A free-market energy blog

Many years ago at at a DOE/NARUC conference, I took note when Christopher Flavin of the environmental Left (EL) Worldwatch Institute commented that he didn’t support solar farms (macro solar) because of their large resource and land requirement. 1

‘Wow!’ I thought. That depletes the EL supply-side strategy, leaving just industrial wind and distributed (micro-solar)–and maybe a little biomass.

I was reminded of this when I read a recent article in ClimateWire (sub. req.), by Lacey Johnson, “Boom in Solar Panels injects NIMBY Battles into Neighborhoods.”

The story begins with Barbara Katz, whose hilltop home in historic north Baltimore, amid roaming wildlife, was threatened by her neighbor’s plan to install a 600-panel solar array. Johnson reports:

“My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be an eyesore,’” remembers Katz, who was confronted by a plan for more than 600 ground-based solar panels on her neighbors’ lawn. “No one would want this in their backyard. It looks like it’s an industrial park.”

Johnson continues:

It takes a good deal of work — and regulations — to keep suburban communities looking picture perfect, and arrays of shiny solar panels don’t always fit the vision homeowners have for their neighborhoods. All over the country, citizens like Katz have begun organizing to block renewable energy projects, throwing a wrench into some peoples’ plans to “go green.” [Read more →]

One of the nation’s important energy analysts is Michael Giberson, an economist at the Center for Energy Commerce in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. Giberson, who has occasionally posted at MasterResource,  teaches energy courses at Tech such as U.S. Energy Policy and Regulation and Energy Economics.

Giberson is also a principal (with fellow energy expert Lynne Kiesling of Northwestern University) of the energy-centric Knowledge Problem, described as “Commentary on Economics, Information, and Human Action.”

A month ago, Giberson critically reviewed a study by the Breakthrough Institute that claimed, basically, that government energy activism crucially enabled the shale gas (and oil) revolution that is now sweeping much of the United States and many countries around the world.

“New Investigation Finds Decades of Government Funding Behind Shale Revolution,” announced Breakthrough on December 20, adding:

Breakthrough Institute research and interviews show the direct and sustained support federal agencies provided to the gas industry leading up to the modern natural gas revolution.

And virtually on the same day (Giberson was on holiday), a rebuttal came at Knowledge Problem (reprinted with separate comments at  Energy Collective) that is now part of the national debate.

On Tuesday night, the Breakthrough Institute trumpeted Obama’s mention under the headline “Obama’s Energy Revolution,” adding:

In his State of the Union, President Barack Obama referred to the findings of a Breakthrough Institute investigation, which found that 30 years of federal funding led to the shale gas revolution.

Given the high-stakes debate, MasterResource is pleased to repost, in its entirety, Giberson’s analysis–and his challenge for deeper research.  The debate is joined. [Read more →]

“[D]emagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group…. [The correction is] showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups.”

- Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, p. 6.

There are many analyses of the President’s address to the nation last night. As last year, Obama has opened himself up to ridicule and parody (see what MasterResource did).

For this year, in what could well be his last such speech, MasterResource presents timeless logic to unmask the fallacies spewed by our quick-fix, anti-market commander-in-chief.

“Green jobs’? The government-created ones for industrial windpower and for on-grid solar power?

Enter Henry Hazlitt, whose Economics in One Lesson, first published in 1946 and last revised in 1988 (Hazlitt died in 1993), exposes the fallacy of government-as-jobs-creator.

This excerpt is from chapter 1, “The Lesson,” of Hazlitt’s classic of 2oth century economic literature.

———————————————-

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics, or medicine — the special pleading of selfish interests. [Read more →]

“The release of energy from splitting a uranium atom turns out to be 2 million times greater than breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond in coal, oil or wood. Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal, and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline. It is hard to fathom this in light of our previous experience. Yet our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential. “

- William Tucker, excerpted from his lecture, Understanding E=MC₂

William Tucker has powerfully explained how the future of technologically advanced civilizations depends upon a sophisticated ability to convert the highest energy densities into increasingly denser power performance, and in the process compacting the time and space necessary to do productive work.

In fact, Tucker wrote an excellent book about this, Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey. In light of the excerpt from that book recently posted at Master Resource, I thought readers of this forum might find my review from two years ago (see below) of interest, particularly if they have not yet read Tucker’s book.

The Primacy of Energy Density

Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel has demonstrated that the trend in energy usage continues along a decarbonizing trajectory. Improvements in technology combined with a communal desire to live longer and more healthfully have spurred this phenomenon. Given a choice, who wants to live in a town where thousands of chimneys cast off carbon by-products like sulfuric smoke and soot? Civilization will continue decarbonizing apace, whether this aligns with climate change alarmism, or not. [Read more →]

Editor Note: Environmentalists like regulation except when it comes to ‘green’ energy. This post asks: what is the growing acceptance of  the thousand-foot voluntary ordinance based on?]

In Indiana and elsewhere, many counties are falling all over themselves to adopt the so-called “1,000-foot voluntary industry setback” between large wind turbines and residences.¹ In some states, it has become part of “model” wind ordinances created by wind developers and energy agencies.

This buffer zone (who said these structures were environmental?) is starkly smaller than those mandated in several countries widely touted by industry proponents as wind “success” stories. In Denmark, for example, the setback is four times total turbine height (or about 2,000 feet for a large turbine), along with a built-in mechanism for compensating abutters for property-value losses.

In Holland, it is 1 km (3,280 ft). Germany’s noise-based setback ranges up to a full mile (1.6 km).

Dozens of jurisdictions scattered around the U.S. and Canada have also adopted larger setbacks, often in the ½- to 2-mile range from abutting residences. All of these larger setbacks are in line with what is recommended by many independent scientific bodies, medical authorities, and acoustical engineers.²

With so many localities adopting the much smaller 1,000-foot distance as a de facto setback, however—seemingly with little public discussion—a reasonable person would expect to find reams of scientific and legal information to back it up.

Conflicting Evidence

But despite a concerted and sustained research effort by myself and others, finding a straightforward explanation published by any government agency (or the wind industry) documenting the origin and technical rationale for such a small setback has proven extraordinarily elusive.

Instead, what one finds is a remarkably opaque policy-making process wherein any scientific studies reviewed or substantive deliberations that may have occurred are not readily evident from the sparse number of documents publicly available. This post is a progress report, summarizing my attempts to uncover the origin and basis of this setback. [Read more →]

[Ed. Note: This testimonial joins Michael Morgan's last week  indicating a growing disconnect between Washington, D.C.-based BIG ENVIRONMENTALISM and in-the-pristine, grassroots, common-sense environmentalism. Mr. Cudnohufsky's bio follows this post.]

On a regular basis, friends are surprised to learn of my recently voiced concerns about industrial wind. Enlightened, perceptive and thoughtful people, they share much of my concern for our earth and human communities.

They ask me, “Isn’t wind a good thing? What concerns you and why? Wind is a large renewable resource used for centuries! We are behind the rest of the world in the use of wind power! We need to address climate change. What is your solution?”

These friends have not incorporated wind energy investigation into their busy lives. With climate change, unemployment, a stagnant economy, health care legislation and a war all screaming for attention, there is to be expected a certain complacency and acceptance of industrial wind.

Despite little time for research, there is strong emotional conviction from the dwindling proponents of wind power as well as the growing number of opponents. Once healthy, convivial communities are sometimes permanently divided by the issue.

It takes but a minute’s reflection to realize that just over two years ago, I held the same opinion of wind that some of my friends do now.  However, investigation of industrial wind has led me to this well-considered conclusion: industrial wind is a total sham! Not only is it horrendously impactful, but it also does not work in any meaningful manner. But efficacy is a subject for another discussion. [Read more →]

“Mounting evidence [of lukewarming] begins to start to make you wonder whether there is some fundamental problem between climate models and reality.”

 

“To me, the most significant thing that the Climategate emails show is that the deck is stacked against the publication of research results that are critical of the established scientific consensus, and the skids are greased for papers that run in support…. Not a good situation for the advancement of science.”

“Lukewarmers” are those scientists (and others) who believe the balance of evidence is middling between “climate alarmists” (who tend to think that the global temperature rise will lie in, or even exceed, the upper half the IPCC’s 1.1°C–6.4°C range of projected temperature rise this century) and ultraskeptics, or “flatliners” (who tend to think that the addition of human-generated carbon dioxide has virtually no impact on global temperatures).

Lukewarmers have found the world to be a lonely place. But favor (think physical processes of global climate) smiled for us in 2011. Several scientific studies produced results, when considered in combination, provide evidence that the general warming of the earth’s climate is proceeding at a rate that lies in the lower half of the IPCC’s projected temperature change during the 21st century.

And with a low-end temperature rise comes along low-end impacts. Seemingly good news for all!

2011 Temperatures

First, let’s review the global average temperature, both at the surface, and in the lower atmosphere since 1979—the year that satellite observations of the temperature from the lower atmosphere become reliably available, and pretty near the beginning of the second warming episode of the 20th century. [Read more →]

“Gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys of Joshua trees.” Such is “the future” of American energy,  not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves.”

So reads a recent Forbes article. But Wind vs. Bird by Todd Woody also raises concern about the fate of a 300-megawatt “green” turbine project threatening California condors, a species just coming back from the edge of extinction. The project might be cancelled as a result.

Indeed, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked Kern County to “exercise extreme caution” in approving projects in the Tehapachi area, because of potential threats to condors. The “conundrum will force some hard choices about the balance we are willing to strike between obtaining clean energy and preserving wild things,” the article suggested. Hopefully, it concluded, new “avian radar units” will be able to detect condors and automatically shut down turbines when one approaches.

All Americans hope condors will not be sliced and diced by giant Cuisinarts. [Read more →]

“When we hear of vast numbers of scientists endorsing Michael Mann’s famous ‘hockey stick’ graph… What we don’t hear is that the vast, vast majority of them never sought access to the specific data and algorithms claimed to support it (much of which was actively withheld from the scientific community at large). They did not independently evaluate either Mann’s claims or the specific, technical objections raised against them by a few critics who were able to wrest those data and algorithms from Mann’s clenched fist over a period of years. Neither had the scientific media performed any independent, critical review when reporting on such issues for over a decade, most of them simply not being equipped to do so.”

Solar energy in its non-fossilized forms – wind, hydro, biofuels, tidal, and direct use of the sun’s rays – are called “renewable,” meaning that it does not require vast geological ages to recreate them.

The term, however, can be misleading. All can only be renewed at a pace that natural cycles allow. The amount of solar energy that shines down upon the earth may seem inexhaustible, but it is extremely dilute. In order to match the highly concentrated power of fossil fuels, it must collected over vast areas and then brought together.

It is the collection process that is not inexhaustible and not always renewable. Hydroelectric dams, the most successful form of non-fossilized solar power, back up reservoirs covering hundreds of square miles in order to generate the same amount of electricity produced by a mile-square coal plant (not counting the area required to mine the coal).

Wind farms have to cover almost a hundred square miles to do the same thing. Fueling only a portion of the nation’s automobiles would require dedicating almost our entire inventory of agricultural land to growing biofuels.

Obviously, being “renewable” is not the only standard by which energy sources can be judged.

Geothermal Energy (The Non-Sun ‘Renewable’)

There is one other form of energy that is often grouped with solar and wind as “renewable,” however, that actually has nothing to do with the sun. This is “geothermal” energy. Geothermal energy is created when groundwater comes in contact with the interior heat of the earth. Sometimes this produces “hot springs,” which were long believed to have medicinal qualities. [Read more →]