Tag Archives: energy

Renewable Energy

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Has German Chancellor Angela Merkel figured out something Barack Obama hasn’t?  As recently as last June, her government had set a goal that by 2020, renewable energy (vis., wind and solar) would comprise 35% of Germany’s electricity production.  In the first half of 2012 (ending that June), Germany already was generating 25% of its electricity from wind and solar, among other renewables.

Then some other things became apparent.  Germany’s Renewable Power Act requires power companies to buy wind- and solar-originated electricity in significant quantities.  Their largest industrial electricity users consume 18% of the electricity produced,  However, they pay only 0.3% of the extra costs generated by those required buys—German taxpayers pay the difference.

The power grid hasn’t kept up with the growth in alternative energy sources—like the offshore windparks in the Baltic and North Seas off the country’s north coast.  Many of those projects are at a standstill, with no way to deliver the power they generate to the mainland.

That Renewable Energy Act provides incentives to build wind turbines, but it doesn’t provide incentives to build the natural gas-fired power plants the country needs for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing (see the figure).

Withal, German consumers are faced with skyrocketing electricity bills.

Now Merkel is changing her mind.  She; her Environment Minister, Peter Altmaier; and her Economy Minister, Philipp Rösler are meeting with industry and union representatives “to discuss the rising costs for consumers.  In the run up to that meeting, Altmaier has indicated that he hopes to…put the brakes on the current rush toward renewables.”

In the US, we have these: green energy subsidies (guaranteed loans, tax credits) and a Federal requirement that power companies buy power from renewable energy producers.

Off the New England coast, special interests found the views from their beach front manses would be offended by wind farms, and the potential farms themselves were declared a “hazard” to aircraft, so they are not even being built.  In central California, environmentalists won’t allow some solar farms to be built and won’t allow the power cables that would deliver solar electricity to cities to be built.

The EPA still requires ethanol to be blended into our gasoline, even though not enough of that is being produced to meet EPA requirements, much that is produced is exported, and the whole charade is driving up the cost of food.

Maybe we should, in  this case, try Obama’s meme of being more like Europe, or at least more like Germany.

Growing Foreign Oil Dependency

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Amid claims by the Obama administration that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil—and actual Republican and conservative efforts actually to do so by opening up access to our own gas and oil supplies, protect our coal producers, and their failed effort to facilitate American purchase of Canadian oil—we get this, from The New York Times, no less.

The United States is increasing its dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, raising its imports from the kingdom by more than 20 percent this year, even as fears of military conflict in the tinderbox Persian Gulf region grow.

The increase in Saudi oil exports to the United States began slowly last summer and has picked up pace this year. Until then, the United States had decreased its dependence on foreign oil and from the Gulf in particular.

If the Obama administration weren’t slow-walking permits for off-shore drilling, closing off Federal lands to oil and gas development, and attacking natural gas fracking, we’d be getting access to increased American oil—and a major product substitute, gas—right about now, instead of having to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia, and thereby enriching a nation that has closed off Israeli access to its airspace should our erstwhile ally want to preempt an Iranian nuclear strike by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

If the Obama administration hadn’t closed off American access to Canadian oil by killing the Keystone XL pipeline, and thereby pushed Canada to sell its oil to the People’s Republic of China (which has its own purposes for getting Canadian oil), we’d have reduced further our dependence on oil from countries that don’t like us all that much.

Some Notes on Energy Subsidies

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Here are some data taken from the US Energy Information Administration’s report Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010.

The following table is excerpted from the EIA report’s Table ES4, and it shows the amount of subsidy that each energy source received along with the per centage of the total of nearly $12 billion in subsidies handed out that each energy source received.

2010 Total (millions)

Share of Total Subsidies and Support
oal $1,189 10.0%
Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids $654 5.5%
Nuclear $2,499 21.0%
Renewables $6,560 55.3%
    Biomass $114 1.0%
    Geothermal $200 1.7%
    Hydropower $215 1.8%
    Solar $968 8.2%
    Wind $4,986 42.0%
    Unallocated
Renewables		 $75 0.6%
Transmission and Distribution $971 8.2%
Total $11,873 100%

 

This table, excerpted from the report’s Table ES5, gives an indication of the relative amount of energy we taxpayers are receiving for our subsidy.

Share of 2010 Generation (percent)
Coal 44.9%
Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids 25.0%
Nuclear 19.6%
Renewables 10.3%
    Biomass Power 1.4%
    Geothermal 0.4%
    Hydroelectric 6.2%
    Solar 0.0%
    Wind 2.3%
Total 100.0%

 

Notice that: coal, natural gas, and oil get 15.5% of the total subsidies while producing nearly 70% of our nation’s energy; renewables get over 55% of the subsidies and produce just 10% of our energy.

As the Wall Street Journal tells us that DoE, which owns the EIA,

…warned that “Focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years” for other energy sources.

Of course.  Because if we did consider such things, we’d have to notice that renewable energy subsidies have been costing taxpayers for 40 years—since the ’70s—with next to nothing to show for it.

“Get rid of the subsidies for the fat-cat oil and gas companies,” says Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.  Ignoring the snide tone of his remark (albeit paraphrased by me), I agree—get rid of the oil and gas company subsidies.  Get rid of the alternative energy subsidies, too.  If the (renewable) energy industry cannot survive in the market on its own, this simply demonstrates that the industry isn’t ready for the market.

At least the oil and gas and coal companies, with their subsidies, are generating actual electricity, though: look at solar—it’s getting 8% of the total subsidies handed out, and generating no electricity (can you say, “Solyndra?”).  Not a watt, except for rounding error to get to that zero.

Some Thoughts on Climate

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There seems to be a problem with the location of the surface stations that are used to assess  (global) temperatures across a wide geographic area and over long periods (as “climatologists” see it) of time.  In particular, the US Historical Climatology Network, which has major contributions to the data sets used by “climatologists,” seems to have been giving invalid readings for quite a number of years, and at least one US agency involved in driving Federal climate policy seems to have badly “adjusted” the data these stations have been doing a bad job of providing. 

Specifically, as Anthony Watts, the lead author of the paper that investigates the implications of this error (“An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends”), put it in an earlier paper,

[A]pproximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources, such as concrete, asphalt, air conditioning system heat exchangers, roadways, airport tarmac, and other issues.

This is the result of the well-known urban heat island effect.  The cities grew out to surround the originally placed sensors, and nothing was done about those sitings.

In Watts’ present paper (that inspirationally titled “area and distance weighted analysis” paper), Watts used a better method of assessing the quality of the station locations, one developed by Michel Leroy of METEO-France and accepted for use by the World Meteorological Organization.

Watts’ findings:

…a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 – 2008.

Moreover,

Poorly sited station trends are adjusted sharply upward, and well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations.

Well sited rural stations show a warming nearly three times greater after NOAA adjustment is applied.

Urban sites warm more rapidly than semi-urban sites, which in turn warm more rapidly than rural sites.

And finally:

The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward.

Hmm….

How “Green” Energy is Working out for Germany

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We’re getting an empirical lesson in the effectiveness of an economy whose energy is intended to come entirely from “green” sources.  The Obama administration would do well to observe closely the in-progress German demonstration.

Germany’s electricity prices have risen 10% in the last few years, since the beginning of the German push to rely exclusively on these sources and to walk away from coal, which Germany has in abundance.  That might not seem like much of an increase, but it hurts.

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations estimates that roughly 10% of German households are having trouble paying for their energy.  Some have been pushed over the threshold and can no longer pay—and their electricity is being turned off altogether: nearly 200,000 recipients of Hartz IV, a German benefits program for long-term unemployed, had their power cut off in 2011 because of unpaid bills.  There’s more: the Economy Ministry has estimated that prices will increase an additional 3-5 euro cents per kilowatt hour in the next year, just to finance renewable energy subsidies and grid expansion.  Those increases amount to an additional €105-€175 ($130-$220) for a family of three.

There are more cost increases to come.  The Federal Network Agency, a wide-ranging regulatory agency with its fingers in electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railway markets, will announce this fall that rates will increase by 30%-50% above current levels.  Consumer “contributions” to renewable energy subsidies will rise by more than FGCO’s estimate of 3-5 cents; the FNA says the rise will be closer to 4.7-5.3 euro cents per kilowatt hour—plus VAT, they remind us.  Hartz recipients, and potentially programs like Hartz, will be hard-pressed to meet these increases.

We don’t need these headaches in the US.