A case in point: As a result of Arizona’s effort to boost renewable energy use and energy efficiency, we are using less natural gas.  That puts Southwest Gas in an bind.  They contend that with lower usage, they are unable to recover fixed costs to provide service.  Southwest Gas and other utilities are therefore urging the Arizona Corporation Commission to allow the utilities to impose a surcharge to gas customers, that is, allow the utilities to “decouple” charges from actual usage.  That policy will, of course, cost ratepayers more.  Not a good incentive for conservation.

We are already paying the cost of renewable energy mandates for electricity.  The Arizona Corporation Commission, in its benighted wisdom, requires electric utilities to produce an increasing percentage of electricity from much more expensive renewable sources due to fear of the phantom menace of global warming.

Tucson Electric Power Company notes that in 2011 it collected an extra $36 million from ratepayers to pay for renewable energy installations (mainly solar), and that in 2012 it expects to collect an extra $44 million in ratepayer money for these projects.

The Arizona Corporation Commission is not serving the public with these policies.  It is mandating that we produce electricity from more expensive and less reliable sources.  To put that in perspective the Energy Information Administration calculated the costs of electricity generation in dollars per megawatthour as follows:

Conventional coal power: $100.40; Natural gas: $83.10; Nuclear: $119.00; Onshore wind power: $149.30; Offshore wind power: $191.10; Thermal solar power: $256.60, Photo-voltaic solar power: $396.10. Note also, that the availability, i.e., the ability to produce electricity on demand, according to EIA, is 85% for coal, 87% for natural gas, 90% for nuclear, but only 34%-39% for wind, and 21%-31% for solar.

I urge the state legislature to take the power of issuing mandates away from the Commission and repeal the renewable energy standards.  That way utilities will be free to seek more efficient and cost effect ways of providing electricity.

See also:

Solar energy cannot economically compete in electricity generation

According to Investors Business Daily:

The Cross-State Pollution Rule, announced last month, and its implementation over the next 18 months will likely result in the loss of a fifth of the nation’s electricity-generating capacity.

The rule requires [coal-fired power plants] in 27 states to slash emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 73% and 54%, respectively, from 2005 levels by 2014.

Up to 110 gigawatts of capacity came on-line between 1940 and 1969 and were grand fathered under the Clean Air Act. Now the EPA is saying bring them up to their code or shut them down.

An analysis released earlier last month by the National Economic Research Associates used government data to examine the combined impacts of this latest rule and other EPA rules and found the EPA’s actions would cause a net job loss of more than 1.4 million job-years by 2020.

Even the New York Times says “Because of new Environmental Protection Agency rules, and some yet to be written, many of those [power] plants are expected to close in coming years.”

The Washington Times reports:

The EPA said it would soon release updated ozone regulations that are going to kill jobs and impose substantial costs on the U.S. economy – at least $90 billion, by its own estimates, and $1 trillion annually between 2020 and 2030 according to industry estimates.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to review standards every five years. The EPA last did so three years ago. Why the rush to imposes new stricter standards two years early? Is this political science rather than real science? According to the EPA, ozone levels have been falling since 1980 and are now just 50% of what they were then.

Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone are associated with fine particulate matter which is regulated by the EPA.

Again from the Washington Times:

What if today’s levels of air pollution didn’t kill anybody? That certainly would be bad news for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has spent the past 15 years stubbornly defending its extraordinarily expensive and ever-tightening air-quality regulations.

The EPA claims airborne fine particulate matter kills tens of thousands annually and that the prevention of those deaths will provide society $2 trillion annually in monetized health benefits by 2020.

But we can debunk those claims with more than mere criticisms of EPA’s statistical malpractice and secret data. We have actual data that simply discredit the EPA’s claims.

Continue reading.

For the most part, current standards have been met, so the EPA is moving the goal posts. The EPA has yet to provide any solid scientific justification for these regulations. And the regulations will greatly harm our economy. But regulators tend to regulate to justify their own existence. How clean is clean enough?

For a more in-depth analysis see: Pretending Air Pollution Is Worse Than It Is from Junkscience.com.

The book is about ideas and solutions to our energy problems. “Any solution or group of solutions will be based on total energy systems. The systems involved include power-grid stations, transmission lines, fuel procurement and manufacture, waste disposal, local power generators, vehicles and vehicle power systems, transportation and distribution systems for fuels, and maintenance and repair facilities.”

Johnson laments that we don’t develop more of our own domestic resources. “America has a virtual sea of oil within its borders and around its shores. Thanks to what I believe to be misdirected effort to influence elected officials by some overzealous environmentalists, the most accessible of our known oil fields are off limits to American oil companies.” At the same time, he proposes to transition away from our use of fossil fuels for transportation and electrical power. This reduction in fossil fuel use is not because of any concern over carbon dioxide emissions, rather, Johnson resents our having to give our dollars to unfriendly or despotic foreign countries. He has a section devoted to the global warming issue.

To transition away from fossil fuels, Johnson advocates more use of biofuels, made from non-food sources, and use of geothermal energy. He explains each in detail.

Johnson has a chapter on politics and expresses some well-placed cynicism. “The reality of politics and political ideologies means that many politicians and bureaucrats, who know virtually nothing about energy, energy systems, and the economics of energy, will be making many of the decisions on what systems we use, the vehicles we drive, and how we create and pay for the new infrastructure.”

All in all, this book is a good primer for anyone wanting to learn about energy systems, their potentials and problems.

The book is published by Senesis Word Publishing and is available from Amazon.

Mills estimates that in 2011, national production of marijuana will be 17,000 metric tons, one-third of that produced indoors.  Based on the energy requirement estimates for high-intensity lighting, dehumidification, space heating, water heating, and air conditioning, it adds up to 1% of our national electricity production and produces 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Read the whole study here.

UPDATE April 18:

Upon reading the many comments to this post, I realize that I should have put a question mark at the end of the title so it would read “Marijuana causes global warming?”

The cited paper is just another example of climate silliness.  For those who believe carbon dioxide has a significant effect on temperature, then the author of the study shows that marijuana grown indoors uses lots of energy which implies the practice can produce carbon dioxide emissions.

Regular readers of this blog should know that I do not believe that human carbon dioxide emissions have a significant effect on global temperature because there is no physical evidence to support that contention, there are only speculations from computer modeling  – garbage in-garbage out.  Go over to the Quick Links page and scroll down to the climate section to see my posts on the matter.

The renewable energy standard is a backdoor to Cap & Trade, and will cost us dearly because wind and solar generation of electricity are intermittent, very expensive, and requires conventional generation backup.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculated “levelized” costs for various electrical generation systems. “Levelized costs represent the present value of the total cost of building and operating a generating plant over its financial life, converted to equal annual payments and amortized over expected annual generation from an assumed duty cycle. The key factors contributing to levelized costs include the cost of constructing the plant, the time required to construct the plant, the non-fuel costs of operating the plant, the fuel costs, the cost of financing, and the utilization of the plant.” The EIA calculated these costs in dollars per megawatthour as follows:

Conventional coal power: $100.40; Natural gas: $83.10; Nuclear: $119.00; Onshore wind power: $149.30; Offshore wind power: $191.10; Thermal solar power: $256.60, Photo-voltaic solar power: $396.10.

Note also, that the availability, i.e., the ability to produce electricity on demand, according to EIA, is 85% for coal, 87% for natural gas, 90% for nuclear, but only 34%-39% for wind, and 21%-31% for solar.

A Heritage Foundation analysis of a generic RES found that a 22.5% RES by 2025 would cause household electricity prices to jump 36%, and industry prices would rise by 60% by 2035. That would cost an average family an additional $2,400 per year. There would be one million fewer people working on average with the RES in effect. And as the mandated level of renewable use rises over time, so do the losses imposed on the economy. Summing up the impacts for 2012–2035 yields a total loss of $5.2 trillion in GDP.

Dr. Fred Singer opines: “Now, it is quite clear that wind and solar are not economic — and they probably never will be competitive, even when fuel prices rise significantly. So the RES mandate would mean that all of us taxpayers would support even more the RES rent-seekers and lobbyists, who are already milking the government for subsidies and tax breaks for the construction of wind farms and solar energy projects.”

The alleged rationale for RES is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and thereby forestall global warming (now “climate disruption”) although there is no credible evidence that reduced emissions will have a measurable effect on climate. Another hyped reason is to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, but the U.S. has abundant domestic resources of fossil fuels. The Obama regime, however, seems to be doing all it can to make those resources unavailable.

National renewable energy standards for electricity will have the effect of a national energy tax which will raise rates on families and businesses, cause loss of jobs, and further depress the economy. What was that promise Obama made about taxes and the middle class?

Renewable energy standards are just another rip-off of consumers and taxpayers by rent-seekers, lobbyists, and radical greens.

I am all for voluntary conservation. In fact, I have a time-of-use meter on my house which allows me to choose when to run certain appliances to get lower electric rates in off-peak periods. However, the ACC program is a Big Brother command-and-control program that may allow utilities to decide when and how much electricity you can use . An Arizona Republic story says “APS (Arizona Public Service Company) is planning to test a demand-response program in which the utility will control homes’ air-conditioners, raising the thermostat a notch or cycling the unit on and off to minimize peak demand.” This so-called “smart grid” system is subject to attack by hackers who could wreak havoc with air conditioning systems in large buildings or neighborhoods, for instance. In a March 9 interview with U.S. News & World Report, Obama advisor Carol Browner said that with the smart grid, “Eventually, we can get to a system when an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won’t operate at its peak.” And strangely enough, Fannie Mae, the biggest U.S. mortgage finance company, holds Patent No. 6,904,336, for a “System and Method for Residential Emissions Trading,” which is the meter that would be attached to your house. reports this is a potential $22 billion dollar market. Maybe that’s why governments are creating a market to sell you something you don’t need.

Demand Side Management programs have been around for a long time and they are found wanting. A well-referenced MasterResource article details the many pitfalls of such programs. They say that “DSM programs are fundamentally unfair. The program punishes all ratepayers through higher rates. Meanwhile, it favors a few ratepayers that receive preferential treatment through the program by receiving subsidized energy efficient products such as light bulbs, refrigerators, consultation services, just to name a few.” “Demand side management presumes that a utility understands their customers’ wants and needs better than the customers themselves.” History shows that DSM programs do not live up to their purported goals. For instance, a Rand Corporation study of 324 utilities found that DSM programs did lower electricity sales, but the cost was far higher than utilities estimated. In fact, the study found that the cost of the DSM programs was roughly two to three times as expensive, on average, as the energy the programs were attempting to conserve. Also, utilities may have a disincentive to lower demand because that reduces sales. For the consumer, having more efficient appliances may just make them use the appliances more. This is a well-known and long understood outcome known as the rebound effect or the Jevons Paradox.

Encouraging electric utilities to provide incentives for customers to reduce their energy usage is fine if it is all voluntary. I wonder, though, where the Arizona Corporation Commission gets the authority to tell utility companies how much electricity they can or cannot produce. I’ve looked through the Arizona Constitution and Arizona Revised Statutes, but could not find any mention of such authority.

The next session of the Arizona legislature should take up this issue and rein in the ACC. While they are at it, the legislature should vacate the ACC mandate that 15% of electricity be produced from renewable resources, which are much more expensive and unreliable than fossil fuels or nuclear generation. I could not find any ACC constitutional authority for that either. The ACC has unconstitutionally seized authority that is properly in the realm of the state legislature. The ACC has fundamentally changed from a government body of limited authority to one with the presumptive authority to dictate energy policy in Arizona. The basic constitutional question is one of separation of powers. For additional information of this power grab, see an article from the Goldwater Institute: Returning to the Original Purpose of the Arizona Corporation Commission.

I suppose members of the ACC want to appear “green,” but they seem ignorant of the fact that your carbon footprint doesn’t matter. DMS programs increase bureaucracy and make the business of power generation less efficient.

Do you want the electric company or bureaucrats to control your air conditioner? Be careful who you elect to the corporation commission.

UPDATE: From Arizona Republic: APS officials are hopeful state regulators eventually will allow the utility to charge higher rates to recover the lost profits from their energy-efficiency programs.

This 12-page publication has some interesting and little known facts. For instance, do you know the single largest user of electricity in Arizona? It’s the Central Arizona Project which brings water to Tucson.

“Groundwater accounts for 40 percent of Arizona’s water supply. Extraction of groundwater for potable use, on average, consumes 30 percent more electricity than diversions from surface water sources, primarily because of the pumping requirements.”

In Tucson, treating wastewater consumes 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity per 1,000 gallons, while in Benson the cost is 7.3 kWh/kgal and in Patagonia it’s 13.5 kWh/kgal.

Which method of home cooling is more efficient, air conditioners or swamp coolers? “Air conditioners use between 2 to 4 times the electricity of a swamp cooler, but they do not require water. Evaporative coolers use less energy, but require continuous additions of water. The study found that if the electricity is generated by coal, the air conditioner is still a water saver, consuming only 425 gallons per month, while the swamp cooler uses more than 4,600 gallons per month. On the other hand, air conditioners are significantly more expensive to run, and their lower water footprint might not offset their greater energy consumption.” In other words, it depends.

This publication is worth the read. Download it from: http://ag.arizona.edu/azwater/files/Arroyo_2010.pdf

 Currently only about 2% of electricity in the U.S. is generated by wind power, but the Department of Energy estimates that as much as 20% of electricity could be generated by wind by 2030. (That estimate may be just wishful thinking.) To generate 20% of our electricity by wind power would require installation of millions of turbines across the U.S.

The M.I.T. researchers say that “using wind turbines to meet 10 percent of global energy demand in 2100 could cause temperatures to rise by one degree Celsius in the regions on land where the wind farms are installed, including a smaller increase in areas beyond those regions.” The researchers also suggest that the intermittency of wind power could require significant and costly backup options, such as natural gas-fired power plants.

 Wind turbines disrupt air flow. The researchers say that the “temperature increase occurs because the wind turbines affect two processes that play critical roles in determining surface temperature and atmospheric circulation: vertical turbulent motion and horizontal heat transport. Turbulent motion refers to the process by which heat and moisture are transferred from the land or ocean surface to the lower atmosphere. Horizontal heat transport is the process by which steady large-scale winds transport excessive heat away from warm regions, generally in a horizontal direction, and redistribute it to cooler regions. This process is critical for large-scale heat redistribution, whereas the effects of turbulent motion are generally more localized.”

In the press release for the paper the researchers explain:

“In the analysis, the wind turbines on land reduced wind speed, particularly on the downwind side of the wind farms, which reduced the strength of the turbulent motion and horizontal heat transport processes that move heat away from the Earth’s surface. This resulted in less heat being transported to the upper parts of the atmosphere, as well as to other regions farther away from the wind farms. The effect is similar to being at the beach on a windy summer day: If the wind weakened or disappeared, it would get warmer.

In contrast, when examining ocean-based wind farms, Prinn and Wang found that wind turbines cooled the surface by more than one degree Celsius. They said that these results are unreliable, however, because in their analysis, they modeled the effects of wind turbines by introducing surface friction in the form of large artificial waves. But they acknowledge that this is not an accurate comparison, meaning that a better way of simulating marine-based wind turbines must be developed before reliable conclusions can be made.”

The researchers also said that large-scale wind farms would disrupt precipitation patterns, particularly at the mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere.

Citation: Wang, C. and Prinn, R. G.: Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale wind farms, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 2053-2061, 2010.

See full paper here: http://tinyurl.com/yz7sgt8

Another downside to wind turbines is their effect on wildlife, particularly birds of prey. An article in the London Telegraph notes that “The world’s largest and most carefully monitored wind farm, Altamont Pass in California, is estimated to have killed between 2,000 and 3,000 golden eagles alone in the past 20 years.” The article further notes that “Spain has one of the three highest concentrations of turbines in Europe and, according to the Spanish Ornithological Society, they may be killing up to a million birds a year.”

See the Telegraph article here: http://tinyurl.com/yjktby2

Finally, electricity generated from wind turbines is more expensive than fossil fuel or nuclear generation. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that for commercial electricity generation plants that begin operations from 2015 to 2020, wind generation will cost $94 per megawatt hour capacity, versus $78 for gas, $69 for coal, and $72 for nuclear. (Source: IEA, 2009 World Energy Outlook). The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration estimates are higher. EIA estimates the cost of new generation will be $149 per megawatt hour capacity for wind, $83 for gas, $100 for coal, and $119 for nuclear. (Source: EIA, 2010 Energy Outlook).

However, the experience in those countries shows that all is not well.

A research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University produced a detailed, well-sourced paper: “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources ,” which shows that the “green jobs” program was an economic failure.

See: http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf

This study found that for every subsidized green job created, 2.2 jobs were lost elsewhere in the economy. “The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 (Euros) to create each ‘green job’, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job.” “… the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy,” and that “each ‘green’ megawatt installed [including solar jobs] destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy.” The study also estimates that between subsidies, and higher production costs, Spaniards would have to pay 31% higher electricity prices to repay the incurred debt.

In Denmark, they produce 19% of their electricity from wind power, but to produce that 19% takes 75% of all jobs in the energy sector. A study from Denmark (http://tinyurl.com/mdfsju ) notes “that the effect of the government subsidy [to the wind industry] has been to shift employment from more productive employment in other sectors to less productive employment in the wind industry. As a consequence, Danish GDP is approximately 1.8 billion DKK ($270 million) lower than it would have been if the wind sector work force was employed elsewhere.” This study estimates that the per job subsidy for the wind industry was $90,000 to $140,000 US.

The Danish Economic Council concludes: “The wind power expansion in the 1990’s is an example of a policy that was unprofitable from society’s point of view, even taking the economic advantages that the wind business enjoyed into consideration. ” As a result, the energy sector underperformed by 13% when considered on a value-added basis compared to other industries.

If the Obama administration really wants to create jobs, perhaps they should rethink their energy policy.