After going through the second hottest July since records have been kept, like many of us, I got a whopper of an electric bill. After picking myself off the floor, I went around the house to see what I could turn down, turn off, or get rid of to save some more juice before the next bill came. I was amazed when I counted up all the things in this house that use electricity - just about everything. Then I thought about where all this electricity comes from.
First a bit of history. While Thomas Edison invented electricity, he only was able to invent DC (direct current). While it was an important discovery, it was impractical to use on a large scale. However, it was a very good first step. It was Nikola Tesla who took what Edison invented and took it to the next step - AC (alternating current) power. This critical invention allowed electricity to be practical for widespread and affordable use.
Fast forward to today. In 2009, the United States as a whole used nearly 4 trillion kWh (a unit of energy equal to 1000 watt hours or 3.6 megajoules). According to the Department of Energy, about 37% of that amount was used for residential use. Some energy experts predict a 20% to 25% increase in the demand for electricity in the United States by 2030.
About 75% of our electricity comes from coal, oil and natural gas. Nuclear Power is supplies about 19%, and the rest comes from dams, wind, solar and geothermal. However, the amount of coal we will be using will shrink in the very near future. This last March the Environment Protection Agency released a draft rule Tuesday that puts new limits on greenhouse gas emissions from any future coal-fired power plants. The technology required to meet the new limits on carbon dioxide is currently so expensive that the rule effectively would put an end to the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the U.S. If we lose coal as a source to produce electricity, that means the remaining sources (oil, natural gas, nuclear and renewable) will have step forward and fill the gap that coal will leave.
How about nuclear? Can we build more plants to fill the gap that coal will leave? Consider this - the last nuclear plant built in the United States was Watts Bar, which was part of the Tennessee Valley Association (TVA). This plant took twenty-five years from concept to when they "threw the switch". True, there were extenuating circumstances within the TVA which allowed this construction to extend out to a quarter of a century. Many experts say in a time of crisis where all rules, regulations and lawsuits would be waived, the best case scenario would be three years to construct a new plant. The truth? If we want to build a new nuke, it would probably end up somewhere between the three and twenty-five year mark.
So how about today's darling - renewable. Consider California as an example. The state has adopted a new mandate where 1/3 of all electricity must come from renewable sources. The state’s peak electricity demand is about 52,000 megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. We will assume that half will come from solar and the other half will come from wind. Most of California's large-scale solar electricity production will come from projects like the $2 billion Ivanpah Solar Plant which is now under construction in the Mojave Desert. When completed, Ivanpah, which aims to provide 370 megawatts of solar generation capacity, will cover 3,600 acres — about five and a half square miles.
In other words, to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah, costing almost $100 billion dollars and covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan. While there’s plenty of land in the Mojave, projects as big as Ivanpah raise environmental concerns. In April, the federal Bureau of Land Management ordered a halt to construction on part of the facility out of concern for the desert tortoise, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Wind energy projects require even more land. The Roscoe wind farm in Texas, which has a capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154 square miles. To have 8,500 megawatts of wind generation capacity, California would likely need to set aside an area equivalent to more than 1,500 square miles. Apart from the impact on the environment itself, few if any people could live on the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which is inaudible to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the turbines. In addition, don't forget about the tens of thousands of bats and birds that perish every year from flying into the blades of the windmills.
Finally, industrial solar and wind projects also require long swaths of land for power lines. Last year, despite opposition from environmental groups, San Diego Gas & Electric started construction on the 117-mile Sunrise Powerlink, which will carry electricity from solar, wind and geothermal projects located in Imperial County, Calif., to customers in and around San Diego. In January, environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the $1.9 billion line from cutting through a nearby national forest.
One more thing on renewables. Consider the massive quantities of steel required for wind projects. The production and transportation of steel are both expensive and energy-intensive, and installing a single wind turbine requires about 200 tons of it. Many turbines have capacities of 3 or 4 megawatts, so you can assume that each megawatt of wind capacity requires roughly 50 tons of steel. By contrast, a typical natural gas turbine can produce nearly 43 megawatts while weighing only 9 tons. Thus, each megawatt of capacity requires less than a quarter of a ton of steel.
As Walt Kelly said in his comic strip Pogo, "We have seen the enemy and it is us". In other words, we keep electing people who allow behemoth agencies like Energy to continue year after year, consuming annual funding in the billions of dollars, producing nothing. We are getting rid of coal, have made it almost impossible to build a new nuke, and large scale renewable energy is nowhere near ready for "prime time". With the DoE refusal to develop a viable long range energy plan and the EPA acting like an anchor rather than a facilitator, we are stuck. Once again, this is another topic which is not being discussed in Washington. With 2030 only eighteen years away, the clock is ticking. The closer we get to that date, energy costs will continue to increase as will the frequency of brownouts and blackouts. However, one thing will not change - we are a society that runs on energy. Without sustainable energy in the very near future which is both adequate and affordable, we will soon become "juiced out".
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