Carbon Fundamentalists and War With China

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Throughout America and Europe, there are now fanatical millions who believe CO2 emissions are an existential crisis of planetary proportions. This terrifies them. What is frightening to the rest of us is how easily they are manipulated.

Witness the ease with which opportunists direct the passions of this mob. Examples are endless and span the political spectrum, from corporate and financial special interests reaping obscene profits via mandated “green” products and “carbon emissions trading markets,” to stone cold communists riding through the gates of Western Democracies inside the Trojan Horse of environmentalism.

Could climate fanatics be motivated to support World War Three in the name of saving the planet? Why not? Wouldn’t you do whatever it takes to stop the people who are causing the end of the world? These climate crusaders already consider people who question the “climate emergency” to be “deniers,” and tens of thousands of them are already militants, willing to move beyond rhetoric. Meanwhile, filthy rich establishment grandees (example: Al Gore) nod and wink, and cash in on the madness.

The origins of “carbon fundamentalism” can be traced back to the end of the Cold War. In 1995, writing for International Affairs, Deepak Lai may have been the first to coin the term “Eco-fundamentalism.” Lai characterizes this “secular religious movement” as attempting to “impose constraints upon non-Western countries’ economic development in the name of environmental protection,” and claims this could eventually lead to a bloody conflict between the West and the rest of the world’s nations.

In 2006, The Globalist published a very brief critique entitled “The New Religion of Eco-Fundamentalism,” identifying three dangers of passionate environmentalism: First, the rhetoric had become extreme – even back then! Second, the movement is “hostile to capitalism and the market economy.” Third, and most profound, this is “the worst time to abandon our own traditions of reason and tolerance, and to embrace instead the irrationality and intolerance of eco-fundamentalism, where reasoned questioning of its mantras is regarded as a form of blasphemy.”

It wasn’t until 2008 that “carbon fundamentalism” was specifically called out as a dangerous new form of extremism. Appearing in Greenbiz and entitled “The Dangerous Rise of Carbon Fundamentalism,” the author expressed reservations about the reframing of climate change debate, wherein “academics who disagree about interpretation of data are [now] compared to Hitler or to Holocaust deniers.” As he put it, “one does not debate Hitler.”

Nor, moving to the present, can anyone who questions “climate change” be allowed public debate. For example, in September 2018, the BBC announced their intention to censor any reports by climate skeptics. Similarly, search Google under the term “climate skeptics.” Instead of finding “climate skeptics,” all you’ll find are websites “debunking” climate skepticism. These conscious attempts to stifle debate are terrible mistakes. More than ever, now should be the time for people to look for hidden agendas and ignored evidence on both sides of this debate over climate change; the scope, the causes, and the proposed policies we support as a result.

Carbon Fundamentalists and Chinese Expansion

By now the tactics of the carbon fundamentalists and the eclectic gang of political and corporate puppeteers who manipulate them are well established. Massive indoctrination in school, persistent attempts at fomenting panic in the media, protests and “direct action” around the world. We could be one big weather event away from seeing violent physical attacks on outspoken “deniers.” But what about the biggest offender of all, the entire nation of China?

China’s total CO2 emissions overtook the U.S. in 2007. By 2018, China’s total CO2 emissions became greater than the U.S. and Europe’s combined. The American press has taken notice. In between their alarmist coverage of hurricanes and tornadoes and their obsession with the Trump administration’s inadequate response to the climate crisis, they cover China. Sometimes the coverage is only obliquely holding the Chinese responsible, but other reports are becoming more critical.

In August 2019, Reuters circulated an article entitled “China CO2 emission targets at risk from U.S. trade war,” with the implication being that China is trying to cut their emissions, but we’re making that difficult because we’re finally challenging their corrupt trade practices. In February 2020, Bloomberg Green published an article entitled “China’s Virus Clampdown Is Cutting Emissions, But Not for Long,” focusing primarily on the virus, but making ominous reference to China’s rising CO2 emissions.

And then there’s the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s effort to build infrastructure around the globe, while simultaneously sinking financial and military hooks into the nations that participate. Notwithstanding the fact that America’s half-trillion dollar per year trade deficit with China is paying for this, there has been a flurry of articles bemoaning the impact all this infrastructure may have on the climate. From the Yale Press, February 2020, “The potential climate consequences of China’s Belt and Roads Initiative.” From Eco-Business, September 2019, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative could lead to 3°C global warming, report warns.” From Brookings, April 2019, “The critical frontier: Reducing emissions from China’s Belt and Road.”

As tensions with China rise, these articles will make their way from academic journals and green trade publications into the New York Times and ABC Nightly “News.” And when that happens, will it really be about the climate? Or will it merely be the next turn of the ratchet, as two civilizations prepare to collide?

You can believe, as many informed skeptics do, that more atmospheric CO2 is actually a net benefit to both planetary ecosystems and human civilization. But even so, this doesn’t excuse China’s shameful failure to regulate all the rest of the filth pouring out of their smokestacks and polluting the world around them – CO2 may be good, it may be bad, but atmospheric SO2, NO2, CO and O3 are all bad.

A geopolitical reckoning with China is inevitable. China’s regime isn’t smiley face fascism, or soft fascism. Hiding behind deception and a blizzard of money to buy positive press, China today has a full blown fascist regime of the German Nazi variety; racist, nationalist, militaristic, expansionist.

The litany of repressive evil and high-tech enslavement practiced by the Chinese regime is well documented. None of the nations surrounding China welcome its growing influence. The people who support China, or apologize for China – from universities in America to political forums in the Philippines  – are almost invariably getting paid by China.

There is a great irony at work here. On one hand, America’s embrace of carbon fundamentalism undermines everything that makes America great – economic freedom, economic growth, land development, energy development, expansion and upgrades of critical infrastructure, and even freedom of speech and tolerance for diverse opinions. This benefits China, since none of these concerns slow them down. But on the other hand, it might eventually be carbon fundamentalism that drives Americans to support a blockade of China, rationing its access to fossil fuel. Needless to say, this would not benefit China.

How fascinating that carbon fundamentalism might actually be the latest expression of Western imperialism, relentlessly thwarting the aspirations of non-Western nations, allegedly to save the planet. But when it comes to relations with China, carbon fundamentalism merely adds additional moral vigor – misplaced or not – to the case for Western Imperialism to counter Eastern Imperialism. With China, the options are containment, capitulation, or war.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Rescuing the GOP’s “Climate Policy” from the Theater of the Absurd

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For the fanatics on the far Left, and perhaps even for those deranged millions in the middle of the Democratic pack, there is nothing a Republican can say about “climate” that will impress them. Along with racism, xenophobia, and all the other assorted isms and phobias that allegedly afflict Republicans, acting like they care about the health of the planet has no credibility.

The Republicans, led by Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif), are trying anyway. As reported in The Hill and elsewhere, but without much fanfare, the GOP has released their own “climate plan” that is “meant to show voters the party cares about climate change.”

Predictable criticism came from the Left. As Vox reported “New conservative climate plans are neither conservative nor climate plans; they are mainly designed to protect fossil fuels.” But it also drew withering criticism from the Right. As reported in The Hill, “the conservative Club for Growth has pegged it as ‘stifling liberal environmental taxes, regulations, and subsidies’ while threatening to withhold support from any lawmaker who backs it.”

More in-depth analysis of what the Republicans are up to came from articles in Axios and Politico, and emphasized the party is trying to come up with a way to be recognized as concerned about the environment without going off the deep end. Of the four bills discussed, three were focused on carbon capture technology and infrastructure, mostly funded via tax credits, and one was designed to back up President Trump’s stated goal of supporting the “Trillion Trees” initiative.

The message the Republicans discussed trying to emphasize was to support a “clean environment” instead of focusing so much on “climate change.” It’s about time.

Returning to the Core Values of Environmentalism

There’s a lot to be praised about the GOP seizing some of the initiative with respect to environmental issues, but there is also a lot that can go wrong. For nearly twenty years, and with increasing intensity, the entire focus of the environmental movement has been on “climate change.” For anyone with a shred of scientific skepticism, or journalistic skepticism, or a love of freedom, or a basic sense of proportion, or common sense, or just a good bullshit detector, this has cost the environmentalist movement priceless credibility.

Does anyone who hasn’t already drank the Cool-Aid take seriously a movement that has to prop up a pampered teenage truant as oracle to the world’s elites, or organizes “die off” performative protests on the streets of European capitals, or, with straight faces, claims the world is going to come to an end in 12 years? Does anyone with a sense of history miss the connection between the “climate emergency,” complete with “dangerous,” “denier” scapegoats, propelled by literally billions of dollars being spent on corporate and government propaganda efforts, and not be reminded of how other nations and cultures have been down this authoritarian road before?

Environmentalism’s core values are sacred, and they have been profaned by corporations and governments channeling that calling into a climate crusade, with traditional environmentalists turned into willing accomplices. The professions of journalism and science have been corrupted, as has the nonprofit sector, and collectivists and capitalists alike are drinking at the trough. Meanwhile, the trajectory of progress on actual environmental challenges, from overpopulation to overfishing the oceans to wildlife poaching and wilderness preservation, have all been diminished.

This is why the trillion trees initiative is meaningful. It returns to the root benefits of environmentalism, and does so in a way that also gives a nod to the climate change zealots. The benefits of afforestation are undeniable, regardless of whether or not anyone believes in the dangers of anthropogenic CO2. Afforestation has been proven to restore water tables, reviving springs and rivers. It has been proven to bring back regular rainfall to regions that were becoming arid. Forests harbor wildlife and timber provides a cash crop. If it happens to sequester CO2, so much the better.

Find Projects and Policies That Are Good Anyway

This principle, to do environmentally sound projects that make sense anyway, regardless of the “carbon accounting,” is a pathway to credibility for the GOP, and even might point the way towards more of a national consensus on environmental policy. This is why it is such a good idea for the GOP to propose new research into developing biodegradable, nontoxic new types of plastic, and to research how to clean up the millions of tons of plastic that even now continues to pour out of Asian and African rivers into the world’s oceans.

Conversely, the GOP proposal to fund pilot plants designed to sequester CO2 gas in underground caverns is only slightly less ridiculous than California’s near miss regulation whereby they were going to require dairy cows to wear plastic bags attached to their anuses in order to capture the methane. California’s preposterous scheme, hatched by fanatics and glommed onto by “researchers” looking for a quick buck, at least had the virtue of only wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. Carbon sequestration schemes are on track to waste billions, to do, what? Pressurize every cave in America and remove how much many PPM of CO2 from the earth’s atmosphere? At what cost per PPM?

This is theater of the absurd. Maybe, maybe, sponsor research aimed at discovering how to convert CO2 directly into a fuel that maintains a solid or liquid form at room temperature. After all, trees do it. Otherwise, save the caves, and keep the bags off the dairy cows. It is, like so much “climate policy,” cronyism pretending to be part of a sacred mission. Some cronyism is inevitable. But at least get something out of cronyism that benefits society.

The GOP needs to aggressively promote climate change related proposals that make sense even if anthropogenic CO2 induced climate change really is the biggest hoax in human history. Because at the end of it all, we can then simply view “climate policy” as a means of capital formation to build things we needed anyway: seawalls, levees, reservoirs, desalination plants, nuclear power and other forms of clean energy; reforestation, sustainable fisheries, biodegradable plastic.

We can view these “good to do anyway” proposals as a way to fund scrubbers that will take the last bits of particulate matter out of the fossil fuel based energy economy, recognizing that even if CO2 isn’t harmful to humans, it is unhealthy to breathe carbon monoxide, lead, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, especially in cities across Asia and Africa that have barely begun to get that under control and are looking for solutions.

This is the clean technology revolution that makes sense. The GOP needs to boldly proclaim support for ways to help humanity complete the journey to a pollution free civilization, at the same time as they refuse to dismantle the capitalist system that gave us the wealth to pursue clean innovations; at the same time as they demand cost/benefit analysis on all “climate change” schemes; at the same time as they patiently remind anyone who will listen that fossil fuel use cannot possibly be precipitously eliminated; at the same time as they demand an end to the silencing and demonizing of rational contrarians who – imagine this – do not believe the world is about to come to an end.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Fossil Fuel Reality

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Over the weekend, the traditional Harvard versus Yale football game was interrupted during halftime by about 150 student activists, spontaneously joined by hundreds of fans, to protest climate change. Occupying the area around the 500-yard line, the protesters chanted “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Fossil fuel has got to go!” The game resumed after about 30 students were arrested and the rest left.

It would be reasonable to suppose that people who manage to gain admission to Harvard and Yale are among the most gifted students in America. But when it comes to swiftly eliminating the usage of fossil fuel, have they done their homework?

Around the world, billions of people are now convinced that catastrophic climate change is inevitable if humanity continues to rely on fossil fuel. Most developed Western nations, along with the United Nations and other supranational organizations, are promoting aggressive policies to replace fossil fuel with renewable energy. While a scientific debate remains, especially with respect to the severity of the predicted climate change, it is the economic challenges relating to rapid elimination of fossil fuel that require urgent examination.

The reason for this is simple: At this time, there is no feasible economic scenario whereby worldwide fossil fuel use does not increase steadily for the next several decades. To dispute this assertion, several indisputable facts would have to be ignored. For starters, shown below is a chart illustrating just how large a percentage of global energy remained dependent on fossil fuel over the past ten years. Using data provided by the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, which is the most authoritative source available, on this chart, the total energy consumed in all of its forms – oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, and renewables – are expressed as million metric tons of crude oil (MMTO).

By converting quantities of energy from various sources into a single normalized unit – the petroleum industry uses units of crude oil, economists use BTUs, scientists use joules – it is easy to see how much each type of fuel contributed to total global energy consumption over the past decade. As shown, renewables – solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass/biofuel – only comprised 4 percent of total energy consumed in 2018.

There has been strong growth in renewable energy. But absolute values also matter. Ten years ago, in 2009, renewables only contributed 1.2 percent of global energy consumed. Between 2009 and 2018, total worldwide energy consumed rose by 22 percent, or 2,502 MMTOs. Annual consumption of renewables, on the other hand, only rose by 424 MMTOs. Renewable energy only represented 17 percent of the increase in energy consumption between 2009 and 2018.

To get a better idea of exactly what type of renewables were part of the global energy mix in 2018, the next chart provides details. As can be seen, the top producer was wind at 1.7 percent, followed by solar electricity at 0.8 percent, biofuel at 0.7 percent, and all other, mostly geothermal, at 0.8 percent.

But there are serious problems with biofuel. According to the World Bioenergy Association, biofuel crops are already consuming an astonishing 550,000 square miles of land. This already represents 5 percent of all arable land area on earth – to produce less than one percent of global energy.

Solar and wind energy, while also being huge consumers of land for the amount of energy they produce, have an additional problem; there is still no cost effective way to store the energy they produce. Not only are solar and wind energy dependent on daily fluctuations of wind and sunlight, but there are seasonal fluctuations that create even greater challenges.

To account for this, either solar and wind installations must be oversized sufficiently to generate adequate daily power during the times of the year when the hours of daylight are the shortest and wind is the least reliable, or batteries and other electricity storage solutions must be deployed. These electricity storage farms would have to be capable of storing enough energy to supply large cities for literally months at a time.

According to former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who served during the Obama Administration, California’s 2050 “decarbonizing” targets “can be met only with breakthroughs in a portfolio of affordable technologies.” Meanwhile, in California and around the world, hundreds of billions are being invested each year on technologies, such as gargantuan land based and offshore wind farms, that are extremely disruptive to ecosystems. These investments only yield adequate returns when the costs to provide grid connections and upgrades, as well as backup capacity including quick start natural gas power plants are socialized onto taxpayers and ratepayers.

Despite the incredible cost, and the likelyhood that many solutions being implemented today will be obsolete within a few decades, if not a few years, political support for decarbonization remains strong. But even if tens of trillions were spent, can it be done? Here is where the algebra of energy consumption presents challenges to the decarbonizers that may be unsolvable.

The next chart shows the average amount of energy an American consumed in 2018, compared to their counterparts in China and India. A few things immediately jump out. First, it is clear that in the past ten years, Americans did not lower their per capita energy consumption, despite driving more fuel efficient cars, deployment of mass transit options and urban densification, regardless of more efficient laptop and cell phone batteries, “smart” utility meters, “connected” appliances, etc. Can Americans significantly reduce their per capita energy consumption? The most recent data does not yet show that they can.

Turning to China and India, however, highlights just how far behind the rest of the world is in terms of average energy consumption. As shown, the average person in China consumed 539 units of energy (expressed as gallons of crude oil equivalents) in 2009, and increased that to 723 units of energy by 2018. They did this at the same time as their population increased by 62 million. India logged similar progress, going from a per capita consumption of 130 units in 2009 to 184 units in 2018, at the same time as their population grew by 135 million.Based on these facts, the global energy algebra comes down to this: In the future, how much per capita energy is it reasonable for people to expect, in order for them to fulfill their aspirations to become educated, engage in productive work, afford entertaining diversions in their spare time, and raise their families in a nation where the infrastructure – all of it, from hospitals and universities, to roads and rail, airports and seaports, to a resilient water and power grid – is robust enough to support their towns and cities?

To answer this, imagine that everyone on earth used only half as much energy as Americans use. And suppose, quite optimistically, that global population stabilizes at 8 billion. To accomplish this would require worldwide consumption of energy to grow from 13,865 MMTOs in 2019 to a staggering 34,621 MMTOs. That is, for everyone on earth, including Americans, to consume half as much energy as American’s currently consume, global energy production would have to increase to 2.5 times its current output. And would that be enough? Americans, with all the emphasis and investment in energy conservation over the past ten years, have not reduced their per capita energy consumption. Shall global energy production then quintuple, so everyone on earth can use as much energy as Americans do?

Facing this enormous challenge, investments in renewables might focus on research into leapfrog technologies. The return on that investment may enable decarbonized sources of energy to arrive sooner than anyone expects, not because they were mandated, but because they truly cost less than fossil fuel. Instead, R&D focuses too much on preposterous schemes such as “sequestering” CO2 in underground caverns, or mechanically removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Perhaps not algebraic, but arguably axiomatic, is the following equation: Affordable energy equals prosperity equals literacy equals female emancipation equals voluntary family size reduction equals ZPG sooner rather than later. In the continent of Africa, where the population is currently projected to rise from 1.3 billion today to 2.5 billion within the next thirty years, either there will be cheap and affordable energy, or there will be a Malthusian event on that continent that will rival any similar such paroxysm in human history.

Looking forward, this is the moral case for fossil fuel. The fact that there is no choice. Humanity needs to develop every single type of energy it possibly can as quickly as it possibly can, because that is how everyone on earth will readily have the opportunity to enjoy first world lifestyles. Only then can people make first world choices to limit the size of their families and only then can they participate enthusiastically and effectively in efforts to preserve the environment around them. Only then will the allure of comfort and security outweigh the desperate imperatives of war. And soon enough, commercially competitive renewable energy – perhaps in forms we haven’t yet imagined – will supplant fossil fuel.

People who demand rapid elimination of fossil fuel need to either face the algebraic impossibility of doing that, or be honest and disclose their true motives.

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Electricity and Ideology – Competing Priorities in California

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“If I wanted the power shut off for days by bloated, corrupt utilities enabled by bloated, corrupt one-party politicians,” quipped Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney and prominent conservative political activist, “I would have stayed in India.”

Dhillon’s observation pretty much sums up the frustration felt by millions of Californians last week. In Northern California, nearly 800,000 homes and businesses went without power. Some of them had power shut off for five days. In Southern California, even as the Saddleridge fire raged through neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, another 25,000 homes had their power shut off.

But while it’s tempting to accept Dhillon’s statement at face value, the causes of California’s wildfire challenges are many and complex.

For example, while any public utility as massive as Pacific Gas and Electric is bound to have pockets of bloat and corruption within, that isn’t the reason Californians experienced devastating wildfires in the summer of 2018. And while California’s one-party politicians have arguably enabled PG&E and other utilities by relieving them of a portion of their liability for wildfires, these same politicians have saddled PG&E with renewables mandates that diverted billions of dollars which could have been spent on wildfire mitigation.

Bureaucrats and politicians have used a shopworn phrase, “the new normal,” to describe California’s supposed future of endless and devastating wildfires. Last week we heard it again, this time in reference to massive power outages deliberately imposed to prevent these wildfires. But neither of these have to become normal. While none of the causes of devastating wildfires can be mitigated overnight, there are many steps that can reduce their frequency and intensity within a few years.

Why Were California’s Wildfires So Devastating?

During the 2018 wildfires, Californians repeatedly were told that “climate change” was the primary cause, and that as a consequence, these fires would become a fact of life from then on. It’s true that fire danger is elevated during droughts and heatwaves—and therefore “climate change” can be connected to more severe wildfires. But there are other, bigger factors. The most significant of these is decades of aggressive fire suppression.

In the natural forest and chaparral that defines most of California’s fire-prone regions, natural fires sparked by lightning had been a part of the ecosystem for millennia. In mature forests, these fires periodically would sweep through to burn out the smaller trees and vegetation. This not only would reduce tinder that otherwise would accumulate, but the removal of these smaller trees and shrubs that competed with mature trees for water and nutrients would ensure the health of the larger trees. When ecologists claim California’s trees are stressed, they’re right, but when California’s politicians echo these concerns, they opportunistically focus on climate change, instead of telling the truth about the role that aggressive fire suppression has played in undermining the health of these trees.

Opinions vary regarding how much of the conflagrations of 2018 could have been avoided, but nobody disputes that more could have been done. Everyone agrees, for example, that aggressive fire suppression has been a mistake. Most everyone agrees that good prevention measures include forest thinning (especially around power lines), selective logging, controlled burns, and power line upgrades. And everyone agrees that residents in fire-prone areas need to create defensible space and fire-harden their homes.

Opinions also vary as to whether or not environmentalists stood in the way of these prevention measures. In a blistering critique published in the aftermath of the fires of 2018, investigative journalist Katy Grimes cataloged the negligence resulting from environmentalist overreach.

“For decades,” Grimes wrote, “traditional forest management was scientific and successful—that is until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the overhaul of sound federal forest management through abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the ‘re-wilding, no-use movement.’”

U.S. Representative Tom McClintock, whose Northern California district includes the Yosemite Valley and the Tahoe National Forest, told Grimes that the U.S. Forest Service 40 years ago departed from “well-established and time-tested forest management practices.”

“We replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect,” McClintock explained. “Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to ‘save the environment.’ The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts, and our federal agencies ever since.”

Grimes went on to outline the specific missteps by federal authorities that led to America’s forests turning into tinderboxes, starting in the Clinton Administration, made worse by activist judges who thwarted Bush Administration reforms, and accelerating during the complicit Obama presidency.

California’s 2018 wildfires were unusually severe, but they were not historic firsts. And while the four-year drought that ended in 2016 left a legacy of dead trees and brush, it was forest mismanagement that left those forests overly vulnerable to droughts in the first place.

Reducing the Destructive Impact of Wildfires Won’t Be Easy

When the destruction caused by fires is measured, explanations typically include the reality of more people living in forested areas. Clearly, the human and financial harm from a wildfire is greater when people are living in its path. But another, less-heralded consequence of more people living in the so-called “wildland-urban interface” is that compared to trees in the forest, wind driven wildfires actually combust and spread faster when encountering homes, and the infrastructure associated with homes.

This is why, for example, in the devastating Paradise fire, there were photographs of the aftermath showing homes burned down to their foundations, while adjacent trees remained standing relatively intact. None of the potential solutions to this reality are easy. Hardening homes to resist ignition works best when wind-driven embers hitting roofs and eaves are the cause of the spread. But when a so-called fire tornado whips into homes at temperatures up to 2,000 degrees and at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, it is almost impossible to make a home fire-resistant.

Creating defensible space, along with hardening homes, is an effective defense against wildfires when they don’t become cataclysmic super fires such as were seen in the summer of 2018. Even then, natural fires have to be allowed to burn, regularly reducing excess tinder, or teams have to go into the forest and remove all of it. Alternatively, controlled burns regularly have to be set to in the hope that they will remove tinder in a safer and more cost-effective manner.

An encouraging example of how a consensus is slowly forming to revise forest management came a few years ago from a spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund, who advocated for more salvage logging to reduce the intensity of future fires. Arguing that years of fire suppression made it impossible to “let nature heal itself,” the writer proposed the Forest Service authorize “merchantable dead tree removal [which] will contribute revenue that then can be used for recovery efforts including tree planting.”

This approach can work not only with dead trees but with healthy live trees. Expediting permits for property owners and logging companies to remove a percentage of commercially valuable mature trees in exchange for them also removing dead trees and dense undergrowth is a financially viable way to quickly restore forests to the state they were in prior to decades of aggressive fire suppression. If this were done, natural fires no longer would be as likely to become super fires. Salvage logging would also make it easier to manage “controlled burns” since the quantity of undergrowth already would be reduced.

Preventing Fires Sparked by Transmission Lines

Some of the most devastating fires of the past few years were caused by sparks from transmission lines. Directing public funds and a portion of ratepayer revenue to hardening transmission lines is an important priority, but should be subject to cost/benefit analysis. Burying high voltage lines, for example, costs $3 million per mile. With more than 25,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines in California, burying all of them would cost $75 billion.

That’s just scratching the surface. California also has 160,000 miles of overhead distribution lines which, while carrying lower voltages, are still capable of sparking fires. To bury them all? Over a half-trillion dollars.

And burying power lines underground brings its own set of problems. Maintenance of underground power conduits is much more costly. They are susceptible to flooding, damage from rodents, earthquakes, and inadvertent disruption caused by new construction or maintenance of other conduits such as telecommunications fiber or water and gas mains.

Another way to reduce the potential for overhead power lines to spark wildfires is to wrap the wires with insulation, replace wood poles with composite ones, and install covered conductors. Additional steps include installing “fast-acting fuses, advanced lightning arrestors, and other devices that can react more quickly to minimize fire risks.”

Finally, cutting off power when high winds and high temperatures greatly elevate fire risk should remain an option for utilities, but the process needs to be refined. The headline of an article just published by the Los Angeles Times says it all: “PG&E’s blackouts were ‘not surgical by any stretch.’” The story explains the distinction between “networked” distribution systems, where power can be routed over several paths of distribution lines and circuits, and “radial” systems, where lone power lines carry power into service areas.

The advantage of a networked system is that if high winds and hot weather are threatening to spark a fire around one section of the system, that line can be shut down but power can still reach all service areas using other routes, maintaining service everywhere.

While reducing or even eliminating wildfires sparked by transmission lines is a worthy goal, that focus must not distract policymakers from more comprehensive solutions. Even if all risks from power lines were eliminated, wildfires will still be sparked by lightning strikes as well as by other types of human-caused accidents. Forest thinning and controlled burns are necessary to ensure that when fires do start, they are lower-intensity fires. At the same time, homes in the urban-wildland interface need to be hardened against combustion, with defensible space around them, so low-intensity fires are a survivable threat.

Energy Policy and Wildfire Management Are Interlinked

PG&E deserves much criticism, but it is important to recognize that no other utility in California is responsible for providing service to nearly as much territory. It is relatively easy for municipal power utilities to maintain their service areas, since their customer base is in a densely populated area. PG&E, on the other hand, is responsible for providing service to customers spread out over 70,000 square miles. Converting a grid from a radial configuration to a networked configuration over territory that vast is far more difficult.

No discussion of how utilities should cope with wildfire risk is complete without considering the impact of renewables mandates. The expense that utilities incur to extend their distribution lines to far-flung solar and wind farms across the state is money that could be used to upgrade transmission lines, pay for networked distribution systems, and where most necessary, bury transmission lines. And the increased mileage of transmission lines necessitated by connecting to disbursed solar and wind farms not only means more potential fire hazards but because these intermittent power sources have to be balanced continuously, it means more electrical traffic on the grid.

The only potential upside of renewables mandates is the possibility that if cost-effective power storage is developed at scale—i.e., cheap and affordable battery systems with capacities measured in hundreds of megawatt-hours per unit, then grid electricity can be distributed and stored. This would permit uninterrupted power whenever transmission lines delivering power into an area is cut off, since the power stored in these batteries would pick up the slack.

In general, however, renewables mandates in California redirect utility resources away from safety, and into technologies that may soon be obsolete. Do we really want to construct a 2.3 gigawatt-hour electricity storage facility at Moss Landing, on California’s Central Coast, using lithium-ion technology, when solid-state batteries may be a reality within the next 10 years? Should we really carpet the Mojave Desert with photovoltaic panels, when safe and cost-effective fission reactors are being constructed all over the world, and commercially viable fusion power could be here within the next 20 to 30 years?

It would be a tremendous setback if the consequence of devastating wildfires in recent years would be prohibitions on new housing in the urban-wildland interface. Using “climate change” as their rallying cry, that is the solution according to some policymakers and activists. But denying to all but the wealthiest Californians a chance to live in rural areas is a cruel and regressive solution. It is particularly unwarranted if one recognizes that “climate change” has little to do with elevated fire risks and more intense fires.

Instead, Californians need to pursue an interlinked set of solutions to minimize risk. Property owners need to harden their structures against fires and create defensible space. Forest management practices need to embrace selective logging conditional on the removal of undergrowth. Utilities need to invest in transmission line upgrades and networked systems. And California’s determination to pour hundreds of billions into implementing renewables needs to be examined not only against the obvious pitfall of likely obsolescence but against the costs and benefits of that course versus building a safe and reliable power grid that can meet the needs and expectations of residents in the 21st century.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Opportunity Cost of Shutting Down Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

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For nearly 35 years, Diablo Canyon Power Plant has pumped just over 2.0 gigawatts of electricity onto California’s power grid. Unlike hydroelectric power, which has good years and bad depending on rainfall, or solar and wind power which depends on sunshine and wind, Diablo Canyon’s nuclear reactors generate this electricity 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.

But Diablo Canyon’s days are numbered. In January 2018 California’s Public Utility Commission voted to shut it down. Barring legislation to countermand this decision, by 2025 Diablo Canyon will cease operations, making California a nuclear free state. Is this a good idea?

Anti-nuclear environmental groups, as reported at the time in the Los Angeles Times, “hailed the decision, which was expected after 17 months of filings and debate, but also were concerned about what type of energy sources would be used to replace Diablo’s electricity.”

Good question. Especially since environmental groups are the groups one might expect to be most concerned about “greenhouse gas,” and the only way wind and solar power can operate is by having natural gas power plants to spin into action every time the wind falters or the sun goes down.

The alternative to natural gas backup is to overbuild wind and solar farms and store the excess energy with batteries. An interesting comparison would be to see what battery storage capacity would be required to replace the power Diablo generates during off peak hours of 12 hours per day.

The following chart projects a $12 billion price tag, based on a cost of $500 million per gigawatt-hour of battery farm storage. This cost estimate relies on data from several parallel projects at the 2.0 gigawatt-hour Moss Landing energy storage facility currently under development on the Central California coast. 

While battery storage costs are declining rapidly, with some experts projecting prices at one-fifth current levels within 10-20 years, others are not so sanguine. And battery costs aren’t the only consideration. Balance of plant costs – siting, distribution infrastructure – and California’s obstructionist construction climate will also pile on costs.

How Many EVs Could Diablo Canyon Recharge Every Night?

If Diablo isn’t shut down, of course, it isn’t necessary to invest $12 billion (or more) in battery storage to scoop up sun and wind dependent intermittent renewable energy and save it for nighttime charging. But either way, assuming California’s policymakers achieve their goal of filling our roads with battery powered vehicles, how many miles could they travel based on tapping into 12 hours of Diablo Canyon’s 2.0 gigawatt output?

As the next chart shows, the metric we’re going to be getting used to when evaluating mileage efficiency from EVs is not “miles-per-gallon-equivalent,” but the far more descriptive kilowatt-hours per 100 miles. And based on US EPA data, most EVs on the road today require around 25 kilowatt-hours to travel 100 miles. That equates to 4 million miles per gigawatt-hour. Taking into account 12 hours of 2.0 gigawatt output from Diablo Canyon, that’s enough to power a fleet of EVs driving 96 million miles per day. How does that compare to the total mileage driven each day by Californians?

According to US Federal Highway Administration data, the Californians log per capita vehicle mileage of 9,053 miles per year. That means California’s nearly 40 million residents are driving nearly one billion miles per day. Nonetheless, Diablo Canyon alone could power enough EVs to put quite a dent into that total. Nearly 10 percent of all driver mileage could be powered by EVs charged overnight by electricity produced by Diablo Canyon.

To make the opportunity cost of shutting down Diablo Canyon even more stark, one might ask what the cost would be to use solar panels and batteries to replace Diablo Canyon’s off-peak nocturnal output? The next chart shows those estimates, based on a rock bottom price of $1.00 per watt of solar panels. That is a best-case number pretty much forever, since land acquisition, engineering, labor, racking, connectors, utility interties, distribution infrastructure – along with the price of the actual panels – make this a mature industry.

As an aside, the less said about wind power, the better. Wind power is an abomination, slaughtering birds, bats, and insects at a rate which would destroy the planet in a few years if it were ever developed to any meaningful scale, not to mention the visual blight, the hideous quantities of materials, or the physical and psychological illness the inescapable low frequency thrum triggers in humans and animals.

As shown above, it would cost about $18 billion to develop renewable assets using solar and battery technology to replace the overnight EV recharging capacity of Diablo Canyon. If California’s vehicles were electrified, this capacity is sufficient to power 10 percent of California’s automobile mileage. And this is exactly half the story – Diablo Canyon operates 24 hours per day, not just at night to charge EV batteries.

It is interesting – or depressing, depending on one’s ability to confront these scandalous miscarriages of policy with equanimity – to wonder why environmentalists, who think we have barely a decade to “decarbonize” before the planet is lost, are so intent on shutting down Diablo Canyon.

The only sane way to sell renewable energy is to make it cheaper than fossil fuel and nuclear power. But the flawed policies and phony accounting that are used to present renewables as competitive need to be replaced by honest analysis.

It should be obvious that if renewable energy was truly less expensive, every nation in the world would be turning to renewables instead of building, as fast as they possibly can, more coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants.

The single most significant variable affecting the economic viability of intermittent renewable energy is storage costs. Maybe batteries will eventually come down in price to, say $50 per kilowatt-hour, i.e., $50 million per gigawatt-hour. And if and when that happens, maybe it will make economic sense to convert to 100 percent renewables. And maybe then, instead of having to sow fear and panic in the media, and weaponize brainwashed elementary school children for photo ops with politicians pushing “green” energy, states and nations will adopt renewables because they really are the cheaper alternative.

If we are entering the electric age, where not only lights, PCs, refrigerators and air conditioners use electricity, but also space heaters, water heaters, cooktops, and vehicles – not to mention cyber currency – then we’re going to need more electricity at a time when “renewables” aren’t ready for prime time. And if the urgent imperative to rush into this decarbonized electric age is to supposedly save the planet, why are we shutting down Diablo Canyon?

In the meantime, Diablo Canyon is a sunk cost. Ratepayers long ago covered the construction bill for Diablo Canyon. But these reactors, instead of continuing to generate 2.0 gigawatts of clean, carbon free electricity for decades to come, are going to be shut down and subject to expensive decommissioning costs. Those who sincerely believe in the need to decarbonize energy need to join with those who support economically sound energy policies, to demand Diablo Canyon stay open.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Why Not Nuclear Power to Mitigate Climate Change?

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AUDIO:  A discussion of nuclear power, especially asking the question: why aren’t climate change activists in favor of nuclear power? – 8 minutes on KNRS FM 105.9 Salt Lake City – Edward Ring on The Rod Arquette Show.

Why Don’t Climate Activists Support Nuclear Power?

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For several days in mid-April, downtown London was paralyzed by thousands of “climate activists” who were protesting the failure of the U.K. government to act swiftly enough to combat climate change. In mid-March, thousands of students across the United States staged school “walkouts” to demand action on climate change.

These protests are ongoing, but there is little underlying logic to them. The primary sources of anthropogenic CO2 are no longer Western nations, which in sum are only responsible for about 30 percent of global emissions. The biggest single culprit, if you want to call it that, is China, responsible for 28 percent of global emissions, nearly twice as much as the U.S., and literally 28 times as much as the U.K. Rapidly industrializing India, responsible for 6 percent of global CO2 emissions, is on track to become the most populous nation on earth. The chances that China and India will sacrifice their national future in order to reduce CO2 emissions is zero. The same holds for every emerging nation, including the demographic heavyweights Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, along with all the rest.

The logic of these protestors also fails when it comes to the science of climate change, although to even suggest this is heresy. So rather than point out that moderate warming might actually be beneficial to the planet, or that extreme weather is actually more highly correlated with a cooling planet, let’s accept all the popular wisdom with respect to “climate science.” So what? According to their own theories, it’s already too late. Climate alarmists have repeatedly said we had just a few years left, or else.

Back in 1989, a “senior U.N. environmental official” said “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Then, in 2006, Al Gore told the Washington Post that “humanity may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.” Fast forward to 2019, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins today’s alarmist chorus, telling us that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

So where’s the logic and reason behind these protests? The biggest emitters of CO2 are not going to stop emitting CO2, and it’s too late anyway. But there’s an even more obvious flaw in the logic of these protestors, and more generally, in the entire agenda of the climate change lobby: They will not support nuclear power.

The Case for Nuclear Power

Emissions free: While it’s disingenuous for those of us who don’t believe anthropogenic CO2 is a mortal threat to humanity to use that argument to promote nuclear power, it’s important to recognize that nuclear power plants don’t emit anything into the atmosphere. Even so-called “deniers,” if they’re intellectually honest, acknowledge that burning fossil fuel still causes genuine air pollution. While carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, lead, and particulates are scrubbed out of most modern power plants in America, the rest of the world lags behind in cleaning up their smokestack emissions. And even in America, where auto tailpipe emissions are cleaner than ever, air pollution can accumulate around busy intersections in large cities and remains a health hazard. Whether to recharge car batteries or to otherwise power the electric grid, nuclear energy is 100 percent emissions free.

Safer than ever: The fear of a nuclear accident animates anti-nuclear activists around the world. But all the nuclear accidents in history – including the big three, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island – have caused at most 200 deaths. Even that number is based on generous speculation since it is impossible to positively identify the cause of illnesses people develop decades after an exposure. Of course, there have been accidents while mining for nuclear fuel, or during construction of nuclear power plants. But as this chart shows, using data from the International Energy Agency, coal mining, drilling for oil and natural gas, and harvesting of “renewable” biomass are all far more harmful to human health.

Absent from the above chart are renewables, but this doesn’t mean renewable energy doesn’t have a cost in human life. Renewable energy relies primarily on photovoltaic panels, wind generators, and batteries, all three of which are incredibly resource intensive. Hundreds if not thousands of miners have already died, working under slave conditions, to extract the cobalt and lithium needed for modern batteries. As renewables increase their share of global energy production, this human catastrophe will increase in scale, and to-date there are minimal reforms, and no viable alternative materials.

Not only does nuclear power have an exemplary safety record when compared to other forms of energy, the next generation nuclear power technologies are safer than ever. These new reactors employ even more resilient cooling systems, they can reprocess their own spent fuel, and they are being designed as modules of various power outputs that require far less maintenance.

Abundant: The world’s present measured resources of uranium are enough to last for about 90 years at current global rates of consumption. According to the World Nuclear Association, “this represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals.” This is an important point. Just as the concept of “peak oil” was popularized in the late 1990s, and debunked about ten years later as new reserves were discovered and new methods of extraction were developed, it is unlikely the global supply of nuclear fuel will precipitously diminish especially as the development of reprocessing technology improves. The history of resource extraction, at least when market forces are allowed to operate, is that innovation and alternative solutions are always sufficient to offset looming scarcity of any particular resource.

Renewables are overrated: There are a lot of aspects to this, from the incredible waste of land, to the devastating toll on wildlife, to the resource intensity, to the monstrous recycling challenge as these massive installations wear out and have to be replaced. But what should be relevant to the climate activists is the intermittency of renewables, which cannot produce energy when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.

In order to compensate for the on again off again nature of renewable energy, fossil fuel has to be employed as backup. This not only guarantees ongoing CO2 emissions, but it has economic consequences. Because natural gas power plants now have to be shut on and off depending on the availability of renewable energy, they cannot efficiently recover their construction costs. This artificially distorts upward the actual cost of fossil fuel energy, making renewable energy look more economical by comparison. Nuclear power plants, which have zero emissions, but cannot be rapidly turned on and off, are in some cases being decommissioned to make room for hybrid renewable/fossil fuel systems. In states where this has happened, CO2 emissions have actually risen.

We need an “all of the above” energy strategy: Global civilization depends on cheap, reliable, abundant energy, and it needs as much of it as it can possibly get. Just in order for average worldwide per capita energy consumption to reach half of what it currently is in the United States, global energy production has to double. This is an immutable fact.

Of course we should continue to develop renewable energy, just as we should continue to research breakthrough energy technologies such as fusion power. But fossil fuel use is not going to go away, its use is going to increase for at least the next 20-30 years until something better comes along. And clean, safe, abundant nuclear power should be part of our global energy portfolio, no matter what anyone believes regarding CO2 and “climate change.”

It is interesting to wonder who is behind the massive demonstrations around the world demanding “climate action.” Whoever they are, perhaps the single biggest challenge to their sincerity is their unwillingness to support nuclear power as part of the solution.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Absurdity of Using the Biosphere to Power the Technosphere

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In reaction to the proposed “Green New Deal,” there is a lot more discussion about the environmental and economic costs and benefits of renewable energy. Much of the attention, however, has focused on solar and wind energy. Meanwhile, the other big source of renewable energy, biofuel, has quietly elided closer scrutiny. This requires correction. With the purported goal of “saving the planet,” governments around the world are mandating increasing percentages of biofuel to be mixed into transportation fuels.

According to the International Energy Agency, transportation biofuel production in 2017 totaled 83 MTOE (million tons of oil equivalents), which represented only 3 percent of total worldwide demand for transportation fuel. Three percent isn’t very much. But we still have to grow the stuff that goes into biofuels. How much land are we already talking about?

When assessing how much land is already committed to biofuel production, theory and reality quickly diverge. Theoretically, it is possible that current levels of transportation biofuel production might “only” consume around 120,000 square miles of land. But two reality checks result in a far greater amount of actual land use: the fact that commonly planted transportation biofuel crops offer vast diversity in yields per acre, and the fact that biofuel, just like petroleum, is not used exclusively for transportation but also for direct heating and generation of electricity. According to the World Bioenergy Association, biofuel crops are already consuming nearly 550,000 square miles of land.

Why do we have biofuel mandates at all? The main justification is they’re “carbon neutral.” The logic goes like this: prior to harvest, growing biofuel crops produce oxygen and consume CO2. Then after harvesting and processing, burning biofuels consume oxygen and produce CO2. This is a seductive equation, especially if you’ve been convinced that anthropogenic CO2 is the ultimate climate boogeyman. But the practical realization of this equation has been an environmental and health catastrophe.

There are two main types of biofuel, bioethanol and biodiesel. The primary sources of bioethanol are corn and sugarcane; the primary source of biodiesel is palm oil. In both cases, the spread of plantations to grow these crops has devastated some of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet. From cane ethanol in Brazil, to palm oil in Indonesia, thousands of square miles of rainforest are lost every year to new plantations.

In 2016, for a few brief weeks, the world paid attention to the problems being caused by biofuel production. That was when forest fires ragedacross Indonesia, sending a toxic haze across thousands of miles, making the air barely breathable for millions of people in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Singapore and Malaysia. The cause of these fires? Land owners burning rainforests to make room for palm oil plantations.

The idea that achieving alleged “carbon neutrality” is a sufficient benefit to offset the replacement of rainforest with monocrop plantations of palm trees and sugar cane is ridiculous. But even if biofuels somehow could be grown using “sustainable” practices, it remains an exercise in environmentalist absurdity. There simply isn’t enough land for conventional biofuels ever to make a meaningful contribution to meeting global demand for transportation fuels.

According to the Biofuels Digest, 66 countries have biofuel blending mandates. While this is hardly an objective source, it’s unlikely their information on mandates in inaccurate. The publication cites the “major blending mandates that will drive global demand” as coming from the European Union, United States, China and Brazil, and claim “each of which has set targets at levels in the 15-27 percent range by 2020-2022.”

Just accomplishing that goal, depending on the scope of these blending mandates, would require global production of biofuel to at least quintuple. Hence the ongoing land grab across the tropics, and throughout the temperate bread baskets, to replace forest and cropland with biofuel plantations. But what if biofuel were to replace all oil?

In 2017, global biofuels production was 83 MTOE (“million tons of oil equivalent”), which represents 1.7 percent of total oil consumption worldwide, which in 2017 was 4,800 MTOE. To begin to estimate how much land it would take for biofuel to replace just the oil used for transportation, which today is around 2,800 MTOE, you have to consider the yield per acre for the primary biofuel crops. For both bioethanol and biodiesel, 500 gallons per acre per year is considered quite good. This means that to replace all petroleum based transportation fuel with biofuel would require plantations consuming at least 4 million square miles.

To put this in perspective, the entire land area of the United States, including Alaska, is only 3.7 million square miles. And this is a best case scenario. While oil palms can yield slightly more than 500 gallons of biodiesel per acre, other popular biodiesel crops have much lower yields—coconut trees only yield 230 gallons per acre; peanuts, 90 gallons per acre; sunflowers, 82 gallons per acre; soybeans, 56 gallons per acre. Bioethanol yields range as high as 662 gallons per acre for Brazilian sugar cane, but only hit around 350 gallons per acre for American corn, or 275 gallons per acre for French wheat. And unlike biodiesel, bioethanol only has an energy content approximately two-thirds that of gasoline, meaning that it takes 1.5 gallons of pure ethanol to provide the same amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline. Finally, of course, global demand for transportation fuel is going to increase in the coming decades.

The worldwide impact of 550,000 square miles of biofuel plantations is is already an ongoing environmental catastrophe. Imagine multiplying that by a factor of eight or more.

In general, Earth’s finite biosphere continues to supply food for humanity with relative ease, because Earth’s 7.5 billion people only consume around 22 quadrillion BTUs per year (based on the average human consuming 2,000 kilo-calories per day). According to the International Energy Agency, world total primary energy consumption is over 572 quadrillion BTUs per year—25 times as much.

Using the biosphere to produce food will always be feasible, especially with the advent of high-rise agriculture and other fantastic innovations that guarantee food abundance no matter how many people eventually live on Earth. But it is not feasible to use the biosphere to power the technosphere—that is, the entirety of our mechanized civilization. Just replacing transportation fuel with biofuel would consume 4 million square miles, and transportation fuel represents less than one-quarter of global energy consumption worldwide.

It is a deep irony that the global elites who wish to cram humanity into ultra high density “smart cities” are at the same time advocating renewable energy that is, in all of its politically correct iterations—wind, solar, biofuel—consuming stupendous expanses of open land, and wreaking environmental havoc in the process.

It is also ironic that the supposed visionary focus on “renewables” is in reality so shortsighted. There is breakthrough potential from dawning innovations ranging from high-rise agriculture to fusion power, from satellite solar power stations to new, novel ways of directly synthesizing transportation fuel from atmospheric CO2, to innovations we can’t yet imagine. Why not use inexpensive conventional fuel in the meantime, and by so doing, more quickly lift peoples and nations out of poverty?

In our rush to avoid using fossil fuels, we are destroying the world in order to save it.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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What Would it Cost for the U.S. to “Go Solar”?

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Proponents of renewable energy claim that wind and solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. According to USA Today, “Renewables close in on fossil fuels, challenging on price.” A Forbes headline agrees: “Renewable Energy Will Be Consistently Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels.” The “expert” websites agree: “Renewable Electricity Levelized Cost Of Energy Already Cheaper,” asserts “energyinnovation.org.”

They’re all wrong. Renewable energy is getting cheaper every year, but it is a long way from competing with natural gas, coal, or even nuclear power, if nuclear power weren’t drowning in lawsuits and regulatory obstructions.

With both wind and solar energy, the cost not only of the solar panels and wind turbines has to be accounted for, but also of inverters, grid upgrades, and storage assets necessary to balance out the intermittent power.

Taking all variables into account, what might it cost for the entire U.S. to get 100 percent of its energy from solar energy?

Speaking the Language of Energy and Electricity

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States in 2017 consumed 97.7 quadrillion BTUs of energy. BTUs, or British Thermal Units, are often used by economists to measure energy. One BTU is the energy required to heat one pound of water by one degree fahrenheit.

If we’re going understand what it takes to go solar, and usher in the great all-electric age where our heating and our vehicles are all part of the great green grid, then we have to convert BTUs into watts. That’s easy. One kilowatt-hour is equal to 3,412 BTUs. Following the math, one quadrillion BTUs is equal to 293,071 gigawatt-hours. Accordingly, 97.7 quadrillion BTUs is equal to 28.6 million gigawatt-hours. So how much would it cost for a solar energy infrastructure capable of delivering to America 28.6 million gigawatt-hours per year?

Solar panels are sold by the watt; residential systems are typically sized by kilowatt output, and large commercial solar “farms” are typically measured in megawatt output. A gigawatt is a billion watts. So generating 28.6 million gigawatt-hours in one year requires a lot of solar panels. How many?

To properly scope a solar system capable of generating 28.6 million gigawatt-hours per year, you have to take into account the “yield” of the system. A photovoltaic solar panel only generates electricity when the sun is shining. If you assume the “full sun equivalent” hours of solar production are eight hours per day (solar panels don’t generate nearly as much power when the sun is not directly overhead), then you can assume that in a year these panels will generate power for 2,922 hours. Since 28.6 million gigawatt-hours is equivalent to 28.6 quadrillion watt-hours, dividing that by 2,922 means you need a system capable of generating 9.8 trillion watts in full sun. How much will that cost?

A best case total cost for that much solar photovoltaic capacity would have to be at least $1.00 per watt. Because the labor and substrate costs to install photovoltaic solar panels have already fallen dramatically, it is unlikely to expect the cost per watt to ever drop under $1. Currently costs for large commercial systems are still just under $2 per watt. So the cost for solar panels to power the entire energy requirements of the United States would be at least $10 trillion.

But wait. There’s more. Much more.

The Other Costs Associated with Intermittent Solar Power

Renewable energy boosters use what’s called the “levelized lifetime cost” to evaluate how much wind and solar energy cost compared to what natural gas or nuclear power costs. To do this, they take the installation costs, plus the lifetime operating costs, and divide that by the lifetime electricity production. On this basis, they come up with an average cost per kilowatt-hour, and when they do this, renewables look pretty good.

What this type of analysis ignores are the many additional, and very costly, adaptations necessary to deliver renewable power. The biggest one is storage, which is breezily dismissed in most accounts as “getting cheaper all the time.” But while storage is getting cheaper, it’s still spectacularly expensive.

The only way intermittent renewable energy can function is by having “peaking plants,” usually burning natural gas, spin into production whenever the wind falters or the sun goes behind a cloud. To achieve 100 percent renewable energy, of course, these peaking plants have to be decommissioned and replaced by giant batteries.

An example of this is in Moss Landing, on the Central California Coast, where a natural gas peaker plant is being decommissioned and replaced by a battery farm that will store an impressive 2.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity. Not impressive is the fact that to-date, the installation cost for this massive undertaking has not been disclosed, despite that all these costs will be passed on to captive consumers. It is possible, however, to speculate as to the cost.

The current market price for grid scale electricity storage, based on credible analysis reported in, among other sources, Greentech Media and the New York Times is between $300 and $400 per kilowatt-hour. The installation cost for a 2.2 gigawatt-hour system would, on this basis, would cost between $660 million and $880 million. Chances are that PG&E will spend more than that, since the “balance of plant” including inverters, utility interties, and site preparation and support facilities will all be part of the capital costs. But using rough numbers, a capital cost of $500 million per gigawatt hour is not unreasonable. It might be optimistic for today, but battery costs do continue to decline, which may offset other costs that may be understated.

So based on a price of $500 million per gigawatt-hour of storage, how much money would it cost to deploy energy storage, and how much would that add to the cost of electricity?

Why Can’t We Just Use Batteries?

As noted, in 2017, if all energy consumed in the United States had taken the form of electricity, it would have been equal to 28.6 million gigawatt-hours. That comes out to 78,393 gigawatt-hours per day. But each day, it has to be assumed that the solar power is only feeding energy into the grid, at most, about half that time. Batteries are necessary to capture that intermittent power and deliver it when the sun is down or behind clouds.

It’s easier to make fairly indisputable battery cost estimates by using conservative assumptions. Therefore, assume that solar can supply reliable power 12 hours a day. That’s a stretch, but it means the calculations to follow will be a best case. If the United States is supposed to go completely solar, we would need to install grid scale electricity storage equivalent to 39,197 gigawatt-hours. In this manner, during the 12 hours of daily solar production, half of the output will be being used, and the other half will being stored in batteries. Cost? $19.6 trillion.

That’s a ridiculously huge number, but we’re not finished with this analysis. There’s the pesky problem of changing seasons.

Only So Many Sunny Hours in a Day

Even in sunny California, the difference between sunshine on the winter solstice and the summer solstice is dramatic. In Sacramento, the longest day is 14.4 hours, and the shortest day is 9.2 hours. Because there are far more cloudy days, even during a California winter, compared to a California summer, the difference is solar output in winter is less than half what it is during the summer months. Solar photovoltaic production in December typically only about one-third what it is in June.

As an aside, wind resources are also seasonal. For example, California’s state government has produced an analysis entitled “Visualization of Seasonal Variation in California Wind Generation” that makes this seasonal variation in wind resources clear. Reviewing this data reveals an obvious variation between the months of March through August, when winds are stronger, compared to September through February, when winds are considerably weaker. This seasonal wind variation, unfortunately, overlaps significantly with the seasonal solar variation. The consequences for renewable energy are huge.

Again for the sake of clarity, some broad but conservative assumptions are useful. A best case assessment of this variation would be to estimate the yield of solar and wind assets to be half as productive in the fall and winter as they are in the spring and summer. This means that to achieve a 100 percent renewable portfolio, two difficult choices present themselves. Either the wind and solar capacity has to be expanded to be sufficient even in fall and winter, when there is relatively little sun and wind, or battery capacity has to be expanded so much as to not store energy for half-a-day, each day, but for half-a-year, each year. This is a stupendous challenge.

To compensate for seasonality, supplemental energy storage would require not 12 hours of capacity, to be filled and released every 24 hours, but 180 days of stored capacity, capable of storing summer surplus energy, to be released during fall and winter. Doing that with batteries would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars. It is absolutely impossible. Coping with seasonal variation therefore requires constructing enough solar and wind assets to function even in winter when there’s less sun and less wind, therefore creating ridiculous overcapacity in spring and summer.

The Cost of Going 100 Percent Solar

Even at $1 per watt installed, it would cost at least $10 trillion just to install the photovoltaic panels. Just to store solar energy for nighttime use, using batteries, would cost nearly another $20 trillion, although it is fair to assume that storage costs—unlike the costs for solar panels—will continue to fall.

Building overcapacity, probably in America’s sunny southwest, to deliver solar power through the cold winter would probably require another $10 trillion worth of panels. And to deliver power across the continent, from the sunny Southwest to the frigid Northeast, would require revolutionary upgrades to the national power grid, probably using high-voltage direct current transmission lines, a technology that has yet to be proven at scale. Expect to spend several trillion on grid upgrades.

Then, of course, there’s the cost to retrofit every residential, commercial and industrial space to use electric heating, and the cost to retrofit or replace every car, truck, tractor and other transportation assets to run on 100 percent electric power.

When you’re talking about this many trillions, you’re talking serious money! Figure at least $50 trillion for the whole deal.

Another consideration is the longevity of the equipment. Solar panels begin to degrade after 20 years or so. Inverters, required to convert direct current coming from solar panels into alternating current, rarely last 20 years. Batteries as well have useful lives that rarely exceed 20 years. If America “goes solar,” Americans need to understand that the entire infrastructure would need to be replaced every 20 years.

Not only is this spectacularly expensive, but it brings up the question of recycling and reuse, which are additional questions that solar proponents haven’t fully answered. A solar array large enough to produce nearly 10,000 gigawatts in full sun would occupy about 50,000 square miles. Imagine tearing out that much hardware every two decades. Reprocessing every 20 years a quantity of batteries capable of storing nearly 40,000 gigawatt-hours constitutes an equally unimaginable challenge.

To the extent the United States does not go 100 percent solar, wind is an option. But the costs, infrastructure challenges, space requirements, and reprocessing demands associated with wind power are even more daunting than they are with solar. Americans, for all their wealth, would have an extremely difficult time moving to a wind and solar economy. For people living in colder climates, even in developed nations, it would be an even more daunting task. For people living in still developing nations, it is an unthinkable, cruel option.

The path forward for renewable energy is for utilities to purchase power, from all operators, that is guaranteed 24 hours-a-day, 365 days a year. This is the easiest way to create a level competitive environment. Purveyors of solar power would have to factor into their bids the cost to store energy, or acquire energy from other sources, and their prices would have to include those additional costs. It is extremely misleading to suggest that the lifetime “levelized cost” is only based on how much the solar farm costs. Add the overnight storage costs. Take into account costs to maintain constant deliveries despite interseasonal variations. Account for that. And then compete.

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California’s Climate Agenda Sets an Impossible Example for the World

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We will never waver on achieving the nation’s most ambitious clean energy goals..
–  Excerpt from Gavin Newsom’s State of the State Address, January 12, 2019

California has long been proclaiming itself the leader in fighting “climate change,” and incoming governor Gavin Newsom promises to continue the efforts. The big push began over ten years ago, with Gov. Schwarzenegger, who pivoted left after failing to reform public employee unions in 2005. Schwarzenegger promoted, then signed, AB 32, in 2006. This so-called “Global Warming Solutions Act,” set the initial targets for greenhouse gas reduction, empowering the California Air Resources Board to monitor and enforce compliance with laws and regulations aimed at achieving these reductions.

Other significant legislation followed. SB 107, also passed in 2006, mandated a “renewable portfolio standard,” wherein by 2010 at least 20% of California’s electricity would come from renewable sources.

The legislation has been unrelenting. SB 1, 2006, mandated utilities pay rebates to homeowners that installed photovoltaic panels on their roofs. AB 118, 2007, funded the “Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program,” the first step towards mandating a minimum percentage of electric and hybrid vehicle sales. SB 375, 2008, the “Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act,” directed cities and counties to increase the housing density of their communities.

When Jerry Brown took over as Governor in 2010, legislation accelerated. SBX1-2, 2011, raised the renewable portfolio standard to 33% by 2020. AB 1092, 2013, mandated electric vehicle charging stations in new multi-family dwellings. SB 1275, 2014, set a goal of 1.0 million “zero emission vehicles” by 2020. SB 350, 2015, raised the renewable portfolio standard to 50% by 2030. SB 32, 2016, set a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. AB 398 extended the “cap and trade” program to 2030.

This is just a partial list. High speed rail, water rationing, “urban containment” policies, a virtual prohibition on any conventional energy development, retrofit mandates for trucks and dwellings, and much more – all of it has come down from Sacramento in an attempt to “address climate change.”

But will any of this work? Is California setting an example that the world can follow?

CAN RENEWABLES MEET FUTURE GLOBAL ENERGY DEMAND?

The short answer is no. Renewables alone cannot possibly power the global economy. Using data on energy from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, along with population data from the World Bank, the following graphics make this clear.

In the above chart, row one shows the US population in 2017 of 324 million, which is 4.3 percent of the world total. Over 7.2 billion people are living in the rest of the world “ROW.” Row two shows that in 2017, using million metric tons of oil equivalents, the US consumed 2.2 billion “MTO equivalents,” which was about 17 percent of all energy consumed worldwide. That is, in 2017 the average American consumed nearly 4.5 times as much energy as the average person living in the rest of the world. Expressed as kilograms of oil in row three of the chart, in 2017 the average American burned 6,898 “KGO equivalents,” while the average for someone living in the rest of the world was only 1,561.

Most people would agree that access to cheap energy is a prerequisite for economic development, which in turn sets in motion a cascade of positive effects on societies – individual empowerment, female emancipation, access to clean water, healthcare, education, reduced infant mortality, fewer infectious diseases.

If one accepts that argument, the next chart projects how much more energy needs to be produced worldwide to achieve these positive economic benefits, and the positive effects that would follow from more abundant and affordable energy worldwide. A primary assumption is that Americans become somewhat more efficient in their use of energy, with their per capita KGO/year consumption declining from the 2017 average of 6,898 to 5,000 by 2035. The other related assumption is that the people living in the rest of the world increase their energy consumption from the 2017 average of 1,561/year up to 2,500/year by 2035, which would still only be one-half as much per capita as Americans would be consuming.

Based on these assumptions regarding individual energy consumption trends, as can be seen on the above chart, total global energy production will need to increase by 71 percent, from 13.5 billion metric tons of oil equivalents in 2017, to 23.1 per year in 2035. This is based on World Bank projections for 2035 that estimate the US population at 355 million and estimate the total world population increasing to 8.9 billion.

Can windmills and solar panels make that happen? They’ll have a long way to go. The next chart, courtesy of BP’s most recent Statistical Energy Review, shows the fuel mix of global energy production today.

It’s hard to even find the renewable slice on this graphic that shows global energy production by type for the last 25 years. On the right, where the 2017 mix is depicted, renewables are the minute orange slice, just below coal (grey), and hydroelectric (blue). As is obvious, coal, natural gas (red), and oil (green), constitute the overwhelming majority of energy produced in the world.

It is difficult to imagine 50% of this chart to be represented by renewables by 2035, when even under minimal scenarios to provide adequate energy for economic development, global energy production needs to nearly double. But how green are renewables?

IS RENEWABLE ENERGY REALLY CLEAN AND GREEN?

To answer this, an unlikely source provides an illuminating perspective. From the website of the “Deep Green Resistance,” a critique of green and renewable power is offered with a lucidity that eludes California’s policymakers. If the “deniers” of the right have no credibility with California’s green movement, perhaps the deep greens do. Consider these excerpts from the Deep Green Resistance website’s “Green Technology & Renewable Energy” FAQs:

“Aren’t renewables better than fossil fuel?

It’s debatable whether some ‘renewables’ even produce net energy. The amount of energy used in the mining, manufacturing, research and development, transport, installation, maintenance, grid connection, and disposal of wind turbines and solar panels may be more than they ever produce.

What about solar power?

Solar panel production is now among the leading sources of hexafluoroethane, nitrogen triflouride, and sulfur hexaflouride, three extremely potent greenhouse gases which are used for cleaning plasma production equipment. As a greenhouse gas, hexaflouroethane is 12,000 times more potent than CO2, is 100% manufactured by humans, and survives 10,000 years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen Triflouride is 17,000 times more virulent than CO2, and Sulfur Hexaflouride is 25,000 times more powerful than CO2. Concentrations of nitrogen triflouride in the atmosphere are rising 11% per year.

What about wind power?

One of the most common wind turbines in the world is a 1.5 megawatt design produced by General Electric. The nacelle weighs 56 tons, the tower 71 tons, and the blades 36 tons. A single such turbine requires over 100 tons of steel. This model is a smaller design by modern standards. The latest industrial turbines stand over 600 feet tall and require about eight times as much steel, copper, and aluminum.

What about hybrid and electric vehicles?

The production of electric cars requires energy from fossil fuels for most aspects of their production and distribution. This requirement is perhaps even more extreme with electric cars as there is a need to manufacture them to be as lightweight as possible, due to the weight of the battery packs. Many lightweight materials utilized are extremely energy intensive to produce, such as aluminum and carbon composites. Electric/hybrid cars are also charged by energy that, for the most part, comes from power plants using natural gas, coal or nuclear fuels. A recent study by the National Academies, which analyzed the effects of vehicle construction, fuel extraction, refining, emissions, and other factors, has shown that the lifetime health and environmental impacts of electric vehicles are actually greater than those of gasoline-powered cars.”

These are tough assertions. Not included here is the environmental footprint for literally gigawatt-years of storage capacity, not only to deliver continuous energy on windless nights, but, even more daunting, in winter when there are far fewer hours of sunlight. Most of what the Deep Green Resistance advocates may be considered dangerous extremism, but their assessment of renewable energy cannot be ignored.

Where California’s mainstream greens depart from the deep greens is in their optimism. But a realistic assessment of renewable energy must combine the optimism of mainstream greens with the lucidity of the deep greens.

Renewables are not necessarily “greener” than conventional energy, particularly if conventional energy is produced using the cleanest technologies available. If the all the governments on earth enforced on their peoples the experiment that California is committed to – 50% renewable energy by 2030 – the likely result would be the collapse of civilization that the deep greens not only predict, but wish to hasten.

An “all-of-the-above” energy strategy is the only way to offer humanity the possibility of peaceful economic development.

Back in the 1990s, when environmentalism had not yet matured into the polarizing climate change bogeyman that it has become, one of the most reputable environmentalist journals was produced by the WorldWatch Institute. Back then, they consistently advocated “methane” (natural gas) as the “transitional fuel” to power the global economy until breakthrough technologies such as fusion power or satellite solar power stations became commercially viable. More recently, environmental activists such as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore have advocated nuclear power as an essential part of our global energy future.

There is no place on earth more capable of developing clean fossil fuel and nuclear power than California. Californians have a choice. They can impoverish their population by creating artificial scarcity of land, energy and water, enforcing draconian restrictions on all development in the name of fighting climate change. Or they can face reality, and become pioneering partners in a new age of clean energy development from all sources. That would set a viable example for the world to follow.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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