Green Energy -Oregon's Electricity Prices to Increase 23.9 Percent

March 25, 2011, see http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20472&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

Economic Effect of Oregon's Renewable Portfolio Standard
"In 2007, Oregon passed Senate Bill 838 (SB 838) which established a state renewable portfolio standard (RPS). The RPS mandates large utilities (those providing 3 percent or more of the state's electricity load) to supply a minimum percentage of electricity sold to retail customers derived from new renewable resources. Specifically, SB 838 requires that Oregon's public electric utilities increase the percentage of electricity generated from new renewable energy sources, say researchers at the Cascade Policy Institute and the Beacon Hill Institute.

Since renewable energy generally costs more than conventional energy, many have voiced concerns about higher electricity rates. Moreover, since Oregon has a limited ability to generate new renewable energy, the state will start from a low power generation base. In addition, some renewable energy sources (wind and solar power in particular) require the installation of conventional backup generation capacity for cloudy, windless days. The need for this backup further boosts the cost of renewable energy.

In the aggregate, the state's electricity consumers will pay $992 million in 2025.
Oregon's electricity prices will increase by an average of 1.73 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), or 23.9 percent, in 2025.
By 2025 the Oregon economy will lose an average of 17,530 jobs, within a range of between 10,025 jobs under the low-cost scenario and 24,630 jobs under the high-cost scenario.
In 2025, the RPS mandate will reduce annual wages by an average of $275 per worker, within a range of between $157 per worker $385 per worker."

Source: David G. Tuerck, Michael Head, and Paul Bachman, "Economic Impact of Oregon's Renewable Portfolio Standard," Cascade Policy Institute/Beacon Hill Institute, March 2011.

Japan Proves Nuclear Power is Safe

See Wall Street Journal Notable and Quotable, Wednesday March 23, 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216473287331538.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

"Writer George Monbiot in the Mail and Guardian online, March 22:

"You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear- neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation."

North Dakota Economy Booming 3.8% Unemployment - California 12.4%

See Wall Street Journal MARCH 15, 2011 Why North Dakota Is Booming By JOEL KOTKIN
■ "They're drilling for oil, attracting high tech, and keeping the tax burden moderate. Result: 3.8% unemployment"
■ "progressives in California—which sits on its own prodigious oil supplies—abhor drilling, promising green jobs while suffering double-digit unemployment, higher utility rates and the prospect of mind-numbing new regulations that are designed to combat global warming and are all but certain to depress future growth."
■ "Between 2002 and 2009, state employment in science, technology, engineering and math-related professions grew over 30%, according to EMSI, an economic modeling firm. This is five times the national average."
■ "North Dakota now outperforms the nation in everything from the percentage of college graduates under the age of 45 to per-capita numbers of engineering and science graduates. Median household income in 2009 was $49,450, up from $42,235 in 2000. That 17% increase over the last decade was three times the rate of Massachussetts and more than 10 times that of California."
■ "North Dakota is a right-to-work state, which makes it attractive to new employers, especially in manufacturing"

400,000 Birds Killed Every Year in America by Wind Turbines

400,000 Birds Killed Every Year in America by Wind Turbines
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704296604576197023673837168.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion
NOTABLE & QUOTABLE Wall Street Journal MARCH 15, 2011
Raffi Khatchadourian on the BP oil spill in the New Yorker, March 14:

"It is possible to fight a forest fire and not be distracted by how the calamity was caused, and whether the cause taints the integrity of the people who deal with it. But oil spills are saturated in blame and political confusion—and opportunity. There is a sense that they are not accidents but accidents waiting to happen, and thus acts of greed. As a result, oil-soaked birds and fish come to symbolize a reviled industry's heedless behavior. Every year, as many as four hundred thousand birds are killed in America by electricity-generating wind turbines, but they do not make the cover of Time."

Why North Dakota Is Booming? 3.8% Unemployment

See Wall Street Journal Op/Ed piece by Joel Kotkin
MARCH 15, 2011 Why North Dakota Is Booming
They're drilling for oil, attracting high tech, and keeping the tax burden moderate. Result: 3.8% unemployment..

■ "progressives in California—which sits on its own prodigious oil supplies—abhor drilling, promising green jobs while suffering double-digit unemployment, higher utility rates and the prospect of mind-numbing new regulations that are designed to combat global warming and are all but certain to depress future growth."
■ " Between 2002 and 2009, [North Dakota] state employment in science, technology, engineering and math-related professions grew over 30%, according to EMSI, an economic modeling firm. This is five times the national average.
■ " North Dakota now outperforms the nation in everything from the percentage of college graduates under the age of 45 to per-capita numbers of engineering and science graduates. Median household income in 2009 was $49,450, up from $42,235 in 2000. That 17% increase over the last decade was three times the rate of Massachusetts and more than 10 times that of California."
■ " North Dakota is a right-to-work state, which makes it attractive to new employers, especially in manufacturing"

Regional Nuclear War Offsets Global Warming

See National Geographic February 22, 2011 article at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/
Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years
Regional war could spark "unprecedented climate change," experts predict.

by Charles Q. Choi

"Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for years, according to U.S. government computer models.
Widespread famine and disease would likely follow, experts speculate."

"To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal."
"The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C."


Also a very interesting comment / question:
erikleeolson
February 28, 2011
I have a question about the "Scenario" where 100 15KT bombs are used in this war. I'm just wondering about the numbers. That would be 1.5 Megatons of energy, whereas many above-ground atomic tests had a much higher yield, such as the 5,000Kt Tsar Bomba which was 1,400 10 times the combined energy of all explosives used in WWII, yet just one quarter of the estimated yield of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Did any of these events change the climate of the whole planet?

Green Energy Transmission Costs

See " The Great Transmission Heist" Wall Street Journal Editorial Monday, November 7, 2010
The latest scheme to subsidize solar and wind power to the detriment of rate payers.
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558400606672006.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
■ "Transmission lines … long-standing user-pays policy would be replaced with a policy of everyone pays under FERC's plan."
■ "wind and solar projects that tend to be in remote areas, like the desert or offshore. In many cases, thousands of miles of new transmission lines would have to be built to get the power to the end user."
■ "Wind and solar proponents insist that renewable energy standards can only be reached if transmission costs are shared by everybody. This sounds like an admission that these energy sources are inefficient sources of power that can't compete in the marketplace without subsidies."
■ "renewable energy projects already receive tens of billions of dollars of loans, grants, tax credits, earmarks, renewable energy mandates, stimulus money, and on and on. According to a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy study, wind and solar already receive subsidies that are more than 20 times greater per kilowatt of electricity than conventional power sources. But as with ethanol, even these subsidies are never enough."

Kyoto Fraud Revealed

See http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/10/14/kyoto-fraud-revealed/ and October 14, 2010 article by Walter Russell Mead. It includes:
■ "When the idiotic Kyoto Protocol was put before the US Senate, 95 senators voted against this confused and destructive initiative on the grounds that, as designed, the measure would simply ship American jobs to China and other countries without reducing greenhouse gasses."
■ "For years, green activists have mourned and bemoaned the shortsightedness of the US. How could we sit out from something so noble, so planet saving, so wise as the sacred Kyoto Protocol?"
■ " The EU ratified Kyoto, and Americans were then treated to years of vainglorious Euro-puffery about the nobility, the wisdom and the self-sacrificial idealism of the cutting edge eco-warriors of the Green Continent."
■ "But a couple of recent studies now seem to show that Kyoto was as big a fraud as the most militant enviro-skeptics ever suspected. The much heralded Protocol was a singularly stupid piece of counterproductive social engineering that encouraged the migration of good jobs to China and other low wage countries — without helping the environment at all."
■ "while the EU’s emission of CO2 declined by 17% between 1990 and 2010, this apparent progress was bogus. If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990. The EU, as the Guardian puts it, has been outsourcing pollution — and jobs — rather than cutting back on greenhouse gasses."

Calif. Rep. Devin Nunes's nuclear proposal would do more to reduce carbon emissions than any Democratic plan on the table

See Wall Street Journal Friday, July 30, 2010 by Kimberly Strassel

at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703578104575397652539348486.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

"Mr. Nunes's interest is how to answer these concerns in a more free-market way. The Californian's road map is the product of years of work, most recently with Mr. Ryan and a handful of Republicans with energy expertise—Illinois's John Shimkus, Utah's Rob Bishop, and Idaho's Mike Simpson. It's a bill designed to produce energy, not restrict it. It returns government to the role of energy facilitator, not energy boss. It costs nothing and contains no freebies. It instead offers a competitive twist to government support of renewable energy.

The bill is unabashedly focused on allowing America to responsibly access more of its own low-cost resources. It opens up more of the Outer Continental Shelf, and takes another run at opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It restores the leasing for Western oil shale that the Obama administration has squelched.

Rather than throw federal loan guarantees at uncertain nuclear plants, the legislation attacks the true problem: bureaucratic roadblocks. It streamlines a creaky regulatory process, requires the timely up-or-down approval of 200 plants over 30 years, and offers new flexibility for dealing with nuclear waste. Mr. Nunes likes to point out that his nuclear provision alone would do more to reduce carbon emissions than any Democratic proposal in existence. And it would in fact create, ahem, green jobs."

Obama Grants Environmental Waivers to BP Gulf Off Shore Drilling

See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
The New York Times June 5, 2010 front page article "In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig" by Ian Urbina includes:
Minerals Management Service
■ "Investigators have focused on the minute-to-minute decisions and breakdowns to understand what led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 people and setting off the largest oil spill in United States history and an environmental disaster. But the lack of coordination was not limited to the day of the explosion."
■ "a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig"
■ " Of roughly 3,500 drilling rigs and production platforms in the gulf [of Mexico], fewer than 50 are in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. But the risks and challenges associated with this deeper water are much greater."
■ "BP officials [for] Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate."
■ "BP engineers … had to get permission from company managers to use riskier equipment because that equipment deviated from the company’s own design and safety policies"
■ "when company officials wanted to test the blowout preventer, a crucial fail-safe mechanism on the pipe near the ocean floor, at a lower pressure than was federally required, regulators granted an exception'
■ The Obama administration Minerals Management Service "shares responsibility for oversight of drilling in the gulf with many others. The Environmental Protection Agency and others review offshore drilling for potential damage to wildlife and the environment"
■ "On the Deepwater Horizon, for example, the minerals agency approved a drilling plan for BP that cited the 'worst case' for a blowout as one that might produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day, federal records show. But the agency did not require the rig to create a response plan for such a situation."
■ "The rig’s 'spill response plan' … includes…the importance of protecting walruses, seals and sea lions, none of which inhabit the area of drilling. The agency approved the plan."
■ "Michael J. Saucier, an official with the Minerals Management Service, said that his agency 'highly encouraged' — but did not require — companies to have backup systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency.
■ "With the clock ticking, bad decisions went unchecked, warning signs went unheeded and small lapses compounded."
■ "BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe. Federal regulators also gave the rig a pass at several critical moments. After the rig encountered several problems, including the gas kicks and the pipe stuck in the well, the regulators did not demand a halt to the operation. Instead, they gave permission for a delay in a safety test of the blowout preventer.”
■ "at least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response, making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.”
■ "For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore, officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach. They ultimately approved the use of only one barrier, called a berm"
■ "Louisiana state officials spent much of May repeatedly seeking permission from the federal government to construct up to 90 miles of sand barriers to prevent oil from reaching the wetlands."
■ "It took more than a week after the explosion for the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, to declare, on April 29, 'a spill of national significance' a legal categorization that was needed before certain federal assistance could be authorized."

Gas Could Literally Transform The Global Energy Equation

See important Letter to the Editor Nov 9, 2009 Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/public/page/letters.html

Note: "Despite the conclusion of [President Obama's] own Energy Information Agency that fossil fuels will still account for 79% of energy demand in 2030 regardless of how many tax incentives are thrown at solar, wind, algae, biodiesel and the like.

"Gas could literally transform the global energy equation because North America is endowed with huge shale formations in virtually every part of the continent. But while technology, price and demand are important factors in the prospects for higher production, new drilling will only occur if Washington and the various states provide an accommodating fiscal and regulatory environment. Unfortunately, this is not likely to be the case.
For example, President Barack Obama wants to hike taxes on the oil and gas industry and use those revenues to subsidize renewables, despite the conclusion of his own Energy Information Agency that fossil fuels will still account for 79% of energy demand in 2030 regardless of how many tax incentives are thrown at solar, wind, algae, biodiesel and the like. Opposition to gas drilling from environmentalists will also retard new gas supplies, as evidenced by New York's decision to ban drilling in the New York City watershed. Plans to drill on Colorado's Roan Plateau are also meeting stiff resistance.
New technologies now enable us to potentially extract trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from domestic shale formations that, in turn, can reduce our dependence on imported energy. Let's not squander this unique opportunity."

Bernard L. Weinstein
Maguire Energy Institute