Energy History, Energy Laws, Energy Policy--
What you'll find here is a series of excerpts or entire articles (fully attributed) that illustrate the breadth of America's energy concerns. Everyone seems to know that energy is costing more financially, and perhaps even politically. Fuel prices continue to rise in fits and starts over time. Cheap oil seems to be history. Plentiful and practical oil, gas, coal, or shale has its promoters and detractors—and nuclear power seems like a brand new question mark after Japan's serious damage at Fukushima.
Questions are powerful opportunities to explore and evaluate possibilities in both our personal and public worlds.
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How far off is:
Nuclear fusion-based electricity? An America whose energy backbone is renewable? Safer methods to extract finite fossil fuels without permanent environmental damage? A mix of incentives and taxes on energy that are fair or in the nation's self-interest? Some certainty that national policy and politics are not overly influenced by energy expediency or excessive lobbying influence? |
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Every change requires inertia and our energy future in the United States is no different. Individuals are free to act as they please in wasting or conserving energy, just as they are free to fasten their seat belts (or not) or are free to follow doctors' orders (or not). They may pay a personal price for their choices, however.
But it's not as simple as that. You can choose to freeze in the dark to save money but it might be better to admit a need for "things" that can help us conserve. Refrigerators and lightbulbs with very high efficiency are now available, which wasn't always the case. Flat screen televisions are appearing with much reduced electricity consumption. EnergyGuide tags on household appliances are now the norm. And one state has remained flat in its electricity consumption per capita over the last 40 years while the rest of the nation as a whole has increased its use by 50%. But these things weren't accomplished easily, or overnight. They required making choices in laws, regulations, and expanded policy principles that were centered on reduced energy use.
The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman likes to say that most new frontiers in products and practices are the result of a critical price point having been reached. With energy, it's the cost per Kilowatthour, or per gallon of gasoline or heating oil that could send that price signal. Raise those prices high enough (he says) and people will demand and stampede toward something else. If a shift in technology and our use of electricity or any other energy commodity is a worthwhile national goal, someone must advocate effectively for it (convincing enough of us) and someone must pass a law or regulation. This is where the rub begins.
For everything you might want to change, there's someone else who'd rather see it remain the same. Otherwise, they lose money, profit, or influence. The greater the change YOU would like to make (whether it's good for us or not) the greater the opposition you will find. This is largely tied to human nature. It's the tug-of-war between ALTRUISM and SELF-INTEREST, where the former is doing good for others (at possible cost to you) and the latter is doing good for yourself (at possible cost to someone else or many others). The specific rules by which we live (regulations) are enabled by laws (statutes) which are passed within legislative bodies filled with those we elect to public office. "Politics" is the name we give to the overall discourse of discussing, proposing, editing, introducing, debating, and passing legal statutes. It's a war of words, ideas, options, timetables, and strategies that determine what our future will be.
Our nation got somewhat serious about gasoline use in the mid-1970s. We passed a law saying cars and trucks had to be manufactured that used increasingly less fuel (or they could not be legally sold). But our Congress kept passing interim measures to forestall the regulation so that it could not be enforced. Did members of Congress suddenly decide that saving gasoline was a poor public policy? Or did they receive requests from other self-interested people who didn't like the law? What happens in Congress and the rest of the government is not necessarily for the good of the nation in every case. If a weakening of the C.A.F.E. (corporate average fuel economy) standards had not happened for nearly 15 years, would we have had Toyota Prius's sooner than we did? You be the judge!
But it's not as simple as that. You can choose to freeze in the dark to save money but it might be better to admit a need for "things" that can help us conserve. Refrigerators and lightbulbs with very high efficiency are now available, which wasn't always the case. Flat screen televisions are appearing with much reduced electricity consumption. EnergyGuide tags on household appliances are now the norm. And one state has remained flat in its electricity consumption per capita over the last 40 years while the rest of the nation as a whole has increased its use by 50%. But these things weren't accomplished easily, or overnight. They required making choices in laws, regulations, and expanded policy principles that were centered on reduced energy use.
The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman likes to say that most new frontiers in products and practices are the result of a critical price point having been reached. With energy, it's the cost per Kilowatthour, or per gallon of gasoline or heating oil that could send that price signal. Raise those prices high enough (he says) and people will demand and stampede toward something else. If a shift in technology and our use of electricity or any other energy commodity is a worthwhile national goal, someone must advocate effectively for it (convincing enough of us) and someone must pass a law or regulation. This is where the rub begins.
For everything you might want to change, there's someone else who'd rather see it remain the same. Otherwise, they lose money, profit, or influence. The greater the change YOU would like to make (whether it's good for us or not) the greater the opposition you will find. This is largely tied to human nature. It's the tug-of-war between ALTRUISM and SELF-INTEREST, where the former is doing good for others (at possible cost to you) and the latter is doing good for yourself (at possible cost to someone else or many others). The specific rules by which we live (regulations) are enabled by laws (statutes) which are passed within legislative bodies filled with those we elect to public office. "Politics" is the name we give to the overall discourse of discussing, proposing, editing, introducing, debating, and passing legal statutes. It's a war of words, ideas, options, timetables, and strategies that determine what our future will be.
Our nation got somewhat serious about gasoline use in the mid-1970s. We passed a law saying cars and trucks had to be manufactured that used increasingly less fuel (or they could not be legally sold). But our Congress kept passing interim measures to forestall the regulation so that it could not be enforced. Did members of Congress suddenly decide that saving gasoline was a poor public policy? Or did they receive requests from other self-interested people who didn't like the law? What happens in Congress and the rest of the government is not necessarily for the good of the nation in every case. If a weakening of the C.A.F.E. (corporate average fuel economy) standards had not happened for nearly 15 years, would we have had Toyota Prius's sooner than we did? You be the judge!
Oil, the liquid fossil-fuel--
Oil is our oldest, liquid fossil fuel and it's largely felt that the year in which peak amounts of oil were pumped out of the Earth is already behind us. And yet, new discoveries seem to be regularly announced. The current emphasis in the U.S. seems to revolve around connecting a pipeline between the Athabascan Tar Sands in Canada with the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of deep shale rock to produce oil inside the U.S. Both present a serious environmental debate that will not be covered here, but both sides see the other as acting totally on self-interest, not altruism.
Oil will have to power shipping, trucking, railroading, and aircraft for a long time yet. And oil is also the source of all our pills (medications), plastics, and all lubricants. But cars already have electric alternatives, and large scale hydrogen development may soon be within reach. Renewables may still cost more than folks want, but what should a system utilizing perpetually free fuel go for? Building construction efficiencies are still reaching new strides; and increasing fuel costs would propel more retrofits of the conserving technologies. Sending Industry a price point signal on fossil fuels would help spur the development of a number of more efficient technologies. Most other developed nations tax their fossil fuels heavily to keep this signal to the public and business a strong one. Cars there are smaller and more efficient.
U.S. consumers of gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil are subjected to a variety of public relations campaigns, the strongest of which are produced by the oil majors and encourage more drilling and fracking toward the purported goal of energy independence. Though never explicitly stated, the campaign implies that independence equals adequate supply, less reliance on petro-dictators overseas, less reliance on military intervention to protect oil transport worldwide, and stable prices (or perhaps reductions) at home. Just so you know, the Associated Press publised an article on New Year's Eve in 2011 saying that that year's record dollar-valued export was finished fuels (from U.S. refineries) sent offshore to non-U.S. customers. It was the highest level of exports in refined fuels since 1949. Meanwhile, the oil majors continue to increase their profits, repeatedly breaking previous records.
And the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline? The last stumbling block to obtain Congressional approval to build it was that all the crude reaching the ocean port at Valdez, AK had to travel to U.S. refineries for processing. The pipeline was completed in 1977. In January, 1990, in the last week of his presidency, George H.W. Bush abrogated the 13-year old provision, thus allowing Valdez crude to go anywhere (and it has).
Oil will have to power shipping, trucking, railroading, and aircraft for a long time yet. And oil is also the source of all our pills (medications), plastics, and all lubricants. But cars already have electric alternatives, and large scale hydrogen development may soon be within reach. Renewables may still cost more than folks want, but what should a system utilizing perpetually free fuel go for? Building construction efficiencies are still reaching new strides; and increasing fuel costs would propel more retrofits of the conserving technologies. Sending Industry a price point signal on fossil fuels would help spur the development of a number of more efficient technologies. Most other developed nations tax their fossil fuels heavily to keep this signal to the public and business a strong one. Cars there are smaller and more efficient.
U.S. consumers of gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil are subjected to a variety of public relations campaigns, the strongest of which are produced by the oil majors and encourage more drilling and fracking toward the purported goal of energy independence. Though never explicitly stated, the campaign implies that independence equals adequate supply, less reliance on petro-dictators overseas, less reliance on military intervention to protect oil transport worldwide, and stable prices (or perhaps reductions) at home. Just so you know, the Associated Press publised an article on New Year's Eve in 2011 saying that that year's record dollar-valued export was finished fuels (from U.S. refineries) sent offshore to non-U.S. customers. It was the highest level of exports in refined fuels since 1949. Meanwhile, the oil majors continue to increase their profits, repeatedly breaking previous records.
And the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline? The last stumbling block to obtain Congressional approval to build it was that all the crude reaching the ocean port at Valdez, AK had to travel to U.S. refineries for processing. The pipeline was completed in 1977. In January, 1990, in the last week of his presidency, George H.W. Bush abrogated the 13-year old provision, thus allowing Valdez crude to go anywhere (and it has).
Nuclear Fission--
Before I do any cooking in anyone's kitchen, I always look for the location of the garbage can. This is the same issue that should have been determined before we got to the point of over 100 fission reactors in the U.S. Nuclear waste is more than a radioactive, "hot" topic. It usually involves three things— In whose backyard will it land? What route will the waste take to get there? and Why can't it just stay wherever it is right now?
If all the waste from our current 104 nukes was shipped to Yucca Mountain, NV, we'd only have to guard one door from terrorists and malefactors in perpetuity (210,000 years). Why are we insisting on guarding 104 doors, how long can we keep doing that, and at what cost?
In the financial tug-of-wars, a lot is debated over subsidies, tax credits, and the cost of liability among the energy producing industries. Until we know we've got the real numbers on nuclear plant de-commissioning and perpetual guarding of waste, how will we ever have a legitimate comparison of all real costs per kilowatthour generated among the various technologies? Articles follow on this issue.
If all the waste from our current 104 nukes was shipped to Yucca Mountain, NV, we'd only have to guard one door from terrorists and malefactors in perpetuity (210,000 years). Why are we insisting on guarding 104 doors, how long can we keep doing that, and at what cost?
In the financial tug-of-wars, a lot is debated over subsidies, tax credits, and the cost of liability among the energy producing industries. Until we know we've got the real numbers on nuclear plant de-commissioning and perpetual guarding of waste, how will we ever have a legitimate comparison of all real costs per kilowatthour generated among the various technologies? Articles follow on this issue.
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Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (6-2-11) . . .Comparisons to Other Industries United States law requires payment of 8 cents per barrel of oil to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for all oil imported or produced. For this payment, operators of offshore oil platforms (among others) are limited in liability to $75 million for damages (which can be paid by the fund), but are not indemnified from the cost of cleanup. As of 2010, before payouts related to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, the fund stood at $1.6 billion.[7] Criticisms The Price-Anderson Act has been criticized by various think tanks and environmental organizations, including Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace International, Public Citizen and the Cato Institute. Public Citizen has been particularly critical of Price-Anderson; it claims that the Act understates the risks inherent in atomic power, does not require reactors to carry adequate insurance, and would therefore result in taxpayers footing most of the bill for a catastrophic accident.[8] An analysis by economists Heyes and Heyes (1998) places the value of the government insurance subsidy at $2.3 million per reactor-year, or $237 million annually.[9] In 2008 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the value of the subsidy at only $600,000 per reactor per year. [10] Due to the structure of the liability immunities as the number of nuclear plants in operation is reduced the public liability in case of an accident goes up.[11] The free government-granted insurance given to for-profit nuclear plant operators in the Price-Anderson Act has been used as an example of corporate welfare by Ralph Nader.[11] Price-Anderson has been criticized by many of these groups due to a portion of the Act that indemnifies Department of Energy and private contractors from nuclear incidents even in cases of gross negligence and willful misconduct (although criminal penalties would still apply). "No other government agency provides this level of taxpayer indemnification to non-government personnel". [12] The Energy Department counters those critics by saying that the distinction is irrelevant, since the damage to the public would be the same. [13] For more please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act ______________________________________________ |
Cost of Yucca Mountain soars
New figure for N-waste storage site tops $90B Published: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:04 a.m. MDT By Erica Werner, Associated Press and Lee Davidson, Deseret News WASHINGTON — Turns out, it's going to cost taxpayers $32 billion more than first thought to open and operate the nation's first nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. And Utah and Nevada members of Congress are using that news to try to kill that project and replace it with storing waste in dry casks at nuclear power plants that produce it. The Bush administration's latest calculation — made public Tuesday — is that the Yucca Mountain facility will cost more than $90 billion. It's the first official estimate since 2001, when the figure was $58 billion. . . "Utahns have a hard time understanding why the transportation risks associated with shipping waste to Yucca Mountain have never been fully studied," despite all the money spent on Yucca Mountain so far, Matheson told the committee. "Given that 95 percent of the waste would go through Utah if rail were used, and 87 percent if we truck this waste, this is a huge concern to my constituents." Matheson added, "The West — whether it is Utah's Skull Valley (proposed as an interim storage site), or Nevada's Yucca Mountain — is not the de facto dumping ground for this lethal material. Storing nuclear waste on site is the safest, most reasonable and most effective way of allowing nuclear power plants to continue operating while we search for an appropriate long-term storage solution." . . . For more please see http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700243465/Cost-of-Yucca-Mountain-soars.html ___________________________________________________ Memories of Deepwater Horizon (2010) and Fukushima (2011) bring to mind what might happen for survivors of an industrial calamity. In the U.S. there have been numerous challenges to the Price-Anderson nuclear liability limit (upheld by the Supreme Court in 1978 for individual plants and for total industry contribution to a common fund for a given accident). |
What causes industries to operate more safely than less safely? Did you guess "the risk of their losses" in your answer? How much damage would a catastrophic U.S. nuclear accident cause? And if you were eligible to collect something in the way of compensation—would that be more (or less) difficult than getting your medical insurer to back up your treatments, or in getting money from the BP disaster in time to save your Gulf-dependent business?
When you ask someone how safe their product/service is and they insist it's totally safe; ask them to take full legal and financial liability for any mishap. Any reluctance on their part should tell you all you need to know. As featured in the Price-Anderson legislation above, the U.S. Nuclear Industry long ago capped its liability in case of an accident. This calms their investors because the worst-case is known, and the rest of us will have to fight for a piece of any settlement (if we live).
When you ask someone how safe their product/service is and they insist it's totally safe; ask them to take full legal and financial liability for any mishap. Any reluctance on their part should tell you all you need to know. As featured in the Price-Anderson legislation above, the U.S. Nuclear Industry long ago capped its liability in case of an accident. This calms their investors because the worst-case is known, and the rest of us will have to fight for a piece of any settlement (if we live).
Energy Risks— two bad sides of the same coin?
It might be seen as ironic that the risks of climate change due to unlimited fossil fuel use (accelerated carbon dioxide build-up) might be on one side of a balance scale and expanded nuclear power on the other. Each course would have different paths but clear risks.
For example, carbon dioxide build-up causing global warming is melting polar ice, raising sea levels, changing weather patterns and the climate of formerly arable land, reducing snowpack, intensifying runoff, shortening irrigation periods, and causing more frequent and severe storms. It is predicted that there will be climate refugees, fights over resources like arable land, water, fertilizer, food, and fuel, and significant chaos and displacement. And those nations with the greatest developed lowland infrastructure will have to spend oodles of money to maintain or re-locate it. In short, climate change resulting from our continued fossil fuel binge could end life as we knew it and cause deprivation for us all.
And if you don't want more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, nuclear advocates will suggest we build many more fission reactors to provide our electricity while reducing carbon in the atmosphere. We should be like France, which depends on nuclear reactors for 80% of its electric power. Trouble is, the capital expense of getting from our 20% of nuclear electricity to a much larger share is very, very expensive, and much more than renewable alternatives.
If there's a plant accident (a la Fukushima) or a terrorist sabotage, or the capture of radioactive waste in place or in shipment— we're all going to be in big trouble. Can't put that genie back in the bottle. Ask the Ukranians about their history with Chernobyl and its aftermath, or ask the Japanese. So, back to the balance scale. We could stick with the status quo and see slow motion chaos leaving a difficult world for our young and their heirs on the carbon dioxide express. Or we could re-start an ambitious plan to go nuclear in the nation with a growing probability that some kind of accident, sabotage, or radiation storage issue in the next 200,000+ years will happen, even while we spend lots of money to build, commission, secure, and decommission these plants, followed by protecting their waste product from harming us next to forever.
For example, carbon dioxide build-up causing global warming is melting polar ice, raising sea levels, changing weather patterns and the climate of formerly arable land, reducing snowpack, intensifying runoff, shortening irrigation periods, and causing more frequent and severe storms. It is predicted that there will be climate refugees, fights over resources like arable land, water, fertilizer, food, and fuel, and significant chaos and displacement. And those nations with the greatest developed lowland infrastructure will have to spend oodles of money to maintain or re-locate it. In short, climate change resulting from our continued fossil fuel binge could end life as we knew it and cause deprivation for us all.
And if you don't want more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, nuclear advocates will suggest we build many more fission reactors to provide our electricity while reducing carbon in the atmosphere. We should be like France, which depends on nuclear reactors for 80% of its electric power. Trouble is, the capital expense of getting from our 20% of nuclear electricity to a much larger share is very, very expensive, and much more than renewable alternatives.
If there's a plant accident (a la Fukushima) or a terrorist sabotage, or the capture of radioactive waste in place or in shipment— we're all going to be in big trouble. Can't put that genie back in the bottle. Ask the Ukranians about their history with Chernobyl and its aftermath, or ask the Japanese. So, back to the balance scale. We could stick with the status quo and see slow motion chaos leaving a difficult world for our young and their heirs on the carbon dioxide express. Or we could re-start an ambitious plan to go nuclear in the nation with a growing probability that some kind of accident, sabotage, or radiation storage issue in the next 200,000+ years will happen, even while we spend lots of money to build, commission, secure, and decommission these plants, followed by protecting their waste product from harming us next to forever.
The role for renewables--
As was mentioned prior, making a significant change in policy is like trying to turn around an aircraft carrier in under one minute. But marching double-time toward renewable resources may be worth it. Please consider a list of reasons below:
- Renewable units of solar, wind, (hot rock) geothermal, and (heat pump) geothermal are all smaller units and less expensive
- Their fuel is free in perpetuity, it cannot be confiscated, diverted, or monopolized by someone else, and can't be embargoed
- Over time, the cost of all other forms of non-renewable electricity will rise; directly per unit, or as a social cost like pollution
- Efficiencies of renewables will increase as will their methods of deployment on individual buildings and complexes
- "Distributed Generation" of renewable electricity will save the grid and lower the cost per Kilowatthour delivered
- Consumers will become more directly involved in their energy use, managing it more than they do now
- The renewable technologies that business perfects can be exported to other nations at great profit
Advances in building construction of all kinds has already crossed the barrier of the "zero energy home," (ZNE). On an annual accounting basis, such buildings use no more electricity or thermal energy than they produce on their own. The "grid," and the pipeline complex are tied to the buildings, sure—but they simply fill in the gaps in need when they arise. And renewable electricity is fed back up the wires in times of surplus.
These buildings achieve such results because they use less energy per square foot to begin with (through a commitment to good thermal design). And when that happens, they require less mechanical heating and cooling to maintain inside comfort. Therefore, for ZNE buildings, less energy needs to be produced on-site. Solar PV and solar hot water are usually present in such buildings. And increasingly, ground source (geothermal) heat pumps are part of the mix.
It takes awhile for many things new to catch on. And sometimes, when those things are on the fringe of our entire culture they are satirized, criticized, and personified as some kind of rare character in a "them versus us" scenario. Tendencies and interests are depicted by amplification. They are sometimes revved-up as movements and set up as straw men (needing to be smacked down). In forestry, "The environmentalists just don't want people or chainsaws in our national forests," goes the saying. And in energy conservation, "This group of people won't be happy until everyone is freezing, in the dark." Neither of these characterizations is accurate, but both are rooted in a newer, national reality that if we don't get busy tending to our natural world, we are inching closer to leaving it solely for the insects (because they are among the natural world's greatest adaptive species, while WE are not).
Renewable energy never hurt anyone. It hasn't consumed someone else's lunch, and it isn't a zero-sum game. If I generate renewable thermal or electrical energy at home it doesn't affect you in a negative way, whether you are a close-in or distant neighbor. In fact, quite the opposite. For every Kilowatt your neighbor (me) doesn't use, the less is the chance our utility will have to upgrade its regional grid, thus costing all of us in the Rate Base. For every therm of natural gas or gallon of heating oil I don't consume on-site, the cleaner the local and regional air will be for all of us.
As mentioned earlier in this Web site section, there is a group of people that could be harmed by my spreading around the notion of energy conservation and use of renewables. That would be all of those who make their living or their investment profit by the exploration, development, transport, retail sale, or servicing of equipment that consumes fossil fuels. That would be coal, oil, natural gas, ethanol, etc. They lose economic opportunity every time a zero net energy building is commissioned. And this is much different than the historical disappearance of buggy whip manufacturers. The use of fossil fuels is directly responsible for climate change whereas buggy whips were not. A focus away from coal may be helpful to thwart climate change, but natural gas is not the "bridge" to a renewable energy future. It may (in fact) be a bulwark against needed change in the status quo.
These buildings achieve such results because they use less energy per square foot to begin with (through a commitment to good thermal design). And when that happens, they require less mechanical heating and cooling to maintain inside comfort. Therefore, for ZNE buildings, less energy needs to be produced on-site. Solar PV and solar hot water are usually present in such buildings. And increasingly, ground source (geothermal) heat pumps are part of the mix.
It takes awhile for many things new to catch on. And sometimes, when those things are on the fringe of our entire culture they are satirized, criticized, and personified as some kind of rare character in a "them versus us" scenario. Tendencies and interests are depicted by amplification. They are sometimes revved-up as movements and set up as straw men (needing to be smacked down). In forestry, "The environmentalists just don't want people or chainsaws in our national forests," goes the saying. And in energy conservation, "This group of people won't be happy until everyone is freezing, in the dark." Neither of these characterizations is accurate, but both are rooted in a newer, national reality that if we don't get busy tending to our natural world, we are inching closer to leaving it solely for the insects (because they are among the natural world's greatest adaptive species, while WE are not).
Renewable energy never hurt anyone. It hasn't consumed someone else's lunch, and it isn't a zero-sum game. If I generate renewable thermal or electrical energy at home it doesn't affect you in a negative way, whether you are a close-in or distant neighbor. In fact, quite the opposite. For every Kilowatt your neighbor (me) doesn't use, the less is the chance our utility will have to upgrade its regional grid, thus costing all of us in the Rate Base. For every therm of natural gas or gallon of heating oil I don't consume on-site, the cleaner the local and regional air will be for all of us.
As mentioned earlier in this Web site section, there is a group of people that could be harmed by my spreading around the notion of energy conservation and use of renewables. That would be all of those who make their living or their investment profit by the exploration, development, transport, retail sale, or servicing of equipment that consumes fossil fuels. That would be coal, oil, natural gas, ethanol, etc. They lose economic opportunity every time a zero net energy building is commissioned. And this is much different than the historical disappearance of buggy whip manufacturers. The use of fossil fuels is directly responsible for climate change whereas buggy whips were not. A focus away from coal may be helpful to thwart climate change, but natural gas is not the "bridge" to a renewable energy future. It may (in fact) be a bulwark against needed change in the status quo.
