The Case for an Inclusive Energy Strategy

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The justification for rapidly transitioning the global energy economy to renewables is to avert a catastrophic environmental crisis. It is based on the premise that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from the combustion of coal, natural gas, and oil, are altering our atmosphere, which in turn is leading to a host of negative consequences too numerous to mention.

It is possible nowadays to find almost anything, from crime and disease and mental health to species extinctions, deforestation and disappearing coral reefs, being attributed to climate change. And if you research almost anything involving the design of civilization, not just the production and consumption of energy but housing, mining, ranching, farming, shipping, transportation, waste management, water treatment, etc., the data most prominently reported are always carbon and CO2. The actual units of energy or water, or tonnage of product, or any other practical data necessary to inform management and logistics, has now become secondary. It’s all about carbon.

This may or may not be a compelling and appropriate redirection of our intellectual resources, but it is a distraction from what remains necessary, which is cutting through the avalanche of carbon data to get at how much energy we use and how much energy we need. And while some revanchist holdouts actually still believe atmospheric CO2 is not an existential threat, but in fact is an existential necessity, and are still willing to engage in debate over what they still view as an open question, there is no debate, anywhere, over the fact that we need adequate energy supplies if we are to continue to have a civilization. The only debate in that regard is how much energy do we need.

To that end, there are two encouraging avenues towards a consensus on energy strategy. The first is to agree on energy solutions that adequately address climate change concerns but make economic sense anyway. The second, which follows from the first, is to identify emerging technologies that will maximize energy efficiency. Anytime there is a cost-effective way to get the same energy service from less raw fuel input, the more efficient solution has an economic advantage. And this is where there are compelling arguments for electrification.

The Case for Electrification

The best way to illustrate why using electricity wherever possible can be a universally preferable energy solution is based on how much energy is lost using combustion-based solutions. In the United States, based on statistics from the Energy Information Administration, when using coal, oil and natural gas, 2/3rds of the raw energy input is lost to heat, friction, and exhaust. Examples of this are found in the most widely relied-upon applications. A coal or natural gas fired power plant still only averages 33 percent efficiency. A gasoline fueled vehicle typically only converts about 25 percent of the energy embodied in a gallon of gas into traction to move it down the road.

With electricity, these ratios are often flipped. Electricity generated by solar or wind energy goes directly into the transmission lines, where, just as with any electricity generator, about 5 percent is lost between the the source and the end user. Unlike coal and natural gas, solar and wind power is intermittent and requires battery storage, but in that round-trip cycle of charging and discharging, the electricity going back out still retains 80 percent of the electricity that went in.

These are clear advantages. They suggest that by electrifying major sectors of the economy, including most transportation and residential applications of energy, it would be possible to enjoy the same level of energy services while only expending half as much raw energy input. But there are also big challenges to electrification.

With respect to producing electricity, there is the need to occupy massive amounts of space for wind and solar farms. In the case of solar farms, they have to be overbuilt in order to still deliver adequate power during the short days of winter. Wind turbines, which require even more space than solar, would have to sprawl over thousands of miles, including offshore areas. They are decentralized sources of power, which means they require huge investments in distribution systems. They deliver intermittent power and require battery storage facilities.

There are also not-so-obvious problems with electrification—specifically, the so-called embodied energy in these solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to make them, transport them, and install them, and yet they only have a useful life of 20-30 years. This energy debt has to be paid back before these technologies can be counted as renewable. They also consume far more resources in their manufacture than conventional energy generators, and they are expensive to recycle.

These concerns, however, are not an argument against electrification; they are only about how to generate electricity. For example, if nuclear power were supplying more electricity to the grid, there would be no need for excessive new transmission lines or battery farms, and nuclear power plants can last 60 years or longer.

On the end-user side, there are also problems with electrification. EV batteries are expensive and use a lot of resources. They are so heavy that EVs are causing unanticipated wear on roadways and far more pollution from tire fragments. And, of course, they take too long to charge. When it comes to residential electrification, heat pumps are an efficient solution in warmer climates, but they won’t work in a Minnesota winter. Heat pumps operate by extracting heat from one place—outdoors—then concentrating it, because it may be cold outside, to transfer it into your home. That’s fine in California in January, when it’s a bitter 48 degrees outside. But there simply isn’t enough heat in the air when it’s 20 below zero outside. The colder it gets outdoors, the more a heat pump has to work.

The Case for Fossil Fuels

There is an immutable reality confronting proponents of renewables, which is that fossil fuel still provide 80 percent of global energy. This reality is compounded by two additional facts. First, the most favored renewables, wind and solar, only account for 7 percent of global energy production; the rest, in roughly equal proportions, are big hydroelectric turbines and nuclear power stations. Second, for everyone on earth to consume just half as much energy as Americans do, global energy production would have to double.

To reference units that energy economists rely on, according to the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of Global Energy, in 2022 total raw energy inputs worldwide were just over 600 exajoules. Taking into account a projected global population of 10 billion people by 2050 and a per capita energy input of 100 gigajoules (about one-third of the current U.S. per capita energy input), global energy production must rise to 1,000 exajoules in just 28 years. To do that purely with wind and solar sources of energy would require a 25X increase from the amount of installed base today. Even if there were space enough to do this, the resource consumption would make today’s global mining impact trivial by comparison. And based on a 20-30 year service life for wind and solar installations, by the time it was completed, you would have to start all over again.

Adding to these cautionary facts is the rising awareness, alluded to already, that renewables aren’t always renewable. The most egregious example of this may be biofuel plantations around the world, which already consume approximately 500,000 square miles in exchange for only displacing 2 percent of oil production. For all practical purposes, biofuel is fully built out. And as previously noted, there is significant negative environmental impact from most renewables, certainly including current biofuel, battery, solar, and wind technology.

The good news is there is enough fossil fuel to supply, just based on proven reserves, 500 exajoules of power per year for another 100 years. Taking into account estimated undiscovered reserves (including Abiotic oil) in the United States onshore and offshore and in the rest of the world is likely to double that estimate. That allows plenty of time to research and develop alternative sources of energy, but without fossil fuel providing at least half of our energy, delivering adequate energy to everyone on earth, i.e., achieving a minimum worldwide total of 1,000 exajoules of energy per year, is probably impossible.

As we pursue breakthrough energy technologies such as advanced fission power and fusion, our ability to more efficiently harness fossil fuel continues to progress. Combined cycle natural gas power plants now achieve over 60 percent conversion efficiencies, and the latest designs (that use a heat exchanger that can harvest higher temperatures from the first turbine’s exhaust) promise to deliver even higher conversion efficiencies. Similarly, the latest hybrid automotive designs, using high-compression engines, regenerative braking, and innovative transmissions, have gasoline-to-traction conversion efficiencies approaching 50 percent.

Our Magnificent Future

This is just the beginning. An all-of-the-above energy development strategy means that no promising leads are excluded, and no technologies need be deployed before they’re ready. There are technologies emerging that can convert raw coal into clean burning natural gas or zero emission hydrogen. There are stationary battery solutions that use abundant and inexpensive iron, sulfur, and water and last longer than lithium-ion batteries. There are solid state batteries being developed for EVs and hybrids that have higher energy density, can tolerate more cycles before degrading, and can be charged in minutes.

Looking further into the future reveals wondrous innovations that we can already imagine attaining feasibility. With abundant energy, we no longer have to be concerned about how much power is necessary to run desalination plants to turn millions of acre feet of ocean water into fresh water. With abundant energy, we can electrolyze hydrogen from water, extract CO2 from the atmosphere, and blend them into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

Most significant of all, of course, is the impact abundant energy will have on the quality of life for everyone on earth. Abundant energy is, by definition, almost always affordable energy. And a global energy grid that offers an inclusive assortment of energy options—renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels—is also a resilient grid, able to withstand disruptions because multiple alternative sources of energy are always present.

By adopting an inclusive, all-of-the-above energy strategy, sustainable abundance in all things is possible because energy is the foundation of general economic growth. Hence, delivering affordable energy translates into everything becoming more affordable, and that, ultimately, is the prerequisite for global equity among peoples and nations. By encouraging energy development on all fronts simultaneously, humanity can eliminate energy poverty, which is one of the most problematic obstacles to peace and prosperity. In so doing, we shall make all other challenges, daunting though they may be, a little bit easier to overcome.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

The Potential of Waste-to-Energy in California

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When searching for new sources of renewable energy in California, harvesting the waste streams from our cities, farms, and forests is a logical option. But how much waste do these sources produce each year, and how much energy would they provide?

Answering this question at a summary level, while retaining some shred of credible and useful information is not easy, because the details can derail the feasibility of many waste-to-energy concepts. How much energy is expended getting the waste from its source to a conversion plant. How close are these plants to our garbage cans, an orchard that has been removed to be replaced with new trees, or thinnings from timber harvesting and forest management? Can a power plant be situated next to a landfill? Can power plants be disbursed in numbers sufficient to be in an efficient proximity to forest and agricultural land, without then being too small to be economical?

These are just some of the fundamental questions that complicate any assessment of waste-to-energy potential in California. Another complicating factor is just how much feedstock is available per year. From reviewing three credible sources – here, here, and here – some low to mid-range estimates of California’s capacity to produce waste-to-energy feedstock, expressed in bone dry tons: agricultural waste, are as follows: forest materials, 10 million tons per year; agricultural waste, 10 million tons per year; municipal solid waste, 20 million tons per year.

Expert estimates for these figures vary widely, especially in the case of forest waste. Based on an analysis of a 2010 USDA report, for example, just proper forest thinning to restore California’s forests to their healthy historical and much lower tree densities could yield an estimated 100 million tons of forest waste. That would be a one-time boost, but it could, for example, yield an additional 5 million tons of fuel for 20 years.

As for how much energy is in these waste streams, this in large part depends on what type of energy is to be extracted, and whether it will be further converted after that. One of the many companies commercializing advanced waste-to-energy systems is the California company Sierra Energy. They describe their waste gasification technology as a process that “uses steam and oxygen to break down waste at the molecular level. Organic materials turn into energy-dense syngas. Inorganics melt into non-leaching stone and metals. Waste turns into particulate and tar-free syngas suitable for conversion into high-value end products. There are no waste by-products created.”

Some of the end products that Sierra Energy’s system can convert waste into include electricity, hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia. In the case of electricity, of course, some intermediate step is necessary. The heat of the gasification can be used to drive a steam turbine, or the methanol can be used to drive a gas turbine, in both cases generating electricity. How much electricity?

Here again, estimates vary, but again based on expert assessments coming from here, here, and here, a consensus emerges that, using very rough numbers, 0.5 gigawatt-hours of electricity can be generated per dry ton of municipal solid waste, and 1.0 gigawatt-hours can be generated per dry ton both from forest materials or from agricultural waste. From here, the math is easy. Ten million tons of forest materials at 1.0 gigawatt-hours per ton will provide 10,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity. Ditto for agricultural waste. And to keep things neat, municipal solid waste at twice the volume and half the energy density – 20 million tons at 0.5 gigawatt-hours per ton – will also provide 10,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity.

This is an over-simplified analysis, but because these numbers are in the ballpark, it puts the potential of waste-to-energy conversion in California into a useful perspective. If fully realized, and applied 100 percent to electricity generation, California’s annual waste stream could contribute about 30,000 gigawatt-hours to the state’s grid, which is about 10 percent of the total energy currently being consumed by Californians each year.

Without diving into infinite nuances, it is important to note that in many cases there will be much better uses for California’s waste stream than conversion to electricity. As new conversion technologies are commercialized, turning waste into ammonia, for example, may be a superior value proposition. And in other cases, simply harvesting methane from existing landfills, as is already done throughout the state, may remain the most economical solution.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

The Cost of Offshore Wind vs Carbon Sequestration

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The California Energy Commission (CEC) has set planning goals for floating offshore wind turbines, calling for between 2 and 5 gigawatts of “nameplate capacity” operating by 2030, and 25 gigawatts by 2045. Note “floating.” Unlike off the East Coast, or the North Sea, deep waters in California lie immediately offshore. So offshore wind in California aims to do at scale what has never been done before – deploy floating wind turbines 20 miles offshore, in 4,000 feet of water, to generate these gigawatts of electricity and send it ashore.

How much will this cost?

Don’t expect much from the CEC’s 65 page, 26,000 word report, “Offshore Wind Energy Development off the California Coast,” issued in August 2022. Searching this PDF file for dollar signs turned up just 27 hits. In the Executive Summary, regarding costs, we get this: “Resource portfolio modeling completed for the 2021 SB 100 Joint Agency Report included a range of scenarios and technologies… The estimated total resource cost of the Core Scenario in 2045 is $66 billion.”

Turning to the “2021 SB 100 Joint Agency Report, Achieving 100 Percent Clean Electricity in California,” the diligent sleuth is invited to peruse the voluminous full report, or the summary, to track down any straightforward disclosure of construction cost to build this stuff. But never mind, because herewith is evidence that constructing 25 gigawatts of capacity will cost far more than $66 billion.

To estimate the cost for this project, we may turn to a document produced in 2021 by a consortium of some of the biggest offshore wind developers in the world titled “Guide to a Floating Offshore Wind Farm.” Within this report there is a chart of “Wind Farm Costs” with over 70 line items specifically called out, each one showing construction costs per megawatt.

To assess the credibility of this report, let’s consider a few facts before going further. The report is produced by BVG Associates, with offices in London, Glasgow, and Trondheim. They are renewable energy consultants with clients around the world. It is unlikely they will be overstating their cost estimates. We also know that since 2021, costs for offshore wind have gone up considerably. And we know that in California, not only are the challenges of floating offshore wind greater than usual because of the plan to float them in waters 4,000 feet deep and 20 miles offshore, but also because in California everything costs more to construct.

So based on BVG’s cost data, here is what is likely to be a best case estimate of what it would cost to install floating offshore wind turbines with 25 gigawatts of nameplate capacity. The construction costs per megawatt of capacity (in 2023 dollars) summarize as follows: $231,953 for “development and project management,” $2,010,261 for the wind turbine, $2,628,802 for the “balance of plant,” and $572,151 for installation and commissioning. That’s $5,443,167 per megawatt. Accordingly, to construct 25,000 megawatts (25 gigawatts) of offshore wind nameplate capacity, Californians will have to spend $136 billion. Add to that price estimate the billions necessary to build massive new transmission lines and gigawatts of new battery storage. A total project cost of “only” $150 billion would be an extraordinary achievement. Recent industry experience is not promising.

In just the last year, offshore wind developers have experienced cost overruns and had to abandon or resubmit bids on major projects along the U.S. East Coast as well as in the North Sea. Headlines from late last year and so far in 2024 tell a dismal story: “Wind Warning: Equinor, BP seek 54% hike in US offshore wind power price,” “U.S. Offshore Wind Projects Hit by Surging Costs,” “Another Offshore Wind Project Terminated Off Coast of New Jersey and New York,” “Offshore Wind in U.S. Is Fundamentally Broken,” “Equinor Abandons Offshore Wind Projects in Ireland,” and “Equinor calls halt to North Sea Trollvind project.”

If anyone, anywhere, wants to bet that 25 gigawatts of generating capacity can be realized in California — through the construction of giant floating wind turbines, onshore battery farms, and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines both underwater and on land—for a total project construction cost of $150 billion, I’ll take that bet and give you odds. It is more likely the total project cost will soar beyond $300 billion. This is California, after all.

As for the amount of electricity we can expect from currently planned floating offshore wind in California, bear in mind “nameplate capacity” is not the same as “yield.” Even out in the windy open ocean these turbines are only expected to be turning 40-45 percent of the time. Also taking into account occasional downtime for maintenance, a 25 gigawatt capacity will only equate to 10 gigawatts of total power input to California’s grid, or 87,600 gigawatt-hours per year. For comparison, in 2022, Californians consumed a reported 287,220 gigawatt-hours of electricity. If California goes all-electric, which is the plan, electricity consumption will need to triple.

Here’s a prediction: Because floating offshore wind energy will prove to be prohibitively expensive, it will never provide more than a minute fraction of California’s electricity needs, but not before what does get built will make a grotesque mess of a coastline and coastal waters that state regulators have heretofore considered sacred.

Instead, why not just retrofit California’s natural gas powered electricity generating plants to capture and store their CO2 emissions underground? Based on data from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, these conversions would cost $44 billion (ref. WC #35). As it is, these plants produced 96,457 gigawatt-hours in 2022, fully 50 percent of California’s total in-state production. But for the most part, because of their allegedly dangerous emissions, they were only operated at 28 percent of their capacity, and only ran when solar and wind generated electricity was not available. If these plants were permitted to run at full capacity, they could have generated 345,573 gigawatt-hours, an increase of 249,116 gigawatt-hours.

If you were responsible for California’s economic health, which option would you choose?

(1) Retrofit California’s entire fleet of natural gas powered electricity generating plants to sequester their CO2 at a cost of $44 billion, in order to increase California’s in-state electricity generating capacity by 249,116 gigawatt-hours ($176,625 per gigawatt-hour), or,

(2) Install thousands of floating offshore wind turbines at a cost of $150 billion, plus the requisite new transmission lines and battery farms, in order to increase California’s in-state electricity generating capacity by 87,600 gigawatt-hours ($1,712,329 per gigawatt-hour).

While pondering this choice, think about which option is more likely to experience cost-overruns. It’s fair to expect both of these projects to end up with unanticipated costs. After all, this is California. But the engineering challenges inherent in CO2 sequestration are far better understood. And as it is, these baseline estimates of construction cost per gigawatt-hour show powerplant retrofits will cost less than one-tenth as much as floating offshore wind, which hasn’t even been prototyped at the scale and under the conditions being planned for California.

We may think whatever we wish regarding the necessity to engage in carbon sequestration schemes, but like offshore wind, it addresses the concerns of the climate lobby. California’s energy strategists need to think carefully before they take even one step further on offshore wind’s voyage into environmental desecration and financial oblivion.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Floating Offshore Wind Will Waste Hundreds of Billions of Dollars

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In December 2022, after years of planning, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior sold rights to develop offshore wind in five lease areas off the California coast. Five companies submitted successful bids, paying a total of $757 million for development rights.

These leases are located 20 miles off the California coast in water approximately 4,000 feet deep. The floating wind turbines will be tethered to the ocean floor with cables, and each of them will also require a high-voltage transmission cable that will pass through the water and traverse the sea bottom for 20 miles to connect to the grid onshore.

The environmental impact and logistical challenges of installing and operating these floating leviathans are devastating. With 25 gigawatts of installed “nameplate capacity” called for by 2045, even at 10 megawatts per wind turbine, this would require 2,500 floating turbines. Each one would tower roughly 1,000 feet from the water line to the tip of a rotor blade in vertical position, with substantial additional structure required underwater in the form of floatation pontoons and counterweights. To put this in perspective, these dimensions are longer than a modern American supercarrier.

Imagine the impact on the California coast as port facilities are constructed, along with substations, transmission lines, battery farms, housing and services for workers, and new access roads. Imagine the impact on whales and other marine life of submarines installing concrete underwater to anchor the tethering cables or laying high-voltage lines on the sea floor. Imagine the operating impact of thousands of rotors turning along avian flyways or the impact of high-voltage electrical waves and mechanical vibrations from the rotor being transmitted into the ocean depths from an obstacle course of thousands of tethering and power cables, each one nearly a mile in length. Where is the coastal commission? Where is Greenpeace? Where are the regulators that won’t allow desalination plants with a footprint that is negligible by comparison? Where are the environmentalists whose entire business model is litigation?

Citizens in the afflicted coastal counties are apoplectic over the momentum and support these offshore wind development efforts are generating. Money is pouring in from wind developers to contribute to local politicians who support these projects. But the ordinary citizens who live in these communities, who can’t even get a permit to add a room to their home or build a seawall to protect their property, are watching the wholesale industrialization of their coast in a display of institutional hypocrisy that will go down in history.

What will stop offshore wind from ever realizing the ambitious scale currently proposed, however, is its preposterous cost. Unfortunately, that reality may not assert itself until a pretty big mess is made of California’s coastline and coastal communities that, to date, have remained among the most pristine and beautiful swaths of real estate in America. And since the State of California and the proponents of floating offshore wind energy won’t offer a straightforward disclosure of how much they ultimately will have to spend to build this stuff—all of which will ultimately be paid by taxpayers and ratepayers—here are some estimates.

An online document recently produced by a consortium of some of the biggest offshore wind developers in the world titled “Guide to a Floating Offshore Wind Farm” includes a chart of “Wind Farm Costs” with over 70 line items specifically called out, each one showing construction costs per megawatt.

This report is produced by BVG Associates, with offices in London, Glasgow, and Trondheim. They are renewable energy consultants with clients around the world. It is unlikely they are overstating their cost estimates. We also know that since 2021, the year for which the cost data in this report is compiled, costs for offshore wind have gone up considerably. And we know that in California, not only are the challenges of floating offshore wind greater than usual because of the plan to float them in waters 4,000 feet deep and 20 miles offshore, but also because in California everything costs more to construct.

So here is what is likely to be an impossibly low estimate of what it would cost the Californians to install 25 gigawatts of floating wind turbine capacity:

The per-megawatt construction costs (in 2023 dollars) are summarized as follows: $231,953 for “development and project management,” $2,010,261 for the wind turbine, $2,628,802 for the “balance of plant,” and $572,151 for installation and commissioning. That’s $5,443,167 per megawatt. Accordingly, to construct 25,000 megawatts of capacity, Californians will have to spend $136 billion. And that price tag doesn’t include transmission line upgrades or battery storage. Tack tens of billions onto the total to account for those necessary additions.

When it’s all done, if it’s ever done, these planned offshore wind installations will actually only contribute the equivalent of 10 gigawatts of baseload power to California’s electricity grid, since even offshore, wind can only be relied on about 40 percent of the time. If anyone, anywhere, wants to bet that 10 gigawatts of baseload power can be realized in California – through the construction of giant floating wind turbines, onshore battery farms, and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines both underwater and on land – for a total project construction cost of less than $150 billion, I’ll take that bet and give you odds. It is more likely the total project cost will soar beyond $300 billion. This is California, after all.

To further put this in perspective, 10 gigawatts of baseload electricity is only about 10 percent of what California’s going to need if it goes 100 percent electric. Floating offshore wind at any meaningful scale would be a financial and environmental catastrophe. But there’s a reason offshore wind developers are all running to the fertile territory of California, a land of high taxes, high utility prices, and institutionalized climate crisis conniptions. They’re failing everywhere else.

Offshore wind developers have experienced cost overruns and had to abandon or resubmit bids on major projects along the U.S. East Coast as well as in the North Sea. Headlines from late last year and so far in 2024 tell a dismal story. “Wind Warning: Equinor, BP seek 54% hike in US offshore wind power price,” “Equinor calls halt to North Sea Trollvind project,” “U.S. Offshore Wind Projects Hit by Surging Costs,” “Another Offshore Wind Project Terminated Off Coast of New Jersey and New York,” “Equinor Abandons Offshore Wind Projects in Ireland,” “BP and Equinor scrap New York offshore wind contract as costs rise,” “Offshore Wind in U.S. Is Fundamentally Broken,” Says Top Industry Leader,” and “Offshore wind project cancellations jeopardize Biden’s clean energy goals.”

Had enough?

But in California, watching the state government squander billions of dollars again and again is a way of life. As long as California’s preening politicians can beat their chests and tell us they’re coping with the “climate emergency,” it doesn’t matter how many whales and other marine life die, how many birds are killed, how many coastal ecosystems are fouled as the most beautiful coastline in the world is industrialized, or how many communities are ruined. Never forget that these are communities where, until now, land development of any kind, no matter how personal and trivial, had to pass through a gauntlet of hostile agencies that would make Stalin blush.

Offshore wind, should it go forward, will be one of the biggest wastes of money ever imposed on the backs of working Californians. And in a state willing to commit tens of billions to build a “High Speed Rail” network that will never divert more than a minute fraction of drivers off the state’s neglected roads and allocate additional tens of billions to a Homeless Industrial Complex whose special interest constituents have looted taxpayers while actually increasing the number of homeless and level of disorder on the streets of California’s beleaguered cities, that’s saying a lot.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Evaluating Underground CO2 Sequestration in California

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While the confirmed skeptic will consider Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) to be the ultimate waste of money, it nonetheless is happening. Billions of dollars have already been committed, with no end in sight. Regardless of how one might judge its necessity, having some facts about CCS belongs in any serious discussion about California’s energy future. So here goes, starting with natural gas used for generating electricity.

According to the California Air Resources Board, natural gas fueled electricity generating plants emit approximately 42 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 per year, which is 11 percent of California’s total emissions of CO2, estimated at 381 MMT in 2021. These plants also generated over 97,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, fully 50 percent of California’s in-state electricity production in that year. What if all of that CO2 could be pumped underground?

One primary consideration would be whether or not there is enough underground capacity for all this CO2. Estimates of capacity vary a great deal. A 2006 study by the California Energy Commission and the U.S. Dept. of Energy came up with a range between 146 and 840 gigatons of “geologic carbon sequestration potential in California.” According to a 2007 DOE study, the “estimated storage capacity of saline formations in the ten largest basins in California ranges from about 150 to about 500 Gt of CO2.” A more recent 2021 study by the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage concluded “California could store 60 million tons per year for more than 1,000 years.”

The somewhat surprising consensus is unequivocal. There’s plenty of room down there. A gigaton is a thousand million tons. Which means that even the implied 60 gigaton capacity referenced in the Stanford study, by far the lowest estimate, could accommodate the current level of CO2 emissions from California’s natural gas power plants for over 14 centuries. But what about the cost to retrofit these plants?

The good news is that compared to extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, extracting flue gas from natural gas power plants is much easier and less costly. That’s because atmosphere is about 0.04 percent CO2, whereas in flue gas emissions from natural gas power plants the CO2 is at least 100 times more concentrated. Skeptics take note – focus your reality checks on the schemes out there to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere. It’s orders of magnitude more impractical.

As for flue gas, according to a 2023 DOE analysis that analyzes the energy required as well as the construction retrofit cost to extract CO2 from flue gas, the energy required will consume about 13 percent of a power plant’s total electrical output, and cost an estimated $1.3 million per net megawatt of capacity. What does this portend for California’s fleet of natural gas power plants?

It’s important here to emphasize that basing retrofit costs on general estimates, even though they are credible and recent, is a tricky business. For starters, everything costs more in California, so while the cost to retrofit a natural gas power plant in Texas to sequester its CO2 emissions might come in under the DOE estimate, doing that here in California might cost considerably more. Moreover, each plant will have distinct features that may add or subtract costs. But to rely on the DOE figures, it would cost $44 billion to retrofit every one of California’s natural gas powered generating plants to extract CO2 from their emissions and pump it underground.

Don’t laugh. $44 billion is not that much.

To begin with, California’s natural gas power plants are being wasted. While they typically generate just under 100,000 gigawatt-hours each year, half of in-state capacity and one-third of total electricity consumption (we import about one-third of our electricity into California from other states), they are capable of generating well over 300,000 gigawatt-hours. This is because California’s natural gas power plants, for the most part, are kept offline until the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing, wherein they’re fired up to make up the difference. In 2022, their uptime was only 28 percent.

This is an incredible waste. California’s reported total system demand in 2022 was 277,764 gigawatt-hours, which is 31.7 gigawatt-years. When vehicle-to-grid technology matures, there will be no need to buffer intermittent solar and wind energy with utility scale storage. If only 10 percent of California’s 31 million motor vehicles were EVs, upgraded with bidirectional charge/discharge capacity, parked and connected EVs (or plug-in hybrids) will receive and send energy to the grid as needed, and kWh price arbitrage will disappear. The average grid load, if that were true in 2022, would have been 31.7 gigawatts, day and night, without peaks, without valleys.

But what EVs, and electrification in general, do portend is the need for more electricity. A lot more. For the moment a precarious detente exists between California’s producers of electricity via natural gas versus solar and wind. Renewables need peaker plants until storage ramps up. The apparent game plan, though, is to kill off natural gas power plants one by one, as battery farms expand. So one must ask: What is the cost of replacing 300,000+ gigawatt-hours per year of natural gas capacity with wind, solar, batteries, and massively expanded high voltage transmission capacity? And how does that compare to the roughly $40 billion cost to retrofit natural gas power plants to pump their CO2 underground?

With all this in mind, next week we’ll take our most detailed look yet at the estimated total construction cost for offshore wind, an integral part of California’s current energy strategy. How the cost for offshore wind shall compare to simply retrofitting our fleet of natural gas power plants will be interesting.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

How to Deliver Affordable Energy Again in California

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Californians pay some of the highest prices for energy in the United States. Gasoline last year averaged $4.89 per gallon, and diesel fuel $5.07 per gallon, both the highest in the country. Electricity rates had California 45th in the nation in 2023 at $0.27 per kilowatt-hour, the worst of every major state with the sole exception of Massachusetts, which edged California out for the 46th spot at $0.28 per kilowatt-hour. Only in the price of natural gas was California’s performance not the worst, insofar as California’s prices were the 6th worst in the nation at $19.63 per thousand cubic feet, with the only major state that with higher prices being Florida at $25.37 per thousand cubic feet.

Energy is already punitively expensive in California, but it’s likely to get worse. Achieving “net zero” emissions requires mass conversion to renewable electricity, and that process has barely begun. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, in 2021 (the most recent year for which we have data), Californians consumed 6.9 quadrillion BTUs of energy, yet in that same year, according to the California Energy Commission, the state only produced 0.7 quadrillion BTUs of electricity. Isn’t the goal “net zero”? And to do that, don’t we have to electrify every sector of our economy? We’re only 10 percent of the way.

Now to be fair – don’t wander yet, this is important – electricity can deliver energy services more efficiently than combustion. “Non-thermal electricity,” delivered from solar panels into batteries and then into EVs or heat pumps, for example, may allow that total power requirement to drop significantly. Let’s assume that if we electrify everything, the improvements in efficiency will mean we can cut it in half and still have enough energy. That’s ambitious but plausible, but it still means our electricity production today is only at 20 percent of where it’s going to need to be. We will still need to produce 3.5 quadrillion BTUs per year, which in electrical terms is 115 gigawatt-years (about 1.0 million gigawatt- hours). In 2021 we generated 22.2 gigawatt-years (that’s 194,127 gigawatt-hours). As for our favored renewables, in 2021 solar contributed 33,260 gigawatt-hours, and wind contributed 15,173 gigawatt-hours.

If all these numbers are numbing, have another cup of coffee. They are the basic parameters that govern California’s path to net zero. They are immutable. They matter. To summarize the previous paragraph: The electricity produced by utility scale solar and wind energy in California in 2021 amounted to 4.8 percent of how much electricity the state is going to need if it intends to fulfill its goal of net zero. It falls short by more than 20X. And that’s probably a best case estimate.

To be sure, other acceptable energy solutions may help. Geothermal energy in 2021 added 11,116 gigawatt-hours, less than but comparable to wind. Biomass added 5,381 gigawatt-hours, and small hydro, which remains off the forbidden list at least for now, added another 2,531 gigawatt-hours. But that’s not much, and expansion potential for those solutions are limited. Fully 65 percent of California’s electricity generated in 2021 came from the bad guys – natural gas 50.2 percent, nuclear 8.5 percent, and “large hydro” 6.2 percent.

So here is the question: Can Californians rely primarily on wind turbines, photovoltaics, and batteries to generate more than five times as much electricity as they did in 2021, convert their entire transportation sector to EVs, their entire residential sector to heat pumps, induction cooktops, and electric water heaters, and work similar massive miracles to convert their commercial and industrial sectors – possibly relying on electrolyzed hydrogen (which is less efficient to generate, meaning more capacity would be required) – and keep their prices for energy to the retail and wholesale consumer competitive with the rest of America, much less the rest of the world?

The answer to that question ought to be obvious. No. California’s state legislature, backed by every renewables special interest in the world, is embarking on an economic experiment on the backs of California’s struggling households and beleaguered businesses, and it is not going to end well. Compromise is urgently required.

Here are ten policy suggestions:

1 – Require minimum 50 percent domestic content for all energy, from gasoline to photovoltaic panels to batteries. That might stimulate a more realistic assessment of what is economically and environmentally sustainable.

2 – Revise Newsom’s executive order mandating pure EV sales of new cars by 2035 to include advanced hybrids. This will allow electric drivetrains to be paired with innovative new ultra efficient, ultra clean combustion engines, fueled with green or blue hydrogen fuel, natural gas, or gasoline. There are simply too many promising new automotive technologies to bet everything on pure EVs.

3 – Reverse existing incentives to encourage at least two types of energy to be deliverable to new residential or commercial buildings. This will improve resiliency in the face of shortages or natural disasters. It will also force competition between energy providers, lowering prices.

4 – Declare an end to the moratorium on nuclear power.

5 – Repeal CO2 emissions reporting requirements on large corporations. Under the new law, they are required to source this information from all their vendors including small businesses. It places a massive burden on all businesses for no purpose other than to produce reports. This information is not essential to formulating sound energy policy.

6 – Require the state legislature to review economic impact reports, environmental impact reports, and carbon lifecycle analysis from multiple independent sources before mandating any new energy policy.

7 – End the regulatory push to eliminate natural gas hookups, abolish VMT penalties on home builders, and make solar roofs and other “renewable” features optional on new home construction.

8 – Retrofit to the highest modern standards and technologies instead of closing California’s natural gas fueled generating plants.

9 – Increase safe, responsible drilling for oil and gas in-state.

10 – Recognize that offshore wind development is an environmental catastrophe and an economic drain, and cancel all public sector support for these projects. Redirect savings into researching potential breakthrough energy technologies.

An inherent handicap towards advocating a comprehensive new energy strategy in California is the fact that energy sectors compete with each other, as they should. The EV lobby wants to eliminate gasoline. The PV and wind lobby wants to keep natural gas around for their peaker plants, that is, until the battery lobby ramps up storage capacity, wherein they’ll want to eliminate natural gas. Most of these energy interests are either indifferent to or happy to reinforce the disparaging stereotypes surrounding nuclear and “large hydro.” And so it goes.

This innate competitive drive makes it challenging for California’s energy industry to unite behind a comprehensive policy agenda, but it shouldn’t prevent political leadership from designing an energy strategy that pushes diverse energy solutions, and the industries that provide them, into healthy competition. That’s how capitalism – as opposed to crony capitalism and monopoly capitalism – is supposed to work. The old truism is nonetheless true, when companies have to compete, the consumer wins.

California can set an inspiring example by embracing an all-of-the-above strategy to energy production. This would mean continued reliance on oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, while incorporating the highest standards possible to reduce pollution and improve efficiency. And while it would still provide for ongoing investment in renewables, it would be at a pace that spares the consumer having to pay locked-in rates on energy solutions that quickly become overpriced and obsolete.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

California’s Impossible War on Oil and Gas

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Determined to save the world from climate change, California has nearly shut down its oil and gas industry, though the Golden State currently gets 50 percent of its total energy from oil and another 34 percent from gas. The state’s most recent move was a decision by California’s Geologic Energy Management Division to deny new hydraulic fracturing permits on oil and gas wells.

The assault on oil and gas has been unrelenting. In September 2023, California attorney general Rob Bonta sued Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP for allegedly causing climate change-related damages and deceiving the public. A year before that, in September 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to ban new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of any occupied structure—a restriction so likely to kill the industry that more than 623,000 registered voters have endorsed a referendum to repeal it this November.

The state government in Sacramento seems determined to be in the vanguard of an international movement to achieve the goals announced last December at the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai. As part of a quest to achieve global “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, countries committed to tripling their nuclear-energy output, with the presumption that renewables—primarily wind and solar—would make up whatever was left over after the demise of oil, gas, and coal.

A careful examination of global energy and population trends strongly suggests that this is a delusion. The most authoritative source on global energy production is the Statistical Review of World Energy, published annually. In the 2023 edition, total global energy inputs for the previous year amounted to 604 exajoules. Based on current data on population and energy use, that equates to 288 gigajoules per capita in the United States and a mere 67 gigajoules per capita in the rest of the world. By 2050—the target date for achieving global “net zero”—total global population will likely level off at about 10 billion. If so, for every person in the world to have access to, say, 100 gigajoules, total global energy production will need to expand to 1,000 exajoules, an increase of 66 percent. Meantime, if all goes according to plan, coal, oil, and gas—which, according to the Statistical Review, provided 82 percent of those 604 exajoules of energy in 2022—will be completely phased out, providing no energy by 2050.

This is not possible. To begin with, the 82 percent figure is misleading, because most official sources, including the Statistical Review and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, inflate the reported energy inputs of “non-thermal” energy (that is, all energy sources except for the “combustibles”—coal, oil, gas, and biofuel), ostensibly to show how much of the less-efficient fossil fuel is already being displaced. In terms of actual electricity that these sources deliver to the grid: in 2022, 15.6 exajoules (EJ) came from hydroelectric power, 9.6 EJ from nuclear, 7.6 EJ from wind, 4.8 EJ from solar, and 2.8 EJ from biomass, plus another 4.3 EJ from biofuel (which already consumes an estimated 450,000 square miles of land, while displacing less than 2 percent of global transportation fuel demand). Altogether, “non-thermal renewables” (including nuclear) delivered only 44.7 EJ of power in 2022. We’ve got 27 years to boost that to 1,000 EJ.

And 1,000 EJ represents the bare minimum to which global energy production must aspire. For Americans to reduce their per capita energy consumption to 100 gigajoules from the current 288 would require extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency. Can electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other innovations increase efficiency that much? Because that’s what proponents of net zero and electrification of the economy must accomplish. Otherwise, 1,000 EJ will not be nearly enough for humanity.

Where will this energy come from? Tripling nuclear power would increase the non-fossil-fuel total to 64 EJ. Shall we double hydroelectric capacity, along with biomass and biofuel? That would get us to 87 EJ, though few would find it desirable to dam every remaining stretch of river and allocate nearly 1 million square miles of rainforest to growing cane ethanol and palm oil diesel. And this brings us to wind and solar: under this scenario, they would have to expand their output from 12.4 EJs to an almost unthinkable 913 EJs—an increase of 74 times.

It isn’t easy to summarize the challenges posed by massively increasing solar and wind energy. The uptick in mining; the land consumed; the expansion of transmission lines; the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity-storage assets to balance these intermittent sources; the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events, including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail; and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20 to 30 years, as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all this suggests that procuring more than 90 percent of global energy from wind and solar is a fool’s errand.

California’s climate warriors may succeed in their quest to eliminate fossil fuel in the state, but it will come at a grievous cost to their fellow residents, and it’s an example that the world cannot possibly emulate. Geothermal energy may offset some of this. Perhaps nuclear capacity could more than triple. But the path for California and the world is to utilize coal, oil, and gas in as clean and sustainable a manner as possible. “Alternative energy” is not a viable alternative.

This article originally appeared in City Journal.

Quantifying the Potential of Decentralized Solar in California

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California’s central planners are determined to stay ahead of the entire world when it comes to renewable energy and achieving “net zero.” It is an expensive and intrusive experiment, and we’re the lab rats. But that doesn’t mean every renewables innovation is bad. And for the hardened skeptics, we can put it another way: At the very least, some solutions are less bad than others.

In that spirit, an examination of photovoltaics is worth considering, in particular if they are hosted on rooftops. To begin with, apart from, maybe, geothermal energy, photovoltaics use less space than other renewables. Far less space.

Corn ethanol, a popular biofuel, is the prime example. A good yield for corn ethanol is 500 gallons per acre. Depending on the use, according to U.S. Dept. of Energy, a gallon of ethanol contains around 80,000 BTUs. Since a kilowatt-hour is 3412 BTUs, it’s a simple matter to calculate that corn ethanol will yield 6.75 gigawatt-hours per square mile per year. Since California’s voracious appetite for electricity in 2022 was 287,000 gigawatt-hours, then even if 100 percent of the energy in corn ethanol could be converted into electricity (it’s more like 40 percent), it would take 42,000 square miles of cornfields to supply California’s electricity requirements.

Another favored renewable, of course, is wind. So how’s wind doing in terms of land required? Much better than biofuel, that’s for sure. The Tehachapi Wind Resource Area is one of California’s best sites for wind turbines. From observing the rows of 1.5 and 3.0 megawatt turbines using Google satellite imaging, they appear to average around 20 per square mile. Making this assessment is an inexact science, but the areas with larger 3.0 megawatt turbines typically number around 20 per square mile. Even if all of them had a 3.0 megawatt capacity, at a yield of 25 percent, they would generate 131 gigawatt-hours per square mile per year. That means to supply California’s electricity demand in 2022 using land based wind turbines would require 2,184 square miles.

But what about solar? Here’s where it gets really interesting. At 12.5 watts per square foot, a yield of 25 percent, and allocating 50 percent of the land on the solar farm for space between the panels, access roads and balance of plant, it would only require 750 square miles of photovoltaic panels to generate 100 percent of California’s electricity consumed in 2022.

Biofuel, 42,000 square miles. Wind farms, 2,184 square miles. Solar farms, 750 square miles. When it comes to renewables, does this help you pick your poison? But the story gets better. Why not put these panels on rooftops? Is there room?

According to a NREL study conducted in 2016, there were just over 10 billion square feet of usable rooftop space in California for PV. Massive warehouse construction and ongoing construction of all types – even a few homes – since then mean this number has only increased. But 10 billion square feet, at 12.5 watts per square foot and a 25 percent yield means if 100 percent of California’s usable rooftop space had photovoltaic arrays, it would generate 273,750 gigawatt-hours, nearly equivalent to the California’s entire 287,220 gigawatt-hours of electricity consumption in California in 2022.

For this reason, California’s state legislature should think twice about taking away the financial incentives for homes and businesses to install rooftop photovoltaics. Photovoltaics on rooftops don’t use up farmland, nor do they despoil any other outdoor environments. Every photovoltaic panel on a roof is one less photovoltaic panel diminishing farm output or disrupting a desert tortoise.

Rooftop photovoltaics have other virtues. They bring power directly into the urban areas where the power is consumed, dramatically reducing the need for additional transmission lines. And every one of them, presumably, will be managed and maintained by private property owners, reducing the burden on utility companies.

Another interesting virtue of rooftop photovoltaics is their potential to exist immediately adjacent to distributed storage in the form of vehicle-to-grid enabled EVs and hybrids. Note to skeptics: Even if EVs may not be there yet, hybrids are definitely ready for prime time. And once again, bidirectional charging stations in parking areas adjacent to buildings can be decentralized and privately managed and maintained. Drive your car to work, charge all day, then drive it home and let it power your home when the sun is down.

Decentralized generation, decentralized storage. Massive private investment in small-scale independent, vertically integrated power providers. Who could possibly object?

This is not the least bit infeasible. If only 10 percent of California’s 14.3 million registered automobiles (that doesn’t include any commercial vehicles) were EVs with 50 kilowatt-hour batteries, they would have a total storage capacity of over 70 gigawatt-hours. California’s goal for total utility scale storage by 2045 is only 52 gigawatt-hours.

It is unrealistic to expect renewables to replace all of California’s energy requirements. Retrofitting our fleet of natural gas power plants, drilling and refining our oil and gas in-state, expanding our nuclear energy capacity, and continuing to develop geothermal energy are all necessary if Californians are serious about maintaining an abundant and affordable energy supply, and setting an example that other states and nations will enthusiastically follow.

Moreover, the cautionary facts surrounding renewables must be acknowledged, starting with the tremendous consumption of resources it takes to build them, their relatively short service life and recycling costs, and the tremendous amount of space required to deploy them. But rooftop solar, buffered with a fleet of advanced hybrids and EVs with onboard vehicle-to-grid technology, is a combination that might well belong in the mix.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

The Delusions of Davos and Dubai – Part Three: Alternatives to Wind & Solar Energy

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If the delusional but dead serious demands coming out of the international climate crisis community are to be believed, and as documented in the earlier two segments of this report, achieving universal energy security in the world will require wind energy capacity to increase by a factor of 60, while solar capacity increases by a factor of 100. The mix between wind and solar can vary, of course, but the required overall increase is indisputable. As noted in Part One of this report, that would be a very best-case scenario, where extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency meant that total energy production worldwide would only have to increase to 1,000 exajoules per year, from an estimated 600 exajoules in 2022.

Finally, and as explained in Part Two, this is preposterous. Wind and solar energy cannot possibly increase in global capacity by a multiple of 50-100 times. It is utterly infeasible. As noted, “The uptick in mining, the land consumed, the expansion of transmission lines, the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity storage assets to balance these intermittent sources, the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail, and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20-30 years as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all of this suggests procuring 90+ percent of global energy from wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand.”

One may nonetheless argue that other forms of energy can supplement wind and solar in order to still fulfill the climate community’s goal to completely displace oil, natural gas, and coal. But what then, and in what proportions? Here are the alternatives:

Tripling nuclear power—which was resolved at COP 28—is an ambitious goal already. Going from 440 operating reactors worldwide to more than 1,300 will be an effort fraught with risk, not merely because of the impact of fuel sourcing, processing, and waste—all of which can be managed—but because of security considerations due to the dual use of the technology. And even tripling global nuclear power still only delivers a mere 3.1 percent of the target 1,000 exajoules.

As for hydroelectric power, to even suggest it might be doubled worldwide—again only to provide 2.9 percent of the target 1,000 exajoules—is a transgression of unspeakable magnitude. There are few topics that so thoroughly ignite both apoplexy and unanimity among environmentalists as the damming of a river. Expect the Chinese and the Indians to further develop their hydroelectric capacity, along with a handful of other nations powerful enough to be both indifferent to and immune from environmentalist pressure. It is possible that hydroelectric capacity might more than double worldwide by 2050, but even if it were to quadruple to generate over 60 exajoules, that would still only represent 6 percent of the target of 1,000 exajoules.

Other solutions carry with them consequences as well that limit their scalability. As it is, biofuel plantations consume nearly 500,000 square miles worldwide. While biofuel crops can yield co-products such as animal feed, this only reduces net land use by between 10 and 40 percent. That improves the equation, but the land required for biofuel nonetheless makes the consequences of even just doubling production problematic. And like all large-scale agriculture, biofuel also requires irrigation, fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide. Claiming biofuel is “carbon neutral” is an obfuscating distraction from the fact that it is one of the highest-impact “renewables” of all. And even doubling production, as reflected on the chart, barely brings biofuel’s contribution to global energy production up to a paltry 1 percent of the 1,000 exajoule global target.

Much has been made of so-called “cellulosic ethanol,” a fitfully emerging technology that extracts ethanol from stems and branches of trees and crop residue. While this form of ethanol extraction is promising and may eventually become cost-effective, it raises an important question. How sustainable is it to remove all growth from forests and farmland year after year when, for millennia, the ashes and slash in forests and the plowed-under crops on farms would be left in place to decompose to restore soil nutrients? Cellulosic ethanol, should it become commercialized and used widely, may end up depleting and degrading arable land and forest ecosystems.

So-called “biomass” is already used to generate power and, indeed, in developing nations is still a primary source of fuel for heating and cooking. More advanced systems have been built all over the world to generate “carbon-neutral” electricity—neutral, of course, because the carbon being released in the combustion is carbon that was relatively recently sequestered from the atmosphere when the plants were growing. But sustainable use of biomass—removing it and burning it only at the rate it grows in the forest or on farms—still raises the question of whether this deprives soil of natural replenishment.

As an aside, it might make compelling sense to burn the excess biomass that has been accumulating in California’s overgrown forests, and, presumably, anywhere else where similar conditions have developed. Nearly a century of fire suppression in America, combined with the regulatory diminishment of the logging industry over the past few decades, has turned many forests into tinderboxes. But once the excess is removed and burned in biomass power plants and a balance of logging and controlled burns is restored to forest management, ongoing biomass extraction from forests to feed power plants may do more harm than good.

Hydrogen has been hyped almost as a panacea to global energy challenges. But hydrogen is not without problems that may be insurmountable. To begin with, hydrogen is not a hydrocarbon. It’s just hydrogen, which is the lightest element in the universe. It is extremely difficult to store in large quantities because, as such a light gas, it has a very low energy density per volume. Storing compressed hydrogen in usable quantities, such as onboard a vehicle, requires a vessel capable of withstanding 10,000 pounds per square inch. By contrast, natural gas, a molecule with one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, has an energy so much higher that it can be stored in usable quantities at only 3000 pounds per square inch. In its natural state, natural gas only has one third as much energy per volume as hydrogen.

But hydrogen burns clean! No CO2 emissions!

That’s true, but hydrogen, just like electricity, is a manufactured energy that has to be produced using some other form of energy. The politically popular scheme is to use electrolysis to extract hydrogen gas from water, then pump the hydrogen into an onboard fuel tank, where it can be converted back into electricity by putting it through a fuel cell. Without describing the technology behind electrolysis or a fuel cell, suffice to say that only about 70 percent of the electrical energy going into electrolysis comes back out in the form of hydrogen, and then only about 70 percent of the hydrogen going into a fuel cell comes out in the form of electricity to power an EV motor. And then there’s the energy necessary to pump the hydrogen into that 10,000 PSI tank—another 10 percent. Hydrogen fuel for vehicles will never achieve an energy efficiency greater than around 45 percent (70% x 70% x 90% = 44%). So much for that 80 percent target.

Hydrogen is also a corrosive gas, meaning we cannot simply repurpose our existing natural gas pipeline grid to transport hydrogen gas. Everything would have to be rebuilt. At best, hydrogen displays interesting potential, but it’s no panacea.

Can humanity eventually overcome its reliance on fossil fuel? The answer to that is certainly yes in the very long run, but an emphatic no in the next 25 years. This is why the fossil fuel industry has proposed creative ways to keep operating. Carbon sequestration schemes, for which oil companies and thermal power generators are happy to collect government subsidies to implement, involve pumping CO2 emissions into underground caverns. Carbon offset schemes, also supported by fossil fuel interests, enable companies to continue to emit CO2 if they pay for projects such as, for example, reforestation, which reputedly “sequester” an equivalent amount of carbon in the form of growing trees.

History may judge harshly the efficacy of carbon sequestration and carbon offsets, judging them as useless apart from being avenues (ok, superhighways) for corrupt redirection of billions (oops, trillions) of dollars. Facing powerful adversaries committed to the annihilation of their industries, however, can explain why fossil fuel emitters have embraced these schemes. Why commit corporate suicide when you can collect subsidies? What would be undoubtedly most productive would be to continue improving practices that scrub emissions of all pollutants apart from CO2, harvest natural gas flares which otherwise are wasted fuel, and overall continue to make the process of extracting, refining, and burning fossil fuel as clean as possible.

Someday, it is possible fossil fuel will be a fuel of the past. Fusion energy has been 20 years away from commercialization for the last 50 years and is still at least 20 years away from commercialization. But if physicists ever do succeed in confining a star in a bottle, the dream of energy that is both abundant and inexhaustible will have been realized. There are other possibilities. Synfuel that is formulated by removing CO2 from fossil fuel emissions and combining it with hydrogen gas to produce a liquid transportation fuel with a high energy density is already feasible, although nowhere near commercialization. Geothermal energy is a wild card, possibly with the potential to put a major dent in achieving the overall energy production target. On the other hand, wave energy, heralded by its proponents as a promising renewable energy solution, would probably make an even bigger mess than wind turbines without making much of a difference.

The reality today is that coal, oil, and gas provided about 500 exajoules of energy in 2022, just over 80 percent of the roughly 600 exajoules of global energy production. To achieve universal energy security in the world, global energy production must increase to 1,000 exajoules at the very least. In 2022, wind and solar energy together produced 12.4 exajoules, a pittance. The reality is simple: to reach a reasonable target for worldwide energy production, we have to develop everything. An all-of-the-above energy strategy is the only feasible approach. Anything else is delusional at best.

It would be a mistake, oblivious to the unforeseen technological breakthroughs that define human history, to not be optimistic about the world’s energy future in the long run. But over the next 25 years, fossil fuel is going to be with us, and in the near term, its use will most likely increase rather than decrease. Our challenge is to use it as responsibly and efficiently as possible, not get rid of it.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

The Delusions of Davos and Dubai – Part Two: Can Wind & Solar Expand 50-100 Times?

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In the most recent “Conference of the Parties,” otherwise known as the United Nations extravaganza that convenes every few years for world leaders to discuss the climate crisis, several goals were publicly proclaimed. Notable were the goals to triple production of renewable energy by 2030 and triple production of nuclear energy by 2050. Against the backdrop of current global energy production by fuel type, and as quantified in Part One, against a goal of increasing total energy production from 600 exajoules in 2022 to at least 1,000 exajoules by 2050, where does COP 28’s goals put the world’s energy economy? How much will production of renewable energy have to increase?

To answer this question, it is necessary to recognize and account for the fact that most renewable energy takes the form of electricity, generated through wind, solar, or geothermal sources. And when measuring how much the base of renewables installed so far will contribute to the target of 1,000 exajoules of energy production per year in order to realize—best-case scenario—800 exajoules of energy services, the data reported in the Statistical Review of Global Energy is profoundly misleading.

Without understanding how current renewables data as reported in summary charts can mislead an analyst into overstating its current contribution to global energy, it is impossible to accurately assess the true magnitude of the expansion in renewables needed to achieve a goal of 1,000 exajoules of global energy production per year. How the summary charts mislead is buried in the Appendix.

As the authors disclose (ref. page 56, “Methodology”) in the Appendix: “in the Statistical Review of World Energy, the primary energy of non-fossil based electricity (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass in power and other renewables sources) has been calculated on an ‘input-equivalent’ basis – i.e. based on the equivalent amount of fossil fuel input required to generate that amount of electricity in a standard thermal power plant.”

It is difficult to overstate how important it is to not overlook this seemingly innocuous footnote.

In plain English, what they are saying is when they report (ref. page 9 “Primary Energy: Consumption by fuel”) the share of global energy contributed by all non-thermal sources—hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar—they gross up the lower, actual production number and report on the chart an imputed and much larger amount, calculated as if these four sources of energy were operating at the efficiency of thermal power inputs, i.e., at 40 percent efficiency.

Why? We may presume that the energy analysts preparing these charts gross up the contribution of non-thermal energy (Lawrence Livermore also does this, by the way, on their energy flowchart) in order to demonstrate how much fossil fuel production is being offset by using non-thermal sources. That seems innocent enough. But it’s misleading.

If we’re setting a goal of 1,000 exajoules of ultimate world energy production and assuming 80 percent of that 1,000 exajoules of energy input shall be realized as end-user energy services, then we have to examine how much usable energy wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear are actually being generated today. That means we need to know how much electricity they actually generate and send into the grid. An imputed, grossed-up number is not helpful.

Getting to 1,000 Exajoules per Year without Coal, Oil, and Gas

Fortunately, the actual amount of power currently generated by hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar can be found in the inner chapters of the Statistical Review. But it is important to recognize that if energy production shifts from thermal sources to electricity, it will still take at least 1,000 exajoules of power generation to produce 800 exajoules of energy services.

It must be again emphasized that it is an extraordinary assumption to project an 80 percent retention of energy from input into the grid to actual end use. For example, we might assume that from the generating plant, 5 percent was lost in transmission, another 5 percent lost from charging and subsequently discharging the electricity to and from utility-scale storage batteries, another 5 percent in the charge/discharge cycle through an onboard battery in an EV, and another 5 percent converting that electricity into traction from the electric motor. Those are extraordinarily optimistic numbers, using a best-case example. Is a heat pump that efficient, or an air conditioner, or a cooktop, or any number of appliances, farm machinery, industrial equipment, and other vital infrastructure? Definitely not yet, and quite possibly never.

The point here is 1,000 exajoules represents the absolute minimum to which global energy production must grow in the next 25 years if every person on earth is to have access to enough energy to enable prosperity and security. How do we get there? Let’s take the experts at their word and assume that use of coal, oil, and gas will be completely eliminated by 2050.

On the chart below, the assumptions governing the future mix of fuels worldwide adhere to the resolutions just made at the recent Conference of the Parties. That is, nuclear energy will be tripled, and use of oil, natural gas, and coal will be eliminated. To take some of the pressure off of the required expansion of solar and wind energy, for this analysis, the sacrilegious assumption is made to double hydroelectric capacity, double geothermal production, and double biofuel production. It won’t matter much. Here goes:

There’s a lot to chew on in this data, but it’s worth the effort. Because the facts they present are immutable and carry with them significant implications for global energy policy. The first column of data shows how much fuel was burned or generated worldwide in 2022—the raw fuel inputs, which total 604 exajoules.

The second column of data shows the number of energy services that reached end-users in 2022 in the form of heating, cooling, traction, light, communications, etc. It is clear that for thermal sources of energy, the lower numbers reflect the currently estimated degree of conversion efficiency worldwide, about 40 percent. But for non-thermal sources of energy (appended to the right with “gen,” signifying generated energy), these numbers are based on terawatt-hour reports featured in individual sections of the Statistical Review dedicated to those sources of energy. Converted from terawatt-hours to exajoules, these are the actual amounts of electricity that went into transmission lines around the world to be consumed by end users.

The third column of data calculates a hypothetical 2050 global fuel mix based on the agreed COP 28 targets. As seen in column 4 “multiple,” nuclear energy is tripled in accordance with COP 28. Also, in accordance with COP 28, use of coal, oil, and gas is eliminated. Not agreed to at COP 28, but to help reach the 1,000 exajoule target, production of geothermal and biofuel energy are both doubled. That leaves the remainder of the needed power to be provided (in this example) equally by wind and solar. It is reasonable to assume, based on everything they’re saying in Dubai and Davos, that this is the model. This is the logical realization of what they’re calling for.

These calculations yield an overwhelming reality check. Yet what assumption is incorrect? The target of 1,000 exajoules is almost certainly too low. Nuclear power is tripled, and hydropower and biofuel are both doubled. None of that is easy; in the case of biofuel, it could be an environmental catastrophe. But even if those other non-thermal sources of energy were to increase two to three times, without coal, oil, and gas, a stupefying expansion of wind and solar would be required.  “Tripling” these renewables doesn’t even get us into the ballpark.

To deliver 1,000 exajoules of power to the world by 2050, for every wind turbine we have today, expect to see more than 60 of them. For every field of photovoltaics we have today, expect to see nearly 100 more of them. Is this feasible? Because from Dubai to Davos, this is what they’re claiming we’re going to do.

Confronted with these facts, even the most enthusiastic proponents of wind and solar energy may hesitate when considering the magnitude of the task. Eliminating production of fossil fuel entirely by 2050 ought to be seen, for all practical purposes, as impossible. The uptick in mining, the land consumed, the expansion of transmission lines, the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity storage assets to balance these intermittent sources, the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail, and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20-30 years as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all of this suggests procuring 90+ percent of global energy from wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand.

If coal, oil, and gas are phased out and it is unrealistic to expect nearly 1,000 exajoules of power to be delivered by wind and solar-generated electricity, what’s left? Part three of this series will examine the potential of the remaining energy alternatives—nuclear, hydroelectric, biofuel, geothermal—along with possible innovations that someday may change the rules.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.