The Biden administration is a full-employment act for energy/environment policy analysts, in particular those interested in defending the market allocation of resources, the national wealth and freedom inherent in expansion of efficient energy technologies, and resistance to the diktats and impoverishment—the central anti-human stance—favored by the environmental left, the bureaucracy, and many “experts.”
It is difficult to keep up with the Biden regulatory, spending, and subsidy onslaught in that it has evolved into a monstrous system of myriad subventions for inefficient energy, technologies that cannot survive market competition, and the resulting coercion by politicians and bureaucrats who believe that they know better. Because this policy environment is massively destructive for the nation writ large, the scholarly, policy, and popular literature criticizing it is huge, so much so that any effort to synthesize it into a coherent set of principles would be enormous and enormously time-consuming.
And so conferences that bring together such analytic themes disparate but closely related provide a huge service, and one such conference—The Energy Future Forum 2024: Dialogues At The Intersection of Technology, Money, and Politics—organized recently by RealClear is outstanding in this context (the full conference video is here).
The conference brought together technology experts, policy specialists, and public officials, each discussing a central dimension of the larger energy policy environment. I urge readers to take the time to watch the proceedings, but I would like here to add a few points to the excellent presentations offered at the conference.
Renewable Energy Is Not “Cheap.” Notwithstanding ubiquitous propaganda about the cost competitiveness of wind and solar power, the simply reality is that such unconventional power cannot survive without massive subsidies. Wind flows and sunlight are intermittent and cannot be scheduled. Accordingly, wind and solar “capacity factors”—the percentage of the time that wind and solar units actually produce electricity—at 30-40% or less are much lower than those for such conventional units as coal, gas, and nuclear, new installations of which have capacity factors of 85–90%. As the wind and solar industry expands, those capacity factors will decline because the expansion must be onto sites increasingly unfavorable in terms of wind and sunlight conditions. And because wind and solar facilities must be sited where the wind blows and the sun shines—not near the areas that will consume the power—a huge expansion in the long-distance transmission system would be required.
The Energy Information Administration estimates that onshore wind power is almost four times more expensive than natural gas generation once the cost of backup power is included. The figures for offshore wind and solar power are, respectively, 6.4 times more expensive and over four times more expensive.
Renewable Energy Is Not Reliable. Put aside the intermittency problem. The U.S. electricity grid is essentially an alternating current (AC) system in which the generators must be synchronized at 60 Hertz. Because generation from wind and solar units cannot be ramped up and down in response to disequilibria in power frequencies in a grid, conventional units must be used to regulate those frequencies. In the absence of such frequency regulation, the grid can become unstable, in the sense that the generators comprising the grid would be spinning at different speeds, a condition of non-synchronous generation resulting in a power outage.
Electricity Rates and the Poor. The adverse effect of the expansion of costly electricity on power rates is incontrovertible. What has not been noted clearly in the public discussion is the regressive impact on household budgets. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the shares of household income spent on electricity for the lowest through highest income quintiles are, respectively, 4.1%, 3.4%, 2.9%, 2.3%, and 1.7%. So much for the leftist argument that renewable electricity will advance the goal of “environmental justice,” however that term is defined.
The “Climate” Justification for Electricity Expensive and Unreliable. Ask not whether a climate “crisis” is upon us. (There is no evidence—none—in support of that common argument.) Ask instead what effect the policy push for energy expensive and unreliable and indeed the entire net-zero objective for greenhouse gas emissions would yield in terms of climate phenomena. If we apply the Environmental Protection Agency climate model under assumptions that exaggerate the effects of reductions in GHG emissions, we derive the following predictions for global temperature reductions in the year 2100 for policies implemented by 2050.
- Biden administration net zero: 0.173°C.
- Paris agreement: 0.109°C.
- China 50% GHG emissions cut: 0.184°C
- OECD 60% GHG emissions cut: 0.242°C
- European Union (27) net zero: 0.087°C
- Global 25% GHG emissions cut: 0.343°C
These trivial impacts should surprise no one. The leftist climate policy agenda has far less to do with climate phenomena and environmental improvement than the ideological opposition to fossil fuels and human wellbeing. That is the central reality obscured by the climate and “renewable electricity” cacophony, which the aforementioned conference will do much to reverse. I urge all policymakers, analysts, and interested individuals to watch it.