Five years ago I started writing this blog site because I figured energy dependence on fossil fuels would destroy America.  Nothing I’ve seen since then has changed my attitude in this regard, although initially I didn’t figure in the problems associated with climate change, nor did I fully appreciate the national security implications identified by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2012.  The Joint Chiefs basically said relying on fossil fuels is the greatest threat to our national security, and they also said ‘climate change’ essentially changes everything.

And national politics, particularly those surrounding our first President of color, Barack Obama, overwhelmed my desire to explore the energy issues.

As it turns out, now that President Obama has been re-elected, the energy issues are resurfacing as important despite Republican obsessions over dismantling the social safety nets, including Social Security and Medicare that have been major distractions.

Most recently the President has proposed using $2 billion in gas and oil lease revenues to fund basic research and development to find ways to replace hydrocarbons as our primary transportation fuel.   In the larger scheme of things energy, according to a New York Times article, the President is striving to “to build as broad an energy portfolio as possible for the country, with expanded oil and gas development; favorable tax treatment for nonpolluting sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy; loan guarantees for new nuclear plants; increased emphasis on energy efficiency; and research into long-term alternatives to fossil fuels.”

OK fine.  I don’t think nuclear is going anywhere anytime soon, especially since the Japanese tsunami wiped out the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011.  And clean coal is a non starter too, although Texas has begun a $2.5 billion ‘test’ project for sequestering carbon dioxide gas from the use of coal for energy by burying it underground.    In both cases, the ideas are non-economic.  They are the most expensive ideas in the portfolio and they need the government to insure unintended consequences because the private markets simply won’t.

The simple fact is that the rest of the world, to the degree it can afford to right now, is moving away from fossil fuel dependence as  fast as it can.   From the Rocky Mountain Institute book “Reinventing Fire,” in 2010 four German states, totaling 10 million people, relied on windpower for 43-52% of their annual electricity needs.  Denmark gets on average 26% of its energy from windpower.  The Extramadura region of Spain gets 25% of its power from solar, while the entire country has 16% of its energy supplied  by windpower.  In the US, the Minnkota Power Cooperative supplied 38% of its retail sales from wind.  Texas, yes that Texas, generated 8% of its electricity from wind in 2010, making it sixth in the world among countries, after China, the entire rest of the US, Germany, Spain and India.

While a lot of public discussion has involved solar, wind, hydro, thermal–the clean sustainable energy sources–the reality is that innovations that create efficiencies will drive most of the movement away from using fossil fuels.   We’ll simply be using less energy to do more work by being efficient, not necessarily by building new power plants, whether they are sustainable and clean or not.  Carbon fiber plane and auto frames will drop airplane and ground transportation weights by as much as 35%, and would raise car MPG ratings well into the 80MPG or greater ranges just by weight reduction.  The newest airplanes are using 20% less fuel because they contain carbon fiber frames instead of steel or aluminum.  This trend is still in its infancy, but will no doubt reduce annual transportation costs by billions of dollars within the next 10 years.

A national direct current grid, capable of transporting energy much longer distances more efficiently, would produce a national marketplace where producers of sustainable and clean energy supplies, most of which are situated in rural areas, can competitively price their energy into urban markets where most energy is used.   And a movement towards energy ‘islands’ where neighborhoods or city districts contain smaller energy plants that can supply their customers even if the larger grid cannot for some reason, can raise energy security by several magnitudes.   These types of modernizations work no matter what the energy source, but they definitely do make sustainable energy cheaper upfront where the initial resistance lies, because once built sustainable energy plants are far less expensive than fossil fueled plants.

The real impediment to all this is political.  Fossil fuel incumbents are some of the most profitable and therefore politically powerful, corporations in the world.  So far they’ve been able to successfully mute the publicity surrounding alternative energy sources, to divert everyone’s attention away from the real, substantive progress that’s been already made in sustainable sources and in energy efficiencies.  Republicans will, no doubt, fight the President’s efforts to earmark $2 billion in gas and oil revenues (that’s over 10 years, so it’s very modest in the scheme of things) to support energy research and development.

But times are changing.  Inevitably the price of gas and diesel fuels, and oil for heating, will rise simply because the rest of the planet is growing and as a result demanding larger and larger shares of these energy sources.  These developing countries understand that the US model of fossil fuel dependent economic growth can no longer be duplicated, so they are aggressively building sustainable supplies.  Nevertheless, in the meantime they will use fossil fuels too, even if they think fossil is more of a transition fuel (which it will be shown to be) rather than the bedrock fuel of their economies.

It’s a global race, in other words, to see who will be the most efficient user of energy.   As the advertisement says, ‘the best way to save on gas is to buy gas less often.’   So it goes.  It’s not a matter of using less energy, because energy use is going to climb as the world demand for it climbs, it’s a matter of getting more work done per unit of energy.

Haven’t had the time to write posts about what I’ve been concentrating on recently:  Our national energy system and what we need to change as quickly as possible.

That said, the political scene out of Washington DC hasn’t really changed all that much.  Republicans, in their long running soap opera aimed at fooling the American voter Republicans still represent them, are now constructing the latest episode in that opera:  “Fire a million employees or we’ll shoot the American economy in the head,” otherwise knows as sequestration.  Sequestration is the child of another GOP soap opera installment called “If you don’t give us what we want we won’t raise the debt ceiling and we’ll shoot the economy in the head.”   In case you haven’t noticed all of these opera segments  end with the threat “we’ll shoot the economy in the head.”

Sequestration came about as a result of the first debt ceiling threat.  It refers to the $1.4 trillion in government spending the Democrats gave to Republicans as a sop to keep Republicans from ‘shooting the economy in the head,” by refusing the raise the debt ceiling in order to pay bills Congress already agreed to pay.    Well, those sequestration cuts come due March 1 and now Republicans are threatening, once again, “to shoot the economy in the head” by allowing all the sequestration cuts to be implemented, as agreed upon, even though most Senate Republicans, and a near majority of House Republicans too, not to mention the Democrats and the President, think to do so is insane.

Sequestration will result in 1 million job losses in 2013 (Congressional Budget Office estimate) and no one believes the private economy will step up to replace those lost jobs any time soon.  So that’s how Republicans will “shoot the economy in the head,” this time.  In other words nothing has changed.  The Republicans really, really do want to “shoot the economy in the head.”  And that’s what a good portion of what passes for leadership in the not-so-modern Republican Party intend to do.

Some Republicans formerly known as Tea Party types (the shoot the economy in the head and ask questions later crew) are showing a little bit of anxiety in light of the shellacking they took at the ballot box in 2012.  House majority leader Eric Cantor, of Virginia (a state President Obama won in 2008 and in 2012), made a speech recently that could have passed as coming from a progressive Democrat.  Most notably he directly endorsed the ‘Dream Act’ for the children of illegal immigrants that the President essentially enforced via executive order.  And he described families of illegal immigrants (estimated at 11 million people) as ‘part of our national fabric.’   Nothing about a legal pathway to citizenship for these parts of our ‘national fabric,’ of course, in his speech.  One must not forget that this is a soap opera.  It’s fictional as far as the Republican Party is concerned.  This is hopeful, marketing ‘spin’ and nothing more.   The party that wanted all 11 million to ‘self deport’ as part of its official party platform in 2012 hasn’t changed that platform.

There’s no real mention of ‘jobs’ anywhere in Congress, although the White House keeps harping on that as an important policy.  So that’s not changed.  The White House puts up some legislation that’s far too small to have a great enough jobs impact, and Republicans refuse to pass it anyway.

Energy policy is stealth-like and not much mentioned.  Republicans, who represent oil and coal interests, keep trying to keep oil and coal subsidies and to eliminate subsidies to competing sustainable energy industries.  So far it’s a stalemate.  Both are keeping their subsidies.  Innovation favors sustainable, where technology improvements are cascading, bringing down costs annually.  Meanwhile basic oil and coal industries haven’t had a new technology in over a century.  Natural gas has had the development of new ‘fracking’ technology which frees up heretofore unreachable gas deposits, but true to form, Congress has done nothing to accelerate the increased use of natural gas.

Republicans still claim to be the defenders of America’s bill paying tradition, but the only technique they’ve actually offered is to ‘shoot the economy in the head.’  Republicans won’t raise sufficient revenues to help pay the bills and they won’t negotiate spending cuts unless Democrats abandon their loyalty to social contracts like Social Security and Medicare:  Ideas that have been roundly rejected by voters several times.   By wide margins.

So while the nation keeps struggling, it is left to its own devices because Republicans insist on trying to impose on American their wildly unpopular, and unnecessary as well, policies.

The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) has published an innovative report that points out that using existing energy more efficiently has the greatest impact at the least cost.  Efficiency is so powerful a force the NRDC claims that even coal fired power plants can be kept on line, in many cases.

From the report:

An innovative feature of the proposal is the inclusion of
energy efficiency. State-regulated energy efficiency programs
could earn credits for avoided power generation, and avoided
pollution. Generators could purchase and use those credits
towards their emissions compliance obligations, effectively
lowering their calculated average emissions rate. Energy
efficiency is one of the lowest cost energy resources and
emission reduction options. States could use this provision
to slash emissions without costly and lengthy power plant
retrofits or new construction, reducing the overall cost of
the regulations……

Improving energy efficiency also cuts costs to consumers
and businesses. Switching to more efficient light bulbs,
adding weather-stripping or insulation in buildings, or
installing more efficient appliances and equipment, for
example, can save a typical household more than $700
per year—about one-third of the $2,200 average annual
utility bill….

The results from the model show that the proposed approach
would begin to modernize and clean up America’s electricity
sector while modestly reducing the nation’s electricity bill.
This is because energy efficiency programs adopted in
response to the incentives created by the approach would
cause overall demand to decline by 4 percent, rather

than increase by 7 percent. Meanwhile, coal-fired generation
would drop 21 percent from 2012 to 2020 instead of
increasing by 5 percent without the proposed carbon
standard. Natural gas generation would rise by 14 percent,
while renewables rise by about 30 percent (assuming no new
state or federal policies to expedite an increase in market
share for renewables)…

Investments in energy efficiency and demand response
are the lowest cost compliance pathway—much cheaper
than building new power plants or installing pollution
control equipment—so including this flexibility significantly
reduces overall costs. Energy efficiency consistently delivers
over three dollars in savings for every dollar invested,
which is one of the many reasons utilities have scaled up
annual investment from $2.7 billion in 2007 to nearly $7
billion in 2011, with a corresponding increase in energy
savings. See Figure 3: U.S. Electric Efficiency Program
Investments, 2007-2011. Efficiency investments reduce the
need to build additional power plants and infrastructure,
reduce wholesale power prices, and deliver significant bill
savings to individuals and businesses. Because substantial
reductions in CO2 can be achieved through energy efficiency
without building many new power plants or installing lots
of expensive pollution control equipment, the total costs of
compliance would be low—netting out at $4 billion in 2020.

Beezer here.  The report shows that enforcing the EPA clean air act need not be expensive.  It also says the program can be done without retiring coal plants and building brand new natural gas fired plants.  Basically the NRDC program is driven by the most efficient, least cost, techniques.  And  that technique is where efficiences come to the fore–irrespective of what fossil fuel is used.  The program provides a channel to substantial carbon dioxide reductions that doesn’t require, at least not initially, expensive replacement of coal fired power plants to gas fired ones.  The channel also allows for increased use of advanced systems like wind, solar and geothermal.

In a new study, researchers at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and the University of Delaware developed the most sophisticated weather model available to show that not only is there plenty of wind over land and near to shore to provide half the world’s power, but there is enough to exceed total demand by several times if need be, even after accounting for reductions in wind speed caused by turbines.

Knowing that the potential exists, the researchers turned their attention to how many turbines would be needed to meet half the world’s power demand — about 5.75 terawatts — in a 2030 clean-energy economy. To get there, they explored various scenarios of what they call the fixed wind power potential — the maximum power that can be extracted using a specific number of wind turbines.

Archer and Jacobson showed that four million, five-megawatt turbines operating at a height of 100 meters could supply as much 7.5 terawatts of power — well more than half the world’s all-purpose power demand — without significant negative affect on the climate.

“We have a long way to go. Today, we have installed a little over one percent of the wind power needed,” said Jacobson.

In terms of surface area, Jacobson and Archer would site half the four million turbines over water. The remaining two million would require a little more than one-half of one percent of the Earth’s land surface — about half the area of the State of Alaska. However, virtually none of this area would be used solely for wind, but could serve dual purposes as open space, farmland, ranchland, or wildlife preserve.

Rather than put all the turbines in a single location, Archer and Jacobson say it is best and most efficient to spread out wind farms in high-wind sites across the globe — the Gobi Desert, the American plains and the Sahara for example.

“The careful siting of wind farms will minimize costs and the overall impacts of a global wind infrastructure on the environment,” said Jacobson. “But, as these results suggest, the saturation of wind power availability will not limit a clean-energy economy.”

Beezer here.  It’s comforting to know that once we’ve used up all the fossil fuels, there’s still some hope we’d have enough energy to power a modern world.  Add in the technology advances no doubt in store both for solar and windpower and all does not seem hopeless that the world could eventually exist on sustainable, relatively non-polluting energy power.  The study is basing projections to 2030 when wind could become a major player in the global energy market.   That’s only 18 years away, so it’s pie in the sky if for no other than reasons there’s immense money and political power behind the continued use of dirty fuels like coal and oil.

Not going into all the parts, but the Oil Drum blogsite has a new post with a series of observations about energy related events across the globe.  It’s a good snapshot.  One take away is that we’re probably going to have to put infrastructure in place to use our natural gas for transportation, at minimum.  Can Democrats and Republicans get together on this?  Probably not because Republicans are only about trimming New Deal and Great Society safety nets in order to satisfy their ideological goals of shrinking government and giving their masters, the already wealthy, even more tax breaks.

A new report paid for by the Department of Defense asserts that solar installations on 9 military bases in the Mojave and Colorado deserts would produce  energy equivalent to seven average sized nuclear power plants.  Not only that, the installations could generate $100 million in annual revenue for the military.

From a New York Times green blogsite post.

A consultant for the Defense Department reports that introducing solar installations on nine military bases in the Mojave and Colorado Desert could generate 7,000 megawatts of power.

Depending on which yardstick you prefer, that amounts to the output of seven average nuclear plants or six large coal-fired plants. It would also amount to 25 percent of the renewable energy that California will require its utilities to produce by 2015, according to the 13 authors of the report, prepared by the consultancy ICF International.

The report says that electricity generated annually from such solar installations would be equivalent to two-thirds of what the Department of Defense consumes nationwide each year.

Perhaps as much to the point, the report also notes that the military could earn as much as $100 million annually from such solar installations, from rental payments to discounts on power. “Private developers can tap the solar potential with no capital investment required from the D.O.D.,” it adds.

What is more, full development of this solar capability would mean avoiding emissions of millions of tons of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, the report said.

One of the bases mentioned in the report, Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, already boasts the largest photovoltaic array in the nation, a five-year-old 14-megawatt project.

But beyond that, the consultants found, another 30,873 acres of military land is suitable for similar solar arrays on land belonging to California bases, like Fort Irwin, an Army base that has already hosted an experiment in “cool roofs” for new base housing; Edwards Air Force Base (whose history was excerpted in Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff”); the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms; and the Naval Air Facility in El Centro, where Prince Harry trained last year.J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times At Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, houses with “cool” reflective roofs reduce energy consumption.

Another 101,000 acres were deemed “likely suitable” or “questionably suitable.”

At least 96 percent of the land on the bases was ruled unsuitable because solar development would interfere with military activities, because the land provides essential habitat to species like the desert tortoise, because of topography like steep slopes, or because construction could harm a cultural resource like a rich archaeological site or an area important to a Native American group.

Even so, the remaining lands, rooftops, parking lots and the like offer rich solar potential for photovoltaic and perhaps concentrated solar facilities if hurdles like transmission capacity could be overcome, the study indicated.

“There are a range of technical, policy and programmatic barriers that can slow or, in some cases, stop solar development,” the report cautions. “Transmission capacity and the management of withdrawn lands are the two most important issues.”

The study’s economic analysis, calculating a 20-year investment return, assumes that all construction would take place in 2015 (allowing for lead-in planning and procurement time) and that the price of photovoltaic arrays will drop 20 percent or so from last year’s levels.

The solar energy installations could also make the military bases less vulnerable to disruptions of the public electricity grid, the report added. Currently the Defense Department relies on individual diesel generators to insure power in the event of a grid interruption, it noted.

As the military bases rely more on secure microgrids to meet energy needs, the authors predict,  solar power can play an ever more important role.

Beezer here.  One of the nation’s more important infrastructure needs is to revamp the electric grid so that these types of renewable, sustainable energy sources can efficiently power distant locations.  Winds along the eastern seaboard and in the Dakotas is a 365 day per year phenomenon.  What’s needed to bring this constant power source online isn’t better storage technology, but installation of modern electric distribution systems.  Status quo energy suppliers like coal will do everything they can to keep this powerful competitor off line, of course.    Republicans are upset the Obama administration hasn’t already approved the Canadian owned Keystone oil pipeline through the nation’s heartland, but not a peep about spending some money bringing non polluting, renewable solar and wind power online.  They claim we need this imported fuel while ignoring what we could be doing on our own soil.  Hypocrites.