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America is Running Out of Electricity
The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that overall energy demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030. Since coal-fired utilities provide over 50 percent of the electricity generated in America, the need for additional plants would seem obvious. A May 2007 Business Week article about coal noted that, "Today, making electricity from coal can cost half as much as using cleaner-burning natural gas." Half as much at the plant translates to half as much in the monthly energy bill to homeowners and others. There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years. The brownouts in California are testimony to what happens when there are an insufficient number of plants to generate electricity, whether it comes from coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power. Right now the population of America is just over 300 million. The rate of population growth is 3 to 4 million people a year. All will want and need electricity. Where will it come from if the Greens are successful in thwarting the building of power generation plants?
Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine points out that, Energy is measured in British Thermal Units, BTUs. One BTU is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2006 the United States used 99.5 quadrillion BTUs of energy for electrical energy and for our transportation needs. What energy sources were used to generate the power? Fully 40% came from oil, 23% came from coal, 22% came from natural gas, 8% came from nuclear plants, 2.9% came from biomass, including ethanol, 2.8% came from conventional hydroelectric dams, and less than 1% came from all other alternatives combined, geothermal, wind and solar power. Along with the efforts to stop any means to provide the power America needs for its present and future energy, the U.S. government heavily taxes energy industries and has placed so many restrictions on new nuclear and hydrocarbon power production that there has been very little development for two generations. On top of this, it has mandated that a large portion of the nation’s corn crop, an essential element of our food supply, be liquefied and burned for fuel! The most recent "energy bill" passed by Congress and signed by the President actually bans Thomas Edison’s most famous invention, the incandescent light bulb! A recently proposed billion-dollar project by ExxonMobil to construct a storage facility and pipeline for liquefied natural gas off shore of New Jersey immediately drew criticism by environmental groups. Gas-fired generation plants would be further thwarted from access to the energy source. Whether it’s coal, gas or oil, the Greens are doing everything they can to return the United States to the same conditions that existed from before the Revolution to fifty years after the Civil War. The use and expansion of electrical energy did not really begin until the last century. An energy catastrophe is looming for the nation and Americans cannot even look to Congress to avert it. Have you visited our daily blog yet? If you enjoy our weekly commentaries, you will love a daily look at life on planet Earth that will always surprise and inform you. "Let’s cut to the chase. Energy is the foodstuff of civilization. Energy enables us to modify materials and to move them from place to place. More to the point, energy is necessary to modify every material in any way, to move materials and people, to heat, and to refrigerate. Our Daily Bread would not exist if we did not use energy to till the soil, to grind grain, to move the flour to the bakeries, and to bake the bread." My friend, Howard C. Hayden, is a Professor Emeritus of Physics from the University of Connecticut where, according to him, he spent 32 years corrupting young minds. He must have been very good at it. I suspect most of those students came in time to appreciate both his expertise in physics and his brilliant skeptical mind. The thing about physics is that it is rooted in some well-established immutable laws about how the universe works and yet it leaves room for further exploration, extrapolation, and invention. Though Sir Isaac Newton gets the credit for getting the ball rolling, it wasn’t until early in the last century that Albert Einstein came up with his then-revolutionary theory of relativity and even then, other physicists tested its validity and thrashed it about. Nobody said, "The science is settled." Science is never settled!
I say "actual options" because we are constantly assailed with some very bad options that are grouped together as "alternative" energy sources touted to save us all from oil, coal, and natural gas by getting us to switch to "sustainable" energy sources such as solar or wind power. You do not have to be a physicist to know that the sun does not shine all the time (especially at night) and the wind does not blow all the time, nor at the same speed. This easily comprehensible fact should automatically raise questions about the viability of either solar or wind power. The reason we are being told we have to switch to these two energy sources is that environmentalists keep telling us we are ruining the earth by using coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. Behind them come the know-nothing politicians who use taxpayer dollars to grant subsidies to the solar and wind power industries and/or legislatively mandate their use. They have already played havoc with food costs by mandating the production and use of ethanol for transportation power. These politicians, almost always liberals, cannot find enough ways to make it impossible for America to tap the vast reserves of oil and natural gas, or to impose taxes on all the forms of energy we use. They are hypocrites and parasites. Anyone who examines the actual viability of solar or wind power quickly understands what poor sources they represent and why they can never replace the abundant energy sources we are already using. The earth is not running out of oil despite the endless blathering of "Peak Oil" theorists who have been wrong so often they keep having to change the date when we are supposed to run out of it. The United States alone has hundreds of years’ worth of coal with which to provide electric energy if only the environmentalists would stop delaying the building of much-needed coal-fired plants. Nuclear energy currently provides much of Europe’s electricity needs and yet a new plant has not been built in the United States in three decades, thanks to the opposition of environmentalists.
As Hayden points out, "There are about 100 million housing units in the U.S. Some 50 million homes are now heated by natural gas and 30 million are heated by electricity. Fuel oil heats another 10 million." Do not believe the propagandists for solar power who keep repeating that we will have all the electrical power we need based solely on solar power. "Total worldwide electric capacity from solar cells is less than that produced by a single nuclear power plant." More solar power generation has come online since Hayden’s book was published. By 2006 it represented a whopping one gigawatt of year’s average power. For purposes of comparison, a city of 700,000 people will, averaged over a year, use about one gigawatt of power. Solar is a thoroughly inefficient way of generating electricity and a thoroughly insufficient one as well. "Because the sun does not always shine, and because the weather may be too cold, it is always necessary to have a backup system for the solar system." This nation could cover itself in solar panels and it would still need traditional power plants to insure that electricity kept flowing for the 80 percent of the time the solar cells were not productive. So, when you hear about solar or wind power, keep in mind that most of the time they are completely inadequate to the task of providing the electricity this nation currently uses and will, thanks to a growing population, need in the future. Alternative or sustainable energy is a fraud. It has limited uses, but blighting the esthetic value of our shorelines, our plains, and even our deserts would be an environmental disaster. The Center continues to need your support. Please consider a donation so that we may continue to provide fact-filled commentaries such as these two. Thanks.
©
2008 Alan Caruba. |
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The provision of electrical power nationwide has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs.
These days, "Cork" Hayden publishes a monthly newsletter, The Energy Advocate, now in its twelfth year. A few years ago he published "The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World" ($23.95, Vale Lake Publishing, P.O. Box 7595, Pueblo West, CO 81007-0595). I unreservedly recommend it to anyone and everyone who wants to understand the dynamics of the way we use energy today and what the actual options are.