San Francisco -- Oil and coal are not about to let clean energy get to market without a fight. And Congress is so used to thinking of energy policy in terms of which regions produce which fuels -- instead of in the context of our collective need for energy services -- that they are getting a hearing.
Peabody Coal just launched a huge attack on wind energy. In an ad in Roll Call aimed at Congress, the coal producer makes the claim that coal-fired power plants, even when equipped with as-yet unproven and therefore uncosted capture-and-sequestration technology, will be 15-50 percent cheaper than wind, 28 percent cheaper than natural gas, and 15 percent cheaper than nuclear. These are absurd figures. A recent California PUC study estimated that wind would cost 9 cents per kilowatt hour delivered; coal, with capture and storage, would cost 17 cents; combined cycle natural gas power would cost 9.4 cents; geothermal, 10 cents; concentrating solar, 12 cents; and nuclear, 15 cents. A wide variety of other analyses have also shown that coal, if you have to capture its carbon, simply doesn't compete -- except maybe with nuclear.
None of these studies included the costs of properly treating the currently unregulated coal-ash wastes from these plants, which were to blame for the disastrous spill in Tennessee last Christmas. In reality, they are all tilted toward coal.
This cost disadvantage to coal is not just theoretical. Look at the experience of the past several months. An economic crisis drives down electricity demand, particularly for industry. U.S. electrical demand has, indeed, slumped -- by 4.5 percent. But demand for coal-generated power is down three times as fast, by 13.4 percent, while cleaner natural gas is up 3.4 percent, and wind is up by 60 percent -- and that reflects the huge new wind construction in 2008 so it's not really apples to apples.
These kinds of numbers are why Jon Wellinghoff, the head of the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has stepped forward and stated
the simple truth -- the U.S. can meet its electricity needs without
building a single new coal or nuclear power plant. Wellinghoff was predictably and promptly attacked by the coal industry, But the attack didn't seek to rebut any of Wellinghoff's analysis -- because the industry can't.
Coal is not alone. The oil industry is
calling on its allies in the Senate to slow progress. Utah Senator Bob
Bennett, now joined by fellow oil-advocate Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, is refusing
to permit the confirmation of David Hayes as Deputy Secretary of the
Interior until Secretary Ken Salazar gives Bennett satisfaction about oil
leases on public lands. These are leases that George W. Bush issued at the end of his term and
which Salazar has canceled. And clean energy advocates lobbying swing
members of Congress report that coal and oil are finding a hearing.
Mark-ups of the Waxman-Markey Climate Security Act are slowing down
because the votes are not yet there even for such seemingly obvious
steps as a 25 percent renewable electricity standard. Public utilities are
making a major, and seemingly successful, bid to block the president's
plan to auction off 100 percent of the carbon permits in any climate program,
and instead are on the verge of grabbing 40 percent for their own benefit -- a
raid which, if successful, will greatly slow the pace at which these
utilities actually have to clean up their carbon pollution.
It's time to turn up the heat on members of Congress who don't get
that this is our future they're talking about, and that energy policy is
now too important to be left to energy lobbyists.
http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=138
Plus, what are you going to use for back up? What are you going to use when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining? Are we going to have duplicate facilities or triplicate facilities in order to achieve reliability with renewables?
Ummm, isn't that EXACTLY the problem with Big Solar, Big Wind and Big Transmission? That sellouts are pushing super hard for massive (Nature Conservancy estimates well over 50 million acres) wilderness kill-off for centralized energy production that should and could be managed WITHIN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT?
DOE already proved that 190% of our electricity needs can be met on EXISTING ROOFTOPS AND IN-CITY BROWNFIELDS using only super-cheap thin film PV. So why on earth would anyone support slaughtering carbon-sequestering ecosystems like the Mojave just to enrich Big Energy?
It's not just a rhetorical question. All the hype about the "Extreme Urgency" of global warming justifying huge price hikes and ecosystem death, while NOTHING AT ALL is being done to support solutions like rooftop solar that are ratepayer owned, smacks of a Big Lie. Either it's urgent, in which case WE should all be incentivized to use our own structures as Ground Zero, or it's not urgent, in which case NOT one inch of wilderness can be sacrificed. which is it?