motivation or even the statemanship to move a project like this along. As the two LA Times pieces noted above point out, state leaders are not on the same page either. They seemingly want to pass bills, but not to actually do anything.
The Interstate Highway System As A Model
Make no mistake, we’ve done much bigger and more difficult things — such as building the Interstate Highway System — so we can do this too. Have you ever driven on our interstate highway system? You know, I-80, I-75 I-95, I-40, I-75 or H1 (Hawaii). Here is a map that illustrates how extensive it is:
INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM
Source: Wikipedia
Well, this highway system was made possible by Federal spending beginning in 1956 under President Eisenhower and continuing on for decades. The actual cost was about $135 billion, give or take a few billion. But, the cost in current dollars would be several hundred billion dollars. Actually, it would be much more because building this today would involve buying out all the property owners along the way at today’s real estate prices. Now, we may need a similar system for interstate electrical transmission. Fortunately, the current estimate for the cost of this system is only about $60 billion or so, which is just pocket change compared to the cost of building our highway system today.
Anyone who lives in Northern California has seen windmills dotting the hills east of San Francisco. And, anyone who lives in or has traveled in the western U.S. knows that the wind in that region is steady and strong. So, producing energy from the wind is feasible, but the real issue is can you get the power from where the wind blows (or where the sun shines) to where people live and use energy. And, that requires a major commitment to a modernized energy grid:
The New York Times article continues:
Enthusiasm for wind energy is running at fever pitch these days, with bold plans on the drawing boards, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s notion of dotting New York City with turbines. Companies are even reviving ideas of storing wind-generated energy using compressed air or spinning flywheels.
Yet experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.
…Unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology. An Energy Department plan to source 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind calls for a high-voltage backbone spanning the country that would be similar to 2,100 miles of lines already operated by a company called American Electric Power.
…A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines…
As we have seen, California has set aggressive goals and requirements, but it has not done much to actually get anything done. Enthusiasm for alternative energy is running high now, but there is a huge gap between theory and practice. Many politicans are announcing grandiose plans, but as the last line above points out, the grid is the ultimate bottleneck for getting serious wattage from the wind. Fortunately, there are no major technical problems that would prevent us from building a better grid. It’s simply a matter of finding a way to get it done.
Unfortunately, those who ‘love’ alternative energy may not actually understand the real world implications of actually producing significant amounts of power from wind, solar and other means. The reality is that we would have to put up vast windmill farms and enormous solar installations. In addition, we would have to build a much larger energy grid.
As we saw from Senator Feinstein’s opposition to building alternative energy projects in the desert, producing power from alternative sources could well fail due to opposition from an unlikely source: environmentalists.
But, if we do not build large alternative installations and if we do not upgrade the electrical grid, then all this talk about alternative energy sources is just blowing in the wind.
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