While Washington waits to see just how many wrenches the oil industry can throw into the Democratic Congressional leadership's effort to pass a modest "reform oil drilling, help low-carbon vehicles, and finance jobs and green-home makeovers" bill, the rest of us need to do some serious thinking about the next round. The U.S. is at serious risk of failing to create a clean-energy future.
Such a failure would undermine our nation's future in a way that few defeats -- even on the battlefield -- could do. As long as we are dependent on and addicted to coal and oil, and as long as American families and businesses have no other way to get to work, run their factories, power up their laptops, and light their homes, we will face a future of steadily escalating, security-destroying threats:
- Jobs exported by the millions.
- Foreign policy controlled by our oil suppliers. Hugo Chavez for Secretary of State anyone?
- Escalating climate disruption.
- Steadily increasing energy bills and national trade deficits.
- Accelerating environmental and public health degradation. How many of our waterways must join the Gulf of Mexico and the Kalamazoo River?
It's very bad news that we won't have comprehensive energy and climate legislation by January.
It's worse news
why we find ourselves in this situation: Because oil and coal have in recent months been able to leverage their old alliances with manufacturers, utilities, regulators, and ideological reactionaries to block not just cap-and-trade legislation but all kinds of attempts to move forward toward clean energy -- whether in Congress or elsewhere.
The federal banking authorities ganged up with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to
shut down the right of cities and states to help their citizens fund energy efficiency and renewables as part of their property tax bills. They pulled off this outrageous ploy in spite of the fact that a major study done for the banks showed that homes that met higher energy performance standards had foreclosure rates 11 percent below their less-efficient neighbors.
The Tennessee Valley Authority's wildly popular Generation Partners program, which helped homeowners install clean-energy technology
ran out of funding and was shut down for a week, before restarting on a scaled-back basis.
Although renewable energy, for the first time, provided more than 5 percent of our electricity in April, the construction of new wind-power sources in the second quarter of this year fell back to 2007 levels -- only 700 MW.
The next year or two will not be a rehash of the last two. The big question on the table will not be whether we can find a way to make carbon polluters pay their bills -- that's clearly going to have to wait. But we can still, for a number of years, still make enough progress without a price on carbon -- as long as we solve the financing bottlenecks that are choking clean energy.
Coal and oil are established, incumbent industries. They have captive customers, subsidized operations, and access to the cheapest possible capital. Wind, solar, geothermal, and high-energy-performance technologies like zero-emission homes and electric cars are start-ups. Their capital needs are greater. Their capital costs are higher. And their access to capital is more limited.
We need to level the playing field. We're not short of capital to finance the energy revolution. Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash and having a hard time finding credit-worthy, high-return investments. Clean-energy investments have very high returns, and the federal government could use its backstop authority to guarantee high-quality clean-energy loans -- instead of throwing billions at low-quality, high-default nuclear boondoggles.
Even if the corporate sector invested only its excess cash -- the amount it has accumulated over its normal reserves -- it would unleash $360 billion in clean-energy investments, which is roughly the size of the additional stimulus that economists have been begging for. But with federal loan guarantees, the banks could step in and leverage that $360 billion in equity investments into something more like $3.6 trillion in total investment. Generating millions of new jobs then becomes not a pipedream but an almost automatic consequence of a wave of new investment.
Incidentally, this is exactly what China is already doing. You don't need an elaborate, quant-modeled, impossible-to-understand, collateralized debt obligation to make this work -- it's just old-fashioned project finance.
The U.S. can keep up in clean energy, but now that we can see that a price on carbon is a few years away, clean-energy finance should become our first and primary focus.
Unfortunately, you can be sure that Big Coal and Big Oil will be standing in the way, trying once again to kill the future in its cradle. Will President Obama play Hercules and kill these two serpents before they do?
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Save money, cut the deficit, employ everyone, cut energy dependence:
Immediately order energy retrofits for all gov buildings.
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
26$ per barrel bio oil from waste bio char.
Latest solar tech Archimede Italy Google it
At $80M producing 9,200 MWh/yr Archimede is 52 cents a kwh in a public utility over 100 cents in a private. New Asian builds of American designed nuclear reactors are coming in at less than 2 cents a kwh (public).
And it stores power overnight? How about over a rainy weekend or next winter? Not so much. Wonder how much it would cost for that - $2 a kwh?
Read cost wind
Real wind cost.
Latest big wind farm Cape Wind is 24 cents a kwh going to 34 over 15 years - approved tariff Google it.
The cost to replace all fossil fuels - mostly imported - in the US with clean and green nuclear power would be covered by fossil fuel savings . Energy Sec Chu is slowly pounding this into Obama's thick head.
Federal Agency Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is an excellent example of this, using government money to finish two nuclear reactors previously uncompleted.
A worldwide investment in 10000 mass produced nuclear reactors paid for by ending expensive fossil fuel use, would eliminate most air pollution saving millions of lives annually, end the global warming/ peak oil problem within a ten year time frame, provide a huge job producing boost to the economy, and require only a small part of our industrial capacity.
The US would need 2500 gigawatts of mass produced nukes at $2500B financed by the $800B paid every year into the coffers of Big Oil/Coal for their deadly products.
Currently Asian nukes are under $1.5B/Gw and 1.5 cents a kwh.Out current nuke operating cost is under 2 cents a kwh way less than coal or NG. AECL and Westinghouse are predicting less than half that for their new mass produced Gen 3+ units.
Like TVA and Bonneville Obama needs to start a giant public power nuke corporation charged with replacing all of America's coal plants on site with a single national license.
everybody alive today,
the companies storing the nuke waste,
the countries that would regulate those companies,
even the memory of where the waste is,
will all be dead and gone,
The waste will continue to be deadly for another million years.
our children's, children, for generations
that will have to deal with nuke cr@p.
In just 50 years of 500 reactors, nuclear waste has been dumped all over the world, the Mob has gotten involved, and big company clearly just don't care. The Englishes channels and Somalia are huge nuclear waste dumps now. Radiation is invisible, and insidiously kills after 20 years of cancers that are indistinguishable from natural cancers.
We all just watched BP murder the Gulf for save a buck.
not to mention the huge nuclear proliferation dangers.
Chu, Wake up! Think. Break the propaganda hold the Nuclear PR geniuses have on you.
Solar Wind and Waste Bio Fuels can provide several times the worlds energy needs, clean safe, cheaper in the long run 26$/barrel, cheap now 2-6 cents, installable in 12 years at 50% growth, and good forever.
Stop the insanity of nukes.
Funny how Research could care less about the three million who die every year from coal pollution while he spews about his fairie tale not so renewables but are so concerned about saving a football field.
Biofuels that would produce any significant amount of energy would destroy materials better used for fertilizer, compost or recycling and would produce deadly amounts of dioxon, furons, and particulate pollution.
Research's solar and wind costs are not real. He just makes them up.
Latest solar tech Archimede Italy Google it
At $80M producing 9,200 MWh/yr Archimede is 52 cents a kwh in a public utility over 100 cents in a private.
Real wind cost.
Latest big wind farm Cape Wind is 24 cents a kwh going to 34 over 15 years - approved tariff Google it.
"Note: the above data refer to fuel plus operation and maintenance costs only, they exclude capital, since this varies greatly among utilities and states, as well as with the age of the plant."
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
25 cent per kwh nukes 9$ per W average. http://energyeconomyonline.com/uploads/Is_New_Nuclear_Competitive_July_10_2009_FNS_Event.pdf
25 cents per KWH for new Nuclear.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants/
10$ per W nuclear minimum.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/
http://energy.probeinternational.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-economics/the-candu-reactor-bankrupted-ontario-hydro
The CANDU reactor bankrupted Ontario Hydro
plus the 30 dollar per KWH waste costs passed on to future generations....
One of the problems with Research is he is reading challenged and can't do simple arithmetic.
He read the incorrect chart on an OECD world nuclear cost paper giving the current US nuclear operating cost at 1.86 cents a kwh including capital.
The chart titled
"OECD electricity generating cost projections for year 2010 on - 5% discount rate, c/kWh"
Has nuclear costs starting at less than 3 cents a kwh.
Research likes to quote old debunked greenwash for nuclear costs. Energy probe is run by notorious climate denier Lawrence Solomon.
I prefer real numbers like.
AP1000 build $1.2B/Gw 2007, 1.3 cents a kwh
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0
Ontario Hydro never went bankrupt. Still up and running, with some of the cheapest power in the world. Ontario cost for nuclear power 2.6 cents a kwh OECD data. Ontario Hydro public power ie the Ontario government. Oddly still working fine and not bankrupt. As OPG It's one of the largest power companies in the world.
Research's spew is all made up nonsense.
Know Nukes! Nuclear power plants are expensive to build but you get what you pay for, the payback is worth it!
We need to start building now for a bright future!
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/lew-hay-ceo-of-nextera-energy-one-of.html
.1 cent nuke waste Surcharge per kwh for 30 years. (maybe 60).
That fund is not even keeping up with current waste disposal requirements, no reason it will ever get any better.
Thus, that .1 cents of waste per KWH will be deadly for a million years.
That's 30 thousand times the .1 cent. equals 30 DOLLARS per KWH.
You could push the plants to 60 years,
That's ONLY 15 DOLLARS per KWH for the waste,
but includes more reactor accidents.
Actually while the NRC assesses a .1 cent a kwh charge for waste management, the "waste" is really valuable fuel for reprocessing use in current and gen IV reactors, enough to power the world for hundreds of years.
Hasn't been a reactor accident since TMI which hardly even scratched the reactor vessel.
Even if you did, discounting would make it still make it only .1 cent. Your argument is based on ignorant arithmetic that happens to be flat out wrong.
it has to be protected for a million years.
You have trouble imagining a million years.
My family and I live in a home within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. I understand the risks involved and I’m completely comfortable with a plant "in my backyard". I have confidence that our kids will be smart enough to treat the nuclear "waste" as a valuable resource. If the cavemen thought their children would be too stupid to use fire safely, where would we be now?
Using Chernobyl as a reason not to build is like saying because of the Hindenburg I will never fly in a commercial airliner.
Nuclear power has the smallest environmental impact of any current energy production method per unit of energy produced. One fuel pellet about the size of a pencil eraser produces the same energy as burning 1 ton of coal, and if reprocessed most of what’s left can be reclaimed. Nuclear power is our best option for reliable, environmentally friendly base-load electrical power.
I am what is known as a Nuclear Professional, specifically an Instrument and Control Technician. I calibrate and maintain the instrumentation and control systems used to safely operate a nuclear power plant. I am responsible for the health and safety of the public, including my own family. I take my job very seriously, I am not a paid spokesperson, my views and opinions are my own.
Anyway, how much energy and how much land is needed to extract the fuel? How much energy and $$ does it take to process it into something that's useable? Where do we store it afterwards (where are we storing it now?) Is it safe, and how much is it costing? How much would it cost to ship it all to Yucca Mountain and manage and maintain it (safely) for thousands of years? How much would this cost, and is the industry factoring all this in, or do they just assume Uncle Sam will foot the bill? These are mostly rhetorical questions, but I'm sure you'll continue to kid yourself about the answers.
Maybe it is time to move to make all vehicles flex fuel capable as a transition to electric
or hybrid. We need to rethink our dependence on oil and our national security.
If the ecological disaster in the gulf is not enough to get us to move away from oil and
our dependence on countries that want to harm us then maybe PEAK OIL will when
the price of gasoline goes to $4.00 then $5.00 a gallon and our economy tanks.
Where's the blog supporting Feed In Tariffs - the ONLY solution that is working to increase property values, create local jobs, encourage conservation and keep our money right in our communities. By utilities paying a FAIR rate for clean power produced right where it is needed - in the built environment - people would be engaged and would make a decent return on investment with NO Big Bank or Big Energy skimming the profits. Our wild places would be saved. AND, GHG emissions will DROP, which they won't do if we build out Big Solar, Big Wind and Big Transmission in our wilderness because the emissions from manufacturing, construction, transmission and operation will exceed any "savings" from the renewable fuel.
If you are not willing to do the renewable revolution RIGHT, so that ratepayers and taxpayers get the benefits and our open spaces and water are protected, then please don't do it at all. All we will end up with is no money, no deserts, a faster climate decline and even richer Big Energy Oligopolies. That is a future I am more than willing to kill in it's "cradle."
"utilities paying a FAIR rate for clean power produced right where it is needed "
Why should the utility and its customers who can't install home electricity generation have to pay full price for the electricity at the point of generation without deducting for the cost of maintaining the grid? Besides, most utilities will offset a large portion of the cost of installing rooftop solar PV on people's homes, shouldn't that financial assistance entitle the utility (i.e. other customers) to pay a price/kWh comparable to other sources?
“Analyses of subsidies during the first 15 years of federal support versus
electricity generated reveals surprising differences. Notably,
commercial, fission-related nuclear power development received
subsidies worth $15.30 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) between 1947 and
1961. This compares with subsidies worth $7.19/kWh for solar and
46¢/kWh for wind between 1975 and 1989. In their first 15 years,
nuclear and wind technology produced roughly the same amount of
energy (2.6 billion and 1.9 billion kilowatt-hours, respectively),â€
http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/pdf/subsidies.pdf
I have a serious poblem with this statement. Feed In Tariffs are very necessary. But they are not "the ONLY" solution. If we resign ourselves to just putting solar panels or small-scale wind turbines at our residences, where the sun may not be very bright or the wind not very strong, what are we really doing? Are we really being the most efficient we can be? How many more resources will we have to rape and pillage mother earth for just to get as much production as if we'd put a large solar farm in the desert, or a large-scale wind farm in the central corridor? I'm all for creating work, at home, in this country, instead of it going to countries that hate us. But I'm not for creating work, just for work's sake. It's very wasteful.
I encourage you to read "Sustainable Energy - without he hot air" (free online) at your leisure. Maybe you'll make a more informed statement next time.
REDUCE GRID LOAD,
and cost less in the long run.
The federal government is backing solar and wind be giving production tax credits and favorable depreciation schedules. Solar and wind also benefit from favorable regulations in terms of outages. Wind and solar don't have to pay customers when clouds block the sun or the wind doesn't blow. Compare this to a nuclear plant operator that has to pay customers when an unscheduled outages occur. The federal government is also making loan guarantees for green tech. In Colorado, a 400 million dollar loan guarantee was made available to a solar panel production company.
Coal and gas companies are laughing at the nuclear vs. green tech arguments. Coal in particular that nuclear fission represents the greatest CO2-free threat to their market share. Nuclear has already virtually eliminated oil as a fuel for electricity
with nuclear fission we're just trading one environmental ill for another, as well as creating a financial one. until we have a proven nuclear waste solution, it's simply infeasible.
"i don't know how many umpteen billion, that the fossil fuel and nuke industries have enjoyed..."
Total of Federal Energy Incentives, 1950–2006 (billions of $-2006)
Oil.....335
Nat gas.....100
Coal.....94
Hydro.....80
Nuclear.....65
Renewable.....45
Geothermal.....7
Seems to me that geothermal is getting the subsidy shaft.
We have a proven nuclear waste solution called reprocessing. It provides half the electricity in France.
American designed nukes are being built overseas for $1.5B/Gw 1.5 cents a kwh less than half the cost of coal.
There are quite literally thousands of things the average family can do at little or no cost to save energy without disrupting their entire lifestyle in the process. We have to make it fashionable and popular to do so. That these things also save money is a big plus.
i couldn't agree more with everything else. we really should have an energy efficiency revolution in this country. IMO, since the rest of the world has already passed us on solar & wind production, we should either grab the market on efficiency or batteries, while we still can. or we'll watch this go somewhere else too.
link to prove you unlikely claims.
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/04q4/ford_escape_hybrid_4wd-road_test
no problem.
Save money, cut the deficit, employ everyone, cut energy dependence:
Immediately order energy retrofits for all gov buildings.
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
26$ per barrel bio oil from waste bio char.
Cap and TRADE bills were all banker, nuke and fossil giveaways. Thank God they failed.
End all breaks and subsides for nukes and fossils.
But Chu hate green energy and lover nukes. His latest gov report misrepresents green energy using unreferenced 4 year old numbers, while using future fantasy numbers from the fossil and nuke industries.
the fix is in.
Real wind cost.
Cape Wind is 24 cents a kwh going to 34 over 15 years - approved tariff
Arcadia Solar just built largest solar plant in the US is 50 cents a kwh at Florida Powers Rate of Return on Investment.
Biofuels from waste biomass producing waste biochar can produce almost no energy after the waste stream is properly processed for compost and recyclables. Whats left releases Dioxins and Furons when burned/
“The lowest thin film module price is at $1.07 per watt (€0.86 per watt) from a United States-based retailer. As a general rule, it is typical to expect thin film modules to be at a price discount to crystalline silicon (for like module powers). This thin film price is represented by a 55 watt module. Note, once again, that these prices are based upon the purchase of a single solar module “
http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm 100725
http://www.pvinsights.com/ weekly spot prices.
• Complete 3,450 Watt Grid-Tie Solar Power System with Enphase Micro-inverter as low as $11,200!Â
• Complete 8,970 Watt Grid-Tie Solar Power System as low as $2.85/w!Â
• Complete 9,360 Watt Grid-Tie Solar Power System as low as $2.67/w!
http://www.dmsolar.com/
insolation usa map http://sunpluggers.com/columns/dan-fink/2010/01/on-and-off-the-grid-000081.php
Don't forget the labor cost for all the folks up cleaning the units every week, and the insurance cost for the ones injured and killed falling off the roof not to mention hailstorms and kids throwing rocks.