This is a guest post from NB41, who is top-notch in the wind energy world and on how to integrate renewable power into the energy system.
Senator Kerry and Boxer introduced, yesterday, the Clean Energy, Jobs, and American Power Act. This bill is an alternative to/similar to the so-called ACES bill (Waxman-Markey Bill) which recently passed the House, albeit in a severely wimped out/compromised form
Beneath the fold is my reply to Senator Kerry, calling attention to the value of Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) for driving more rapid renewable energy integration into the electric system.
Dear Senator Kerry,
After reading through your new Energy Bill Summaries, I finally found the key to your proposal – in effect, CO2 pollution vouchers, to be imposed on the large CO2 polluters. The money from sale of these vouchers would be partly recycled to offset the higher price of energy that will result when coal and natural gas users burn these fuels to make energy and products. I guess there are also arrangements to allow the the purchase of RECs to offset these vouchers.
While I think your bill has good intentions, it is too mild, too little, too wimpy and too cumbersome to do what is needed. While this approach may help somewhat, I think there is a much simpler system that has successfully been used in several countries, which should ALSO be used. This better system is called Feed-In Tariffs, or Feed-In Laws, and they could be tacked on to your system very readily, and at no loss in efficacy to your programs (though that is not saying much).
In addition, your system only addresses some of the CO2 pollution – mostly coal and natural gas derived. Here is an estimate of the present US Co2 pollution rates, in gigatons/yr:
Oil (19 million bbls/day)……… 3.2 Gigatons/yr CO2
Coal (1.05 billion tons/yr) …… 2.6 Gigatons/yr CO2
Ngas (23 trillion cubic ft/yr) … 1.4 Gigatons/yr CO2
Most of the coal is used to make electricity, and it can be replaced by wind turbines. 20% of the Ngas makes electricity, and the rest is used for heat and chemicals manufacture. Most of the oil is used for transport, and much of that usage can be eliminated by using more fuel efficient cars, less car-miles traveled more urban mass transit (electric powered), replacing long distance truck transport by trains, electrifying bulk freight train lines, and replacing short and intermediate length airline traffic with electric passenger rail. Things like hybrid cars and electric cars will help, but not as much as more mass transit, and replacing low density sub-urban and ex-urban housing with mass transit centered arrangements. Using 50 mpg cars, and traveling half the number of miles/yr, gasoline usage could be cut by 75%, and the combination of domestic petroleum and biofuels could supply such a demand (about 2.5 million bbls/day, versus 9 million bbls/day of present gasoline use).
And, there is ZERO need for more nukes, or “clean coal” oxymornisms. Just lots of wind turbines, tidal systems, pumped hydroelectric energy storage systems, some geothermal, some solar thermal and a touch of PV for those who are rich enough to indulge in such activities.
Anyway, if you want to stimulate the economy massively with more renewable energy installations and renewable energy generation device manufacturing (a good idea!!!), there are 3 approaches:
- Make CO2 pollution and nuke derived electricity more expensive
- Subsidize renewables with govt tax revenues/CO2 pollution fee revenues
- Free renewable prices from fossil fule prices, and allow generators of renewable energy to get a stable price equal to the cost to produce it plus a reasonable return – alias the Feed-In Law approach
Since all of our governments (local, state, Federal) are way less than broke/way past responsible debt levels, subsidizing electricity costs with ANY government revenue should be out of the question (includes the PTC/MACRS subsidies). Feed-In Laws WORK, and they have proven to be the best way to minimize renewable energy generation REAL costs, maximize innovation, encourage a democratic participation in renewable energy investment/ownership (the PTC/MACRS subsidies result in ownership of renewable energy by ONLY those in your economic class (mega-millionaire and then some). But, fear not, the rich also do just fine by Feed-in Laws.
If you liberate renewable energy prices from the gambling associated with Freidemanite “variable pricing” schemes as well as highly volatile fossil fuel prices, no government expenditures will be needed to rapidly stimulate renewable energy installations in our country. We could easily exceed installation increases of 50%/yr for each of the next 10 years with a Feed-In Law (which would need to be regionally adjusted to account for the renewable energy resources of regions). And this would largely eliminate the need for most coal or Ngas to make electricity, and we could seriously start de-commissioning those aging nukes which have no proper garbage disposal arrangement (and are unlikely to ever have one – care for one on Cape Cod? Perhaps at the Oyster Bay Yachting Club? I did not think so…).
So, there’s my 2 cents worth. This use of Feed-In Laws would result in a massive privately funded Keynesian stimulus to our economy – funded by long term amortization of the investment via those electricity payments that consumers of that electricity already make. the funds from CO2 pollution fees (and a petroleum import fee, gradually raised, of course) could be used to fund efficiency improvements – for example, a lot more mass transit, installed on a massive and rapid scale, and employing at least million people for a generation just to construct (lots more to manufacture the parts).
Anyway, best of luck in your endeavors. And please check out some websites such as Wind Works and others that detail how the most effective (and at zero cost to government coffers/tax revenues, too) work. And why almost all major economies (most of Europe, China, India, and even Ontario) will be using the system that works, and not the U.S. subsidy and quota system, which costs a lot and relative to the need, gets very little done, and results in virtually all renewable energy generation ownership by the already uber-wealthy.
Sincerely,
Nb41 (name changed to keep in sync with the website)