In comparing sources of electricity generation, however, I think it’s essential to start with the basics. Energy is the ability to do work and power is the rate work gets down. Both these interrelated concepts meet at the nexus of productivity, wealth creation, and quality of life.

Huge turbines can convert wind energy into electrical power. But they do so with the same capacity standards that powered sailing craft and water pumps in the early nineteenth century.

For nearly two hundred years, industry has deployed far more effective ways to produce power. Contrast the ability of sleek clipper ships to deliver small, typically specialized cargo across the Atlantic in three or four weeks with today’s freighters that can make the same trip in days, often on schedule, while carrying many thousands of tons of diverse cargo: the power (the rate work is accomplished) of the latter is many times greater, allowing exponentially more productivity. Although we may applaud the skill of the sailor, we rely for our well being on the performance of highly responsive power.

The ability to convert prescribed amounts of energy at high rates of power at specified, convenient times is a cornerstone of modern society. Imagine the long lines at filling stations if wind power pumped the gas: your tank might get filled eventually but the wait would be infuriating, costly both to your time and that of your fellow travelers.

Although coal power, for example, has a number of costly externalities, it also provides a huge benefits, given the way it anchors (producing 50% of our electricity) our systems for health maintenance and safety, among many others. My own calculus shows a substantial net benefit for coal well over and above its costs. Still, for a number of reasons, I think it wise to hitch up other reliable sources of ” modern power,” not desultory energy, enhancing, even extending, the technology that preserves the energy requirements of modernity.

I would argue to the extent that hypothesis is accurate, the same must also be true for the beneficial externalities. I think the only intellectually honest way to talk about the “cost of energy” and any associated “security premium” is to include them in the context of the scaled benefits produced by the same unit of energy. Simply, what is the net profit produced by the unit of energy. The math isn’t complex but but subjective values placed by the person doing the analysis is.

I have not seen anything approaching that level of comprehensiveness. If it exists, I hope someone will point me to it. I would not be surprised if the net benefit approximates the net margin of the global energy value chain. It is also very likely that the net benefit is larger.

I would hope that it is undisputed that chainsaws which work when desired produce more benefits than chainsaws which do not. But I am sure you know that someone will argue that there are other benefits to reducing the operation of some “polluting” chainsaw and the activities which both anticipate and precipitate from that. To be clear, I do not place my subjective value in that direction but it would be nice to see a study which attempts to quantify the net benefits to the extent they can be known.

The cap-and-trade scheme Bruce argues for is really political legerdemain, not economic or physcial reality. If the marble under the constantly moving shell were truly discreet, such as, say, nitrous oxide or mercury, then, well, maybe such a game might be winnable. With CO2, however, we might as well be trying to contain pixie dust.

As for industrial wind technology as a means for offsetting CO2 emissions under a cap-and-trade system, the idea is truly preposterous. Wind behaves much like drunken energy. Why not push for more inebriate ambulance drivers as occasional replacements for sober ones, improving their diminished capacity by increasing their numbers more widely? This idea, not at all different in kind or degree from what is proposed for wind with electricity, should reveal even to wind zombies how silly the notion is.

Far from being cutting edge and progressive, wind technology is antediluvian and uncivil, neither able to offset meaningful levels of CO2 emissions nor to be a good neighbor. Wind and cap-and-trade are the nip-and-tuck twins of public policy pretension, for both are nurtured at the breasts of delusion and cupidity.

I dealt with cap-and-trade and a federal renewables mandate in my post, but EPA proposed regulations are coming down the pike as you say.

Lawsuits will delay EPA’s rules for some years, and a new Administration, Congress, and regulatory outlook could well be in power to fundamentally revisit the issue. But you are right: it would take 60 votes to legislatively fix the problem of CO2 being declared a pollutant.

Also, a new Supreme Court might reverse the prior decision on the basis of new science and the simple fact that carbon dioxide is not mentioned once in the Clean Air Act.

Regulating CO2 is a futile crusade. I expect that ‘cooler heads will prevail’. In the meantime, there is waste, waste, waste on both sides of the issue working to cancel one other out. No good.

Can we call a truce Bruce?

P.S. Yes, as a Ph.D. economist (see Stram’s writings such as http://www.reg-markets.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=138), you join the great majority in favoring a tax over cap-and-trade. And yes, I love quoting Hansen on the need to avoid a Wall Street approach to CO2 mitigation.

I think the political equation is more complicated than you suggest. You’re being too optimistic (or pessimistic depending on your point of view.)

Notwithstanding last night’s win, it is a fact that the Dems are in charge of the Senate and House for at least another year. And Obama is going to be President for another 3 years at least. (It’s in the Constitution, you can look it up.)

The Cap and Trade bill as we know it, and as noted by Jim Hansen, has become as freighted with special deals as health care, if not more so. And is not likely to reduce GHG very soon or enough to affect whatever global warming might be caused, even if other countries do as much (or as little).

But it is a fact that the EPA has been charged with dealing with the GHG issue and that has been approved by the Supreme Court. The EPA must act, and if no federal legislation, then without guidance and on its own. We’re at least three years away from a conservative replacing one of the libs on the court.

The political dynamic so far has been Congressional activists pushing for cap and trade, and therefore in the position of seeking energy industry support: hence all the special deals. The Dem Congress will pass nothing rather than tell the EPA to do nothing. So with the EPA taking action, the dynamic becomes industry on their knees asking Congress to save them. They’re less in a position to demand special deals and much more willing to agree to even handed legislation.

Whether Republicans retake Congress in a year or not, the Dems will block any attempt to roll back the EPA just as the Repubs will block any attempt to push cap and trade as we now know it.

All of this adds up to some compromise legislation which supplants EPA action or provides guidance and this at the behest of industry, not over its objections. (I can cite examples of this happening in fairly recent history.)

That means back to the drawing board. It’s time to consider new and less grandiose approaches.

And many Repubs aren’t going to be comfortable doing nothing. The cheapest policy alternatives going are energy RD & D and geoengineering.

You may recollect that, in the past, I proposed a small carbon tax to get the ball rolling, that could be increased if and as the science more strongly supports the GHG problem. Such a tax doesn’t even need global warming as justification. Clearly the cost of emery greatly exceeds the price being paid. The world, especially the US, is paying a huge premium for energy security. As I further proposed, that tax, hopefully in concert with likeminded nations, could be used to substantially increase and reliably support energy research, development, and encourage deployment of technologies that are lower cost, less polluting, and less prone to Middle East problems.

As a PS, you may also remember that I pointed out that cap and trade caused huge issues per wealth transfer (unlike a tax) as well as means of hiding costs. And, I have to say, I think it’s cute to see you quoting Jim Hansen positively.