Superb analysis & a reality check on Renewable Energy....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-27-2008

A week ago, though I just happened across it yesterday, TIME published an opinion & analysis piece that was so extremely well done, I’ve included most of it below.

(The original was at:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1834265,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-healthsci .)

I added some paragraphing to make some of the writer’s points stand out & will add my comments and the reality check I found after the quote I include here.:

Putting US Energy in the Wrong Place Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

By BRYAN WALSH

“….The reality is that whether the U.S. drills or not, it really doesn't make a difference — not against the sheer scale of the energy and climate crisis facing America and the rest of the world.

(Indeed, the other 6.3 billion people factor into this equation too.)

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that under a business-as-usual scenario — which the U.S. seems intent on abiding — global oil demand would rise 70% by 2050. That increase represents five times as much oil as Saudi Arabia produces annually. You could drill America with exploratory wells until it looked like Swiss cheese and still not make much of a dent in that figure.

That's not to say offshore drilling should be off limits. The world will be on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, and we will need more oil. If individual U.S. states want to take the risk of opening up their coastlines to drilling, let them — it's not a battle environmentalists should insist on winning.

The larger problem is that the Presidential campaign has been captured by a mostly meaningless debate over offshore drilling, which is obscuring a far more relevant question regarding the energy crisis: how can America develop workable alternative fuels — right here and right now?

Instead of squabbling over the nickels and dimes of offshore oil, we need to create a national plan to capture the future of energy: wind, solar, electric cars, next-generation biofuels. And this should be America's priority even among those who don't believe a word Al Gore has ever said about global warming.

If we have any chance of avoiding a future where we feel nostalgic for $4-a-gallon gas, or where countries with lots of oil (Russia, for example) can make a mockery of our foreign policy, we'll need scaled-up alternatives now.

Drilling advocates argue that we need to start exploring now so we'll reap the benefits in a decade, but the same goes for development of renewables — we have no time to waste.

It's too bad we seem to be treating alternative energy policy as somewhat less important than, say, passing resolutions to establish National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week (May 5-9).

Eight times this year, the Senate has failed to pass legislation that would extend tax credits that encourage the development of the wind and solar industry, legislation that will expire at the end of December.

(McCain, it should be noted, missed all eight of those votes — a record that doesn't jibe well with his campaign promises to pursue an aggressive alternative energy program along with offshore drilling.)

Without those tax credits, the renewable energy industry "is grinding to a halt," says Peter Duprey, CEO of the North American arm of the Spanish renewable company Acciona Energy, which has a 64-megawatt solar thermal plant operating outside Las Vegas, and recently launched a 180-megawatt wind farm on the border between North Dakota and South Dakota. "Everyone says America is the land of opportunity for renewables," says Duprey. "We have to get serious about it."

Duprey points out that the arguments used by proponents of offshore drilling can also be used to support aggressive investment in alternatives. "We have this vast untapped renewable energy reserves, just like oil and gas," he says, referring to the rich wind resources of the Midwest and the solar potential of the Southwest. "We just need to build the transmission lines to move that energy out."

Think of it that way, and suddenly alternatives don't seem like a far-off solution based on science fiction, but a resource that exists today, if it can be tapped — just like offshore oil.

That's a job for government, whether it means building the lines directly or using tax credits to support private industry.

This is the debate we should be having this election season — not an empty argument over offshore drilling or properly inflated tires.”

X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

Bryan Walsh makes some superb points in this essay. He makes them so well that I decided not to paraphrase his comments but include them directly as a quote.

Here are my comments on this; “The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that under a business-as-usual scenario — which the U.S. seems intent on abiding — global oil demand would rise 70% by 2050.”

As I’ve posted before, that is totally scary if we are on the edge of creating irreversible global warming that will bankrupt the economies of the nations of the world and devastate our ability to grow food and flood our coastal cities. If that is the case, as the evidence suggests, burning that much more oil will create catastrophic consequences.

The good news is that many people in the United States do NOT support business as usual. They know that it has unacceptable consequences and that the technology is now in place to generate that much renewable energy and more. So, it is the policy of the United States government he is actually speaking about here.

So, endorsing the people in government or who might be -- who intend to continue business as usual looks like a horrible idea to me.

George Bush & his administration have continued business as usual.

And, John McCain has done several things, from his emphasis on more drilling for oil, to declining to support renewable energy at key times even before he became a candidate for President that very much suggest he will do exactly the same thing.

That point Bryan Walsh did notice.: “(McCain, it should be noted, missed all eight of those votes — a record that doesn't jibe well with his campaign promises to pursue an aggressive alternative energy program along with offshore drilling.)”

These votes to continue the renewable energy tax credits this year that did NOT pass may well set back the launching of many well planned solar & wind projects if a bill continuing them fails to pass before the end of the year.

In my opinion, if John McCain was knowledgeable enough on these issues to be qualified to be and trusted to be President of the United States in these times, he would have been at all eight of the votes and worked to create a compromise that included some drilling provisions but continued the renewable energy tax credits AND then showed up to vote for them each time.

To me, the fact he failed to do this doesn’t just mean we should all vote for his opponent, they mean we should also pray that he never becomes our President too.

I think our country deserves a better fate than the one continuing the Bush Administration’s business as usual policies will produce.

The only point that Bryan Walsh missed is that there is ample evidence now to show that renewable energy is a larger resource that we can bring onstream faster than we can add that much oil production.

He also leaves out the fact that it may not be possible to increase oil production that much.

The reality check is that despite the far greater amount of energy available from solar, so far most of our increase of renewable energy has been from wind power.

And, the amount of that, though modestly impressive, is not yet any where near enough.

I saw recently that Texas now generates 3568 megawatts of electricity from renewable source and that Iowa generates 1267 megawatts. (And the vast majority in both of those states is from wind power.)

Despite each having the potential to generate more than those two states combined many times over from solar energy, the states that have the most solar potential, California, Colorado, Nevada, & New Mexico only generated 2058 Megawatts between them. And some of that was from wind power.

(John McCain’s home state of Arizona despite its huge solar potential generated less than the 90 megawatts that New Mexico did.)

This means that even though the need is there and the technology is there and the demand for energy is making the more limited fossil fuels rise in price enough to make renewable energy economically competitive, we have a very long way yet to go.

Will we have a President who gets it & will help us get a fast start in getting there?

Or, will we have a long delay while the situation worsens with more business as it has been before?

Like everyone else, I have my preferences on other issues. But they are irrelevant compared to this one.

Energy, more to the point, massive increases in renewable energy as soon as we can possibly deliver it, are THE issue.

Whether or not it’s even possible for the other issues to continue to be addressed, let alone addressed well, depends totally on this one issue.

Please vote accordingly.